Isabel paid a call on Ruth, to share what she could of Becca’s last days in the hypersphere. Jael nursed, more alert than usual, her angelic eyes fixed upward adoringly at her mother, while her mouth chomped on the breast, making snuffling noises. What an odd hybrid creature an infant was, half angel and half piglet.
Ruth’s Benjamin plodded across the room, his arms spread wide to keep his balance, an empty beehive frame clenched tightly in one fist. When something caught his interest in the next room, he dropped the frame with a clatter, then fell down on all fours again and sprinted through the doorway, still an expert crawler. Isabel watched curiously, thinking how different he was from the little naked kitten she had helped deliver the year before. Another year, and Jael, too, would be on her feet tearing up the house.
“Becca asked after Benjamin, often,” she told Ruth. “She wanted to know how he ate, and what he’d learned to do.” Isabel wished she had remembered more to tell Becca. “She asked after the bees, too. She wanted to know if the new queen took.”
Ruth nodded. Ruth held in her hand an eyespot scale which Peace Hope had given her. She turned it over curiously, poking her finger through the pupil hole. “So, with this, Becca came to ‘see.’”
“That’s right,” said Isabel. “She gave us all the gift of sight.”
“Could the children learn, too, do you think? Would it be safe for them?”
“I don’t see why not.” Isabel had not considered this. Little Benjamin, and even Jael, would grow up taking angelbee eyesight for granted. It made her feel suddenly old, to realize that her children would be born into such freedom.
Ruth said, “Becca always liked to hear the bees. She claimed she could tell different ones apart by the sound of their humming.”
She remembered something else to tell Ruth. “Becca led a seder for us. We had to eat special things, and ask questions.”
“That’s Becca.” Ruth flashed a smile. “She always loved to lecture. Even when Aaron was alive, she used to lead the seder.”
“She answered my question about Abraham and Isaac, too. She said the point was, you had to be willing to give up your own child for the sake of God’s peace.” Isabel shook her head, as she switched Jael to the other side. “I still don’t understand how you can think that way, with people like those Shades running around. I’d never give up my child.”
“Well, she and Aaron used to argue over that one. But you should agree with that; you’re the Quaker.”
“I don’t know what I am anymore. If God gave bees stings to defend their brood, why shouldn’t humans do the same?”
“Bees can learn to be tame. Look how they let us rob their honey. Aaron used to make a ‘bee beard’ by covering himself with bees, from his cheeks down across his chest.”
“But the bees know we’re there to help them keep up their hive. They’ll sting, if you make a wrong move.”
“Not all bees even have stings. Some members of the genus Trigona are not aggressive at all, yet their nests are never attacked, even by army ants. If bees can figure out a way, surely humans can, too.”
Isabel sighed. “I suppose so. I guess that is what I was supposed to learn out there. I’m not sure I learned anything.”
Ruth rested a hand on her arm. “Of course you did. You’ve taught us a great deal. You taught us to see through the darkness, and to walk through walls.”
Isabel cast her eyes down. “That’s true, only…”
“Yes?”
“We have yet to walk through the Wall.”
“That is true.”
Isabel plunged into it. “Peace Hope says we have to talk about…about Doomsday, first. Before we can cross the Wall. That was Becca’s last wish: that you would tell us about Doomsday, and the Death Year.”
Ruth took a deep breath. “The town has been considering this very thing. You’re right, we need to tell the story of the Death Year, before those memories pass away. But this time, you will have to live through that telling.”
XLIII
THEY GATHERED IN the Scattergoods’ sitting room, just as on that afternoon two summers before, when the townspeople had come to face the mysterious burning of the night sky. That had been a Sunday in August, the day that Isabel had challenged the people in the Meetinghouse in the name of the Wall, the Wall whose birth she had not been born to see.
