by Nick Cole
His heart did not beat.
He was sweating.
And he squeezed back. Hard. Almost too hard.
“Jin,” she whispered.
The general called her Jin. He had learned that much.
She squeezed his hand once more and took a cup of tea to the general.
After that, she left and did not look at him, as the general had turned from the picture and was now talking to the Boy. Words in the English. Words the Boy did not understand because he could not concentrate on anything other than the moment of her touch. His face felt as though it were on fire.
“Is there no place that survived in some part beyond a mere day-to-day existence?” asked the general.
The Boy was watching the girl named Jin, though she had already left the room.
“She is the only one who believes in my work,” said the general, watching the Boy’s eyes. “She is the only one who, like me, wants to know what happened out there. She is not afraid of it. She is not bothered by the harsh reality of these times like so many of our people, who simply wish to live behind their gates and keep themselves from the ‘contamination’ as they call it, of the world as it is now. They require only that their lives be beautiful and a reminder of a homeland that is gone. They willingly live a lie, simply because it is fragrant.”
The general paused and sipped at the tea he had taken up in his two liver-spotted hands.
“Jin and I seek the truth because the truth holds its own beauty. In my opinion, it is the lies of our past that have brought about the current state of destruction. Late in my life, I vowed never to live another lie. My only sadness is that I made the vow after the world had been burned and poisoned by a rain of nuclear radiation.”
The Boy watched the general.
“Sometimes I think she merely humors an old man,” said the general, lost in the map again. “But she is a good granddaughter and I feel that she can look past the damage and the rubble and the warmongering of our collective past, both China and America, and find what was noble and beautiful about us.”
He fell to mumbling when his eyes found some new, previously unconsidered mark on the map, “I was saying . . .”
THAT NIGHT THE BOY lay on the floor of the shack near the brazier. It was exceptionally cold outside. His side ached. His hand was cramped and black from the charcoal he used to draw pictures on the walls of the general’s study.
Horse stirred as the fire popped.
The Boy was watching the lines.
He was watching Jin.
Horse complains for a moment as if sensing an animal outside in the cold wind and the dark night.
There was a moment of quiet that threatened to go on forever.
And then . . .
There was a knock at the back door that led out to the two-plank dock.
The Boy opened the door.
Jin pressed her mouth into his and he could feel her cold, soft cheeks grow warm. Her slender body melted into his arms, alive and living within his grasp. He felt her arms about him, clutching at his shoulders. And for a moment one hand slipped down to his withered arm, caressing him there.
“I am Jin,” she said haltingly. “I do not . . . speak American”—she said something in Chinese—“very well.” Then, “But I am learning.”
He closed the door and brought her to the fire. She stood warming herself while he got the bearskin and wrapped it around her.
“What is your . . . name?” she asked.
The Boy looked at her.
In the light from the glowing brazier, wrapped in the skin of the bear, she was even more beautiful. She looked at him expectantly, her eyes shining in the firelight.
“What do they call me? What do your people call me?”
“They call . . . you . . . the Messenger.”
“Why?”
“You brought . . . the news of the barbarians. I do not want . . . I do not want to call . . . you the Messenger.”
“Why?”
She kissed him again and again until their intensity threatened to consume them. Breathlessly she broke from his hungry embrace, panting, “It . . . cannot be.”
Later, they sat staring into the fire, she reclining against him, the two of them almost sleeping, dreaming.
“Why?” asked the Boy.
She drew her fingers along his powerful arm.
He liked that.
Later she said, “You know that this is . . . not done?”
He held her hands, resting them on her belly.
“If you were my woman, then it would be all right.”
“No, that can never . . . be.”
“Why?”
She took up his withered hand. She turned to face him. Her dark eyes caught the firelight.
“I . . . can know . . . can tell. I can tell . . . you are brave. To me you are very . . . pretty . . . no . . . handsome. You are . . . clean. ‘Whole’ is the word? To me. But our leaders will not let those who live inside the gate . . . I do not like this word . . . it’s . . . is their . . . but they say ‘sully’ . . . you know . . . to be unclean? With the barbarians.”
She sighed deeply, her eyes searching the darkened rafters for the right words. For the story. For the explanation.
“Even before we came . . . to here. To this place, America. We were separate and apart from others. Mandarin and Cantonese. Government and peasant. Not the same, do you understand? But after the war . . . even more so, there were many . . . defects. Many of the survivors from other places . . . Americans . . . were like you.”
He understood. She was perfectly formed. Perfectly beautiful, and he was not. It would be wrong of him to make her his woman. It would be wrong in this place.
“Even our people . . . were affected by the radiation from . . . bombs. But those children . . . how do you say . . .” She searched the room, her eyes casting about and finding nothing. “Never existed?”
The Boy nodded, understanding.
“They made them disappear. They made . . . rules, laws, I mean. No intermarrying with those who are sick . . . unclean. Now, they cannot even stand . . . to have them inside . . . the gate.”
