Come In and Cover Me (16 page)

“Yeah,” she said. “Yeah, I do.”

“Tell me when something's different,” Ren said to him. “Tell me what's different than it was with the others.”

“Everything that's different?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Than with all the dozens of women before you?”

“Screw you,” she said, and brushed the back of her hand against his jaw.

“Nobody's ever liked me not to shave before,” he said. It struck him as the safest answer. Her own reserve had tempered his need for full disclosure. He did not want to scare her off. Or bore her. He would make her laugh and keep her reaching for him at night, and the rest could come later. “I mean, the stubble thing.”

“I like it,” she said.

“I know.”

He was sore from the day, from holding his neck too long at one angle.

“I need a new body,” he said.

“I like the one you have.”

“But it hurts me.” He looked back at her, pulling one elbow behind his head. “What if I could have a body that was totally painless, but it was, um, pear-shaped? Wouldn't you rather me be pear-shaped and not be in pain?”

“No,” she said, running her palm over his hip bones, the flat of his belly, hard thigh muscles.

He fidgeted again, making the mattress squeak.

“My shoulders hurt,” he said. “And my knees and my neck and the place where my left leg connects to my hip.”

“Okay, you can have a new body,” she said. “A fat, pear-shaped one. Fine.”

“Thank you.”

Ren came within inches of stepping on a little brown grass snake on her way to Santina Canyon. It had blended perfectly with the sand, and only when it moved did she jump back.

The snake slid past her foot as silently as a ribbon falling through the air, making quick looping curves through the sand. It was perfectly harmless. Silas had tried to get her to take his gun with her—he said hiking alone without it was dangerous—but she didn't want to carry it. Still, she should have been more observant. She had been too lost in, well, not even thought. Lost in non-thought, in blankness. It could be comforting.

You could walk right past Santina Canyon and never know you'd passed it. Silas had shown her the way during her first week at the site—a path that seemed to dead-end into a rock wall actually dead-ended into the hidden entrance to the canyon. Someone—probably a long-dead someone—had carved footholds and handholds into the twenty-foot sheer wall, and the first chamber of the canyon appeared huge and solid around a corner just a few steps from the top.

Ren had hiked this canyon a handful of times, most of those with Silas. Going up the wall was satisfying and fairly quick, although going down would take more concentration. She slung her pack over her shoulder and reached for the first hold, moving steadily until she got to the top and needed to push off with her arms and reach with her left foot to cross over to another rock formation. A gap between the two rocks showed the gravelly ground below, and it was impossible not to dislodge a few pebbles that clattered to the ground in slow motion. It was a gap just large enough for a body to fit through, and Ren always tried to keep her eyes focused on her handholds.

Once the climbing was done, the base of the canyon opened in front of her, with a network of narrow pathways. The paths branched off and inevitably came back together into wide, round areas with towering walls, natural amphitheaters, little Roman Colosseums carved out of rocks. It was an alien world, harsh and sharp, but the colors of it were soft. Rose and tans and golds and yellows and pale pink—the colors of rose gardens, not rocks. It was lovely and claustrophobic, and only the bright blue sky above kept it from overwhelming her. But she liked to wander through the maze of it all—about two miles before it emptied into an unexpected meadow—and feel the quietness of the stones.

Sometimes she thought that complete silence sharpened her vision, in the same way that she sometimes thought the steady rhythm of hiking might open her mind to potential ghosts.

Sometimes she wondered if she really ever saw anything at all.

She had just turned thirteen when her mother started taking her to church. It was a few months after the accident. Her father stayed home. Ren and her mother sat in the fifth pew from the front, behind the lady in the green furry hat. The hat covered the lady's eyebrows completely. At the front of the church, behind the pastor, behind the choir, a stained-glass window showed Jesus on a throne. His hands were extended, palms up. His face was kind but strong, not pale and emaciated like other Jesuses she had seen. She liked this Jesus. She liked the pastor, who would talk about grace and mercy and faith and salvation, all beautiful words that she liked to roll around her mouth. He gave a sermon on the gifts we receive from God. He meant abilities, not actual presents. These gifts were manifestations of the Spirit, and they were different for each person—the gifts of wisdom or faith or healing or prophesying or interpreting or miraculous powers—but they were to be used for the common good. She liked this. She looked up the word “manifestation” when she went home and decided Scott could be one.

