“Sister Mary? Oh, dear—what’s wrong?”
I’m taken off guard by the concern in her voice. “What?”
“You… you’re crying.”
And so I am. I wipe away the telltale tears. “Must be old age creeping up on me.”
She tries to laugh at that, but she’s distracted by Stephen. He approaches hesitantly, as if he isn’t sure he should interrupt us. Enid smiles at him as she rises. “Well, I’d best get to work. Stephen, have you seen Little Mary?”
“She’s waiting for you in the workroom.”
“Oh, my, I really must get to work.”
She hurries away, and Stephen sits down in the chair she has vacated. He looks out at the rain and finally asks, “What’s going to happen, Mary? I mean, with school and… and Miriam.”
“I don’t know, Stephen.”
He considers that. “Sometimes I think Miriam does hate you, but I don’t know why. You’ve never done anything to her. Except maybe…”
His eyes are downcast, and I have to ask, “Maybe what?”
“Well, when you wouldn’t let her finish the whipping.”
Does he think all this is somehow his fault? Oh, my sweet child, not-yet-man. I reach out and take his hand. “It goes much deeper than that. But don’t worry. We’ll resolve this one way or another.”
He studies me intently, and perhaps he realizes how little real comfort there is in that assurance. Then he looks at the diary on the table. “Maybe you’d rather not have a lesson today.”
“Why not?” I ask, surprised. And I wonder if Stephen and I will be allowed more of these lessons after the family meeting.
“No reason,” he says, and means no reason he can explain. “Besides, maybe this is a good time for you to think about happy memories.”
“Happy memories?”
“I meant… well, you and Luke that summer at Amama.”
“Oh. Yes, of course.” I suppose my memories of that time are happy. Luke and I were in love. What an amazing state of mind that is. I think it’s similar to Miriam’s state of mind where religion is concerned. There is an extravagant exultation in being in love, living always at the extremes of emotion. The problem—which is never evident to the victim—is that this exultant state induces mental tunnel vision.
“Weren’t you happy when Luke asked you to be his wife?”
I hear the clack-clack of Enid’s loom, her patient instructions to Little Mary. “Yes, I was happy, Stephen.”
“And Rachel? Wasn’t she happy for you?”
“Yes, she was happy for me. And I thought… but, of course, she wasn’t in love. She didn’t suffer from tunnel vision.”
He looks perplexed. “From what?”
“I just mean that I only saw what I wanted to see. I thought Rachel was as happy as Luke and I were. But in fact she had nothing to look forward to but hard labor eking out a living here, spending any remaining time and energy on the books—all in absolute solitude. In loneliness. But I was incapable of envisioning that future for her. And I was doing what I thought I had to do, what I thought was right.”
“But wasn’t it right? I mean, if you could have children…”
In his world, where there are so few people and new life is so precious, my doubts make no sense.
“That summer it seemed right, Stephen. And it was a happy time for me, and a busy one. Luke and I were determined to see that Rachel was well prepared for winter. The three of us harvested and stored most of the crops, split wood, cut and baled hay, and Luke shot two deer and smoked the meat. We canned vegetables and made jams and applesauce, harvested honey, made cheese. And Luke finished the vault. On that day I know Rachel was happy. It was the last day of August. We carried all the books we’d already sealed to the Knob and stacked them in the vault, then we opened a bottle of our mead and celebrated right there.”
I don’t add that we opened more than one bottle, and we were all a little drunk. We laughed and sang until the sun set and the shadow of dusk fell on the sea. The last song was “Auld Lang Syne.”
“Well, after that, Luke felt his work at Amama was finished. There were a few odds and ends to do to prepare Rachel for winter, but that only took a few days. On the sixth of September Luke and I left Amama. We set out on foot, each of us carrying a backpack. Rachel offered us one of the horses, but Luke said there were plenty of horses at the Ark, and we wouldn’t need much in the way of worldly goods. All we needed would be provided for us at the Ark….”
Rachel walked with us as far as the east gate. I held her for a long time, and I remember feeling a sudden fear, a sense of loss as urgent as panic. But Luke called to me to come along, and the panic vanished. I was smiling when I turned and waved my last goodbye.
By then I was too far away to see if there were tears in Rachel’s eyes.
Chapter 20
The great question which, in all ages, has disturbed mankind, and brought on them the greatest part of their mischiefs… has been, not whether be power in the world, nor whence it came, but who should have it.
This had once been a state campground. A paved road, tufted with weeds, veined with blackberry vines, still wound through the trees. Luke led Mary to a campsite that was separated from the beach only by a sloping, salal-covered bank six feet high. To the south a creek tumbled over a rocky bed until it reached the sand, where it sprawled in a weave of shallowing channels toward the sea. Two spruce trees, bent by winds into a canopy, dappled the ground with shade. The concrete table and benches were intact, as well as the firepit.
Mary sagged down on one of the benches, backpack and all, her feet and legs aching. Luke had insisted on starting out this morning as soon as there was light enough to see. Yet now he insisted on stopping, and the sun was still thirty degrees above the horizon. He was standing by the stream, his back to her. When he turned, he smiled as if he were about to divulge a secret he could no longer keep.
“We’re only about five miles from the Ark, Mary.”
She felt a tingling at the back of her neck. “Then why are we stopping here?”
Without responding, he came over to the table, turned and rested his pack on it while he unbuckled the straps, then helped Mary out of her pack. “This is a nice place, isn’t it? I’ve camped here when I was out with hunting parties. There’s good fishing off those rocks to the south.” He delved into his pack, found the collapsible fishing rod, and began putting it together. “And I’m not looking forward to jerky and pemmican for supper. I’ll see if I can’t catch something tastier.”
She walked with him as far as the beach, then began searching above the high-tide line for driftwood, while he strode toward the small headland to the south, and she wondered why it had apparently always been the lot of women to gather firewood.
In the next hour she accumulated a substantial stack of wood and kindling; she laid a fire ready to be lighted; she gathered two cupfuls of wild huckleberries from the bushes growing along the road; and finally she sat down on the concrete bench with the sketchbook that had been Rachel’s parting gift to her.
She opened it to an ink drawing of the Knob. Rachel had added a few strokes to suggest the vault. On another page, a magnificent stump lying on the beach, roots flung skyward. On the next page, a dark, textured arch: the base of the tree. Then a montage of cats; she recognized Trouchka with his odd spots. Then Shadow in various poses—Shadow whom she knew she would never see alive again.