Part 13: Be Still, My Soul, Be Still
They go inside when the sun gets too hot for them to bear the work, and Savannah brings the sketchbook with her. He supposes he should feed her something. He isn't sure it's time for lunch, but he seems to have no routine with her yet besides food preparation. So he is therefore surprised to learn that Sarah has apparently established one under his nose. Savannah sits down at the table, opens her book to a fresh page, and regards him expectantly.
"We're doing times tables," she says.
"Excuse me?"
"For school. We did reading yesterday, so it's a math day today and we're doing times tables. You need to grade my work from last time, then give me another page of problems."
She's started up school with Savannah again? He supposes he should have realized that Sarah would have experience with this. She did live off the grid for several years with John, and he attended a regular school later, so she must have kept him up to speed. He takes the notebook, skims the pages and sees at least a week's worth of work covering every curriculum area. The pedagogical emphasis is clearly on skills Sarah thinks Savannah will need---they've been talking about departments of government for the social studies component, and Savannah has written her own little capsule summaries on such branches as the department of Homeland Security, the FBI and the department of defense---but it's all there, from math to music and everything in between. Sarah has written comments on the cyborg diagrams regarding Savannah's technique---she seems to be using the project as art curriculum. And they have just began a novel study on The Wizard of Oz.
He grades her homework and writes her up a page of times table drills. Then he turns to the back of the sketchbook he's been using and begins to write up some notes of his own. He knows many things about departments of government, and he's sure he can make a valuable contribution to Savannah's education.
--
It's almost dark before Sarah turns up again. He has had a productive afternoon with Savannah. They finished their times tables, then went back outside and finished up their respective work on the cyborg's right arm. They'll be ready to start the left side tomorrow. He's packing up their pencils when he notices that Sarah has joined them outside and is gathering up supplies for a bonfire.
"Good day to you," he says.
She nods, but doesn't look up. He pulls Savannah inside, helps her put her things away, then prepares a platter of hors d'oeuvres: baked chips, spinach dip, cheese cubes, crackers. A few squares of chocolate. He pours orange juice, plain for Savannah and fortified with the last of the vodka for the rest of them. They carry it outside together and set it all down on the little picnic tarp, which has not yet been brought in after pizza.
Sarah's got the bonfire going while he was inside, and in the fading light, the flames play off her pale, pinched face in a way that softens it and makes him feel warm. When he sits down beside her, he notices that as Savannah has surmised, she has been busy with the sketchbook, and it's looking the worse for wear. The cover is worn and dented with pencil marks, it looks like some of the pages have been torn out, and there are smudges where her hand has rubbed against the paper. There are smudges on her skin too, and her still-healing hand is limp and loose on her lap. Her knees are drawn up to her chin, and she's staring at the flames.
"I ran out of paper," she says.
"We'll get more. We'll need some for school, I expect. You have a good program set up."
"Yes."
"Did you tell what you needed to tell?" he asks, pointing at the sketchbook.
She shrugs. "I didn't need to tell anything. It was you who needed to hear it." She moves her foot a little, kicks the book over to him. "But I'll say this. I hope it's enough, James Ellison. Because I'm not sure I have anything else to give you. Is there dinner yet? I think I need to be alone for awhile."
And she walks off, and leaves him. The sketchbook glows in the fire's reflection, calling out to him.
--
He eats with a subdued Savannah. She's picked up on both their moods, Sarah's fragility and his restless introspection. He won't open the book until Savannah is safely occupied with other things; he doesn't know what he'll find in there or how he's going to react. But he can't wait to get his hands on it, and she senses that he's eager to be rid of her.
"I feel like reading," she says. She chews her last bite of reheated pizza, then neatly folds her paper napkin and balls it up inside her empty glass. "Can I go inside with Aunt Sarah? I feel like reading."
"Let her rest, Savannah."
"I know. I want to read about Munchkinland. Mr. Fur will help me."
He barely processes the oddness of that statement. The sketchbook is buring a hole in his brain and he has to see, has to know what's inside of it. Savannah goes. He lets himself be mesmerized for a moment by the flames of the fire as he steels his nerve, the book lying heavy and flat in his hands. This is Sarah Connor, he's sure of it. Whatever it is that might be inside of it, it's her.
At the thought, his stomach seizes and he hunches over, retching, his head spinning, his eyes blurring. He manages, with effort, to keep his dinner down. But as he wrests himself back to a seated position, the gravity of what he is about to see overcomes him, and he pauses for a moment of prayer. No, not prayer. The stories of his childhood that he's been sharing with Savannah have been plaguing him almost as much as Sarah herself has been, and he finds himself remembering the bits of poetry they had to memorize in high school English classes. Invictus. Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix. Fragments of epitaphs, all of them. Fragments of messages to carry around through ones days. When did his world become so full of messages? God is not so far away, after all. God never was. That was the message all along...
Be still, my soul, be still, he recites from memory. His hands shake and he can't get a finger on the cover to open up the book. Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle. She made this for him. He's sure of it. Therapeutic though the drawing might have been for her, she made this for him. What had she told him, before he took his ride with Savannah? She's trying. Trying to move forward, trying to heal, trying to let him in. Be still, my soul, be still. And he will witness it. Whatever it is she has to share, he will witness it because if she endured it, he will too, even if it breaks his heart because he's growing to love her and her suffering will eat him up alive, he will endure it too. He owes her that, more than anything.
