by Wren, M. K.
The chisel clattered against the bucket as the bale slipped out of her hand. She blinked, expecting the figure to resolve into a mirage, an accident of light and atmosphere. But it remained unmistakably human, despite the exaggerating effect of a backpack.
A human being.
She stood flailed by emotions, all conflicting—disbelief, hope, fear, joy—and the result was paralysis.
But that passed, gave way to caution. She called Yorick with the silent whistle, ran to the tumble of drift, and crouched behind a log, held Yorick with a hand around his muzzle to keep him from barking.
And watched the stranger draw nearer with every stumbling step.
He gave no indication that he was aware of her. Yes, it was he. She could see a red beard; a wide-brimmed, leather hat shadowed the rest of his face. He wore a sheepskin jacket, gray with soot and dirt, and pants of dark cloth stuffed into hiking boots. The boots had to come from Before. The backpack, too. He was tall and thin, with long legs that didn’t seem to function properly, that gave him an odd, scarecrow aspect. A rifle was slung over his left shoulder.
He stopped. He was only a hundred feet from her now, and she wondered if he had seen her.
No. His eyes were fixed ahead on the Knob. He staggered, nearly fell, then got his balance again. He was ill. She almost cried out at that realization. When he was only a few yards away, she heard him shouting over the roar of the surf. No, he was singing. “ ‘. . . the beautiful, the beautiful river . . . gather at the river . . . flows by the throne of God. . . .’ ”
But his legs couldn’t keep pace with the song. Again, he staggered, his knees buckled, and he toppled like a felled tree.
Yorick slipped out of her arms, ran barking toward the man, but he didn’t move. He’s dead, Mary thought—might even have said it aloud as she ran after Yorick.
The stranger lay sprawled on his belly, face half-buried in the sand. She turned him on his side, his head lolling. He was alive, and she nearly wept with relief. But she could turn him no further until she got the backpack off, and her hands were shaking so badly, it took an inordinate amount of time to unbuckle the straps, and all the while he was straining for breath. His skin was wan as alabaster, damp with sweat, the sand clinging like a rough second skin. Mary hesitated, her mouth dry. It occurred to her that his disease might be contagious.
But even if it were, what was she to do? Leave him here to die—the first living human being she’d seen in ten years?
Finally she got the pack off, and he slumped over onto his back. Her breath catching at the feel of his skin hot against hers, she brushed the sand away from his eyes and mouth. His long, narrow head seemed skull-like, with jutting cheekbones, deep eye sockets—a face that at first seemed old, yet she realized he was younger than she. His hat had fallen off, revealing a cloth band that restrained his long, tangled, copper red hair; words were embroidered on the band, but she didn’t try to read them. Where had he come from? How did he get here?
It didn’t matter. Not now. She ran for the ravine, Yorick barking at her heels. She was panting when she reached the top of the path, but she still had breath enough to shout for Rachel. All five dogs—even Shadow, limping with her arthritic joints—joined the cacophony, and Rachel came out of the greenhouse. “Mary, what’s wrong?”
Mary worked the words through panting gasps. “A man . . . there’s a man on the beach . . . he’s alive, Rachel!”
Whether he would remain alive was moot. Mary and Rachel carried him up the mud-slick path, and once they got him to the house, they put him in Mary’s bed and stripped off his clothes. They saw the scars then, the white weals across his back, and Rachel said tightly, “Man’s inhumanity to man hasn’t abated, I see.”
His fever registered 103 degrees on Rachel’s old mercury thermometer. Through the remainder of the morning and into the afternoon, they alternately bathed him with wet cloths, then when the chills struck, covered him with layers of blankets, and in the rare moments when he roused to semiconsciousness, plied him with water and willow-bark tea. They couldn’t leave him alone at any time. In his fever he thrashed wildly, threw off the blankets, leaving him naked to the next chill.
But by late afternoon his fever had dropped two degrees, and he had quieted enough so that they could take turns with their ministrations and the chores that couldn’t be shirked. Rachel killed a chicken for supper, and while it baked, she simmered a pot of broth at the back of the stove. Finally, when they finished supper and the last of the evening chores, Rachel offered to take the first watch with the stranger. Mary went into Rachel’s room and settled in her bed with Shadow lying at her back, two of the cats at the foot of the bed.
Sleep was a long time coming, and she was surprised it did come, surprised when Rachel opened the door, lighting her way with a candle in a pewter holder, and told her it was two in the morning. Mary had been dreaming. One of the old death dreams. She got out of bed and began dressing. “How’s our patient?”
Rachel put the candle on the small table by the bed and sat down to rub Shadow’s back. “Well, he’s past the crisis. Fever’s down to ninety-nine, and he woke up long enough to talk to me.”
Mary sighed her relief as she pulled on a sweater. “What did he say?”
Rachel laughed. “That I was an angel of mercy. Maybe he thinks he’s died and gone to heaven. He definitely believes heaven is a possibility. Did you notice that headband he was wearing?”
“What about it?”
