Light of Dawn

by Vannetta Chapman

  Everyone turned to look at Gabe, including Carter.

  He wasn’t sure how much of their situation was supposed to be a secret. Actually, what did it matter if these people knew? Stu and Mary Jane might not be as feeble as they looked, but they were awfully old. They didn’t pose a threat. That much was obvious, even to him.

  Gabe glanced around the table, maybe waiting for someone to object. When no one did, he admitted that he was a doctor in the military, and that he’d enlisted the help of the rest of the group to find the federal government. Then he gave a brief summary of their journey. It was surprising to hear it all at once like that. Finding Langford Cove empty and looted, splitting up at Hamilton, coming across signs of Hugo and then being nearly killed by him, being rescued by Gus and helped by Hauk.

  Surrounding Hugo and his goons.

  Leaving them handcuffed to a fence outside of Wichita Falls.

  The tornado.

  The people chasing them as they fled the area.

  The shoot-out.

  Driving aimlessly through the night.

  “You’re a doctor?” Mary Jane asked.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Stu reached for the coffeepot in the middle of the table and poured a little more of the now tepid liquid into his cup. “It’s a miracle indeed that you found this little county road.”

  “There was a sign,” Bianca pointed out.

  “True. The odds of you seeing it, though—those are pretty slim. And actually turning down the road, slimmer still.”

  “What’s the point of trying to find the federal government?” Mary Jane asked. “Do you actually think they’re going to help you and send supplies and people to protect your town? If they were planning to do that, you wouldn’t need to search for them.”

  Gabe had left out the part about being sent by Governor Reed. Now he shrugged and said, “Sometimes you just want answers.”

  “And you’re willing to risk your life for that?” Mary Jane cackled. She reminded Carter of the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz, but one that cooked well and might not be on the dark side of things. “There’s something you’re not telling us, young man. And that’s fine. We don’t expect you to share all of your secrets.”

  “What about you?” Shelby leaned forward and tapped the table between her and Mary Jane. “What are your secrets?”

  Carter thought Mary Jane wouldn’t answer. After all, she didn’t owe them anything, and his mom—well, she wasn’t exactly polite about it.

  “Our secrets? Hmm…that’s something we’d have to show you. Can’t be told. Not that simple.”

  Mary Jane glanced at Stu. He nodded once and pushed his way into a standing position. “We can show you, but it’s a bit of a walk.”

  A raucous discussion broke out between the members of their group, half saying they needed to be going and that they should have already left. The other half—Bianca and Lanh and Max—insisted that they weren’t in such a big hurry and that maybe what Mary Jane and Stu had to show them was important.

  Gabe took a vote, and Carter landed on the side of going to the old folks’ place. Mostly because they hadn’t tried to influence the discussion in any way. They’d sat back and watched, a bemused look on their faces, giving the distinct impression that it didn’t much matter to them one way or the other. If they were up to something, they would have been pushing their agenda.

  He didn’t try to explain all of that. Instead, when his mom tromped along beside him and gave him the look, he laughed and said, “A little curiosity doesn’t hurt.”

  “Tell that to the cat.”

  They trudged across the fields, leaving Patrick and Lanh to watch over their vehicles. The morning was quiet. The only sounds were natural ones—no vehicles or rifle shots to mar the peace.

  “I don’t like it,” his mom admitted.

  They were walking at the back of the group, with Mary Jane and Stu leading the way.

  “Are you worried about taking the time to do it? Or about what we might find?”

  “Both.”

  “As long as you have all the bases covered.”

  Shelby rolled her eyes and reached out to give him a playful nudge. Yeah, his mom was apparently feeling better. It was amazing what a good night’s sleep and a decent meal could do.

  As for Carter, he’d insisted on coming on this trip. He’d left High Fields because he wanted to see other places. He wanted to find out how others were living and what things they were using to survive. He didn’t see an extra hour off the road as a waste of time at all.

  Google had failed him.

  Wikipedia was a thing of the past.

  If they were going to learn, they were going to have to learn from one another.

