Life Sentence (13 page)

On part of the canopy’s white sheet metal, which was
now tilted down and visible from the road, someone had
spray-painted “DRY” in bright orange paint. Will gestured to it.
“When we get all the fuel from a station, we mark it, so people
don’t waste time on it later. That’s partly why you all are
here—we’ve gotten everything we can use out of this town, so no one
will come to this area anymore. Now it’ll all just sink into the
ground and be covered over with plants. A whole town, just
disappeared. And of course, they’re all like that. Do you remember
the town where you used to live, Truman?”

I shook my head. I thought it was nice of him to
ask, though.

“That’s funny, how you remember some stuff, but not
things that relate just to you, like where you lived. What about
you, Blue Eye?”

She stopped and considered the buildings around us.
She shook her head, then raised her arm with her hand bent and the
palm down, as if indicating something taller than herself.

I thought I knew what she meant—we had been able to
communicate a little using similar pantomime—but I looked over to
Will to see if he understood.

“You lived in a city,” he asked, “in a tall
building?”

Lucy nodded.

“It must’ve been the really big city east of here.
That’s where we found you. That’s where Milton has been clearing
you all out for the last couple years, but there are so many there,
I don’t know when he’ll ever finish.”

At the end of the little town, the road extended
into the fields beyond, barely distinguishable beneath the plants.
In the cracks and in the fields where the grass wasn’t so high, I
picked some dandelions and wanted to put one in Lucy’s hair. Even
after we’d been together and close for a while, sometimes she
didn’t like to be touched, and with someone else around I really
wasn’t sure how she’d react. I approached her carefully and showed
her the flower. She smiled a little and I knew it was all right.
Almost the same yellow as her scarf, the dandelion looked nice
behind her ear. Out in the sun, she shone so beautifully, even more
than at home, I thought.

Will smiled too. He definitely still looked rather
serious, alert, dangerous, but not at all mean or angry as he had
on previous visits. “Those dry up so quick, Truman,” he said. He
picked one of the ones that had gone to seed and blew the little
parachute seeds off to float over the grass. “I used to pick them
for my mom all the time. They’d be all closed up by the end of the
day. Funny isn’t it? They grow so fast, and take over the whole
yard and choke the grass, but when you pluck them, they don’t last
as long as other things. Funny.”

Among the tall grass in the field beyond the road,
some lilies had grown. Their trumpet-like flowers were big and
orange, with little black flecks, like brushstrokes. Will pointed
them out to me. “Tiger lilies. At least, that’s what I was told
they’re called. They’d last longer once you pick them. Go ahead. No
reason for her not to have more than one flower.” I did as Will
suggested, and now a lovely pair of yellow and orange flowers
peeked out from under her scarf, just above her blue eye,
underlined by the pure, innocent white of her skin.

“But you know, Truman, you may be right,” Will
continued as he considered her. “Maybe dandelions are a good choice
too. You could grow some where you live in that little patch of
ground by the office. Here, pick some of the seedy ones and put
them in your pocket.”

All three of us started picking them until the two
pockets of my shirt were stuffed. I could just barely tell that
Will kept me between himself and Lucy, and I don’t think she
noticed. I appreciated his subtlety.

“Come on,” Will said, beckoning us farther into the
field. “There’s a river over here.”

There were some trees there as well. Lucy and I sat
under one. Will jumped from rock to rock to cross the water and
started gathering sticks and grass. “Guys, I’m really thirsty, but
I need to boil the water before I drink it or it might make me
sick. So I’ll need to make a fire.”

Lucy nudged me and I realized we should help. We
made a little pile of kindling on our bank, but neither of us was
nimble enough to jump across the water like Will. He saw us and
laughed. “Go ahead and take your shoes off and step in the water. I
mean, I guess you all don’t get hot like regular people, but it
might feel nice. Go ahead, if you want.” He had a nice laugh, I
thought.

