Orleans (31 page)

When the first round of Fever struck, he turned his mission into a hospital. Bed against bed, full of people moaning and dying, but Father John and his folks, they stay. That is, ’til some of them nuns and other priests be getting sick, and they go home. But they take the Fever with them. I guess there be a real crisis of faith in the Outer States when the ministry start dying. All them Catholic hospitals and Presbyterian hospitals and Methodist hospitals, the Jewish ones, too—all of them been infected with Delta Fever. Nobody be going to church when the pulpit be empty. Mr. Go say religious folks be right in line with the government when it come to building the Wall. Two thousand some years ain’t killed Christianity, or Islam, or Buddhism. I guess they be damned if some little Fever gonna do it in less than a decade.

But down here be different, ’cause some of us got immunities. Some of us learned to live. Father John survived and he kept on caring for us. When the borders closed, he still helped by getting us sponsor families. That been how I came to have the Coopers, with they care packages and pictures of a real house, with painted walls and glass windows, and a dog that weren’t a blood hound. That why I be having faith in them, and in Father John now.

The trees be thinning, but it true dark now. Good thing, too, because there be a road up ahead, and I see people coming. They carrying lights, but the lights go dark as they get close, and I hear whispers and I know they part of the AB raid. I stay in the trees ’til they gone past me. Then I see Father John’s mission up the road a ways. I stop and hold Baby Girl close in my arms, get to my knees, and say a prayer for them O-Negs, and for the O-Positives, too, if any still be alive. They don’t deserve what about to happen. Nobody do. And to think I used to want to be a chieftain. I be lucky if I can help this baby, but that be about it.

The Super Saver look just like I remember—a big one-story brick of a building that take up most of a block. You can see the edges of other stores that used to be next to it, but they gone now. Just this big old red thing left behind. The
SUPER SAVER
sign be broken where it attached over the double doors to the inside. Somebody gone and repaired it with a piece of plywood, and they changed the word
saver
to
savior.

Behind me, far away, I hear faint pops and shouts, like there be a celebration in the woods. It make me break into a run. I reach the doors and pull hard, but they locked. Chained from the inside. Father John ain’t never locked his door. Churches be sacred.

I be too exposed standing here like this, so I run down the steps and around the building, away from the woods, to look for another way in. At the back of the store there be a loading dock with two trucks what used to bring food over the border. They empty now, but it look like somebody been sleeping in one. There be a little nest of clothes inside. The truck be parked so close to the dock, you could walk from the truck through the bay doors and back without getting wet in the rain. Maybe Father John be living back here now.

“Father?” I call out softly, and brace myself in case I need to run.

I try the back door. It be unlocked, so I walk in and call out.

“Father John?”

My voice echo down the back hall of the church. I feel guilty, sneaking in the back way, but it ain’t safe out front. A few torches flicker on the wall. They been added after the generator died years ago. It always strike me how churchlike they make the place feel, since it really be an oversize grocery store. The hallway be dotted with office doors that say
MANAGER
,
ASSISTANT MANAGER
, but somebody, maybe the same joker who did the sign out front, done changed
Manager
to
Manger.

Most of the rooms be empty. I look through the little glass windows set in the doors. Nothing but darkness.

“Hello?”

The lunchroom be next. When Father John took over, it been a classroom for us, with computers to e-mail our sponsors. Father John used to set out our care packages on the long tables, and we kids be going crazy trying to see who getting what. I got my first pair of rain boots that way. But they too soft to be walking around in Orleans back then, with debris so high and nails and pieces of glass cutting up everything. Daddy say I’d be dead of tetanus if I try wearing them. They too small to fit over my work boots, but they bright yellow with little white daisies on them. I ain’t never seen daisies for real. I loved them.

The hallway end in a set of closed double doors. Back here be where the nuns used to live, and the priests, and volunteers. Father John, too. Out there be the chapel. I put a hand to the left-side door and push.

“Hello?”

I hear somebody scuffling, like they rushing to hide, then some softer sounds. A man clears his throat.

“Welcome, child, and all who enter here.” The voice be booming softly, like a storm in the distance. It like Mr. Go that way, like Lydia, too, with her important voice. I relax. I know that voice, those words.

“Father John, it be me, Fen de la Guerre. You knew me a long time ago.”

It seem like I always be giving the same speech these days, telling people who I be, why they know me. Like something in the air here erase who you been and you got to keep saying it so you don’t forget.

“Fen?” He don’t sound so strong now, like the man I knew. He sound old. I step through the door. The room be lit with stubs of candles all around, making it hard to see. I stand by the altar, on a little stage. Rows of hard metal folding chairs fill the floor in front of me. A thin maroon rug run down the steps of the altar between the chairs to the front doors, with they heavy chain crisscrossing the handles. Things have changed. But not everything. The smell of old incense be strongest here, sharp with wild sage and other herbs. The real incense ran out before I been born.

“Father, where you at?”

“Here, child.” And then I see him in the corner by the nave. He reach into the old desk for matches and start to light the rows of devotional candles. Father John be tall, one of the tallest men I know. He be wearing long robes today, not his priest robes, the pretty black thing with the embroidered collar he used to do service in. These look more like the robes of a monk, rough-woven and dark brown. The kind of cloth we be making in the O-Positive camp. Easy to weave.

He light the last candle and turn to face me. The glow from the nave light up more of the room, but it keep his face in the dark. “Good to see you, Father,” I say.

He move into the light then, and I see him, older and with more gray in his hair than used to be, but his skin pink and healthy, and he smile at me like old times. He sweep me into a big hug, and I smell the sage, even stronger now, and something beneath it, sharp, like kerosene. I pull back.

