A Gift Upon the Shore (27 page)

—JOHN LOCKE,
AN ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING
(1690)

T
his 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.

She looked out at the ocean, squinting into the double glare of sun and reflected sun. Luke had offered to put Shadow out of her misery, as he put it. But Rachel had refused him. She would take care of Shadow to the end.

Mary could see Luke in minuscule silhouette on the headland. She wondered if the changes she felt in him in the last four days were real or only figments of her own anxiety. Sometimes she imagined the Ark as a magnet that wrought subtle alterations in his emotional and mental charge as it drew him into its field of influence.

From the first night, when they camped in an old bum where charred firs loomed over the new growth of alder, they slept in separate sleeping bags, although they might have zipped the bags together and, if nothing else, shared the warmth of their bodies in the chill September nights.

And at the end of the second day they unwrapped the last of the baked chicken they'd brought from Amarna, and Luke clasped his hands in prayer, as he always did before eating. But this time he spoke aloud, and when he came to the
amen
, he added, “Say it, Mary. Amen.” And she was too startled not to.

That night, as they watched the campfire burn down to coals, he gently stroked her hair, and she closed her eyes, appreciating the affection she read into that gesture. Then he said, “You'll have to let your hair grow out. Women don't cut their hair.”

Annoyed, she retorted, “If you're any example,
men
don't cut their hair, either, where you come from.”

“It's unnatural for a man to cut his hair or beard.”

She laughed. “Oh. The Samson syndrome.”

He ignored that. “When we reach the Ark, you'll have to cover your hair. Do you have a scarf or bandanna?”

“What the hell's
wrong
with my hair?”

“Mary, don't say words like that!”

And they had gone to bed in silence, separately.

Last night, while the fire still burned bright, he took out his Bible and asked her to read aloud the passage he designated: Saint Paul outlining in rigorous detail the proper behavior for women.

And yet—she sighed in resignation. At other times he was still the Luke she loved, naive, but kind and gentle. She pressed her hands to her abdomen, wondering if one missed period could be taken seriously.

Then she rose and put the sketchbook in her pack. Luke had left the rocks and was walking up the beach. When he reached the campsite, he grinned proudly as he showed off his catch of iridescent black kelp fish, but across his right forearm was a scraped cut, and his shirt was tom at the shoulder, the ragged edges bloodstained.

“Luke, what happened to you?”

“Oh, I just slipped and went down on the barnacles.”

“Well, let me clean those cuts.”

“All right, but first I have to clean these
fish
.”

“The fish can wait a few minutes.” She went to her pack, found a handkerchief, then with her hand on Luke's arm, led him to the creek. “Take off your shirt.”

He did, knelt with her on the bank while she dipped the handkerchief in the chill water and washed the cuts. They were only minor abrasions, except for the one at the swell of the deltoid. “Luke, you might have a new scar to add to the ones the survivalists gave you.”

He looked at her, then turned away, eyes averted. “I didn't say that's where I got those scars.”

Mary was bewildered, at first positive that he
had
said he'd acquired the scars at the hands of the survivalists. But maybe she'd only assumed . . .

“How
did
you get those scars?”

He rose, pulled on his shirt, ruefully noting the tear. “When we get to the Ark, you'll have to mend this for me.”

Woman's work, no doubt, but she refused to be distracted. “Someone whipped you unmercifully. Who, Luke? And why?”

“I have to take care of the fish.”

“Luke!”

Her importunate tone stopped him. He studied her, while she waited, a seed of fear growing in her mind. Then he said, “It was a long time ago, and it was a just punishment.”

“Punishment! What did you do to deserve
that
?”

He took a deep breath. “I spoke blasphemy.”

That explanation seemed so unlikely, she laughed. “
You
?”

“Yes, me!”

Abruptly she sobered. “Please . . . tell me what happened.”

He folded his arms against his chest. “It was in the Blind Summer. I was sixteen then. It was such a hard time for us. There was so much grief and sickness and hunger, so much . . . disagreement. Lord help me, if I hadn't said it right out in church in front of the whole Flock—what was left of us—it wouldn't have been so bad.”

“Said
what
?”

He seemed to find repeating it difficult. “I said—well, I said there wouldn't be any Second Coming. It'd been nearly a year since Armageddon. I said the Doctor was wrong about the Second Coming.”

“And that was blasphemy?”

He frowned irritably. “Of course, it was!”

“Is it written in the Bible that the Last World War—or whatever it was called—was Armageddon? It was the Doctor who made that assumption. You didn't blaspheme. You only disagreed with him.”

