Drought (11 page)

My rage softens, a little. He was doing a decent thing, marking her grave with flowers—and telling me where to find it. It doesn’t change the fact that he’s chosen a terrible path, being an Overseer.

But the flowers are beautiful … a single petal couldn’t hurt. I tug it away from the flower and lift it to my nose, then tuck it in the waist of my dress. It’s softer than anything else that’s ever touched my skin.

Chapter 14

Tonight there’s only a sliver of moon. I walk to the cistern, slow, my feet a little uncertain after so long away. Every night brought a reason to stay away.

But no reason is enough, anymore … not since he told me where Ellie rests.

I see Ford’s shadow before I hear him, a darkness that doesn’t belong under the cisterns.

I walk to him, slowly, pushing away the flutters I feel every time I see him. He’s given me no reason to fear him, I remind myself.

No reason except being an Overseer.

Ford doesn’t stand. I get close enough that I can see he’s wearing a trim white shirt with short sleeves and pants so dark that I can’t see his legs in the grass.

“It’s been lonely,” he says.

“I knew I shouldn’t see you again.”

“Huh.” He pats the grass near him, then slides away a bit, as if making room. “What if you talk but you don’t look at me?”

“What?” I ask, confused.

“You said you can’t see me. But you didn’t say anything about not
talking
to me.”

I can’t help smiling. But I know I shouldn’t talk, see, listen, think of, touch … the last word makes me shiver.

“No. I should really …” I glance up at the cisterns.

“Just for a little. Then you can pray. Please?” he asks, patting the grass again.

I am tired from a long day of gathering, then digging. Again there was no supper. Couldn’t I sit, if only for a few minutes?

And don’t I owe him something for pointing me to Ellie? Isn’t that what made me return, finally, to the cisterns?

So I sit, closer than I probably should … much closer than the last time we talked here.

“Thank you for telling me where Ellie is,” I say.

“I’m real sorry she died.”

“I know.”

“They made us check the cabin. I didn’t want to,” he tells me.

“I went to her grave right after you gave me the note.” I brush my fingers over the tips of the lush grass. It’s damp, so different from the yellowed field that Ellie lies in.

“I thought maybe you’d want a funeral,” Ford says.

“I can’t tell anyone. They’d wonder … how. How I knew.” Shame wells in me, and I stare at the ground.

“I guess that’s better for both of us,” Ford says.

“It would be better if we stopped … this.” My chest feels tight, with barely any room for air.

“You can leave if you want to,” he says.

But I slide closer, just a bit closer, to him. And he slides a little closer to me.

“You brought Ellie flowers,” I say.

“That’s what you do when people die … people you like.”

“I never smelled anything like them.” The petal didn’t last forever, tucked in my dress. So I pressed it beneath a rock, by our cabin door. Maybe soon I’ll bring it inside and hide it under my mattress.

“Ellie seemed like the type that’d like roses—I think.” Ford clears his throat.

“Is that what they’re called? Roses?”

Ford laughs. “You’re kidding, right?”

“No.”

“Oh. Sorry. I forget … I forget how things are up here, sometimes.”

How can he forget? I can’t forget for a second, not ever.

I glance up at the cisterns. I haven’t climbed up there tonight. Before I leave, I have to add my blood. It’s been far too long.

“Do you stay here all night?” I ask.

“Mostly. Sometimes I sneak back and catch some sleep if I know Darwin’s gone for the night.”

“He leaves? Where does he go?”

“Darwin’s got a whole other house off the mountain, a real nice one with a huge backyard and an in-ground swimming pool,” Ford tells me. “You didn’t know?”

It would be
our
house, I suppose, if Mother ever promised to love him.

“What’s a swimming pool?” I ask.

“It’s … Really? Really, you don’t know?” Ford inches closer to me, as if to get a better look at my face.

I turn my face so we’re gazing at each other, straight on. “There’s a lot I don’t know about,” I tell him. “Most things in the modern world, I don’t know.”

“It’s like your lake, here. Only it’s much, much smaller. And people build them. They’re not natural.”

“He made his own lake?”

“With a fountain and everything. The guys say he has a party there every summer—a picnic for all their families. He treats their families real well.”

As soon as he says it, Ford ducks his head and stares at his feet.

“Real well, huh?” I look up again at the cisterns. Our Water pays for that house, and that swimming pool, and takes care of all those other families.