She did not look for solace in church the way her mother did. Her mother needed to know that there was something after death; she needed to be reminded of it, promised it, convinced of it. Ren didn't need convincing. So she looked at the stained glass. Jesus and his throne were in the center of the window, and they were the simplest part of the design. A ring of disks surrounded the throne, framing it in vivid blues, reds, and yellows with the sunlight streaming through. There was a different image inside each perfect circle, and they reminded Ren of foreign coins that someone had melted into glass. There were angels and unrecognizable beasts and horses and doves. There was a bird with the head of a blue-eyed man. There was a blood-colored horse with the golden head of a lion. There was a woman with the wings of an eagle.

She would stare at Jesus and imagine him coming to life, stepping from the window into air, floating over the heads of the church members. She would reach up, and his robe would brush against the tips of her fingers. He would look down at her and put his hand on her head.

This fantasy had many endings, depending on the Sunday. Sometimes Jesus would lift a hand and the window would vanish. A great gleaming round doorway to another place would open where the window had been. The doorway would shine with something soft like candlelight and a strong sweet wind would blow. The doorway did not lead to heaven. It led to another world, and anyone who wanted to walk through it could go, but the catch was that Jesus would not tell you anything about the other world. It was a blind leap. Ren always chose to go—sometimes she was the only one in the whole church to go. She would discover that the world on the other side of the window was full of warriors and sorcery and magic.

On some Sundays no doorway was revealed. Sometimes Jesus set the church aflame, and fireballs rained down from the arched ceiling. Ren would save her mother by dragging her out of the church, dodging the falling fire, and pushing her mother into the safe open air. Then Ren would save others, lowering them out the windows and heading back for more. Sometimes Jesus would take the rainbow light from the stained glass, leach it right from the window itself, and let it pour down on Ren. She would feel the warm light soak into her skin, and everyone would look at her and know that she was chosen.

One Sunday, the stained-glass Jesus moved. Actually moved. It did not happen as Ren had imagined it. It started with only a twitch of his finger. It was no fantasy, not at all like her daydreams—the movement of his finger was as concrete and undeniable as the rustle of the pastor's papers on the lectern. Ren looked up at her mother to see if she had noticed Jesus, but her mother was staring straight ahead at the pastor. Ren looked back at Jesus's fingers—they all moved this time, beckoning to her. Come. Come here. Come to me. She looked to his face, to his kind mouth and sharp cheekbones, but he showed no expression. Then one of the brilliant circles—the one with the winged woman—flew out of the window, sailing like a Frisbee into the crowd, then shattering against the back wall of the church. A round hole was left in the stained glass, and behind the hole there was only blackness. A cold wind blew from the empty space. Jesus blinked. He did not meet Ren's stare. The circles began to break free, one by one, spinning in the air, sunlight still inside them. They smashed and turned to dust over the pews, over the gray marble floors, over the suit coats of men, and over a furry green hat. The glass broke hard against wood and skin, shards flying, blood-red and eye-blue, but no one made a sound. No one screamed. No one ran. No one even looked away from the pastor.

It was the lack of reaction that made Ren realize she was wrong, that nothing she was seeing was really happening. She squeaked, but she held the small sound inside her mouth, the way dogs could sound during thunderstorms. She was breathing heavily, pulse knocking inside her throat, and because of either the squeak or the breathing, her mother looked down at her and frowned. Ren lowered her eyes. She could see amber-colored pieces of glass by her feet, with the red tail of a horse in one of the pieces. The pieces had swirls of color like gasoline in rain puddles, and the swirls were moving. The air was frigid from the wind blowing through the empty circles in the window. Ren shivered and tried to control her breathing. She closed her eyes and squeezed her numb hands together.