Luke shook his head. “No, you don't understand. The Doctor— he's a special man, chosen of God.”

“A man who has visions,” Mary said with cold irony.

“Yes! He's our rock, like Saint Peter was the rock of the new church of Jesus Christ.”

“Was it this rock who punished you so terribly for disagreeing—”

“For
blasphemy
, Mary, before all the Flock!”

“Was he the one who whipped you?”

“No, the Doctor left it to my father to punish me, since he was Elder of our household. And afterward I went before the Flock in the church and . . . well, I don't remember much of that. The glory of the Lord came over me. They said I spoke in tongues. It was the first time for me.” He sighed. “And the last.”

Mary looked into his troubled face, and he seemed so achingly vulnerable, she couldn't hold on to her anger. Bringing to heel the defiant boy Luke had been was a necessity of survival for the Flock. They couldn't afford dissension or rebellion. But Luke paid a high price for their unity. She put her arms around him, closed her eyes when she felt his arms strong and needing around her.

Finally she drew away, waited until he could return her gaze. “You'd better take care of the fish. I'll get the fire started.”

He kissed her forehead. “I knew you'd understand, Mary.”

“Then why didn't you tell me about it sooner?”

He laughed self-consciously. “I guess because I was afraid you wouldn't understand.”

“Oh, I understand, Luke.” She understood far more than he did. “Come on, let's get supper ready. I'm hungry.”

There was more to understand before the night was out.

After supper they sat together on one of the sleeping bags watching the fire, while the surf whispered constant assurances in the darkness, and Mary felt her equilibrium restored.

Until Luke rose, put more wood on the fire so that it flared harshly in her eyes, and she braced herself as he went to his backpack, returned with his Bible. He knelt, facing her. “Mary, the reason I didn't want to go on to the Ark today is that before you reach its gates, you must take Jesus into your heart as your personal savior.”

She found his earnestness annoying. “I must
what
?” He started to repeat the formula, but she interrupted him. “What would happen if I weren't a Christian? If I were a Jew or Buddhist or Muslim or agnostic or—heaven forfend!—an atheist? Would I be denied entrance to the Ark?”

His face was slack with confusion. “Mary, the Ark is a place for Christians, for the blessed who have accepted Jesus—”

“Then if I'm not a Christian, they'll turn me away?”

“I . . . yes. We'd have to, because only—”

“Then you should be grateful Rachel and I didn't refuse to let
you
in at Amarna until we were sure your philosophy agreed with ours. You'd be
dead
, Luke, and swept out to sea with the crabs eating your carcass!”

He stared at her, then looked down at the Bible, contemplated it a moment, and his chin came up. “That was different. You're not sick. You come to the Ark as my future wife; you'll be part of the Flock.”

Mary finally shrugged, reminding herself that it didn't matter, all this literalist drivel. She had come this far because she had no choice. She was doing what she had to do. And if it would satisfy Luke . . .

“My mother made sure I was baptized properly in a proper Christian church, Luke. Isn't that enough?”

“You were baptized?” he asked eagerly. “The Lord be praised! Then you've been consecrated to Jesus. But you must make that commitment anew, you must be reborn into the love of God and His only-begotten Son. Mary, you must do it! Come—kneel here before me.”

Something in her balked still, but she shifted position until she was on her knees facing him. Let him do his mumbo jumbo. It didn't matter.

“Pray with me, Sister! Pray with me!” He took both her hands in his and with his head tilted heavenward, eyes squeezed shut, he exhorted his god to accept this poor sinner who longed for his grace and his love and for eternal life in the wonder of his presence. He exhorted at length and in repetitious detail, while Mary knelt, staring at him, hands numbed in his tightening grip as he droned on and on, and there was in his voice a hypnotic cadence enhanced by the flickering light of the fire. The flames blinded her, surrounded Luke with darkness in which nothing could be seen to exist, and at some point—she didn't know how she reached it— she found herself weeping, heard her voice responding with Luke's, and she didn't know what she was saying, what he was saying, and her knees ached, every muscle in her body ached, and she cried, “Yes, yes, yes!” And finally Luke's voice rang out with a last “
Amen!
”

In the sudden silence Mary heard the murmur of the sea. I
am here . . . I am always here
. . . . And she sought in the darkness the pale light of the surf, but her fire-dazzled eyes recorded only illusions of flame.

Then Luke's arms closed around her, and she turned into his embrace. He said, “Mary, oh, my sweet Mary, I love you.”