I looked to Lucy, and we sat down under the tree.
With her grace and dexterity, she untied her shoes quickly, almost
as fast as I slipped off the ones I was wearing, which didn’t have
laces. Then we sat back down on the bank and let our feet touch the
water. At first it felt too cold, like it would hurt us, but in
just a second, it was delightful. Lucy gave the braying kind of
hiccup that I knew was her laugh. To be honest, it was not the
prettiest sound she made, but I accepted it the way she accepted my
wrong-looking smile, for the emotion it contained, rather than its
appearance. We sat there as Will gathered up all the grass and
sticks into one pile, a little upstream from where we were. He sat
next to it and raked a large knife across a dark piece of stone.
Sparks flew out, and these startled me, but when the grass and
tinder caught fire into a bright, orange blaze, I felt the heat and
smelled the smoke, and I remembered how much flames frightened me.
Lucy gave a little shriek and grabbed my arm.

Will put his hands out in front of himself, in a
calming gesture. “Hey, hey, you two. It’s okay. It’s way over here,
and I won’t let it get any bigger. Just sit still and enjoy the
water.” Lucy and I both calmed down and nodded.

Will got out a large metal cup from a pocket of his
jacket and dipped it into the river, then placed it at the edge of
the fire. With a bigger stick he piled some embers around the base
of the cup. As he waited for the water to boil enough, he took his
boots off and put his feet in the stream. I moved my feet to splash
Lucy with some water. She gave her odd laugh, and Will laughed some
more, too.

Using a piece of cloth as a pot-holder, he took the
cup from the fire and blew on it till it was cool enough, then he
drank the water. It took him a couple minutes, sipping it like tea.
Then he dipped the cup back in the stream. He walked in the water
towards us and offered me the cup. “I guess I’ve never seen you all
drink, but would you like to try?”

I took the cup. It felt nice in my hands—cold and
smooth, calm and reassuring. It was a big measuring cup with a bent
band of metal as a handle. The gradations were marked on the side
with little indentations in the metal, and I ran my fingers over
those, feeling them like Braille. I raised it and poured some water
into my mouth. It didn’t feel like when I’d tried to eat that
horrible thing before, not at all. It felt like a part of me was a
little bit more alive right then, like it had been deficient or
wounded before, and now it was healed. I wanted the feeling to
spread through me, but it didn’t. I couldn’t even master swallowing
the water; most of it spilled out on my chin.

“Try again,” Will said with surprising patience. I
had been afraid he’d laugh. “This time close your mouth when you
try to swallow it.”

I did as he suggested, and managed to get some down.
The sensation was not as intense as it had been in my mouth, but it
definitely felt like something was more complete, less broken in me
than it had been before, though the feeling was faint and it passed
quickly. I handed the cup to Lucy. With her better control and
coordination, she was much more successful than I had been. She
looked surprised and elated, and she smiled at Will as she handed
the cup back.

We sat there a little longer, before Will stamped
the fire out and we put our shoes back on. We slowly made our way
back home.

“I hope you two had fun,” he said as we shuffled
through our gate (Will had already led the other people to the
opposite side of the enclosure). He looked happier than he had
before, like he thought the outing quite enjoyable. I was glad.

He locked up the gate. “You two seem all right, like
real people.
Better
than some real people, even.”

I was always confused when he referred to us this
way, but I was getting used to it.

“I got something for you.” He pulled out a glossy,
colorful brochure and pushed it through a tiny gap in the fence. I
took it and read the cover: “Stony Ridge College—Where Learning and
Character Grow Together.” I lowered my eyebrows a little, for the
motto wasn’t quite what I expected, even as high-minded as it
seemed. I certainly hoped I had lived up to it when I had worked
there, but it sounded so grand I wasn’t sure if it were humanly
possible to do such things for people, at least not at school.

I looked back to Will.

“I don’t know if you can read, Truman, but it’s your
old college. I went out there the other day to check it out.” He
glanced at the other people as they moaned and approached. “Some of
the buildings are falling apart, but I found one office where they
had these brochures and they were all boxed up, so they were still
readable. It’s quite a ways, but we can go there next time if you
want.”

As the first of the others began to push and jostle
me out of the way, I nodded, touched by his thoughtfulness. Will
nodded too as he stepped away from the fence.

