“I can’t abide the smell of old things, General . . .” the muffled growl of a man jolted Gran from her reminiscing. Darting behind a half brick wall that used to be part of the park clubhouse, she lay flat on the ground, holding her breath in silence.
“. . . these children will grow into rebels . . .”
“. . . pull them out for reprogramming . . .” the voices continued.
Corsairs, my oath!
“Very well, Mr. President.”
The dawning realization that she was listening to the Triumvirate began to make her sick. The dank, stale air in the corner of the wall assaulted her senses as she choked back the rising bile from her stomach.
She lay there longer than she thought she needed to, making sure the men were gone before she stirred, all the while thinking through the plans she’d heard. The Triumvirate was going to round up all the children. But where? Over the fence, or over the wall? She couldn’t understand some of what she’d heard. And in her immediate thoughts, she thanked whatever luck existed that they hadn’t seen her and that their plans didn’t include the Forbidden Grounds. She was bloody well out of it.
As she stood, brushing leaves and grass from her tattered clothes, she saw again the merry-go-round, the rusted swings, the fallen slide. Her children’s faces among the ruins streaked with mud and her tears. She remembered her early days in prison, wondering what had happened to them, hoping they’d found safety and shelter, but never knowing. And she thought of the other mothers who unknowingly had the same loss racing toward them. Some other mother would miss her children and wonder what had happened to them. Some other mother’s arms would ache with emptiness. That other mother would never sleep another night without dreaming of the horrors that had befallen her babies. No, she could not allow someone else to go through what she had, not if there was the slightest chance she had the power to stop it.
That evening, Gran prepared what would be her last meal in the Forbidden Grounds. She counted the moments out in breaths. Long ones and short ones. Gasped breaths and held breath. Hot breath and cold. She rested for her journey in the time it took her to take in the world around her in an inhale. The night draped a gentleness over the earth, a gentleness not felt in the glaringly oppressive day. In the company of unfettered stars, she knew there was freedom to be found somewhere, even if not on this earth.
* * * * *
Meeting at one of the guard stations along the Border, General Drape took Colonel Goodson for a walk as if they were just two friends having a chat. He always had the air of one who was in complete control and so was completely at ease, especially in a subordinate’s presence. Even as they walked in the breeze that was picking its way through the trees, nothing of the general’s hair or clothing rustled with the breeze as he defied even nature with his control.
“I’ve come to give you the orders from the Triumvirate, Colonel, as I trust you above all others to carry this out.” Simeon patted Mark on the shoulder in the good-natured way that could sometimes make people mistake him for a kind man.
“Thank you, sir.”
“You will round up the children and bring them to the old lumber mill outside the borders, is that understood?” He spoke as if he were asking him to bring him a glass of water.
Mark stopped walking. He almost forgot himself to grip a fence post for support. Though he held himself erect and at attention, he could not make his feet move before him. “But I thought Phase Two was reprogramming, sir. That is not the reprogramming facility.”
“I am aware of that.” Turning to face Mark, Simeon’s face held his surprise at the response, while his eyes held his natural coldness.
“But, sir, you can’t mean . . . they’re children.”
“Are you hard of hearing, Colonel? Do I need to have you removed from your post and sent to the lumber mill yourself?”
“No, sir.”
“Then you will follow my orders.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And you understand what is to be done with them once they are at the mill?”
“Perfectly, sir,” Mark choked out the words.
“Excellent. Now, be on your way. I expect immediate results.”
* * * * *
From a hollowed-out hole in the trunk of a maple tree, Gran drew out the rust-laden tools she’d accumulated in the past few years. Wrapped in molding canvas, they clinked and clamored into her hands, heavier than she remembered. There was a hammer, a screwdriver, wrench, jack, and finally the wire cutters she was after. She could leave behind the others for some other poor soul to find. She’d not be needing them after this. Her knotted hands gripped the dark red handles and tried to work the cutters out of their frozen rust. Two good clips, the only job they had left to perform before being discarded. She dropped the other tools, bag and all, with a thud back into the hole and made her way to the Border.
She chose a spot farthest from the two nearby guard stations, watching and timing the arrival and departure of the Corsair guards from behind a fallen tree. Her joints ached as she crouched, making her wish the guards would hurry up. One, then two. They tipped their hats to each other, turned, and walked back to where they started. Gran slowly stood to make her way toward the fence, wire cutters in hand.
“Hello?” a timid voice came from behind her.
Gran swung around to a bright-red head of hair and two tear-filled eyes swimming in a dirty face. “Jesus, girl! Get down before the whole Corsair army sees you!” Gran whispered hoarsely.
Back behind the fallen tree, the two consulted.
“Are you going over the fence?”
“That obvious, am I?”
“Well, I thought I might . . . no, I don’t know.”
“You’re welcome to come along, if that’s what you were going to ask.”