“I’m sorry for the smell. You caught me cleaning up a spill from the generator. It runs on ethanol now. Some tribes in the area run a still and bring it to me. Made from potatoes or some such, I understand.”

“It ain’t bothering me,” I tell him, even if Baby Girl be wrinkling her nose like she fit to sneeze. “I just be happy to see you,” I say again.

“And you, Fen. And your child, is it?” he ask, catching sight of Enola. “You’ve both picked an interesting night to visit us. There seems to be an . . . altercation in the woods.”

I don’t know how to tell him it be worse than that, so I say nothing.

“Tell me, child, how are your parents?”

My breath hitch in my throat. “They dead, Father John. Long time ago, too.”

He nod and fold his hands into his sleeves. “We never had a service for them.” He don’t say it like he be judging me, but I feel bad all the same. Just because I ain’t got much use for God don’t mean my parents never did.

“That true,” I admit, hugging Enola to my chest. “They been killed by hunters. Ain’t nothing I could do to stop it. They told me to run, and I ran.”

“I am very sorry,” he say, but I can’t look him in the eye or I might let these tears fall. He put a hand on my back and push me into a seat. I can’t stop telling the story.

“They say, ‘Run, Fen, and don’t look back.’ And I don’t want to run, but there be dogs and whips and I don’t know what else to do, so I run and then I be in the swamp, swimming and running, and I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t.” I look up and I be crying again and angry about it but I can’t stop. “And I’d’ve come here to you, but you been so far away and them dogs been chasing me and then they stop and I know they got Mama and Daddy. So I just kept going and I fell in with some bad folks, and it take a while, but then I find the OPs like Daddy say and they test me and take me in.”

Father John don’t say nothing. He just sit next to me, so solid and safe and steady that I start to breathe again and my eyes stop leaking and I sink into my seat and let some of it go.

Baby Enola be looking up at me with her eyes bigger than anything, like they hold the whole world. She yawn real big and Father John shift beside me.

“Tell me about your little one.”

I smile, but it be sad to say it. “This be Baby Girl Enola, Father John. She ain’t mine,” I tell him. “She the daughter of my chieftain, but her mama be dead and we need your help.”

“Shall I baptize her?” Father John ask.

I hesitate. I don’t know what Lydia’d be wanting there, but then I think of that Delta water running down Enola’s clean face and I say, “No. But you can give her a new life. Outside the Delta.”

“What are you saying?”

I turn to him. “Remember my foster family, the Coopers? I know it been a long time, but they sponsored me ’cause they wanted kids and couldn’t have one of they own. They good people and they wanted to help me. Now I need it. Enola, she brand-new, Father, born just a few days ago. She type O and she clean, healthy as can be. She can go over the Wall, if you help.”

Father John look at Enola for a long time, then he look away, toward the lights burning in the nave.

“Can you do it?” I ask.

He clear his throat. “I’d have to test her,” he say. “And contact my diocese in the States. They might have a family . . . or contacts to your Coopers.”

A knot I ain’t known been in my stomach relax. I be sorry to let Enola go, but I be glad for her.

“There be a war out there,” I tell Father John. “That fighting outside be just the beginning, so the sooner, the better.”

Father John tense up. “Another war?” He sound distant and I know he thinking of the last time things been bad. Bad times be like the tide in Orleans. Now the tide be coming in again.

“I have feared this day,” he say, and it sound like he read it from the Bible.

He stand up quick. “Well, let us make haste, then. Bring the child to the altar. I will get my instruments.”

Testing Enola take some time. He swab the inside of her cheek to check for Fever in one of the offices with medical equipment. She drink two whole bottles while we wait. I change her and we sleep in one of the rooms the nuns used to share. The walls of the Super Saver be thick, but not so thick that I can’t hear fighting outside. It make me wonder if Daniel got enough sense in him to make it over the Wall on his own. But it too late to worry about that now. All I got to think about be this baby in my arms.

• • • 

I must have fallen asleep, ’cause Father John wake me from a dream about the cottage in the glade.

“I am so sorry,” he say to me in that deep, important voice. “But the child is unclean.”

39

I ASK HIM TO SAY IT AGAIN.

I make him run the test three more times, but the answer always be the same.

It don’t matter that Enola be only four days old. That she ain’t had nothing but pure water and pure formula.

“I don’t know who told you she was O positive, Fen,” Father John say. “She’s B positive. She had the Fever even before she was born.”

It don’t make sense. Daniel lied to me. But why? It don’t matter to him one way or the other what type Enola be. Unless he trying to get on my good side. What’d he say? “O positive, like her mother.” Like that be good news. And it was, enough to get him out of that blood farm and safe to where he want to go.

I sit down hard on the bench next to Father John’s equipment. Baby Girl in my arms don’t like the drop and she start to cry. She ain’t the only one be wanting to cry.

The world ain’t what it been to me an hour ago. Nothing make sense.

Lydia would never be with an AB. She knew ABs and Os make A and B babies. Any child she had would belong to La Bête . . .

But then I think of how them ABs attacked us right when it been her time. And how she tried to talk peace with them months ago and failed. Maybe La Bête been coming for her and got the powwow instead.

I feel sick. Ain’t no way for me to raise a B baby. Ain’t no way. Enola look healthy now, but that ain’t gonna last. She gonna be needing transfusions, and I ain’t able to give her my blood. She gonna get sick and die like that boy in the Ursuline hospital tent. Or she gonna be one of them girls at the Market, owned by La Bête and flirting with whatever trash come her way.

She look so small and innocent against the ugly scars on my arms. I kiss her on the forehead and she wriggle her little legs. She looking more like her mama every day. But she type B. There ain’t nothing I can do to save her.