Wolves (53 page)

Am I blind? Will my sight come back?

Doesn't matter now.

“How long?” he asks.

“What?”

“How long have we been out of the city?”

“I don't know. Maybe an hour.”

Huxley is flabbergasted. He doesn't remember that hour. Was he passed out the whole time and only now toppled from the saddle?

It takes him three tries to get back into the saddle, but he makes it, exhausted, aching all over. He is sitting behind Nadine, and he can feel her small, bony body shivering against him. She is out in this cold night with just the flimsy dress she had on. No shoes on her feet. Her broken leg bouncing with every movement of the horse.

He struggles with the wool coat. How could he be wearing this when his daughter is shivering, broken in the saddle? He gets the coat off. The air is cold, but he doesn't even equate that to how he will feel after a few minutes exposed. He can only think about how it must feel for her. He puts the coat over her shoulders and wraps her tight in it.

She starts to object, but then remains silent.

Huxley spurs the horse on.

The cold is bracing enough to keep him conscious for a bit, though his eyes keep wanting to roll away from what he's trying to focus on—the road in front of them. And his thoughts are jumbled and disorganized. They flit from here to there with no real rhyme or reason. His brain firing awkwardly and randomly as he skirts the twilight edges of consciousness.

Nadine must have felt him swaying again in the saddle.

She gently touches his burned arm. It hurts, but he doesn't react to it. “Dad,” she says. Trying to bring him back. Trying to keep his mind present.

Behind her, swaying almost drunkenly in the saddle, Huxley gives a faint, disastrous smile.
“Yes …”

“Do you remember Mom?” she asks quietly.

He fights to keep his eyes open. “Yeah. 'Course I remember your mom.”

“So … she's dead?”

The smile falters into a pale wisp, and then drops away. Nadine didn't know. When she'd been dragged away, her mother was still alive, lying on the ground. She must've suspected … but for a year and a half she didn't know. She didn't know whether her mother lived. Or her father. There must've been nights that she felt so stricken and abandoned … 

But I'm here. I'm here now.

“Yes,” he whispers. “She died.”

Nadine takes a breath to speak, but hesitates for a few beats. “I … I think I'm forgetting her face.”

Huxley doesn't speak, or react. Inside, he breaks. He is ground to dust. No stone left standing.

“I've tried to draw her,” Nadine says, her voice strained with pain both physical and emotional. “I tried. But I could never … I could never remember what her
face
looked like. Is that wrong? Am I a bad daughter?”

“No, honey. You're not a bad daughter.” He wants to offer more encouragement but he has to choke on his words for a short time until he can put some strength back into his voice. When he is steady enough, he says, “I can tell you about her.”

I can only tell you, because I've forgotten the image too.

They are only words. But they're all I have left.

“Okay,” Nadine says.

Huxley breathes slow, lets his eyes close. Sways with the movement of the horse. “She had hair the color of the barley fields when the sun was behind them—just like you. She had blue eyes that were bluer in the middle, and they sparkled when she smiled. A big smile. Beautiful mouth. She'd been a joyful person. A wonderful person. The best person I know.”

They ride in silence for a time, Nadine seeming to digest his words, to construct them in her mind. Huxley wonders if it is familiar to her or not. Does the image he just spoke bear any resemblance to her dim memories?

“Maybe you can help me draw her someday.”

“I'd like that,” Huxley says.

But he knows he will not be given the time. He has a full tally to pay, debts accrued on debts.

He could just go. He could just run. With Nadine. They could go north, away from the Wastelands, away from the Riverlands, away from the EDS and their war for the Mississippi. They could go north and never look back, out of reach of Davies and the slavers and anyone else that might want to hurt them …

Lowell
.

But he couldn't leave Lowell. He couldn't abandon him again.

Not even for your own daughter?

He looks at her in the saddle. Broken leg dangling to the left. But her shoulders are squared up to the wind, her face set with a sort of determination you don't see in people her age. It has only been eighteen months since they were separated, and yet there is the difference of a decade in this girl.

She is strong. She is very strong.

If Lowell dies, I will be lost.

That is still true. If he lets Lowell die, he will not be able to remember anything good about himself. He will be a soulless shell of a man, and he will live his life running scared and ashamed, always looking over his shoulder for Black Heart Davies, always haunted by his own weaknesses.