  The walk took less than ten minutes.

  “They’re spry for old people,” Carter muttered.

  The home was pretty much what Carter had pictured, though busier than he’d expected. Cows grazed in the pasture next to a brown, shaggy donkey. He could hear pigs rooting around in an enclosure to the south. A vegetable garden had already been planted on the west side. Laundry hung on the line, flapping in the early morning breeze.

  Mary Jane didn’t take them to see any of those things.

  Instead, she and Stu led everyone up the porch steps and into the sitting room.

  Carter was diagnosed with diabetes when he was only four years old. He didn’t remember much about that time, but over the years there had been the occasional emergency that landed him in the ER—sometimes diabetes related, but more often just the usual mishaps of growing up. You could say he knew his way around a hospital.

  He’d barely stepped through the front door when he caught the smell of antiseptic, bleach, medicine, and sickness. Some things were the same whether you were in a technological world or not. When someone was dying, it seemed to him that there was a certain odor in the air. Maybe it was just helplessness that he thought of as a smell rather than a state of mind. Regardless, Mary Jane’s house was full of that odor—the scent of a life about to end.

  FORTY-FIVE

  It took Shelby’s eyes a minute to adjust to the darkened interior of Mary Jane and Stu’s home. Five from their group had come along to see whatever it was the couple wanted to show them. Surely, it couldn’t be this, though.

  What would this sad but all-too-common situation have to do with them?

  And what could Mary Jane and Stu possibly want?

  “I’d like y’all to meet my twin sister, Mary Jo.” Mary Jane walked over to the daybed and peered down into her sister’s face. “We have company, Mary Jo.”

  “I can hear, Mary Jane. I’m not deaf, only dying.”

  “As you can see, she’s a real spitfire,” Mary Jane said.

  Stu seemed used to their bantering. He shuffled to the front window and pulled back the curtains, flooding the room with light.

  Mary Jane made quick introductions, and everyone said hello.

  Shelby’s heart softened when she took the woman’s hand in hers and said, “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “You’re all the way from Abney?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “My granddad had an old dry goods store in Abney once. This was before my sister and I were born. But he often talked fondly of the area and how kind the people were.”

  “They are that.”

  The skin of Mary Jo’s hand was paper thin, and Shelby could clearly see the pattern of veins running beneath. Unlike Mary Jane, she had very little hair on her head—a few white wisps. A faded quilt draped her frail body. The sheets and her clothing were crisp and clean. Her eyes seemed to say that she understood what was happening, and that she was at peace with it. Shelby stayed by the bed, talking with her, remembering her time working at the nursing home in Abney. Those dear people had tugged at her heartstrings with their need, their gratitude, and their resilience. She saw the first two in Mary Jo’s eyes, but she wasn’t so sure about the resilience. The woman seemed to almost fade into the freshly l
aundered pillowcase.

  They’d only been in the living room a few minutes when Stu suggested they go outside to see the chickens.

  Gabe and Bianca held back, speaking to Mary Jo in a soft voice.

  Stu took his slow, sweet time leading them through the house.

  He insisted they stop and admire Mary Jane’s windowsill herb garden. “There’s even aloe vera, which is good for many things, including indigestion.”

  “You can put a spoonful of the jelly into your tea.” Mary Jane stuck a finger in the soil and then added a small amount of water from a watering can.

  “Also works as a salve for burns,” Shelby said.

  “Indeed,” Mary Jane agreed.

  Stu pointed out several other plants—some that Shelby knew about and had growing at High Fields, and a few that she didn’t. She’d have to put those names into her journal as soon as they were on their way.

  They meandered through the kitchen and across a screened-in porch, walked back out into the sunshine, and trooped over to the nearby chicken coop.

  Stu picked up one of his prize roosters to show off. He told them how well the hens were laying, how good the roosters tasted in a stew, what they fed them, and how particular they were to keep their coop clean. “Chickens can be a real help in these dark times. Protein—that’s what most people need more of.”