Today was a Saturday evening, the last of October, and the survivors of Doomsday were going to tell how the Wall was born. Isabel sat on one of Nahum’s spare wooden chairs and whispered furtively with Daniel and Peace Hope, anxiously wishing the baby was back in her arms, though Carl had promised to get her to sleep upstairs. Deliverance was there, and Sal and John who clasped hands demurely, notebooks on their laps. They all were expected to listen and take notes as a sort of oral history. Peace Hope was flipping through her audio cassettes, making sure not to erase her precious Lucy tape by mistake.
As if by unspoken agreement, those who were to speak had gathered in the opposite corner of the sitting room, by the west window where the sun’s dying rays tinted their faces red. A beautiful sunset, the kind that the Little Prince would have loved and Isabel thirsted for after her months in the hypersphere.
Marguerite was one of those seated to the west, the doctor’s chin nodding briskly as she spoke to Teacher Matthew, while Vera Brown interjected an occasional “I quite agree,” in an unnaturally high tone of voice. Liza and Nahum sat together in silence. They were the only couple who had survived the Death Year together. Ruth, who had been nine at the time, chose to speak tonight, but Anna, who had been only three, came to join Isabel. The Drehers, who had married some years afterward, were looking after the children upstairs. Having lost Charity to the cancer just two months before, they chose not to relive the Death Year at this time.
Andrés had contributed pots of mulled cider and refried beans to help those gathered keep on through what promised to be a long night. “A fine night they chose, All Hallows’ Eve,” he muttered gruffly to his daughter, hiding his nervousness. “It sets my teeth on edge. Could they not wait two days? All Souls’ is the holy day of remembrance. What fate was mine, to fall among heathens.”
“Sh,” said Isabel. “Once we open the Wall, you can go to Sydney, or even back to Chile, and find a priest again.”
“And how do I get there, pray tell: in a rowboat, perhaps? A town that teaches Greek, but no geography.” Andrés sighed and shook his head. “What use? There’s no more Pope, so perhaps anyone can be a priest. Your friend Keith’s a good enough priest for me.”
Isabel smiled and squeezed his hand. Keith had declined to take part, saying he had recalled enough about the Death Year in Sydney and preferred to mind the hospital that night. Actually, Isabel suspected, Keith had become addicted to angelbee vision and planned to spend his Saturday night practicing on the local possums and owls.
Marguerite drained a cup of cider, then stared ahead, her full lips turned to stone. For a while there was a shared silence.
“It was a good year.” Vera’s voice broke the silence. “The year before, I mean. The price of eggs was down, we bought a new Toyota. Jem and I.” Jem had been her first husband; Isabel knew only Ted Brown, the father of Sal and Deliverance, who had died of melanoma, the earliest hospital patient in Isabel’s childhood memory. “You would never have guessed that—well, like I said, it was a good year.”
Isabel wrote in her notebook, self-consciously making her o’s wide and round like moons. On Peace Hope’s tape deck the red light flickered.
“A year of peace,” Marguerite agreed. “It’s fair to say that. There was arms control, there was peace in Managua, where I worked at the clinic. There was a new drug for AIDS. It wasn’t a bad year, compared to some.”
“‘Peace, peace, when there is no peace.’ The peace was only skin deep.” Nahum’s voice came sharp; his dark-suited figure was imposing, his hair tied back severely as usual. “Peace founded on lies is no peace.”
A short silence again. Isabel i
magined Nahum sitting just like that behind bars, when he refused to pay taxes for the bombs. Andrés stood behind Marguerite massaging her shoulders, looking pensively out the window, where a trace of red from the sunset remained.
Matthew rolled his eyes upward. “It’s worth remembering that tonight, Halloween, is the forty-third anniversary of the Moscow Link conference, when American and Soviet scientists jointly presented in public the phenomenon which they called nuclear winter. The concept originated, curiously enough, from Sagan’s earlier observations of the persistence of dust clouds on Mars. Sagan could not have known that Earth’s eventual survivors would owe their existence to visitors from far beyond Mars.”
Isabel opened her mouth to ask a question, then realized she had about a dozen questions to ask at once. Listening, first, would be better.
