by Jason Mott
“He chose to stay,” Lucille said in a low voice, as if reminding herself of something.
“He did,” Pastor Peters said. “And Bellamy will take care of them both. Like I said, he’s a good man.”
“That’s what I used to think. Back when I first met him. He seemed good, even if he was from New York. I didn’t even judge him on account of him being black.” Lucille put a hard stress on that point. Both of her parents had been deeply committed to racism, but she’d learned better—learned from the Word—that people were just people. The color of their skin meant about as much as the color of their underwear. “But when I look at him now,” she continued, “I wonder how any decent man—regardless of color—could be a part of such a thing as kidnapping people from their homes—children, no less—and locking them up in prison?” Lucille’s voice was like a thunderstorm.
“Now, now, Lucille,” the pastor said.
“Now, now,” his wife repeated.
Pastor Peters made his way around the pew and settled in beside the old woman and put his large arm around her. “They’re not kidnapping people, though I know it can feel that way. The Bureau is just trying to…well, just look like they’re helping. There’s so many of the Returned now. I think the Bureau is just trying to make people feel safe.”
“They make people feel safe by taking an old man and his child away from their home at gunpoint?” Lucille nearly dropped her Bible as her hands came suddenly to life in front of her. She always spoke with her hands when she was angry. “By holding them for three weeks? By putting them in prison without…without…heck, I don’t know, without pressing charges or doing something resembling the Rule of Law?” She looked toward one of the church windows. Even from where she sat she could see the town, in the distance below the hill where the church stood. She could see the school and all of its newly erected buildings and fencing, all the soldiers and Returned buzzing about, the clump of houses not yet within the realm of the fencing. Something in her heart told her that would not last.
Far away, on the other side of the town—hidden by trees and distance, out where the town was ended and the countryside holding sway—was her home, sitting dark, empty. “Lord…” she said.
“Now, now, Lucille,” the pastor’s wife said, accomplishing nothing.
“I keep talking to that Martin Bellamy,” Lucille continued. “I keep telling him that this is wrong and that the Bureau’s got no right to do this, but all he says is that there’s nothing he can do. He says it’s all that Colonel Willis now. It’s all about him, Martin Bellamy says. What does he mean there’s nothing he can do? He’s a human being, ain’t he? Ain’t a human being full of things they can do?”
Beads of sweat marched down her brow. Both the pastor and his wife had taken their hands from her, as if she were a stove top someone had switched on without warning.
“Lucille,” the pastor said, lowering his voice and speaking slowly, something he’d learned calmed people, whether they wanted it to or not. Lucille only looked down at the Bible on her lap. A great question about something settled into the curves of her face.
“God has a plan,” Pastor Peters said, “even if Agent Bellamy does not.”
“But it’s been weeks,” Lucille replied.
“And they’re both healthy and alive. Aren’t they?”
“I suppose so.” She opened her Bible to no page in particular. She opened it only to see that the words, and the Word, were still there. “But they’re…” She hunted for a good word. She would feel better if she could find a quality word right now. “They’re…immured.”
“They’re in the same school where almost every child in this town learned to read and write,” the pastor said. His arm was around Lucille again now. “Yes, I know it looks different now with all those soldiers around, but it’s still our school. It’s the same building that Jacob went to all those years ago.”
“It was a new school back then,” Lucille interrupted, her mind falling into memory.
“And I’m sure it was beautiful.”
“Oh, it was. Just shining new. It was much smaller back then, though. Back before the additions and renovations that went on after the town got a little older and a little bigger.”
“So can’t we just think of them still there, in that version of the school?”
Lucille said nothing.
“They’re warm and they’re being fed.”
“Because I take them food!”
“The best food in the county!” The pastor made a show of looking at his wife. “I keep telling my beloved here that she needs to come and spend a few weeks with you and get the secret to that peach cobbler of yours.”
Lucille smiled and waved him off. “It’s nothing special,” she said. “I even take Martin Bellamy food.” She paused. “Like I said, I like him. He seems like a good man.”
Pastor Peters patted her on the back. “Of course he is. And he and Harold and Jacob and everyone else there at the school who got to taste your cobbler—because I hear you’ve been taking it over in great quantities and sharing it—they’re all indebted to you. They thank you every day, I know it.”
“Just because they’re prisoners doesn’t mean they should have to eat that government slop those soldiers are feeding them.”
“I thought they were having their food catered by Mrs. Brown’s catering service. What’s she calling it now? Gone on to Glory-ous Foods?’”
“Like I said—slop.”
They all laughed.
“Things really will settle down,” the pastor said when the laughter had trailed off. “Harold and Jacob are going to be just fine.”
“Have you been down there?”
“Of course.”
“Bless your heart,” Lucille said. She patted the pastor’s hand. “They need a shepherd. Everyone in that building needs a shepherd.”
“I do what I can. I talked to Agent Bellamy—he and I talk quite a bit, actually. As I said, he seems like a decent man. I believe he really is trying to do everything he can. But, with the way things are progressing, with the sheer numbers that the Bureau is having to deal with—”
“They’ve put that terrible Colonel Willis in charge.”