  “Lots of vitamins too,” Mary Jane added.

  “And they make an affectionate pet.” Stu gently placed the rooster on the ground, and it strutted off. “Not that you want to get too attached.”

  Shelby was beginning to wonder if they’d come to the elderly couple’s home only to receive a lesson on poultry, when Bianca and Gabe caught up with them, and Mary Jane jumped right to the point.

  “We didn’t actually bring you here to talk chickens or show you my window box garden. We brought you here because we wanted you to meet Mary Jo.”

  “She’s dying,” Gabe said.

  Mary Jane and Stu nodded, waiting for Gabe to go on.

  “Please understand that oncology isn’t my specialty. Mary Jo told me that she first noticed the lump in her breast last summer.”

  “After the flares,” Mary Jane said. “After the hospital closed.”

  “And the ones in her lymph nodes?”

  “Three months ago.”

  “So you realize she’s in stage four.”

  “Yes, of course we realize that.” Stu picked up a smooth, polished walking stick that had been leaning against the fence. He thumped it on the ground and said, “That’s why we brought you here. We know she doesn’t have much longer until she goes to meet our Lord face-to-face.”

  “I’m very sorry. I wish there was something we could do, but we don’t have any medicine that can help her.”

  “They don’t want medicine.” Shelby stepped closer to Mary Jane, finally understanding the calculated look she’d seen in the woman’s eyes from the first moment. “You’ve been trying to decide if you could trust us…with your sister.”

  Steel blue eyes met hers. Mary Jane didn’t waver. She didn’t look apologetic about what she was about to ask. If anything, she had a more determined look in her eyes. Love could do that to a person, Shelby realized. She was seeing in this woman the same fierceness that she’d felt since the evening she first saw the flares, the same desperate need to care for someone in a world that made doing that very difficult.

  “Her dying wish is to see her son. I want you all to take her to him.”

  FORTY-SIX

  Max couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “We’re not an ambulance service,” he said, but no one was listening. Carter was asking Gabe how difficult it would be to transport her. Bianca and Shelby were actually arguing for it, and Mary Jane was simply standing there, letting them voice all of their objections.

  After a moment, she raised a hand to silence them. “I made Mary Jo a promise that I would find a way to take her to see her son—”

  “Why would you promise such a thing?” Max asked.

  “Because it’s her wish. Her dying wish. I’d promise her anything, and believe me, I’ll find a way to do it. Right now, you’re our best option.” She waved toward the small, white clapboard church. “Been taking food to people for the last month. You don’t think you’re the first to stop at our chapel, do you? But most groups…well, I wouldn’t trust them with one of Stu’s roosters. You folks are different. I can tell.”

  “We know we’re asking a big thing,” Stu added.

  “Yes, it’s a big thing.” Max pulled off his cowboy hat, ran his fingers through his hair, and resettled it. “Chances are she wouldn’t survive the ride.”

  “Actually, she’s stable,” Gabe interjected.

  Max gave him a whose side are you on look, and continued to tick off objections on the fingers of his right hand.

  “We need to be on our way, headed to Kansas.”

  “Won’t take you far out of your way.”

  “This isn’t our problem. No offense.”

  “None taken,” Mary Jane said evenly.

  “Our vehicles aren’t in the best condition, and we don’t even know if her son is still alive.” He glanced down at his hand, surprised to see he’d reached his thumb. Five reasons. Five good reasons not to do this thing.

  Surprisingly, it was Shelby who walked over, took ahold of his hand, and said, “Sometimes you do a thing because it’s the right thing to do. Not because it makes sense.”

  He stared at her dumbfounded.

  She did not sound like herself.

  “You were the one questioning why these people showed up in the first place.”

  “I know I did.”

  “And now you, what…trust them?”

  “I do.”

  “But, Shelby, honey. You’re talking about taking a stage-four cancer patient in a broken-down vehicle to a place where her son might not even be.”

  “Actually, that’s not a problem.” Mary Jane pulled a piece of paper from her pocket. She handed it to Max, who unfolded it.