Nadine deserves a better father than that.

By dawn, they stumble upon a growing horde of refugees, and beyond, the span of the Mississippi river, that waterway so valuable that men will fight and die for its muddy banks. And it is here that his exhausted, injured daughter looks back at him.

“Where are we going?” she says.

He looks at her again, this girl with so many pieces of her mother in her. But pieces of him, too. And yet, she is not bad. She can't be bad. She's so young. And no matter how much of himself she has, she's still a good person.

I'm sorry, sweet girl. This is the way it has to be.

She might not understand now, but eventually … hopefully …

He starts down the hill toward the river. “There's someone I have to meet.”

Chapter 11

At the riverbank, amongst the rest of the refugees, Nadine grows quiet. The refugees are quiet as well, for a group of what must have been a thousand. There are some that weep loudly and cry for the loss of loved ones, or the loss of their things. But mostly they stare at the waters, blankly. Some of them know what it is like now to have nothing. Will they become desperate too? Will they become dangerous?

The Riverlands is a country of summer-dried grasses, and lightning has just struck, and before this is all over, everything will burn.

The ferries come and go. The bridge is looking more of a shell now, the substructure the only thing that still spans. Explosions continue as holes are bored into concrete and sticks of some crude explosive are lit in them. Men crawl over the structure like swarms of ants, intent on its destruction. Now the destruction of the bridge makes sense. They are cutting the EDS off.

They have to wait for the large ferry, because the horse will not fit on the small boats, and Huxley doesn't believe he has the strength to carry Nadine. And so they wait. The morning sun warms him. Huxley fades in and out again.

The pain of his shattered arm stabs him occasionally.

Nadine also suffers, but she does it quietly.

An old woman, a healer, comes by. Huxley and Nadine are pathetic figures, but most of the refugees are injured or bloodied in some way or another, some of them carried in stretchers by their friends and family, barely clinging to life. Some of them lie by the wayside, dead in the journey. A young girl tags along beside the healer. He could imagine that this was Brie, half a dozen years ago. Before her life had been destroyed. Before she grew hateful. Before she started killing more than she healed.

The girl carries a pitcher of water. She lets Huxley and Nadine drink from a ladle that she draws from her pitcher. The healer is there only to help. Not to make gold from these fleeing, penniless people. Huxley almost refuses her services—what injuries he has are his own fault. But he does not refuse the healer for Nadine.

Huxley helps Nadine down from the saddle. The healer puts a leather thong in Nadine's mouth for her to bite down on. It is wet from the mouths of others that have bit it along the way. Nadine doesn't seem to notice, or care. She clamps down on it, baring her teeth, squeezing her eyes shut. The healer sets the bone quickly while Nadine strains to stay still and not scream. Then the healer splints her broken leg with a few sticks fetched by the younger girl and smooths Nadine's hair.

“You'll be just fine,” the healer says, kindly. She looks to Huxley, who leans against the horse, barely conscious. “If you won't let me tend to your wounds, at least let me put that arm into a sling. It'll only take a moment and a piece of cloth.”

Huxley lets her sling his arm. The cloth comes from his own pant leg, a long strip of it from the bottom all the way to above the knee. The old healer works gently with Huxley's arm, always with a slight smile on her lips, as though nothing pleases her more than doing these kindnesses for others.

He watches her, almost with suspicion, and he hates that he is the foul one, because he can see that she is genuine. He is the schemer, the evil one. She is goodness and kindness. What right does he have to question her? He cannot even remember how to be kind to a stranger. He thinks maybe once he'd been capable of it, when he still had faith in people.

“Why are you doing this?” he asks the healer, unable to keep the suspicion from his voice. “You gain nothing from it.”

She smiles at him, as though she expected his question. She is not taken aback. She is not offended. “What does it benefit me to gain the world, but lose my soul? I do this because you are a human being, and you are in pain. It is in my power to help relieve that pain. Why would I not?”

“Because you don't know what kind of person I am.”

She finishes knotting the sling at his shoulder. “It doesn't matter what kind of person you are. What matters is the kind of person
I
am. I have no control over you, or the rest of the world. All I have control over is how I react to it. The world is full of people that choose to react by inflicting pain. I choose to react by taking it away.” She seems good-humored about it. “We balance each other out.”