“No, I’d better stay here. She said she’d come back, and I won’t know where to find her on the other side.”
“Who?”
“Sister.”
“So that must have been the other one I talked to who looked like you.”
“You met her?”
“Had to have been.”
“I promised to wait for her.”
“Well, I’d venture to say you’d have a better chance of finding her on the other side.”
“Do you think so?”
“I do. But we don’t have any more time to talk about it. So either come with me or stay, but make your decision now. And if you come with me, we’ve got to cover up that hair. You can be seen from a mile away. Here, take this scarf.”
Laurie tied the proffered scarf, gray with age, around her head.
“Come on, then,” Gran whispered over her shoulder, crawling toward the fence. She figured they’d talked for about five minutes. That meant they had five left to cut the wires and get far enough away so they wouldn’t be seen. Plenty of time, if they worked quickly.
Gran pulled out the wire cutters and began the task of carving out a hole without being whipped by the freed wire full of barbs. It would take more than two cuts to get them both through the intricate wire weaving. With every clip of the wire, the young woman behind her jumped and looked around in panic. Three more and that should do it. But the rust on the wire cutters had caused them to jam. Gran was struggling to open their jaws.
“Let me help,” Laurie offered.
Gran gladly handed them over. “Yes, just there. That’s it.”
One more, and they’d be through.
“You there!” A shout zipped through the trees, striking Gran in the chest. “Stop!”
“Come on, we can make it,” Gran insisted as she began squeezing through the hole in the fence, tearing new lashes into her already shredded clothes.
“No, you go on, I’ll distract him.”
The Corsair was running swiftly toward them, pulling his gun from his shoulder. Gran was through the fence, now on the same side as the soldier, who had his site homed in on her and was getting closer by the second. Laurie wriggled through the fe
nce, wire cutters in hand. Just as the soldier got close, she swung them toward him, barely missing his head with the tip of rusted metal. In one second, he’d turned and fired on her. One shot, and she was down.
Gran wanted to call out to her but realized she didn’t even know her name, this woman who had tried to save her. She stood in shaking silence, staring down the long barrel of the Corsair rifle.
“You will halt, woman!” the Corsair continued to shout, even though he was in close range.
Gran stood with empty hands exposed as another soldier ran up behind her.
“What are you waiting for?” the new soldier questioned, quickly ascertaining the situation. “She’s an intruder who has breached the Border. Shoot her!”
Gran saw the youth of the Corsair before her. He couldn’t have been more than sixteen. A child with a gun.
“I just . . . I just thought . . .”
“Thought what?” the older soldier pushed.
“I thought we might bring her in for questioning.”
“No questions required. She crossed the Border illegally and the punishment is death.”
“But what if she’s working with someone else, shouldn’t we get more information from her?”
Gran knew better than anyone what the problem was. This boy didn’t care about information. The girl had been the first person he’d ever shot, and he was terrified. He could barely even hold his aim this close. He’d pop her in the leg if he got up the courage to fire.
“If you don’t shoot her, I will.”
“What’s all this, men?” Colonel Goodson approached on horseback.
“I caught this woman crossing the Border, sir, with that one there on the ground . . . wait, where is she?” They all looked to where the young soldier was looking. There was blood among the leaves on the ground, sure enough. But Laurie had vanished.
“He lost a prisoner and now won’t shoot this one, sir. He’s scared. Fresh out of programming, I’d say.”
“That’s enough, Private. You’ll stand at attention when addressing a superior officer.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You seem quick to sell out your comrade. I’m not sure you couldn’t do with a dose of programming yourself.”
“Please, sir.”
“Enough. I will handle this situation from here. I will take charge of the prisoner, and you will both return to your posts.”
Colonel Goodson dismounted, but was still able to look down at his fellow soldiers, towering a head above them. He pulled the pistol from his holster, taking Gran by the arm.
“Move!” he shouted as the soldiers each turned in opposite directions to return to their guard stations. Waiting until they were out of earshot, he put his gun back in the holster and surveyed the woman standing before him.
He always hated seeing those who lived in the Forbidden Grounds. They looked like walking rag dolls, most of them, dreadfully dirty and starved. But this one was different somehow. The woman looked as if all color had been scrubbed off of her with a hard brush. The years had not been kind to her body, but her face seemed strangely young under her white hair, hair that faded into white skin and almost white-blue eyes. He’d seen those eyes before. Taking a step closer, he knew where.
“You’re the one, aren’t you?”
“Who?”
“The one my friend helped escape from prison. I remember you.”
“He was your friend?”
“Yeah. Was.”
“They didn’t kill him, did they?” she asked anxiously.
Mark was touched by her concern. “No, they didn’t kill him.”
“Then he’s alright?”
He wished he could tell her Kyle was still the same kind boy from back then. Wished that he could tell her he wouldn’t have shot her himself probably if he were now in Mark’s place. But he couldn’t say any of those things.
