Jude dressed by the light of the bathroom. He opened his curtains, then checked to pat his pocket and make sure that he had put the door card inside, and slipped out into the hall. He paused before Tizzie's door to listen: nothing. He walked down the corridor, past the ice machine and into the lobby. The young black girl was still there, reading a thick book under a night light, surprised to look up and see him standing there.
"Forgot something in the car," he muttered, making for the door.
The air outside was pleasantly warm. He walked around the front into the parking lot, down the length of the building. The sky overhead was clear and glistening with stars. And as he walked across the tarmac behind the darkened cars, he counted the windows of the rooms and finally came to his own, the one with the curtains open. He stopped and looked at the windows on either side, glancing, as if casually, and saw that they both were dark.
Inside, in the lobby, he smiled at the girl, but she barely looked up from her reading.
They were passing through the town of Wagon Mound, New Mexico, on the way to Santa Fe, when Jude, driving, turned to Skyler in the seat next to him and told him to recount his life on the island.
"Everything you haven't already told us," he said. "From start to finish. Don't leave anything out. Tell us everything you can remember, no matter how small and unimportant it seems. There may be a clue in there, something we've overlooked that can point us in the right direction."
It was evening. For hours, the sky off to the east had been darkening with a gathering thunderhead, and now in the far distance they could see slanted gray steaks of rain pounding down on the plain. Tizzie was in the backseat, lying on her back with her feet propped up on the window jamb. Jude thought she was asleep, but he was not sure.
Skyler looked out the window, as if he were mulling over Jude's request, then opened the glove compartment and pulled out Jude's Camels.
"Mind if I try one?"
Jude frowned. "Don't be stupid. Why get started? They'll kill you."
"You're one to talk."
"Yeah, well…"
Skyler lighted up, drew smoke into his mouth and let it out in a cloud that enveloped his face. He tried again, this time sucking the smoke deep into his lungs, and was seized by a coughing fit. He looked at the cigarette in his hand.
"How can you smoke this?"
"It's an acquired taste."
"Christ," said Skyler, stamping it out in the ashtray.
Tizzie poked her head up.
"Not very smart," she said, lying back down.
Skyler stared out the window again, still coughing and clearing his throat. Then he began his narrative. He talked slowly and quietly and unemotionally, laying out the details of his life on the island as carefully as if he were putting down cards in solitaire. As he talked, he continued looking out the window, drawing a kind of strength from the foreign landscape of dark brown and red earth and rolling hills and scrub brushes.
He told of his earliest memories and Raisin and camping out and leaving the goats in the secret pasture to run through the woods. He told about the day they had met Kuta and Raisin's epileptic fit and the snake bite, and how Raisin had become a renegade.
He told about the bad things, too, the frequent physical examinations, the shots and the pills, the discipline and the Orderlies, and how members of the Age Group would suddenly disappear.
"Didn't it seem strange to you that all this was going on?" interrupted Jude. "That people could be perfectly healthy and then suddenly turn so sick that they would have to be operated on?"
"Not at all. That's just the way it was. I didn't know anything else. Don't forget — we didn't have much… much information. That was the way things happened. Growing up, I never had any reason to think my life was unusual. I never really thought about it one way or the other — not for a long time."
The rain caught up with them. It came in a sudden onslaught, falling on the windshield in loud, thick drops and making the roof rattle. They felt cut off from the landscape, snug in the car's interior. Jude switched on the wipers, which smeared the front windshield, but gradually cleared it, so that they could look out and see the raindrops pelt the road ahead.
It made Skyler think of his escape through the swamp.
Then he told of Raisin's escape and his death.
"At his funeral service, Baptiste and the others spoke with such feeling that it almost seemed like they meant it. But I knew they didn't. After all, they had practically caused it."
"Did you see — did anyone see — Raisin's body?" asked Jude.
"No, it was in a coffin. That would have been too cruel — I expect he was bloated and ugly."
Jude lighted a cigarette and cracked the window to let out the smoke; a spray came in and struck him in the side of the neck, but he ignored it.
Skyler talked about his disillusionment.
"It came gradually, like the dawning of an idea that won't go away. I can't tell you how upset I was. I remember reading about the late fifteenth century, when Europeans came to accept that the earth was no longer flat. I think it was like that for me. Gradually, the most basic assumptions of my existence — the very ground I was walking on — shifted beneath me. It crumbled and I felt like I was falling. I no longer knew anything."
For the second time, Tizzie spoke up from the back — which startled Jude. He hadn't realized that she was listening.
"Tell us about Julia," she said in a thin voice.
And so Skyler did. He told of what she'd been like as a young child and how he'd always looked for her in lectures without even realizing it, a quick once-over to make sure that that precious head of tousled hair was somewhere around. He talked about the bond between Raisin, himself and Julia.
"I think on some level I was secretly jealous," he said. "I thought she must love Raisin more than me — I mean, that made sense, he was so much bigger and stronger and smarter. So when she got sick, when she was operated on and got that big scar on her back and I snuck into the sick bay to see her and we held hands — that opened up a whole wonderful world to me."
He told how they had consoled each other when Raisin died. And then finally he told the story of how they had come to have sex — how they'd stopped taking the pills and felt a new vigor. He described the signal for a rendezvous — the rock under the oak tree — their secret meetings in the old lighthouse with the flapping of the birds' wings, the rush of excitement when they'd first touched each other's bodies. As he talked, an emotion welled up inside and closed off the back of his throat and so he had to stop.
He felt a hand on his shoulder — Tizzie's. Her touch was light, but it felt heavy, charged.
"But what was she like?" she asked.
Skyler drew a deep breath.
A lot like you.
He thought it but didn't say it. He turned to look at her and felt she could read his mind. He didn't answer right away, because he was afraid of what he might blurt out.
Then he told of the day Dr. Rincon and an assembly of dignitaries had come from the mainland. The Jimminies and everyone else had prepared for days. The Campus had been spruced up, the lawns mowed, even the Big House looked presentable. They'd been amazed as planeload after planeload had arrived and disgorged well-dressed guests who'd filed into the manor. Then Rincon himself had arrived — but the Jimminies were not allowed to see him; they were confined to their barracks. That evening, Skyler and Julia had formed a daring plan: they would sneak out and spy upon the gathering. They'd climbed a tree next to the Big House and looked in an upper-story window, but they couldn't see Dr. Rincon. Then they'd stolen into the basement. Julia had climbed into a dumbwaiter and ascended to the first floor, where the assembly was underway. She'd pried open the doors an inch or so and peered through as the founder was speaking, but she couldn't get a good look because of her poor eyesight. Skyler had cursed himself for letting her take the risk, but she'd soon come back down and they'd run back to their barracks.