“It’s the best job in town,” Ford says softly. “Not even the jobs in Albany pay like it. Especially if you haven’t gone to college.”

“That doesn’t make it right.”

He lifts his head to look at the cisterns, then me. “I know.”

“I need to … I have to go soon.” I will myself not to look up at the cistern but he taps it with his knuckles.

“Do you have to … um, pray?”

“Yes.” I stand up fast and hope he doesn’t follow.

For a moment, it looks like he’ll get up. But then he settles back on his hands and looks in the other direction. “I’ll be here if you need me.”

I won’t need him. I can’t ever let myself need him.

My feet make a soft
clank-clank-clank
on the metal steps to the top of the cistern. I roll my sleeve back and hold the knife over my arm.

What would he think if he knew what I was really doing up here?

“Praise Otto,” I say, loud enough for him to hear. “Bless this Water.”

I make a quick slash with the rock, and my blood flows. It hurts more than usual tonight—I don’t know why—and I let out a small gasp.

“Are you all right?” Ford asks. I hear rustling. Is he getting up?

“I’m fine. I just bumped my … finger. I’m fine,” I say quickly.

He doesn’t answer. I count the drops into the cistern—twenty, today, to make up for the time I’ve stayed away. Near the end I have to squeeze my arm; the blood doesn’t want to leave my body tonight.

As soon as I can, I wrap my cut in a handkerchief and hurry down the ladder.

There is Ford’s shadow, under a cistern. I want to go sit next to him and talk more. I want to do bold things … touch him, even. What would it feel like, the brush of his skin against mine?

But it’s wrong and dangerous. “Good night, Ford,” I say softly.

“Wait!” He stands up too fast and knocks his head, hard, on the cistern.

“Are you … Are you all right?” I ask.

He grips his head and staggers a step sideway. “Fine,” he grunts.

“You don’t seem fine.” I go closer, and closer, and then I am reaching up to touch the part of his head that he bumped. The short bristles of his hair are soft, not the hard spikes I imagined. I run my fingers once, twice, over them before I realize what I am doing.

I drop my hand fast. “It doesn’t seem to be bleeding.”

“I’m too hardheaded for that.” He is smiling, I can tell, even though it’s so dark in the shadows that I can’t see much of his face.

We are so close that I can smell him: a clean, soapy smell. And there’s something else too; a familiar tang, like woodsmoke.

“Stay awhile,” he says. “I like talking to you.”

“You’re an Overseer. And it’s late … and …”

“It’s not an Overseer asking. It’s just me.”

And then he reaches out and takes my hand, gently, slowly. First only our fingertips touch, and then his skin slides against mine until our hands are knitted together.

Mother used to take my hand when I was smaller, tugging me here and there. Sometimes it was a sweeter touch at the end of a long day, or when we sat in front of the fire. But it never felt like this.

Heat travels from my fingertips, up my arm, until I feel like my body is made of embers.

“I’ll stay,” I say.

“Good.” He bends his knees to sit. I follow, even though worry and shame squeeze my heart. I edge away a bit to make sure only our hands touch.

He still holds my hand—I still hold his—but his other hand strays up to his neck. I see the glint of the gold that he wears on the chain there.

“What is that?” I ask.

“What?” Ford looks over at me, then follows my eyes to his hand.

“You touch that necklace a lot,” I say.

“Oh … I do?” He lets out an embarrassed laugh and his hand falls to the grass. “I didn’t know that.”

“You don’t wear other jewelry,” I say. Some of the other Overseers do: bracelets like small chains around their wrists, or big rings that cut cruelly, if they punch or slap a Congregant.

“It’s a medal, really. I wouldn’t say that it’s jewelry. My mother …” He draws in a deep, shaky breath.

I don’t push him. I close my eyes and listen to the wind in the trees. It’s a little cooler at night, these days. Soon it will be darker earlier. Will Darwin lessen our quotas?

Our fingers drift apart. I feel cold without Ford’s touch, but I don’t reach out for him.

“It used to hang from my mother’s rearview mirror, in her car.” Ford slides his hands away from me and runs them over his head, tilting his head back to look at the sky. “It’s a picture of Saint Jude. He helps desperate people.”

I wonder if Saint Jude knows Otto. Has he told him what’s happened to us?

“How does he do that?” I ask.

“Well … you pray. He’s supposed to take your prayers to God and sort of …” Ford waves one hand in the air. “He convinces God to listen to them. That’s what saints do.”