She watched his eyes, searching to find the wound her words, the truth, had caused him.
But he remained steady, his gaze never wavering from her deep brown eyes.
“To me you . . . it does not matter, you are whole, to me,” she said again.
The Boy looked at her for a long time.
In his eyes she saw the question.
“Is that why I had to wear the suit beyond the gate?”
“Yes . . . they fear you will contaminate . . . them. They understand little and are afraid . . . much.” Then, “It is not wise of them. They do not have . . . wisdom.”
“Wisdom changes things. I knew a man who was very wise. But he is gone now . . . I need wisdom.”
“We . . . all . . . do,” she whispered.
An hour before dawn he led her to the dock. A slender boat, tied to the wooden planks, bobbed atop choppy wavelets.
As he helped her down into the tiny boat, he felt a sudden moment of terror, as if he were casting something valuable, something precious—his tomahawk, his best blanket, food even—down into a pit. Or an ocean. Or an abyss.
And I am hoping it will come back to me.
And.
She is more valuable than my tomahawk or a blanket or even food.
Why?
“Will you be safe?” he asked her.
Why was she valuable?
“Yes. I’ll use the boat to . . . go around . . . the point and then come close to the wall. I know my way over . . . and our home is just . . . just on the other side.”
He leaned down to untie the boat.
“When you stood . . .” she began, “in front of our leaders . . . in your mask . . . and at the wall . . . you were not afraid to tell them . . . the truth. They are . . . always . . . have been . . . afraid of truth.” She looked at him. She shook her head slightly. “You are not afraid . . . of anyth
ing . . . even of the truth.”
And.
“I also . . . am not afraid,” she said finally and turned the boat toward open water.
She looked small and helpless in the boat and he watched as she paddled out and away from him, rounding the point and finally disappearing. He watched the water for a long time, until he almost felt frozen inside. Within the shack he lay down on the bearskin in front of the fire.
Why?
Because she saw me when she looked at me.
Without horror.
Without fear.
Without pity.
And because she did not look away when she let me see that she was beautiful.
Thinking he was still awake, he slept. When he awoke with a start, wondering what was real and what was not, he smelled jasmine.
Chapter 42
The Chinese were preparing for war.
Soldiers drilled with their long breech-loading rifles. Large cannon were dragged forward by teams of laborers to an outer wall that was being hastily thrown up to surround the shantytown and the inner city. Every day riders left, thundering off toward the east at all times.
When the Boy returned to the shack by the water after another day of drawing for the general, he saw a strange man waiting under a roof down the lane, staying out of the spring drizzle. He was Chinese. He was thin. He appeared to watch something far away, but the Boy could feel him watching the shack. Watching him. For the rest of that wet and rainy afternoon, when the Boy looked out the door of the shack, he could see the man waiting in the darkening light, “not watching.”
Jin came to him again after midnight. She was soaked by the drizzle that slapped at the water of the bay.
“We must . . . exercise much caution,” she said.
The Boy considered checking the street.
She held on to him tightly.
“I would give . . . myself to you,” she whispered.
Blood thundered in his ears, beating hard in the silences between the soft rain on the roof and the hard slaps out on the water beyond the thin walls of the shack.
“But . . . it . . . cannot . . . be.”
They sat by the fire, listening to it pop and crackle.
The Boy thought of the bear’s cave where he and Horse had lived for the winter.
“Why?” he murmured.
Looking into his face, she reached forward and brushed away the dark hair that hung there.
“When my people came here . . . there was a great war. Our home, China, was destroyed. I am told that the first years were very, very difficult. Hard winter. Constant warfare. Famine. The children who were born . . . after these times . . . were not . . . good.”
Jin lay her head on his chest.
“It does not matter to me.” Then, “But if I am ‘sullied’ . . . then it will be . . . very bad . . . for me.”
The rain had stopped outside. Dripping water could be heard, everywhere and at once, almost a pattern.
Almost music.
Almost as if one could count when the next drop would fall.
“Here,” he said staring into the fire.
She looked at him and nodded.
“Here, in this place,” he said angrily.
She nodded again.
“Yes. In this place . . . that is the way it must be,” she said.
He thought more of the cave of the bear and all the other places he had been. Places that were not this city. Places that were not here.
She stayed too long that night.
Dawn light was breaking the top of the eastern hills. In blue shadows, standing on the dock, he held her tightly to himself.
“I must . . . go now,” she stammered and yet still clung to his chest.
“There are other places than here,” he said. “I would take you with me to those places.”
You take everything with you.
In the small boat, in the pale light, her long alabaster hands were shaking as she began to row for the point.
She heard the first birds of morning.
Her hands were shaking.
When she turned back to him, he was just a shadow among shadows along the waterfront.
Her hands were shaking.
THE HEAT OF the day built quickly. There was the smell of fresh-cut wood and fires burning out beyond the earthworks. The thick scent of the fields and dark earth mixed, and when the Boy drank rainwater from a barrel it was cold and satisfying.
A cannon cracked.