“That’s my understanding of it.”
Lucille’s mouth tightened. “Someone has to do something,” she said. Her voice was low, like water whispering from a deep crevice. “He’s a cruel man,” she said. “You can see it in his eyes. Eyes that seem to get farther away the longer you look into them. You should have seen him when I went over there to get Harold and Jacob back. Cold as December, that’s what he was. Like a mountain of apathy.”
“God will find a way.”
“Yes,” Lucille said, even though, for three weeks now, she had been wondering more and more. “God will find a way,” she repeated. “But still, I worry.”
“We all have our worries,” the pastor said.
* * *
Fred Green had been coming home to an empty house for several decades now. He was used to the quiet. And while he didn’t much care for his own cooking, he’d long since come to grips with frozen meals and the occasional overcooked steak.
Mary had always done the cooking.
When he wasn’t tending his fields, he was at the sawmill, trying to pick up any work he could. He rarely made it home until almost dark and his body was a little more tired each day than the day before. But lately he was finding it harder and harder to get jobs on account of the fact that the younger men were always there, waiting in the dim morning light for the day manager to pick out the fellows he wanted to work that day.
And while experience had its merits when it came to manual labor, youth is all but impossible to beat. He felt as if he was starting to wind down. There was just too much to do.
So each evening Fred Green came home, dined on TV dinners, settled in front of the television and turned to the news, where there was only talk of the Returned.
He only half listened to anything the newscasters
said. He spent most of his time talking back to them, denouncing them as troublemakers and fools, catching only piecemeal details of the stream of Returned that was growing into more and more of a river with each day.
All any of it did was make him uneasy, possessed by a great sense of foreboding.
But there was something else. Some feeling he could not quite get a handle on. He’d been having trouble sleeping the past few weeks. Each night he went to bed in his empty and silent house—just like he had for decades—and he chased sleep until well after midnight. And when sleep finally did come, it was shallow and restless, devoid of dreams but fitful nonetheless.
Some mornings he awoke with bruises on his hands which he blamed on the wooden headboard. One night he was possessed with the sensation of falling, only to awake the instant before landing on the floor beside the bed with tears streaming down his face and a great, indescribable sadness choking the air around him.
He remained there on the floor, sobbing, angry at things he could not put to words, his head filled with frustration and longing.
He called his wife’s name.
It was the first time in longer than he could remember that he had spoken her name. He composed the word on his tongue and launched it into the air and listened to the sound of it resonate through the cluttered, musty house.
He stayed there on the floor, waiting. As if she might suddenly come out from hiding and wrap her arms around him and kiss him and sing for him—in that blessed, resplendent voice that he longed for—bringing music to him after all these years of emptiness.
But no one answered.
Eventually he picked himself up off the floor. He went to the closet and pulled out a trunk which had not seen the light of day in decades. It was black with a thin patina covering the brass hinges. It seemed to sigh when he opened it.
It was filled with books, sheet music, small boxes containing trinkets of jewelry or ceramic knickknacks for which there was no one left in the house to appreciate. Halfway down, buried beneath a small, silk blouse with delicately stitched roses about the collar, was a photo album. Fred lifted it and sat on the bed and brushed it off. It opened with a creak.
And, all of a sudden, there she was, his wife, smiling at him.
He had forgotten how round her face was. How dark her hair was. How perpetually confused she seemed to always look—and how that had been what he loved about her most. Even when they were arguing, she had always seemed confounded, as if she saw the world in a way that no one else did and could not, for the life of her, understand why everyone behaved the way they did.
He sat and turned the pages of the album and tried not to think of the sound of her voice, of the perfect way she would sing for him when the nights were long and he could not sleep. He opened and closed his mouth, as if trying to form some question that, out of stubbornness, would not come out.
Then he came across one photograph that gave him pause. Her smile was not as bright. Her expression no longer confused, but decided. It was from some sun-bathed afternoon not long after her miscarriage.
It had been their secret, that particular tragedy. No sooner than they’d gotten the news from the doctor about her pregnancy, everything came crashing down. Fred awoke one night to the sound of her sobbing softly from the bathroom, the burden of what had happened already weighing on her.
He’d always been a deep sleeper. “Waking you up is like waking the dead,” she had told him once. To this day, he wondered if she’d tried to wake him that night, if she had asked for his help and he’d failed her. Surely, he could have done something.
How could a husband sleep through such a thing, he wondered. Lay dreaming like some dumb animal while the small ember of their child’s life is snuffed out.
They had planned on telling their friends about the pregnancy at her birthday party, less than a month away. But then there was no need. Only the doctor ever knew what had happened to them.
The only indication that anything had been wrong came in the dimness of her smile after that day, a dimness that he could never forget.
He removed the photograph from the sticky film. It smelled of old glue and mildew. That night, for the first time since her death, he wept.
