Nightlight (25 page)

Ed rubbed his eyes, and blinked them. “I told her not to bother even coming in here, that she didn't even want to see. Didn't I? Didn't you both hear me say that?”

“Yes,” they answered.

“But she said she'd come all that way, and she was the only one who could calm him down.”

“She was right,” said Paul.

“No mother wants to see her son like that. She's managing, but I'm afraid it'll be too much for her.”

The door clicked. Mary slipped into the firelight. “He's asleep,” she whispered.

She sat beside Ed, shadows trembling across her features. At last she said, “At least everyone's still alive.”

“That's right,” Ed responded quickly. “Everyone is still very much alive.”

“He was going to kill you,” said Mary softly.

“I had that impression,” said Paul.

“He's been living under the cabin and in the attic. He was terrified of you. He thought—” She faltered. “He thought you had come to bury him. He thought—he thought he was a dead man.”

“Dead,” Paul said, shivering.

Mary spoke carefully, in a low voice. “He wanted to resemble my father in every way.”

“So he used the scalpel to transform himself,” said Paul.

“I'm sorry I sent you here, both of you. I should have come here myself. I was—I was afraid.”

“But everything's going to be all right, now,” said Ed, rubbing his hands together. “This cabin got its hands on an already sick young man, and nearly destroyed him.”

“He's exhausted,” said Mary. “From fear, and exposure. And his—his face.” She did not speak for a moment. “Oh Jesus, his face—”

Lise went to her. “It'll be all right.”

“It can never be all right,” said Mary.

“At least we're all alive.”

“His face is infected. I don't see how he can ever be a human being.”

Ed stood and paced the room, his shadow rising and falling on the wall. “The main thing is, as cut up and hacked up as he may be, he's alive. This house”—his fist struck a wall—“this cabin almost digested three fine young people. But we got here in time.”

“It's not raining,” said Paul.

There was only the sound of the river, the churn and hiss on both sides of the cabin. Lise opened the front door and looked out for a long time before she said, “The river's rising.”

“But the rain has stopped!” gasped Paul, struggling to his feet. His arms were in slings torn from sheets, but once he was standing they did not hurt. Or so he told himself. They hurt, but he no longer felt queasy with agony.

Water glittered among the trees. The current surged around the redwoods, and through them. The smell of water rose into the cabin.

“Randolph won't make it,” said Mary.

“Of course he will,” said Ed.

“Paul, don't go out,” cried Mary.

Paul crept through the darkness to the rising water. A crust of forest floor dissolved at his feet as the water ate it, and spun it away. The roar of grinding boulders filled the air.

“We can climb to the roof!” he called. Then, to himself, he laughed. They couldn't climb to the roof. He couldn't, certainly, and Len was in no condition to save himself. This was the way things would end, washed clean from the earth. He did not want to die. He would do everything possible to stay alive. But if he had to die in this river he had accomplished one thing, one precious thing in his life: He had won Lise.

He trudged through the mud, grunting with pain, and looked up at the silhouettes on the porch. “I don't know about you guys, but I'm not going to drown.”

“What do you suggest?” asked Mary.

“We'll build a raft,” said Paul.

“That's right!” boomed Ed. “We'll knock a raft together in no time.”

“Stop it,” spat Mary. “I can't stand any more optimism. Look at how fast the river's rising.”

“It's already past the trees,” said Lise.

“So we better work fast,” said Ed. “We can't just stand around like this. What's the matter?”

The buttons on Ed's shirt glowed. The outline of the roof loomed above them. Trees stood black against brown water. “It's morning,” said Paul.

“What difference does it make?” said Mary.

“Yes,” said Lise. “You can see red over there.”

“Randolph has probably made it back to his place by now,” said Ed.

“It'll take hours for anyone to come all the way out even to his place, much less here,” said Mary. “We can sit on the roof, I suppose. And hope.”

“That's right,” Ed said. “There's plenty of hope.”

