Chapter Fifty-three

Revelation

Malcolm Reed

Numbly, twenty-four hours later, I prepare to leave the shack for the last time.

I won't be coming back. Neither Grandmother nor I pretend otherwise.

I've done what I could around the place to shore it up for a while longer, but everything around me feels different; as though I'm looking at it with the eyes of a stranger. I mended things with impersonal efficiency, and even when Grandmother hands me the rolled-up bedding from a box bed that no longer needs any I feel as though it ought to mean something to me, and doesn't.

"You'll be passin' the store on your way," she says gently. "It'd be a kindness to me if you'd drop these off an' have a kind word for the Bernthals. They were right fond of your wife."

"No problem." They're good enough to be re-used by people who can't afford to pay for them and will be glad of the gift. I'll pass on the tools while I'm about it. They may come in useful for someone or other. My body will probably prompt me occasionally to steal something to eat, but I won't be stopping in one place long enough to earn my keep. If I want to reach the place Burnell indicated, whatever it may be (not that I know, or care) before that missile malfunction, I'll have to keep moving.

We still haven't been able to talk about Liz ... about what happened to her ... and ... and Beans. I hope it was quick, I hope she didn't suffer too long. Some of me wants to know, but some of me is so much of a coward I can't bear the thought of her in pain, hoping right up till the end that I'd come and save her. Not that I could have, most likely, not if Grandmother and the clinic couldn't, but I could have tried. At least I could have been holding her hand when she slid into the dark.

Is not being here to try worse or better than being here, trying and failing?

All I know is that I failed her. Monumentally, when she needed me most.

I wasn't here.

I know what she'd have said: that the starving people in that village needed me more. I'm not sure that gives me absolution. They needed anyone willing to help them. Liz, on the other hand, needed me.

If she could forgive me for all the other terrible things I did to her, she can forgive me even for this. I can't.

My actions towards her aboard Enterprise replay themselves over and over again in my mind, an inescapable litany of self-accusation. How could any man do that to a sweet, kind young woman like Liz? How in the world had I been able to do it and look at myself in the mirror afterwards without seeing the monster reflected in it?

"Malcolm." Grandmother touches my face gently with her withered fingers, using my true name for the first time since the day on the anniversary of the windflowers when I nearly killed her. So deep is the pain of my loss that even the memory of that no longer hurts. "Time you were gettin' on where you're goin'."

"Yes." I jerk myself briefly from my bitter reverie. "And thank you, Grandmother. For all you did for –."

"It was my pleasure, child. You weren't the only person 'round here who loved her."

Loved her but couldn't save her. I swallow that bitter, unjust accusation. I'm sure that if anything could have been done, Grandmother would have done it.

So I kiss her dry, wrinkled forehead for the last time, shoulder my rucksack and pick up the roll of bedding. I'll go down to the village, call in at the store and pass over what I have to, and then I'll head for the road. There won't be an eastbound train for another two days, but with luck I'll be able to sneak a lift on the back of a lorry headed for Nevada; after the long trip through the desert, most drivers stop for a break at the Bernthals' place. This is a little cantina next to Capshaw's Mercantile that sprang up in the years Liz and I were wandering. They can get a cool drink in the shade there before getting back in the cab for the next leg of the journey.

Before I leave, though, I have one last call to make.

The shelf still gazes northward, and will for centuries after I'm long gone. The stones will be here, untouched, long after the bones inside have crumbled into dust and blown away into the desert sand.

All I have or was that mattered will be left here. I offered all that was left of me for Death to take, and he gave me a set of co-ordinates and walked away.

I have no words. There are no words.

I stand for a few minutes, and then push the visible edge of one wooden petal deeper out of sight; I don't want the blown sand to scour it. Then, with an effort that feels as though if I looked back I'd see part of myself still clinging to the stone, I step back, turn, and stumble away down the track to the village.

=/\=

It doesn't take me that long to get to the road where the decrepit village is somehow hanging on to existence in this harsh, unforgiving environment.