* * *
The next morning Fred went to the sawmill, but the day manager didn’t pick him for work. He went home and checked the fields, but they didn’t need his attention, either. So he got in his truck and drove over to Marvin Parker’s place.
Marvin lived across the street from the entrance gate of the school where they were holding the Returned. Marvin could sit in his front yard and watch the busloads of Returned being brought in. And that’s exactly what he did a great many mornings since all of this had begun.
For some reason, Fred felt like this was where he needed to be. He needed to see for himself what the world was coming to. He needed to see the faces of the Returned.
It was almost as if he was searching for someone.
* * *
Harold sat quietly at the end of his cot in the center of what was normally Mrs. Johnson’s art studio. He wished his back hurt, if only so he could complain about it. Harold had always found himself better able to ponder deeply profound or confusing subjects after he’d had a good, solid rant about the pain in his back. He shuddered to think what might have happened if, somehow, he’d never been a complainer. Lucille might have had him sanctified by now.
The cot next to Harold’s was where Jacob slept. The boy’s pillow and blanket lay neatly at the head. The blanket was one Lucille had made. It was full of intricacies and colors and fancy stitching that would take nothing less than a nuclear assault to unravel. The corners were sharply folded. The pillow perfectly flat and smooth.
What a tidy boy, Harold thought, trying to remember if it had always been that way.
“Charles?”
Harold sighed. In the doorway of the art-room-cum-bedroom stood the old woman. One of the Returned. The afternoon light came in through the window and fell across her face and all around the frame of the doorway were paint splatters in various colors and finishes, remnants of years of art projects. There were vibrant yellows and fierce reds, all of them brighter than Harold thought they should have been considering how old they probably were.
They framed the old woman in a rainbow of color, giving her an air of magic.
“Yes?” Harold said.
“Charles, what time are we leaving?”
“Soon,” Harold said.
“We’re going to be late, Charles. And I won’t stand for us being late. It’s bad manners.”
“It’s okay. They’ll wait for us.”
Harold stood and stretched his arms and walked slowly over to the old woman, Mrs. Stone, and led her across the room to her cot in the corner. She was a large black woman, well into her eighties and senile as could be. But, senile or no, she took care of herself and her cot. She was always clean, her hair always well-kept. What little clothing she had somehow remained spotless.
“Don’t you worry none,” Harold said. “We won’t be late.”
“But we’re already late.”
“We’ve got plenty of time.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m positive, honey.” Harold smiled and patted her hand as she eased down onto the cot. He sat beside her as she stretched out on her side and already was drifting into sleep. It always happened like this for her: a sudden excitement, some inescapable stress, followed by a sudden sleep.
Harold sat with Mrs. Stone—Patricia was her name—until sleep came for her. Then, in spite of the June heat, he covered her with the blanket from Jacob’s bed. She mumbled something about not keeping people waiting. Then her lips were still, her breathing slow and even.
He went back to his own cot and sat. Harold wished he had a book. Maybe when Lucille came to visit he’d ask her to bring him one, so long as it wasn’t a Bible or some other form of tomfoolery.
No, Harold thought, rubbing his chin. Bellamy had a hand in t
his somewhere. In spite of his lessening of authority since the Bureau began locking people up, Agent Martin Bellamy was still the most informed person in the area.
In his own way, Bellamy still ran the show. He was in charge of food and room assignments, clothing procurement, making sure everyone got toiletries and whatnot. He oversaw keeping track of both the True Living and the Returned.
He was in charge of it all, though other people actually did the legwork. And Harold was beginning to discover, by way of soldiers who liked to jabber loudly to one another as they patrolled the school, that there was less and less legwork going on these days.
The policy was slowly becoming a policy of simply holding on to the dead, storing them like too much foodstuff. Now and again, if they found one of particular value or notoriety, they went a little above and beyond and bought him a plane ticket home, but mostly the Returned were just being replanted wherever they happened to sprout up.
It might not be this way everywhere, Harold figured, but it would be soon. As a general rule, it was just becoming easier and cheaper to assign the Returned a number and a case file, punch a few keys on a computer, ask a few questions, punch more keys and forget about them. If a person felt like going the extra mile—which fewer and fewer did—perhaps they would go so far as to run an internet search for the person’s name. But that was the length of it. More and more, those few keystrokes—effort barely above doing nothing—was the way of things.
* * *
With the old woman sleeping, Harold left the room and made his way through the crowded, old school. Since the very first day they started arresting the Returned, things had been inadequate. And every day since, they were becoming more inadequate. Where there had been open space and room for a body to move here and there among the hallways, now there were only cots and people clinging to them out of fear of having them taken away by whatever newcomers might happen to show up. While things still hadn’t devolved to the point of having more bodies than beds, there was a hierarchy being born.
Those with tenure had their cots set up snugly within the main school building, where everything worked and nothing was very far away. New folks—except for the old and/or infirmed; there was still room being kept inside for them—wound up outside, in the parking lot and small sections of street surrounding the school, in an area referred to as Tent Village.