“Maybe we need a saint to talk to Otto,” I say. I mean it as a joke, but then I wonder: is that why Otto doesn’t listen? Do we need someone to remind him of us, to convince him our prayers are worth granting?

What if I’m supposed to be that person? An idea starts to tick in my mind, something too small to name—yet.

Ford’s hand goes to his neck again. “Otto isn’t God, Ruby.”

“How do you know?”

“I went to Sunday school for eight years. Nobody ever talked about Otto.”

“They just don’t know about him. He’s real,” I tell him.

Ford turns to face me. Even in the dark I feel his eyes, steady and firm, on me. “Do you really think he’s God?”

“He’s … Otto.” I never went to a Sunday school. I only know what my mother has told me for my whole life.

We sit quiet for a while. Ford’s fingers twine around mine again. I feel his pulse, slow, steady, where the webs of our fingers meet.

“He’s all you have, out here,” Ford says. “I get that.”

“He’s not here.” I can’t keep the bitterness from my voice. Suddenly Ford’s fingers feel too heavy, too thick, and I slide my hand away.

“You pray to him, though,” Ford says.

“Yes.”

“Then doesn’t that make him your god?”

“He’s everyone’s god,” I say. “Otto heals all.”

“Otto isn’t my god.” Ford crosses his arms. “I’ve got the Holy Trinity. That’s what the Bible talks about.”

“Trinity … so you have three gods. Couldn’t there be one more?” I ask him.

He lets out a loud puff of air, like he’s been punched in the stomach. “The Trinity is all God. There’s only
one
God, Ruby. The Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit … all one God. Didn’t your mother tell you any of this?”

I raise a hand in the air. “Don’t tell me what to believe, Ford.” I sound more like Mother than I mean to—hard, final.

“I’m sorry,” he says. Then he shifts so he’s not facing me anymore.

“Otto performs miracles. The Congregants saw it,” I tell him. “Does your god do that?”

“Sure. There are all kinds of miracles in the Bible.”

“You’ve seen them?” I ask.

Ford pulls his legs in close to his body and hugs them, lowering his chin to his knees. “No.”

“Has anyone?”

“I don’t know. Not for a very long time, I guess. Or … at least there’s nothing recent in the Bible.”

Then maybe it’s Ford who’s found the wrong god. But I don’t say that. I know how it feels when he presses his god on me.

“I pray to God to save my mom, every day.
That
would be a miracle.”

“Like we prayed for Ellie,” I say.

“Yeah. And she’s probably going to die, like Ellie.”

We feel so far apart now. I edge closer, and closer, so our hips touch. Then I rest my head on his shoulder.

“They don’t seem to be listening, do they?” he asks.

“Who?” I whisper.

“Otto. And God.”

“Sometimes I wonder about that too,” I confess.

Ford strokes his hand over my head slowly, like a mother comforting a child. It leaves a trace of shivers behind, every hair feeling his touch.

I pull my head off his shoulder and shift away a bit. “What’s wrong with your mother?” I ask.

“Cancer,” Ford says. “She’s got it so bad, they can’t even treat it.”

“That sounds terrible,” I say.

“And worse every day.” He leans his head to the side so it’s touching mine, just for a second, then sits up.

“You could give her Water,” I say.

“No. Never.” He says it quickly.

It stings. I feel like he’s rejecting me, my blood. Would he feel the same if he knew my blood made the Water special? “You gave me medicine for Ellie. Is it any different?” I ask him.

“You ever give that to her?” he says.

“I didn’t get a chance, did I?”

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“Could it have saved her?” I ask.

“No. Just less pain,” he says.

“The Water might save your mother,” I say.

I could give him a tiny bit, couldn’t I? Just enough to help? Maybe then he’d believe in Otto’s miracles.

“If an Overseer steals Water, he’s done. Even one drop and Darwin will kill him,” Ford says.

“How do you know?” I ask.

“You think nobody’s tried?” Ford points up at the cisterns. “I’ve heard all the stories. Last guy who tried ended up strung up … never mind. We’ll just say it wasn’t pretty.”

“I never knew.”

“It’d be the same thing for a Congregant.” Ford’s voice is soft.

“I’m not stealing,” I say.

“I know.”

“I wish I could help your mother,” I tell him.

“I wish I could’ve helped Ellie.”

The cicadas in the woods let out a burst of sound, shrill, like a warning. There’s no breeze, suddenly: it is hot, airless, and a bead of sweat trickles behind my ear.