Huxley's spirit is hardpan dirt that has been pierced. Underneath that, the things he'd kept down below for so long keep coming up. He has no control over them, but they burst out of him, unrelenting. He wants to be strong, but he can't keep it down anymore. Everything that has happened, all the deaths, and the murders and the bad things, and the good things, and his daughter and the memories that she brings and the goodness inside of her—they all just keep boring that hole bigger and bigger and it makes it all harder to control.

He takes the old woman's hand and kisses it. His own tears come down his nose and wet her wrinkled hand. He feels weak for his foolish tears, but they come against his will now. This is the nature of all the things that you sink down deep inside of you. They will eventually come out. In one way or another. They will come out in anger, or anguish. They will come out in blood, or in tears.

“This world doesn't deserve people like you,” he whispers to the old lady.

She smiles and clasps his hands in hers. “Thank you for your kind words.”

And then the healer moves on, her young apprentice in tow.

Still seated on the ground, Nadine is wiping tears from her eyes. She seems to be very deliberately not looking at Huxley. He doesn't know what to do, or what to say. Has he forgotten how to be a father? Or is he right to leave her alone in that moment?

On the river, the large ferry is trundling its gradual way back across the river.

Nadine, with trembling hands, reaches into the inner pocket of the heavy woolen coat that Huxley put over her shoulders, and she draws out the folded piece of parchment and the stick of charcoal, which has broken into three pieces now, each no longer than an inch.

“I found this,” she says, still not looking up at him.

Huxley stares at it. Remembers the boys that died.

He has so much blood on his hands, so many souls on his shoulders … how could he ever be the father that Nadine needs? He is poison to those around him. But he has managed to succeed in one very important thing. He has taken Nadine out of bondage. He has freed her. He has seen her face, he has held her, even though it was briefly, and she has recognized him.

That is good enough.

What did he expect? That they would ride away into the north together? Or make it through the lines of war and sneak into the Eastern Democratic States? That he would build her a new life and till fields and be a father?

It seems beautiful, but how many beautiful things has he destroyed?

That is what I became. I became a destroyer.

Perhaps Davies is right. How long can you live with so steep a bill hanging over your head? The tally must be paid.

“You can have it,” Huxley says. “Please. It's yours.”

She opens the folded piece of paper. At the corner, Huxley can still see the muted stain of red.

“Is that blood?” she asks.

Huxley pulls his eyes away from it. “Yes.”

Nadine considers it for a time, and then begins to draw.

Out of pure exhaustion, she falls asleep with just a few lines drawn, framing a face, though what face Huxley can't tell. He was never very good at understanding what she was drawing until he could see the finished picture. There were things that she did at the end, tiny details that seemed so insignificant sometimes, but which brought the picture to life. That was her talent. That's what made her so special to everyone.

The line of refugees continues to dwindle as the large ferry runs people and animals back and forth. It is a lifetime of laying down, taking a short nap, and then getting up and moving forward twenty yards, then collapsing again and sleeping.

When she is awake, Nadine draws, she adds small bits and pieces to the picture.

Huxley doesn't look over her shoulder. She never could stand that. She wanted to reveal it only when it was done. She knew that it was the finishing touches that made the picture real. She did not want anyone to see the groundwork sketches that came before.

It is midafternoon by the time they are able to board the ferry. It takes every last piece of gold in Huxley's satchel to pay for the passage of himself, his daughter, and the horse, and even then he has to empty his satchel and prove to the shipman taking the payments that he has no more coin.

Huxley is feeling less likely to pass out. But exhaustion is there, creeping over him like a heavy blanket. It seems to weigh everything down. Every limb a thousand pounds. When they find a quiet corner of the ferry, Huxley lays down. He has to lie on his back—both his arms scream when he tries to turn on his side. His eyes stay open for a brief moment.

His girl, seated atop the horse, her hair caught in the wind as the ferry shoves off for the western bank of the Mississippi, and the sun caught in the strands.
Like the barley fields
, he thinks again with a smile. She is drawing again, her red-rimmed eyes focused intensely on the paper, and he can almost imagine that the two of them are not where they are, but at a cottage that he built with his own hands, at the northeastern corner of a barley field, so many long miles away …