“The words embroidered on it. ‘Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil.’ ”
Mary looked at Rachel, but her face was turned away from the light, and Mary couldn’t be sure of the edge she felt in those words. “He sounds like a dyed-in-the-wool good Christian. What else did he say?”
Rachel shrugged. “He asked me my name. I asked his. It’s Luke, by the way. No surname.” For a moment she seemed distracted, as if she had more to say, then she looked up at Mary and offered a smile. “You’d better go see to our good Christian. I’m going to get some sleep.”
When Mary entered her room, she felt a shiver of uncertainty that she blamed on the night chill. An oil lamp burned on the bedside table, and in its glow the stranger slept. She checked the fire in the blue-enameled stove, then sat down in the chair Rachel had drawn up by the bed. Rachel’s book was on the table. Loren Eiseley. Mary leaned back and looked on the face of this stranger, a man named Luke, and tried to sort out her thoughts.
The short span of sleep had put a little space between her and the clamor of emotions she had endured throughout the day: the shock of seeing another human being, the added shock of finding him so ill, the constant fear that this, the only survivor they’d met in all these years, might die before uttering a coherent word.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death . . .
And he had indeed walked through that valley, but he was out of it now. He would live. And Mary knew her life would inevitably be changed by that fact.
She and Rachel had walked their own valley and had climbed out of the shadow; they had a purpose in living, a purpose that provided them satisfaction and even pleasure. No more than a third of the books had been sealed, but they had decided that this summer they’d begin building a permanent shelter for the books, their gift to humankind and the future. But this stranger embodied the potential of a different kind of gift. At the moment she brushed the sand from his face on the beach, the possibility stirred to life, but she hadn’t put it into words then. Only now did she let the words shape the idea: this man can father my children.
She was thirty-four years old, and in all probability capable of bearing children. The clockwork regularity of her menstrual cycles had been a continuing source of annoyance. It had been so futile, her body’s monthly preparation for something that could never happen.
But it could happen now.
Before the End she had considered bringing a child into that world unkind at the least and certainly irresponsible. Was it any kinder, any more responsible, to bring a child into this world?
Yet did she really have a choice? In a world where the continued existence of the human species might be in doubt, could she choose not to bear children if she were capable of it?
She looked at the stranger’s face, his forehead, cheekbones, the aquiline prow of his nose etched in lamplight that glinted in his coppery hair and beard. The face that had on the beach struck her by its look of age, now seemed young, like a hungry child’s. His eyes were closed, but she had seen them, knew them to be the color of the sky on a clear, spring day. She wondered if this stranger was someone she could love.
Or someone who could be a lover?
She smiled, the muscles of her abdomen tensing against the sensations unleashed by that thought. Was that the real explanation for her desire for motherhood?
No, her need—her obligation—to bear children was something she couldn’t escape. But this man as a lover . . .
She wondered why she hadn’t permitted herself to think of him as a lover before. Yes, she had been intensely aware of his maleness when they undressed him and bathed him to quell his fever. Even now that he was chastely covered, she was aware of his body, flat-muscled, long-boned, with sunburned skin evolved for northern climates. Today she had been too preoccupied with his illness to think of him as a lover.
Now . . . she thought about it, thought about making love. For ten years she had lived like a nun, had resigned herself to celibacy. She’d had no choice in that.
Now maybe she had a choice.
Then her smile slipped away. She was getting ahead of events. Wouldn’t it be ironic if this stranger, whom she envisioned as the father of her children, as her lover, were sterile or if he simply rejected her?
And Rachel—where did she fit into this scenario?
Mary shivered and folded her arms against her body.
Changes. This stranger potentiated changes like a magician pulling chains of bright scarves out of his sleeve.
She reached for the Eiseley and found it as difficult to read as she had to sleep a few hours ago. Yet she did at length become engrossed in the words, and she had read two of Eiseley’s essays when she was distracted by a change in the pace of the stranger’s breathing. She watched while he opened his eyes and looked around the room. Finally his gaze fixed on her, and she felt a spasm of fear. His eyes had been open before, but he had never been fully conscious, and she had never fully recognized that there was within that sick body a unique mind, one entirely unknown to her.
He looked at her for what seemed a long time, then he frowned, cleared his throat.
“You’re not Rachel.”
Mary laughed. That wasn’t at all what she might have anticipated as his first utterance. She closed the book and put it on the bedside table. “No, I’m not Rachel. She’s sleeping now.”
“Then she is here? There is somebody named Rachel here?”
“Yes, of course there is.” Mary rose, picked up the glass on the table. “You’d better get some more water down you. With that fever, you’ll be badly dehydrated.” She helped him sit up and held the glass for him while he swallowed most of the water. She saw the scars on his back and again wondered about them. When he sank back and closed his eyes, she returned to her chair, expecting him to fall asleep.
But his eyes opened, focused inward now. “I had a vision. I was walking on the shore, and I was sick and sore afraid. Then suddenly there was a woman there before me, and she had dark eyes full of wisdom and kindness. She held out her hands to me and said, ‘I’m Rachel Morrow.’ Then . . . she was gone. But I knew she was sent by the Lord, and if I’d just keep going, I’d find what I’m seeking.”