She could feel a small thin cut on her thumb, along the lines of her knuckle.

When she looked up, the circles were back in the stained glass where they belonged. Jesus was still. She did not trust anything she saw anymore, though. She did not know what was real and what was only falling glass. She refused to go inside the church again. Her mother did not argue with her.

At one of the larger amphitheaters, she found a flat rock almost perpendicular to another tall rock. Both were slightly warm from the sun. She sat down, hugging her knees to her chest, leaning back against the L shape of the rocks. This close to the rocks, she could see the striations in a single broad boulder, dark pink bands and yellow stripes, swaths of color side by side.

She pulled off her shoes and socks, checking the bandage wrapped around the ball of her right foot. She'd been afraid she needed stitches, but the gash was healing up nicely. She pulled off her hat and sat on the rock, lifting her face to the sun.

She heard the tune to “Just Like a Woman” before she saw Scott. He cast no shadow, so she could only tell he was getting closer by the song growing louder. Then she saw him from the corner of her eye, just his legs and feet at first, until she turned her head and looked up at his face. He smiled and sat beside her, on the edge of her rock chair, making no sound other than his song.

“I wondered where you'd been,” she said. “It's been days.” She always saw him more often when she was on-site. At home, in her flat-roofed bungalow, she sometimes went weeks without hearing the hum of his voice.

“. . . just like a little girl,”
he sang. He added an instrumental “da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da” at the end.

“You could have asked for a better voice if you were going to haunt me.” She shifted on her rock, crossing her legs and facing him.

He never aged. His hair was always the same length—a little too long, flopping over his eyebrows, shaggy over his ears and down his neck. He still had an awkwardness in the slump of his shoulders. His legs seemed to be in his way. His face was perfectly smooth. He always looked just as he had when he left her.

“Do ‘Dark Eyes,'” she said.

It had been her favorite Dylan song to fall asleep to. Before the accident. She once upon a time had a favorite Dylan song for each of a wide range of activities. She liked to lie awake to “Ballad of a Thin Man.” She had selections for brushing her teeth, for jumping on her bed, for drawing on her notepad, for remembering.

Scott obliged, leaning in, eyes too sincere, arms thrown out with jazz-hand palms. She giggled, tempted to touch him, knowing better than to try. She covered her mouth with her hand as she laughed, a gesture she did not use anymore. All the girls in sixth grade had covered their mouths demurely at the first sign of giggles—it was a tic that her mother had loathed. Her mother said if you want to laugh, laugh. If you want to be mad, be mad. Don't cover it all up like you're ashamed of feeling something. Put your hand down, Ren, put your hand down. Let us see you.

“Sing it for real, Scotty,” she demanded, behind her hand.

He sat straighter, looking toward the ground, not her.
“I live in another world, where
life and death are memorized/Where the earth is strung with lovers pearls and all I see are dark eyes.”

His hair caught the sun, gold for a moment, as Silas had said hers sometimes did. She'd always coveted Scott's hair. When he'd run, when he'd chase her—back when she was half as tall as he was—and she was slow to turn away, she would see his hair rise and fall in a single short sheet, thick and straight. She'd loved to touch it, thread her fingers through it, when he hugged her good night.

His eyes shifted to hers again, and she missed him. She missed sharing a look with him when their parents' backs were turned—she missed him kicking her under the table. She missed how he would pick her up in a fireman's carry and walk through every room of the house, nearly banging her head against doorways.

A story her mother told her: When Ren was nearly three, she hit a rebellious stage. Prior to that, she'd been consistently adorable, and Scott was fed up with it. He got spanked, got sent to his room for talking back, got lectured on saying “Thank you” and “Please,” and Ren got nothing but cuddled. But when she learned to scream “No” and throw herself on the ground and dig her fingers into the carpet for leverage, she started getting her bottom slapped and her hand popped and her blanket—she called it a bah—taken away. Scott was delighted at first. He would appear when he heard a tantrum and prompt, “You should spank her, Mom. Or take her bah away. You should take her bah away.”