A tree groaned. A redwood tilted, paused, and, like a weary thing, lay down in the water. The churning water tossed its branches, and the tree rolled.

Paul smiled. Perhaps it was because he was in shock. Perhaps this was, in fact, courage. But he was not afraid. “It's all right, Lise,” he said.

She forced a smile.

The river surged higher, arms of it working across the soil, floating redwood needles and bay leaves. Earth slumped in places and was swept away.

“I love you,” Lise breathed into his ear. “Whatever happens, I love you.”

“I'm going inside,” said Mary. “At least Len and I can be together.”

“I'll find a hammer,” said Ed. “We're running out of time.”

“There's one in there,” said Paul. “But I don't remember seeing any nails. We could use nails already in boards. Straighten them out.”

“Now you're talking,” Ed grinned. But there was a thinness to his grin, and he remained on the porch for a moment, surveying the flood. “We'll knock together a raft that'll get us out of here.”

Lise held Paul, but she did not cry. They did not have to speak. “It's coming up so fast,” she said, finally.

Water slopped over the edge of the bottom step. The roar of water shook them as they stood, like the rumble of a huge engine.

And it was the rumble of an engine. Something steel and gigantic. Something impossible. The water flattened. It lashed against itself; and their clothes whipped around them.

A helicopter hovered above the water, and figures plunged into the river, striding through it. Men waved their arms in greeting, hurrying through the surging flood.

“A road crew came back for the bulldozer,” Ed cried into Paul's ear. “Damn near arrested Randolph, but he explained it all.” Ed laughed. “I don't think he'll be able to keep the bulldozer, though. I bet he's real disappointed.”

Water lashed the cabin far below them. As they watched, the porch sagged and collapsed. Then they could see no more, as the helicopter followed the chocolate smear of water up the valley.

“What's left after the flood's down I'll take care of myself.”

Paul glanced at him questioningly.

“I'll destroy it,” called Ed. “Level it to bedrock. No one will ever stay there again.”

Mary held a figure huddled in a blanket. Paul settled against Lise. Her breath soothed his ear, as sunlight gleamed off the dark glasses of the deputy who crouched before them. “We'll have you guys in Saint Helena in no time,” said the face behind the dark glasses. “You'll be patched up in a jiffy.”

Paul wanted to answer that he felt fine, but he said nothing. He smiled, and knew that the smile must seem the result of delirium—or perhaps the deputy was certain that he had two madmen in the helicopter.

Paul didn't mind. Lise held him gently, and he could feel the rise and fall of her breath.

He could stay like this forever.

37

He said, “Begin at the beginning.”

There were stiff white uniforms everywhere. White shoes. Everything too bright.

“What was so remarkable about your grandfather?”

My lips were stiff. They hurt. I shaped a word. “Special.” He was special because He would not die. Because He loved me. “Because He was so strong,” I said, with lips that were barely my own.

He had been so loving. He had waited so patiently. And then He took me easily, with a kiss.

There was too much light here, and I wanted to close my eyes. I knew that light would cure me. It was so silent, though, and sterile, falling heavily from the sky.

Tweezers plucked gauze away from my nose. Eyes studied, calculated. My face began to hurt again. It felt like it was growing huge. Cotton rubbed cold alcohol on my arm, and a needle stabbed.

I was scattered, like a bag of leaves. Dr. Kirby's voice was raking me in.

“You'll live a normal life,” he said. “Like everyone else.”

To be normal was to be weak. To have no Voice.

The loving Voice would never come to me again. I was alone.

“It will take a long time,” said Dr. Kirby.

I knew what this meant: It might not work.

“There may be days when you seem to make no progress.”

I could feel the tape. A nose. The lips were like healed burns. They were raking me together.

“But we have time,” said Dr. Kirby.

When I learned to smile again, I would learn to say without speaking: This is impossible, but I know you are being kind.

One morning Dr. Kirby asked, “Would you like to have one of your cameras?”