A whump followed a second later.
“They are sighting the guns,” said the general. He was looking at Sergeant Presley’s map with a large and cracked magnifying glass.
“How close did you come to Galveston, down in Texas?”
The Boy walked toward the picture he had drawn. The picture of the Great Wall of Wreckage.
“No closer than fifty miles.”
Sergeant, you said to me, on that day when we looked at the map together and the weather was so hot and the air was so thick, you said, That’s right, Boy. Never closer than fifty. Radiation.
Your voice would be a comfort to me now, Sergeant.
The Boy had been waiting all day for it. He had been waiting for it since it ceased. Since the open graves and tattered canvas. But now, of all days, on this first hot day of the year, he needed to hear it.
I need to know what to do next, Sergeant.
I need wisdom.
“What did you find there besides what you have drawn in this picture?” asked the Chinese general.
Sergeant Presley, I’m going to take the girl and run.
“What do you mean?” the Boy replies.
I don’t have a plan, Sergeant. I’ll take her and ride fast and far away from here. Is that what I should do, Sergeant?
“Were there villages or people there?” asked the Chinese general.
The Boy thought of long winter nights in the bear cave. He also thought of MacRaven and his ashen-faced warriors moving through the forests and the foothills and the swamps, approaching the bay.
Where can we go and be safe, Sergeant?
“The people there were deformed,” answered the Boy. “There was a warlord who ruled over everyone, but we never met him. The sick told us that he came and stole their children in the night and made them his soldiers. They said he ate people. They said he was a demon. They said his soldiers were demons now, no longer their children.”
There’s an army coming and they’re probably looking for me, Sergeant.
“It sounds like a terrible place. Are they deformed like . . . ?”
I would go back to the cave, but MacRaven . . .
“Like . . . me?”
Sergeant Presley, you always said north was too hard. If you weren’t ready for winter it would kill you. If we have to run for a long time, there might not be time to prepare for the next winter.
“I am sorry . . . I meant no disrespect,” said the general as he stared at the Boy.
West is the ocean, Sergeant. I don’t know how to make a boat go.
“No. They were much worse off than me.”
So that leaves south.
“I am sorry,” mumbled the general, looking back to the map. “It sounds like a very dark place.”
We’ll go south, Sergeant.
“We barely escaped.”
I know you would say, Don’t get involved. I always told you that.
In his mind, Jin murmurs in the firelight.
But I love her, Sergeant.
The Chinese general put down the magnifying glass. He hobbled around the desk and came to stand beside the Boy.
“It is all my fault,” said the general after a great sigh.
“I don’t understand,” said the Boy.
“The deformities. Your deformities.” Pause. “They are my fault. I mean no disrespect to you. I am not like . . . the rest. I see nothing wrong with a man if his body is weak. Old age has taught me that bodies fail. Even if we are successful at not dying, and doing our best to stay healthy, bo
dies still fail. A body doesn’t make a man strong or weak. It is the heart of a man or woman that makes them such.”
My heart is strong for Jin.
You would ask me, Sergeant, Is that enough?
“You seem troubled. I hope I didn’t . . .”
“No. What happened at the end? The end of the American army.”
The general looked away to the sketches on the walls. He looked at the broken sailboats in Detroit, piled up like toys after a flood. The general could hear the clang of the spinnakers and the knock of the weather vanes in that long-ago winter wind.
He let go another great sigh.
“In the end there were few American soldiers left. There were few of us left, for that matter, also. That last year was little more than a long stalemate that preceded our final battle, if one wants to call such a day a battle. Our scouts thought there might be influenza sweeping through the American defenses above Oakland, so we decided to attack with everything we had left.”
The general turned and hobbled back to his chair, sinking into ancient leather with a groan.
“I started the war as a lieutenant. In the end I was a brigadier general in command of forces. My superiors tasked me to lead a reconnaissance in force against the American positions. All such actions in the past had met with defeat. In fact they were little more than suicide missions. I thought it was my time to die. I said my goodbyes. I kissed my very pregnant wife and my son, my granddaughter Jin’s father, and we set out in rafts lashed to the few amphibious vehicles left that still worked. It was quite a departure from the way we’d arrived ten years earlier, when we’d invaded the United States. Then we’d attacked with fighters, a carrier group, and an airborne invasion all along the western United States. Now I was being towed to my death in a leaky raft by a broken-down amphibious armored vehicle that belched dirty black smoke.”
The general breathed deeply again, gathering himself and letting go of some past oath to secrecy that no longer held him.
“I kept waiting for the American artillery to open fire as we crossed the bay. But it didn’t, and we made the beach, to our great surprise. No gunfire, no mortars. No fixed-bayonet charge. I ordered our mortar teams to set up. We advanced through the wreckage of the old city of Oakland, finding no one. When we came to the trenches at the bottom of the hill we found a ragged soldier, thin to the point of death. He was little more than the bones that held him up. He waved a white flag. From a distance he told us of the sickness. He said we should stay away.