There's not much here; apart from the makeshift church, there are a few dozen houses, most of which seem to be held together with nails, planks and prayers. There are only three businesses: a garage that used to have fuel but now survives somehow on servicing and the occasional repair job; Bernthal's Cantina, which is furnished with the lunch counter and appliances that used to be in Capshaw's Mercantile; and the mercantile itself, which does duty as an exchange mart, feed store, and could probably admit to being a post office on the very few occasions when anyone around here has anything sent to them. Mail out is another luxury that's beyond the purses of most, and if anyone has an urgent requirement to communicate they get the garage repair man Sam Dwyer to hack into the telecom system and sneak an e-mail out. He used to charge half a credit for the service but after I had a quiet word with him he 'found a cheaper way of doing it' and dropped his fees to a quarter.

The sooner this is done, the sooner I can get out of here. With a resigned sigh I step up onto the porch, but then I hear a woman's voice singing – singing to a baby – and I come to a full stop, flinching. Mrs Bernthal was expecting a baby too, and evidently she's had it.

I can just drop the bundle of bedding and go. They'll find it, and it doesn't matter who left it. The last thing I want to see is a new mother, proud and happy ... and alive.

I put the bundle down silently, and squat beside it to take the tools out of my rucksack. I wrapped them carefully so they'd make no sound, and stealthily I begin transferring them into the bedding.

I'm pretty good at being very quiet when I want to, even now, and I'm absolutely certain I've made no noise that would have alerted anyone inside to my presence. So I've no idea why the door opens and András the owner steps out, and stops short.

At least half of my prayers are answered. He doesn't tell me how sorry he is, or that he's certain Liz is in heaven. Instead, he invites me in for a drink.

"Ahhh... no, thank you," I mumble, pushing the last couple of screwdrivers into the bundle. "I've got a long way to go."

"Please." His lugubrious, jowly face reminds me irresistibly of a Great Dane's, but his voice is gentle. "Drink to her memory with us. Just once. I ask it of you."

I don't want to, of course, but to refuse would be churlish. They're good, kind people and I know Liz thought the world of them. I hope they won't say much, just give me the drink and let me gulp it down and go. I won't even glance at the baby unless I have to, though even that will be an ordeal I can hardly imagine.

I finish the bundle, stand up and pass it over to him. "Grandmother sends this with her love. I'm sure you'll find a use for it."

"God will provide," he replies, nodding.

He and Christopher would get along, evidently.

Bracing myself, I step into the shop. It's not changed much since I was last here with Liz a few days before I took off for my last mission. The lunch counter is impeccably clean, the aluminium trim as polished as it ever was when it sat over in the mercantile; a glass-fronted refrigerator – one I suspect I refurbished years ago – contains home-made bacon, a couple of lonely-looking sausages on a plate, a loaf of bread, a dozen eggs, (possibly the last from grandmother's chickens until spring), a few glass bottles of mysterious beverages (the cantina's primary stock in trade), and what appears to be a crumb-topped coffee cake. If their menu isn't quite as extensive as it was when the lunch counter sat over in the mercantile, well, the cantina is a newer business. They just need a few more years to build their clientele.

A table to one side bears donated stuff looking for new owners. I pray that András won't unwrap the bedding while I'm here, because at a guess there will be stuff in it that I'll recognise as Liz's, and I'm just about holding onto things right now.

But he doesn't, courteously gesturing to me to step into the living quarters – that being the polite term for the one room that he and his wife occupy, which comprises bedroom, sitting room and kitchen all mushed in together. Needless to say it's rather cramped, but it's clean and extremely tidy, and his wife is sitting in an armchair to one side of it. Before my eyes can swerve desperately away from her, I see a bundle in either arm. Twins...

I swallow a lump in my throat, and sit where my host indicates, the armchair that's undoubtedly his in his leisure moments.