Mary felt as if a trapdoor had been tripped beneath her. But she reminded herself that she shouldn’t expect lucidity when he was just recovering from a serious illness. It wasn’t surprising that he was confused about the circumstances of his meeting with Rachel.
Mary said, “You met Rachel a few hours ago here in this room. Don’t you remember?”
“No, I haven’t seen Rachel yet,” he replied levelly. “Not in the flesh.”
Mary let that pass. “Well, you will tomorrow morning. Are you hungry? We have some broth for you.”
“Yes, I’d like that. But first—what’s your name?”
“Mary Hope. And you’re Luke, right?”
His mouth sagged open. “How did you know that?”
“Never mind. Don’t you have a last name?”
“My family name is Jason, but we don’t—” He stopped abruptly.
But Mary caught that potent pronoun we. So there were other survivors.
He didn’t give her a chance to ask about them. “I have to go outside.”
“Outside! You’re in no shape to go outside.”
“I . . . have to go to the privy.”
Mary rose. “Well, you don’t have to go outside. We’ve managed to keep the plumbing in operation. Okay, let me help you.”
He pushed the covers back, realized he was naked, and his face went red as he hurriedly pulled the covers up again. Mary went to the closet and returned with a plaid, woolen robe—a man’s robe, one of the many articles of clothing they had scavenged. He reluctantly let her help him into it, then she lighted a candle in the flame of the oil lamp, put it in a holder, and offered her shoulder. She felt his resistance to that support, but he was too unsteady to walk without it. When they reached the hall, Cleo and Candide skittered away like small, striped ghosts, while Yorick and Agate roused with threatening growls. Luke held out his hand for them to smell, with that raising himself a few notches in Mary’s estimation. Then she guided him into the bathroom, put the candle down by the sink, pointed out the clean towels for his use, and asked if he needed any help.
He withdrew from her, shocked. “No.”
She shrugged and closed the door, returned to the bedroom for the lamp, then went to the kitchen to stoke up the banked fire in the cookstove, reminding herself that she must bank the coals again before the revived fire burned out. Rachel was expert at that, at maintaining that magic glow of fire. There were still some matches left, but they were too precious to use unnecessarily. The only alternatives now were a welder’s sparker and a magnifying glass. Mary took the chicken broth out of the cooler, ladled some into a pan, and put it on the stove. Then she got a bowl out of the cupboard, changed her mind, and decided a mug would be easier for Luke to handle. Yes, there was still one left that wasn’t chipped.
Then she picked up the lamp to return to her patient and found him leaning against the bathroom doorjamb. He smiled at her, and she realized it was the first time she’d seen him smile. It was an ingenuous, wistful smile, and she couldn’t do less than return it. She offered her shoulder. “Come on, Luke, let’s get you back to bed.”
He seemed to accept her support more readily now. He said, “This is a very fine house.”
Mary wondered what he was comparing it to, but didn’t ask. In the bedroom he kept the robe on and sagged into the bed. She covered him, then left him long enough to go to the kitchen and fill the mug with warm broth. When she returned and offered it to him, he thanked her, then didn’t say another word, concentrating on the broth like a starving man. When he finished it, he asked for another mugful, but this one he downed slowly, while Mary sat in the chair, watching him.
Finally she asked, “How long have you been traveling?”
“I think . . . well, it must be about nine months now.”
“That’s a long journey. Where do you come from?”
He glanced warily at her. “From a place to the south.”
And he wasn’t going to be more specific. Did
he think she might be a threat to the we he’d left behind? Perhaps. She was as much an unknown quantity to him as he was to her.
He sipped at the broth, studying her. At length, he said, “You’re a beautiful woman, Mary Hope.”
Again, he had surprised her. And made her self-consciously aware of her sunburned skin, of her hair cut short with no attempt at style, of her callused hands with the broken nails always stained with dirt however often she scrubbed them.
“Luke, you haven’t seen many women lately, have you?”
He looked down at his mug. “I . . . I was just thinking, your husband must be very proud of you.”
A probe of sorts? Why didn’t he just ask?
“I have no husband.”
“Did he pass on?”
“I’ve never had a husband. Rachel and I are the only ones here.”
That brought a frown of consternation. “All the others passed on?”
“There never were any others here, not since the End.”
“The End? Oh. You mean Armageddon. How did you survive all these years with no men? I mean, with nobody to help you?”
Mary shrugged. “We managed very well, actually.”
He considered that while he finished the broth. “It’s a miracle.”
“Our survival?”
“Yes, and . . . and my coming here.” Then with a short laugh, “But I don’t even know where I am, except I’m where I was meant to be.”
Mary didn’t ask him to explain that. She said, “You’re just north of what used to be the town of Shiloh Beach.”
“Shiloh? The first permanent tabernacle of the Hebrews was at a place called Shiloh.”
“Well, this town was named after the place in Tennessee where one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War was fought.”
“The Civil War?”
“The American Civil War. You know, North and South, the Blue and the Gray. Would you like some more broth?”
He shook his head as he surrendered the mug to her. “No. That was wonderful. You’re a good cook.”