One thing I’m sure of at this moment: it was an error to think that Miriam must kill me to negate my influence. She has only to destroy what is most vital to me.
The books. The vault.
It hadn’t occurred to me before. I suppose I didn’t think it was possible. But it is. Nobel’s legacy to the world may yet destroy mine.
“Oh—Mary, I didn’t know you were here.”
Esther has come out the backdoor. She sees the wedges of wood on the concrete and hurries toward me. “Did you hurt yourself?”
“No, Esther.” She starts picking up the wood, and I tell her, “Here, I’ll take that.”
“Maybe you had too big a load.” She is solicitous as always, yet she seems to be having trouble meeting my eye. She balances three pieces in the crook of my arm. “That’s enough, I think.”
I don’t argue with her, but take my light load into the house and deposit it in the wood box by the living-room fireplace. When I go back for more, I find that Esther has detailed Stephen and Jonathan to assist me. I leave the job to them, go out on the deck, and feel the damp wind in my face. I’m shaking badly, but I can’t seem to stop it.
Again, I consider Miriam’s options.
If she has decided to negate me by destroying the vault, it must still seem an act of god. Would a dynamite blast fill that bill? Yes. If Miriam can’t be connected with it. I can imagine it. In the middle of the night the silence is broken by a rumbling explosion, and the family starts from their beds, and Miriam, snug in hers, wakes from a sound sleep and asks in convincing innocence, “What happened?”
She could manage that—slip out in the deep of night, take a lantern to light her way, place the dynamite and leave a long fuse, long enough for her to run back to the house, get into bed, and seem to be sleeping when her god strikes the vault and its evil contents a thundering blow.
But doesn’t she think I, at least, will call that explosion an act of man? Rather, of woman. Doesn’t she think I will remind the others of the dynamite?
Perhaps she hasn’t thought that far. Perhaps she’s too obsessed to look past that act of god—the act of a vengeful, jealous god.
Or perhaps she knows this family better than I do. She knows their mood now, knows they aren’t likely to examine closely her act of god. They’ll accept the destruction of the vault as an act of god just as they accept the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem as an act of god because Jesus predicted it. That the prediction was recorded years after the temple was in rubble doesn’t matter to them. They are ready to have me repudiated by a higher authority. Then they can in good conscience join Miriam in repudiating me. Join. That’s the key. This family lives too near the edge of survival to tolerate schism.
I leave the deck and walk across the wind-rippled grass to the head of the path, look down at the beach where ships of foam scud across the sand. I’m not afraid to stand in such a dangerous place now. Miriam won’t bother to push me into the ravine. She doesn’t need to.
“Mary?” I turn and see Isaac running toward me with his swaying, graceless gait, and his smile is a beatitude. When he reaches me, I put my arm around his frail shoulders.
“What is it, Isaac?”
“It’s time for supper. We’re having pea soup!” Pea soup is one of his favorites; he likes the green color.
I laugh. “Then we’d better get at it.”
After another quiet meal in an atmosphere heavy with tension, I busy myself building fires in the living room and bathroom, then carry a bucket of water into the bathroom and put it on top of the stove to heat. This is the children’s bath night. Every night is someone’s bath night, but we’re lucky if each of us gets a bath once a week.
But first, evening service, and I wait impatiently until the family leaves the house for the church. I go to the kitchen, take one of the oil lanterns out of the cupboard, light the wick with a strip of kindling dipped into the stove’s firebox. More pots of water squat on the stove top in preparation for the baths. I go out the backdoor, hear a hymn raggedly sweet in the twilight: “Nearer My God to Thee.” The yellow glow of the lantern precedes me along the east wall of the new wing and around to the north side. The wind, heavy with moisture not yet resolved into rain, whips around the corner. Inside the storeroom, the air smells of dust and rust, and the floor-to-ceiling shelves are filled with crates, jumbles of tools, loops of rope and chain and electric wire, empty cans, buckets, glass jars, pipes and plumbing fixtures, house paint and turpentine, stacks of lumber, nails and screws, nuts and bolts. The lantern casts dense shadows as I search for that small, wooden box. Perhaps I remember it so clearly—and everything about the dynamite—because I didn’t want it here. It was a bitter symbol of humankind’s violent history. I can even remember that Jerry brought exactly twenty sticks to Amarna. He used five to blow out the spring.
The light falls on a box marked in stenciled letters: DYNAMITE. The box has been recently moved; there are clean areas in the dust on the shelf. I open the lid, my pulse rushing in my ears. The sticks seem innocuous, perhaps an inch in diameter and eight inches long, wrapped in thick, oily, yellow-brown paper. There is no hint of their lethal potential, except the word printed in faded black: DANGER.
I count five sticks. Ten are missing.
I replace the lid, turn the lantern on the hand-lettered message on the smaller box next to the dynamite: BLASTING CAPS—FUSE. I don’t bother to look inside. I’ve seen enough. Too much.
When I return to the house, I put away the lantern and go into the living room, where Shadow is sleeping on the couch. I build up the fire, then sit down beside her, stare into the flames, and remember evenings with Rachel here while we were still alone, then her casual “lessons” with Luke at this same fire. And in the last ten years there were many evenings when the family gathered here to talk or sing. I’m not sure when we stopped having those evening gatherings. Their cessation was a gradual thing. It began with Rebecca’s death three years ago.
I take a deep breath, let it out in a sigh, and consider my options.
At least, now that I’m sure of Miriam’s intentions, I can stop her. I can tell Jerry and the others that the dynamite is missing and demand a search. I wonder where she’s hidden it.
I hear myself sighing again. I can’t look to Jerry and the family to help me. But, Mary, why would any of us steal the dynamite? And if I explain why, they won’t believe me.
Still, they might if Miriam succeeds. Which will be too late.
And even if I can stop her from destroying the books now, she has an advantage over me: an advantage of nearly forty years. I am constantly reminded that I’m an old woman. I’m lucky to have lived this long, and I can’t count on living much longer. There is in Miriam’s eyes that banked fire that tells me she is impatient to do something now. But if I stop her now, she has only to learn patience, to wait until I die. I wonder how long it will be after my death before all the family joins her in a Pauline frenzy of book burning.
No, I can’t simply stop her. I must negate her influence, just as she must negate mine. And perhaps age has an advantage. You learn deviousness when you can no longer, physically, solve problems in a more direct fashion.
I hear rain slapping at the windows, a hard rain that will undoubtedly last all night, and I smile. I won’t have to worry about her dynamiting the vault tonight. A storm might make her act of god more plausible—she could say god struck the vault with lightning—but it has its drawbacks. For one thing, it would be difficult to light a fuse in a driving rain. For another, she couldn’t avoid getting soaked. None of the waterproof coats and boots are left. Now we arm ourselves against the rain with wool and leather, which once wet take hours to dry. It wouldn’t make her story that she was asleep before the blast credible if she or any of her clothing were wet with rain.