It seems none of us has the slightest idea of what to say. Clearing his throat uncomfortably, András gets out a bottle of tequila that has just enough left in it to fill the three old shot glasses that he takes down from the cupboard behind the door.

I could toss it back in one gulp, thank them and go. Instead I sip it, and with the fiery stuff burning its way down my gullet I try to imagine what Liz would say in these circumstances. Lucifer knows she was far better with social niceties than I ever was, and however much pain she was in, she'd find something gracious to say to these good people who are waiting in agony for me to say anything.

... There's an obvious topic of conversation, if only I can find the courage from somewhere to open it. I don't want their condolences, and it will be safer all round if I can only... if I can only...

"I'm sure you're proud of them." My gaze shudders across the two small heads, one dark, one fair. Fraternal twins, then, not identical or they'd be the same colour – I can remember that much from my biology lessons.

"God is generous," says Mrs Bernthal, rocking them gently, lovingly. I can't remember her name for the life of me, only that it began with D. "He provides in our hour of need."

Maybe He does, if you believe in Him, but I can't say that. I can't say any of the bitter things that crowd onto the back of my tongue. I can't storm that He wasn't there when Liz died, taking our baby and my heart with her to the grave. If He exists at all, I'll never forgive Him for that.

But I have to say something, so I fall back on the only thing I can think of. "What have you called them?"

She glances at me. I think she's smiling, but there's something about her expression that I have no idea how to interpret.

"This will be Elchanan." She drops a kiss onto the forehead of the dark-haired baby. "And this–" a kiss for the fair one – "this is little Elisheva, after her mother."

I freeze in mid-swallow.

Now I do know what her expression is.

The silence in the room is absolute, but for the contented snuffling of the two babies.

I set down the glass, and stand up.

I have no memory of moving, but suddenly I'm standing in front of her.

Her husband is – I think – ready to intervene, but wisely he doesn't. Instead he takes the dark baby, leaving her with the fair one.

She rises gracefully. She could push me away, which would be even more unwise, but instead with her free hand she arranges my arms the right way, and then she places my daughter into them.

Elisheva. Elizabeth.

They knew her name. I don't know why, but that pleases me.

I'd like to claim I see some resemblance, but I don't – at least not until the little button mouth purses into a shape that says If you want to get better, Malcolm, you'll learn when to stop or I guess we could talk about that or even You can, if you ask me nicely...

I close my arms around her. Nothing, no-one, is ever going to take her away from me. Ever.

I'm going to take her away with me. Into poverty, into danger, into hunger and cold and thirst. I have no milk. I can't feed her. I have no clothes for her, no medical care if she gets ill.

I'm a rebel on the run. I'm a wanted man. Three hours from now the Pack may find me again, and when they do there will be no escape this time. She will die in my arms but she'll die just the same, a death she never earned.

I know nothing about babies. Nothing except the fact that they're fragile, and precious, and they need love and care, milk and warmth.

I can give her my love and care. Or I can take her away.

'Guess you'll want to see where we put them,' were Grandmother's words. Finally I know where Beans is now, keeping Liz company. I don't know what happened, and I never will, but I'm not sure it matters.

Did she know I'd find out? Maybe. She sent me here quite deliberately. Maybe she trusted me enough.

I kiss an incredibly soft forehead. She smells sweet, like peaches. Her fingers on the woollen blanket are tiny, each nail pink and perfect as the inside of a sea-shell. Her eyes half-open for me, unfocused, like Liz's were when she half-woke to my goodbye kiss in the dawn light that last morning. "Goodbye, sweetheart."

I'm not even sure which of them I'm speaking to.

And then I hand her back.

András drops a hand to my shoulder, but neither of us says anything. Moments later the babies are nestled together again, dark and fair.

Her head and mine, on the pillow.

And somehow I turn around and walk away, to wait in the shade of the ruined shrine up the road for the next lorry heading eastbound.

And Malcolm walks away, not knowing what he's going toward, but understanding that his baby girl will be safer without him. If you've been enjoying the story please consider leaving a review.