“He’s alive, yes.”
“Oh, thank God.”
“Well, look, I guess I can’t very well undo what he did, can I? Everything has ripples, right?”
“You think so too, eh?”
“Jesse’s Hollow is due east from here. You’ll want to find a man named Zacharias or a woman named Gemma. They’ll know how to help you.”
Gran caught her breath, and Mark worried she would collapse.
“You’re okay, aren’t you?”
“Why are you letting me go?” she managed to get out.
“Who knows why any of us do anything anymore? Now go on before the others return.”
“Thank you.” Gran took the colonel’s hands in hers, kissing them and covering them with her tears.
* * * * *
Making her way across the bridge and following the directions a young man had given her to the house of this Zacharias, Gran tried to tell herself this couldn’t be the same Zacharias. He couldn’t have been this close all this time. It seemed too wonderful and cruel. She was walking slowly through the bright fall day, squinting against the sea-blue sky. The light seemed different on this side of the Border; she couldn’t understand it. Cleaner, somehow. Not filtered gray.
Zacharias stepped off the porch. The children were making the midday meal, but he needed a walk. The house had seemed confining lately. It wasn’t the children. It was him. He couldn’t stand the walls of his own home anymore. It didn’t seem like home. He found himself wishing he’d never told Sam about Jesse. He had been right to keep the feelings at bay all these years. Easier not to think about or talk about her or the children. Now she seemed to be with him, haunting him all the time. He would turn a corner and think he saw her there. He imagined what she would look like now, how the years would have changed her or not changed her. Of course she would still be beautiful. Even now as he approached the bridge, he thought he saw her there. It had to stop.
But the illusion was not disintegrating as he got closer as they usually did. This mirage was gaining clarity and focus with each step he took toward it. There was someone on the bridge. A woman from the town, probably. But he’d never seen someone in town with such long, flowing white hair. And the clothes. The clothes didn’t seem right for someone from the village. Zacharias drew closer, but somehow felt as if his stomach were dropping out of his body.
White hair surrounding a youthful face. Eyes of light. Impossibly high cheekbones. The old smile.
Jesse.
Her beauty hurt him. Different and yet so much the same. And before he knew it, she was standing directly before him on the bridge, her hands on his face, in his hair, looking searchingly in his eyes.
Her first words, “Did they hurt you?”
“Of course you’d ask that first. The one question I’ve been wanting to ask you for almost forty years.” He tried to laugh but sobbed instead.
His arms still fit around her, like a hand in a glove. Her face was in his neck, their tears and bodies mingling.
When they could talk again, “No, they didn’t hurt me,” he answered. “Not physically. I fear your answer will be sadder than mine. The worst pain they inflicted on me was taking you away from me.”
“And our children? Jill and Max? Did they escape with you?” She looked around as if she expected to see them running toward her.
“I never saw them again after that last day,” Z whispered. He felt as if he’d struck his wife, and he hated himself for having to give her the news.
Jesse flinched, clutching his hands tighter. “Oh, Zack!”
“I thought you were all dead together. But secretly, I hoped. I hoped if you were alive that they were alive with you. I’m so sorry, Jesse. I’m so sorry.”
They were in each other’s arms again, holding each other up under the pain of years of fruitless hope finally being let down.
“We lost our babies, Zack,” she sobbed into his shoulder. “It happened forty years ago. So how can it feel like it just happened today? We should have grown old . . . together . . . with our children and their children around us.”
Moments, hours, it was i
mpossible to know how long they stood, soaking each other in, reacquainting themselves. As the afternoon sun began to dip lower in the sky, Zack held his Jesse in a long-awaited kiss. And in that sunlit kiss, they tasted the bittersweet emptiness of the years between them and what their lives might have been if one of them had just crossed the Border.
19
LOST BOYS
I n the moonlit autumn night, Jesse and Zacharias sat on the front porch in two creaking rocking chairs, holding hands and rocking slowly in unison. All the children except Daisy were in bed. Zacharias had sent her for Gemma so they could discuss the information Jesse had brought them. He knew Daisy, of all the children, could pick her way through the woods, taking shortcuts to Gemma’s house, more safely in the dark than in broad daylight. And he and Jesse figured the Corsairs wouldn’t be able to start rounding up the children for at least a day or so.
Jesse laced her fingers between Zack’s. They felt the same as she remembered, and yet different. The moon reflected in his white hair and hers, creating a kind of halo around them. She thought of the way she used to describe herself back then, in the time Before. Daughter, wife, mother. They were more than roles or jobs to her. They had been her whole identity. Then, as each one was ripped from her, what had she become? A prisoner, a fugitive, caretaker of children, survivor, old woman. But here she sat with Zack as she’d always imagined them together. A wife again. A mother, still missing her children.
Zack squeezed her hand. “What are you thinking about?”
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