  There was a simple map to a rural neighborhood twenty miles north of their location, which was at least in the right direction. Names had been jotted down to the right and left of the road, and a star penned by the name of Mary Jo’s son.

  “Now, this isn’t your typical neighborhood. It’s folks living way back in the woods where no one can bother them.” She pointed at the penciled lines off the main road. “Those are all dirt. You’ll be able to get through. We didn’t even see that tornado you talked about, though we had the rain. But it wasn’t enough to affect the roads. If something’s happened and Christopher isn’t there, then you leave her with one of his neighbors.”

  “And Mary Jo is okay with this?”

  “She knows the risk. We’ve talked about it often enough, but this is what she wants. Now if I have to, I’ll put her in that wagon and pull her there myself, but that’s—”

  “Twenty miles.” Carter was reading over Max’s shoulder.

  “Yeah. It’s at least twenty miles. Hard walk for someone my and Stu’s age.”

  “I don’t see that an extra twenty miles will make any difference to us.” Carter stretched and tried to cover a yawn. “We’ve been traveling in circles for days.”

  Gabe nodded in agreement. “I could monitor her condition in the backseat of the Hummer while Patrick drives.”

  “If you think…” Max felt his resolve caving.

  “We’ll do it,” Shelby said. “But we should check with Patrick and Lanh first. This has to be a unanimous decision.”

  “They’ll agree,” Stu said with confidence. “See, we haven’t got to the good part yet. How we’re going to thank you.”

  “But you already fed us,” Bianca pointed out. “From supplies I’m sure you needed.”

  Stu thumped his walking stick against the ground again, a mischievous grin spreading across his face. “That was nothing. I was listening when you told us what you’ve been through and where you’re going. What you ne
ed is a way across the Red River—a way that no one else knows about, a way that won’t be blocked.”

  “And you know of one?” Max didn’t even attempt to keep the skepticism out of his voice.

  “Sure do. I’ll even draw it on the map.”

  FORTY-SEVEN

  An hour later, Shelby embraced Stu, who had tears running down his weathered cheeks.

  “I know Mary Jane can be hard to get along with, but she loves her sister and would do anything for her.” He added as an afterthought, “Or me. She’d do anything for me.”

  “I understand that. I do. We’ll take good care of Mary Jo.”

  All three vehicles had been moved over to the small clapboard house. Shelby wanted to continue straight to the Dodge, but instead she walked over to the Hummer. Mary Jo had been loaded so that she was lying down in the backseat. Pillows were stacked under her head and tucked around her body. The same quilt that had covered her in the daybed now rested across her in the Hummer.

  There was enough room, even with her lying down, for Gabe to sit beside her. “I’ll monitor her condition. We’ll do our best to ensure she makes it to her son’s.”

  “I trust she will.” Mary Jane bent over, kissed her sister on the cheek, and whispered something in her ear. Then she turned and began to walk away from the Hummer, nearly bumping into Shelby.

  What could Shelby say to this woman? That everything would turn out fine? Not to worry? That she was doing the right thing? The first two she couldn’t guarantee, and the last she didn’t know. What she did know was that she saw much of herself in this woman’s eyes.

  The bond between twins was strong—she’d always heard that. Was it as strong as the bond between a mother and child? Maybe. The love and pain shining in this woman’s eyes reflected Shelby’s own every time she wondered how Carter would survive in this world turned upside down. She’d always hated empty platitudes, so instead of offering false condolences, she said, “Thank you for allowing us to be a part of this. For having a hand in granting her last wish.”

  The tears didn’t spill from Mary Jane’s eyes, but she stared at the ground for a moment, pulling her bottom lip in between her teeth. When she looked up, a steely resolve had returned. “I knew you were good people the moment I laid eyes on you. Knew you didn’t trust me, and that was okay because you shouldn’t trust just anyone these days. You have to watch and discern. You have to listen to the voice inside your head and your heart. I knew you were good people, and I’m sure that you will do the best you can to transport Mary Jo.”