To hold, I thought. Just to hold. I nodded.

“You know the therapist wants you to enunciate as much as possible.”

“Yes.”

But I did not mean that. I meant that a camera would remind me of the dark. I had always understood the dark, how with time and care the camera could magnify the barest illumination into noon. It would remind me of more than the dark.

It might bring back the Voice.

I sat in sun some afternoons, sitting under a magnolia tree.

One morning Dr. Kirby said, “I wonder if you would like to see your mother?”

“Yes.”

“You don't have to, you know. It's up to you.”

Because I had not meant yes. I had meant that to see her would remind me of the Voice. That I was afraid. But that I would risk it.

“You're still recovering from a great trauma,” said Dr. Kirby. “We can take our time.”

So Dr. Kirby knew how to wait, too. Perhaps all real power came from the power to wait.

“I want,” I said, “to see her.”

But she did not come. I knew why. I was not easy to look at. I understood. They were gathering me, but it was taking too long.

It was afternoon, under the warm sun. A magnolia tree spread over me, tangling the light. Water somewhere pattered on the lawn.

A blond nurse stepped across the lawn, trying to avoid the glistening place where it was wet. Green grass clippings clung to her white shoes—two of them on the side of one foot.

“Your mother is here to see you,” she said.

The water on the lawn was a long, airy note. Like the Voice.

“You don't have to see her,” she added. “She'll understand.”

I looked away. If I wanted to have a future, it would have to begin. It surprised me, sometimes, that the nurses here could not read my mind. My thoughts were so vivid I imagined easily that they could read them through my skin.

I took a slow, deep breath. I let it go. “I want to.”

She looked smaller than I had remembered. She looked away from me, and then looked again. I stood and held her.

The attendant brought a chair, and the two of us sat in the sun. There was silence. I understood my mother. What was there to say?

Her hand slipped into her purse, and she said, “Dr. Kirby said you asked for this.”

It was my oldest, a Leica M2. I was trembling as I unscrewed the brush-steel lens cover.

“I brought film, too,” she said.

The colors around me pulsed for a moment. This was the world that I could possess, if I wanted it. I was afraid, then, and held the camera to my chest. If my future became precious to me, because it was so possible, perhaps the Voice would come back simply to take it away.

I closed my eyes. The sun was a blush behind the veins of my eyelids. I spoke as clearly as I could. “Thank you for bringing it.”

“I wasn't sure which one …”

I tried to smile. If only I could stay like this. If only the empty places in me could fill, slowly, with light.

“You'll be fine,” she said, as though she believed it.

If He leaves me alone.

38

A life is a simple thing, she thought: You live.

Mark was waiting at the car. His face brightened when he saw her, but then he took her in his arms. He plainly did not know to ask.

“He knows where he is,” she said. “And who.”

“That's a blessing.”

A blessing. It had been a long time since Mary had believed in blessings.

“Dr. Kirby is very pleased. But you know doctors. Sometimes I think they like to see people very sick so they can cure them.”

Mark held the door of the car open for her, but she did not want to get in yet. She wanted to stay here for a moment. Mark was such a healthy man. So solid. He could never imagine what it was really like to have a soul like hers.

But Mark seemed to read her mind. “Isn't hope one of the great virtues?”

“It can be foolish.”

“Never be too busy to stop and sniff a clover,” her mother had said. Mary had dismissed it as the sort of insipid wisdom her mother was always offering. But that frail woman had done just that, and watched sunsets over the heads of tennis players, and gathered leaves while Mary learned how to throw a knuckleball. A slim figure in white, stooping to watch something small, an insect or a mushroom, while Mary and her father sweated, tossing a football.

“I nearly thought it was a bad idea to bring him a camera. I thought it might bring it all back to him. And you know—I think it might.”

“The doctor wouldn't have suggested—”

“You're one of those people who have faith. I'm not. I'm afraid my son may still be lost.”