“I was at my parents’ home that day,” her mother said quickly, “recuperating from my hectic schedule in Managua. Dad was out of town, on an action with the Plowshares. Mom had a two-hour commute from the Philly law firm; I never could see how she stood it. It was a beautiful, clear day, a bit of a wind from the west.”
“Northwest,” amended Matthew. “I remember seeing the weathervane pointing on top of the—” He stopped and swallowed a couple of times, unable to say the word “house.” His house, what remained of it, stood just outside the Wall. “I wasn’t spending the night there, because at the time Janet and I were separated.”
It took Isabel a moment to realize what he meant. The final separation of loved ones was more familiar to her.
“A few people caught sight of the flash from Philadelphia,” said Vera. “Jem told me he saw it, out of the corner of his eye, through his office window at the bank. I just recall the sound, like a giant thunderclap.”
Ruth said, “Becca caught the flash. She was climbing a tree in the orchard across from the middle school during lunch break. She admired the view; you could see for miles.”
Marguerite nodded. “It was an airburst; it must have set fires for miles around the city. The power blackout’s the thing I recall,” she added. “You could see lightning bolts leaping out of empty sockets. Little did I know it was the last electricity I’d see for two years.”
“There was news on the shortwave,” Matthew added. “On emergency stations, and also the BBC. New York, L.A., Washington of course—the list of hits was staggering. I suppose the Soviets got the same, though little news got out.”
Ruth added, “Becca’s parents took her to the hospital, but it was already full of casualties flown in.”
Silence again. Beside Isabel, Anna’s eyes were narrowed and her lips were pressed tightly together.
Liza said quietly, “We watched the black clouds spread along around the horizon. I remember watching with Nahum, shaking our heads at the sky. That was our second year of marriage.”
Just then Vera choked and began to sob uncontrollably. Ruth went to her side to speak with her in low tones. She helped her up and led her out into the next room for a while.
Marguerite spoke, in almost a clinical monotone. “We were just inside the fallout zone. I posted warnings to stay indoors. Most did, but some were caught outside when the rains came. Doses received ranged from one to three hundred rads. Jem got a medium dose. He hung on for another three months.”
Nahum added, “The shortwave told us not to eat any grain from the fields. But the shops were empty, and the fields were full.”
“We all got sick, to one degree or another,” said Marguerite. “A lot of folks left town, heading south mostly. The highways were clogged, day and night. By the third day refugees from Philadelphia were streaming in. My mother never made it—she was downtown—but my father did, I don’t know how. He collapsed soon after arriving. His skin was all dotted with purple spots, spot hemorrhages.”
Vera and Ruth quietly returned to their seats.
“The sky darkened more, every day,” said Matthew. “Everything seemed to be closing up—banks, schools, gas stations. A gang came through town, plundering houses; they torched a few for the heck of it, the Sewells’ and the Radnors’ up the street.”
Isabel paused with her pencil. So that was what befell the abandoned black hulk of a house they passed every Sunday on the way to Worship.
Liza said, “People were hungry of course. We had six months’ worth of grain and dried milk in storage; it’s a family tradition. We offered what we could.”
“The people cleaned your house out in no time,” Marguerite reminded her. “People came from miles around, and you couldn’t say no. They took more than food, too.”
“Praise God for that,” said Nahum. “How was I to sleep in the valley of death, with that pile of earthly goods in my house? I had no rest until the house was empty.”
The plain wood furnishings had all been crafted since Doomsday.
Marguerite said, “About a week after Doomsday we awoke to discover the Wall.”
“It was just like a waterglass set over the area,” said Vera. “It was the queerest thing; even the shortwave had no explanation. We tried to dig out, of course. We dug holes twenty feet down, thirty feet…”
“At first, we were the ones trapped,” said Matthew. “I remember Angie, my nine-year-old, crying because I couldn’t come out to her. She stood there with her face buried in Janet’s skirt. Our Irish setter whined and lapped at them, trying to comfort them. Then Janet went back to the house, where Robbie was in bed with fever.”