I moved back through the crowd, so I could get away
from them. Lucy came with me, and we retreated to our little
cubicle, where we sat together on our sofa. I opened the brochure
to examine it. Inside there were pictures of ivy-covered, brick
buildings and smiling, pretty young people of every race. None of
them were bloody or missing parts, I noticed. None of them even had
a deformity as minor as crooked teeth or scraggly hair.

Looking at such perfect people, I wondered if any of
their learning and character had grown because of me. I also
wondered where they all were now, and if any of them still
remembered anything I’d taught them—again, even assuming that I’d
been a teacher there. I thought of all the other people in the
storage area with us, who couldn’t speak or read, who didn’t seem
to remember much of anything, and I wondered what difference I had
ever made. I was grateful for how thoughtful Will had been, but I
almost wished he hadn’t brought the brochure.

Lucy touched my arm and leaned over to look at what
I was reading. She tilted her head up at me, and I pointed to the
brochure, then at myself. She furrowed her brow and shook her head.
I pointed to my pile of books near the sofa, then to a picture of
books in the brochure, than back to myself. This time she nodded.
She put her finger on my chest, then turned the finger back to
touch her breast. I put down the brochure and took her hand; with
one finger of my other hand, I touched her breast and then my own
chest. She nodded and leaned her head against me.

After a while, Lucy sat up and took up her violin.
As she began to play, I thought of how some teacher must have
taught her, probably many years ago. As I leaned back and again
enjoyed the overwhelming beauty of Lucy’s serenade, I knew that
teacher’s work had at least made my meager life more tolerable,
even joyful, whatever else it might have accomplished. Perhaps some
of my students were somewhere, doing something similarly beautiful
or good. It was only a hope, I suppose, but that summer night it
was enough that I felt good about the day’s events and I could sit
beside Lucy as happy and content as I had been on the previous
nights.

Only a few more days of school remained after I took
my vows. The littler kids were already done, and the bigger kids
like me were taking exams. During the final exam in Mr. Caine’s
class, a little girl came into the classroom and ran up to Mr.
Caine. They whispered, and then Mr. Caine called me to the front of
the class.

“Zoey,” he whispered, “leave your exam on your desk.
I’ll pick it up and keep it for you for later. You have to help
your mother with a delivery. Go and meet her at the street corner.
Good luck.”

I nodded and left the school building. I went to the
street corner, and Mom came running.

“Who is it?” I asked her as we started to walk,
almost at a jog. “Who’s in labor?”

“It’s Rachel,” Mom said. “Ms. Dresden.”

That’s what I had thought. I knew it was almost her
time.

“Zoey, remember what I’ve said. Rachel has had a
hard time. We’re not here to judge. She needs our help.”

“I know, Mom.”

I had always found Ms. Dresden a fascinating, if
somewhat troubled, presence in our community. She was a young
woman, only nineteen or twenty. She was extremely pretty, I had
always thought—short, a little stout, but muscular and well-built,
with full hips and breasts, perfect teeth and skin, a sprinkling of
freckles across the tops of her cheeks, and remarkably red hair the
color of some fall leaves—vibrant, undulating, and free. She kept
her hair longer than most women, just down to her shoulders, but
not as long as my mom did hers. She smiled and laughed often,
though she seemed more impish and sardonic than cheerful, I thought
later. Her parents had both been killed in the initial onslaught of
the dead, twelve years ago. Rachel had managed to hide until she
saw the people in the museum; she had scrambled over the wall to
safety with them.

As with many people her age, she’d had difficulty
adjusting to our way of life, more difficulty than most people who
were either older or younger. When I was little, she was the wild
girl parents warned their children about—smoking cornsilk
cigarettes (or even marijuana, I had heard people accuse), wearing
suggestive clothing and garish makeup, staying out late with boys
her own age or older. Hanging around boys and men all the time,
she’d learned to operate heavy machinery—loaders, forklifts,
excavators—and she spent much of her time going past the fence to
haul lumber or other supplies back to our city. Of course, hanging
around men all the time inevitably led to the situation my mom and
I had to help with this day.