He opens the book to the first page, and there she is. A younger her, a smaller her. The detail is immaculate: the faded jeans, the 80's hair, the high-top sneakers. She's drawn herself small; she had to, in order to fit in everything else that's on the page, but he senses that the proportion is symbolic too.
Be still, my soul, be still; the arms you bear are brittle,
Earth and high heaven are fixt of old and founded strong.
Think rather,---call to thought, if now you grieve a little,
The days when we had rest, O soul, for they were long.
There are other things on this page. Faces, places, some drawn with soft lines of sentiment, some with energetic strokes of pen and marker, like music. And a shadow hanging over it all, a claw-shaped shadow, filling in the spaces on the page with pointed, ominous portent. Young Sarah makes him smile, and he traces his finger over the youthful memories she has chosen to memorialize for him.
Men loved unkindness then, but lightness in the quarry
I slept and saw not; tears fell down, I did not mourn;
Sweat ran and blood sprang out and I was never sorry:
Then it was well with me, in days ere I was born.
He turns the page, and there are four of the faces again, one in every corner. An older woman with a familiar resemblance; her mother, perhaps. A younger girl dressed as Sarah herself had been in the earlier picture. He tries to remember, from the FBI file, who might have been among the first of her losses. A friend, maybe? A roommate? The third picture is a man he recognizes from his own dream as John's father Kyle Reese, and the fourth is Sarah herself. She's drawn the two of them facing each other, and there is love in their eyes amidst the pain.
She's filled the page with these four faces, drawing them large enough that every detail can be seen, from individual strands of hair to birthmarks to huge, sympathetic eyes that seem to track the ominous claw-like shadow as it stalks them across the page, shooting strands of energy out of every terrifying metal finger. This was a hard one for her. Some of the lines, especially around the eyes, are wobbly. In other spots, her hand has faltered enough to smudge the pencil. The overall effect has everyone on the page appear as if they are melting.
Now, and I muse for why and never find the reason,
I pace the earth, and drink the air, and feel the sun.
Be still, be still, my soul, it is but for a season:
Let us endure an hour and see injustice done.
More drawings, dozens, hundreds. Scenes he recognizes from what he knows of her past. John's birth. Mexico. Houses of all different kinds, from dirt shack to middle American suburbia. The jungle, at least ten pages worth. John at all different ages. The ones of him are always soft, indistinctive, and never complete. Whatever else is on the page, she draws it sharp, detailed. But John is only half a profile amidst the wreckage of disaster. A face only, peeking out from behind a sheltering wall. Half an arm trailing after her as she punches or shoots or screams. There is never all of him there. Never room for it, either, with so much else going on. With so much else after them.
Sarah is in the drawings too. The lines on her are short, fast, kinetic. Sometimes she is alone, sometimes with people. With men. With weapons. On every page, she is formidable, and in every single image, she fights, she kicks, she grieves. Even in the rare moments of stillness she's chosen to capture, she looks like she's thrashing underneath it all.
There are images he expects to see, post-apocalyptic dreamscapes where a pencilled Sarah watches the sky, her body bent over like she's protecting something with her life. If he squints closely on those ones, he'll spot a piece of John in there, a stray leg with a tiny shoe on it poking out from beneath the shelter of Sarah's body, or a single baby hand clenched inside her larger one. And there are images he isn't quite expecting and can barely bring himself to focus on for more than a moment before they overwhelm him. There is one of what appears to be the most extensive weapons bunker he's ever seen, and she's lying on its floor with a look of resignation on her brave, defiant face while a man twice her size stands over her, a hand on his belt buckle and a look of lust in his eyes. How much has she paid to learn what she knows now? It never crossed his mind to think of it, and now that he has, now that he'll look at every skill and strength and victory and wonder what it cost to earn that one, he wonders how he'll ever thank her for sparing Savannah from having to pay this price to learn it too.
Another one from Pescadero (page after page of those, and in most of them she is struggling against restraints, no matter what else might be going on) of a man standing over her just like that one was, lust in his eyes, one hand on his belt buckle and other on a syringe that he plunges into her arms while she struggles and lashes out against him. There are several like this, and in one of them, a Kyle Reese so lightly pencilled in he's barely there is holding her hand while it happens.
And more than anything else, there is the claw. It's on every page, either in shadow, looming large over whatever action, or attached to larger things which run and chase and crush. Even in the more tender moments---caressing her infant son, watching him take his first baby steps on the sand of a beach in Mexico, a birthday scene with John and herself and Charley Dixon---the claw is there, reaching tentacles out toward her, toward John. It's there, it's always there, and this is what she couldn't tell him, this is what she could not convey with words...
This will haunt him. Every single thing he has seen in this book will haunt his dreams, and he deserves it. He knows now why she distrusted him. He knows exactly what he betrayed. This moment---right here, right now, where he knows it at last---will be a defining moment of his life.
Ay, look: high heaven and earth ail from the prime foundation;
All thoughts to rive the heart are here, and all are vain;
Horror and scorn and hate and fear and indignation---
Oh why did I awake? When shall I sleep again?
He goes in to her. How can he not? But he tucks the sketchbook into the trunk of the jeep first, not wanting to bring that terrible claw back inside with him.
She is huddled on the bigger bed, wrapped in every blanket she has, and she's trembling. When she meets his gaze, her eyes are red with tears.
"I can't stop shaking," she says.
He climbs into bed with her, wraps her in his arms.
"I'll hold you," he says. "I'll hold you. For as long as it takes."
--
Note: The poem is by A.E. Housman