“My sister Sarah tried to send food in,” recalled Liza. “Nothing got through, not even a lima bean. Sarah opened a sack of flour and tossed it in our direction, but it all blew back in her face. I can see her now, her face and hair all white with flour…”
“The sky outside kept getting darker,” Vera said, “yet it was odd how a sort of murky light persisted in the sky above our trapped town. The dome of the Wall kept the black clouds out.”
“The darkness,” said Ruth, “the smoke-filled clouds outside, like a vision out of Night. That is the one thing I remember well. My father told me those clouds came from Philadelphia…I had just attended the wedding of my cousin that spring, at a temple in Northeast Philly. All my cousins and nieces and nephews were there, all the children. As I looked up into that dark stillness, I kept imagining the faces of those children, turning into wreaths of smoke.”
The sun had quite set by now. Andrés was lighting candles, new ones brought by Debbie Dreher, and their scent of beeswax filled the room.
Vera went on, in an unnaturally high voice. “After the second week, I noticed my brother Gabe and the kids were wearing snow parkas when they came to the Wall. You could feel the chill coming in, like a giant icebox with the door open. And it was mid-July…”
“That’s when the crowds began to collect,” said Marguerite. “Hundreds, eventually thousands perhaps, to the warmth of the Wall. They blamed us; they cursed at us, even shot bullets which ricocheted back. One hit a child outside; I tried to explain to his mother how to dress the wound. The child died of blood loss. My father also died around that time.”
“The animals came, too,” said Liza. “So many deer, raccoons, possums, like the animals gathered into Noah’s ark. But this ark had no door.”
“The animals were our salvation, for food,” said Matthew. “Janet got out the shotgun and took a deer now and then. She managed to chop enough firewood, too, God bless her. We’d had a stock for the wood stove, but that was long plundered by then.”
“Yes, Gabe did the same,” said Vera.
“The Pylon,” Ruth remembered suddenly. “The Pylon had appeared by then. My friend and I found it there, in the field past the Trans’ place.”
“Yes,” said Vera. “We had no idea what it was, but when the angelbees started appearing, we put two and two together. Gabe said it was an alien invasion after all, not a human war. Everyone was saying it. We all felt a lot better, God knows why.”
“A refuge of lies,” said Nahum. “Lies built the Wall in the first place. We have
yet to give up on lies, though the hail has long swept the refuge away.”
Matthew nodded. “The extraterrestrials must have been watching Earth for years, ever since they first detected our radio signals. Why did they never make contact? A slow-moving race, they watched and waited to learn about us, but in the end were too late.”
“Alice was convinced she could ‘talk’ with the Pylon, somehow,” said Liza. “Everyone thought she was crazy, an old woman bundled up in the snow, gesturing to an alien artifact.” Yet the Pylon had “talked” to her, and kept on for those many years.
There was a long silence. Matthew opened his mouth twice as if trying to say something. “Janet finally told me Robbie had died,” he said at last, his voice nearly inaudible. “I’ll always remember the look on her face, in that moment. She said she couldn’t bury him properly because the ground was frozen solid. I told her she ought to be wearing gloves. She said Angie was wearing her gloves because someone had taken the girl’s gloves for her own child.” Matthew choked on his words. “It was a neighbor, I won’t say who; let the dead rest.”
“They weren’t all like that,” Ruth observed. “There was an elderly woman from our temple who kept on knitting scarves for people the whole time.”
“The darkness outside was indescribable,” said Marguerite. “For months, you couldn’t tell night from day. Only we had light, inside, and that was dim at best. We tried to help, setting fires on our side of the Wall; but then, we got short on firewood, too. We went without food for two weeks—until the first shipment arrived, miraculously, at the airwall of the Pylon. The first of many.”
“I remember the day Gabe packed the kids onto the horse and said they were heading south. South where? I told him. I never saw them again. I guess I was lucky…”
“Janet pitched a tent right next to the Wall, leaning into it you might say, one of a long, unbroken line of tents and other makeshift dwellings. Angie and the setter huddled there all day. Janet never left for long, lest someone push them out. She had gloves again by then, from a corpse most likely.”
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