by Kate Wilhelm
As she drew, Molly thought: millions of people, hundreds of millions of people, all gone. She drew the ruined Washington Monument, the broken statue of Lincoln and the words of the inscription that remained on the pedestal: One nation indi . . . She drew the skeletal frame of the Supreme Court Building . . .
They didn’t move camp to the city, but slept aboard the boat every night. They were amassing too much material to take back with them; every evening when they left the city they took back loads of records, books, maps, charts, and after the evening meal each of them went over his own stack of material and tried to sort it. They made extensive notes about the condition of the buildings they explored, the contents, the usefulness of the material in them. The next expedition would be able to go straight to work.
There were the skeletons, some of them on top of the rubble, some half buried, others in the buildings. How easily they could ignore them, Ben mused. Another species, extinct now, a pity. Pass on.
On the ninth evening they made the final choices of what to pack in the boat. They found an intact room in a partially destroyed building and stored the surplus material there for the next group.
On the tenth day they started for home, this time rowing against the current, with a fresh breeze blowing from the northeast, puffing the large single sail they had not been able to use until now. Lewis attached the tiller, and the wind drove them up the river.
Fly, fly! Molly silently urged the boat. She stood in the prow and sang out the hazards, some of them almost before they came into sight. There was a tree stump there, she remembered; and again, a train engine; a sand bar . . . In the afternoon the wind shifted and blew in from due north, and they had to take down the sail or risk being driven onto shore. Gradually the excitement they had all felt earlier gave way to dogged determination, and finally to mindless patience, and when they stopped for the night they all knew they had traveled little more than half the distance they had traveled on this leg of their journey toward the city.
That night Molly dreamed of dancing figures. Joyously she ran toward them, arms outstretched, her feet not touching the ground at all as she raced to join them. Then the air thickened and shimmered and the figures were distorted, and when one of them looked at her, the outline of her face was all wrong, her features wrong, one eye too high, her mouth bent out of shape. Molly stopped, staring at the grotesque face. She was drawn toward it relentlessly through the thick air that changed everything. She struggled and tried to hang back, but her feet moved, her body followed, and she could feel the resisting air close about her suffocatingly. The caricature of her own face grimaced, and the figure raised snake-like arms toward her. Molly came wide awake suddenly, and for several moments didn’t know where she was. Someone was shouting.
It was Thomas, she realized, and Ben and Lewis were struggling with him, getting him out of his bunk, toward the bow of the boat, the canopied section. Harvey moved to the rear and gradually quiet returned, but it was a long time before Molly could go back to sleep.
By the third day the return trip had turned into a nightmare. The wind became gusty, more dangerous than helpful, and they no longer tried to use the sail. The current was swifter, the water muddy. It must have rained much more inland than it had in Washington. Also, the air had a chill that persisted until midday, when the sun became too hot for the warm clothing they had put on earlier. By sundown it was too cool for the lighter garments they had changed into at the lunch break. They were always too hot or too cold.
Ben and Lewis withdrew from the others and watched the sunset from a rise over the river. “They’re hungry, that’s part of the trouble,” Ben said. Lewis nodded. “Also, Molly has started her menstrual period and she won’t let anyone near her. She nearly bit poor Harvey’s head off last night.”
“I’m not worried about Harvey,” Lewis said.
“I know. I don’t know if Thomas is going to make it or not. I tranquilized him at dinner. I don’t know from one day to the next what to expect from him.”
“We can’t carry a dead weight home with us,” Lewis said grimly. “Even with strict rationing, food’s going to be a problem. If he’s tranquilized, he’ll still need to eat, someone else will have to row for him .
“We’ll take him back with us,” Ben said, and suddenly he was in command. “We’ll need to study him, even if he goes home in restraints.”
For a moment they were both silent. “It’s the separation, isn’t it?” Lewis looked south, toward home. “No one predicted anything like this. We’re not like them! We have to scrap the past, the history books, everything. No one predicted this,” he said again quietly. “If we get back, we have to make them understand what happens to us away from our own kind.”
“We’ll get back,” Ben said. “And that’s why I need Thomas. Who could have foreseen this? Now that we’re aware of how different we are from them, we’ll be looking harder. I wonder where else differences will show up when we’re not expecting them to.”
Lewis stood up. “Coming back?”
“In a minute.”
He watched Lewis slip down the embankment and board the boat; then he looked at the sky once more. Men had gone out there, he thought in wonder, and he couldn’t think why. Singly and in small groups they had gone into strange lands, across wide seas, had climbed mountains where no human foot had ever trod. And he couldn’t think why they had done those things. What impulse had driven them from their own kind to perish alone, or among strangers? All those ruined houses they had seen, like the old Sumner house in the valley, designed for one, two, three people, lived in by so few people, deliberately isolating themselves from others of their own kind. Why?
The family used isolation for punishment. A disobedient child left alone in a small room for ten minutes emerged contrite, all traces of rebellion eradicated. They had used isolation to punish David. The doctors knew the full story of the last months that David had lived among them. When he became a threat, they had isolated him permanently, punishment enough. And yet those other men of the distant past had sought isolation, and Ben couldn’t think why.
Chapter 13
For two days it had been raining; the wind was gusting at thirty knots and increasing. “We have to get the boat out of the water,” Lewis said.
They had covered the entire boat with oiled canvas, but water seeped in through cracks and now and then a wave lapped over the side and spilled down into the boat. More and more frequently something heavy rubbed against the boat or crashed into it.
Molly pumped and visualized the river behind them. There had been a bank hours back, but since then there had been no place they could land safely.
“An hour,” Lewis said, as if answering her thoughts. “Shouldn’t take more than an hour to get to that low bank.”
“We can’t go back!” Thomas shouted.
“We can’t stay here!” Harvey snapped at him. “Don’t be an idiot! We’re going to get rammed!”
“I won’t go back!”
“What do you think, Ben?” Lewis asked.
They were huddled together in the prow; Molly was in the midsection manning the pump doggedly, trying to pretend her aching muscles away. The boat shuddered under a new impact, and Ben nodded.
“Can’t stay here. Not going to be a picnic getting back downriver.”
“Let’s get at it,” Lewis said, and stood up.
They were all wet and cold, and afraid. They were within sight of the swirling waters of the Shenandoah where it joined the Potomac, and the eddies that had nearly swamped them on the first leg of their trip now threatened to break the boat apart. They could get no closer to the Shenandoah until the flood subsided.
“Thomas, relieve Molly at the pump. And, Thomas, remember, you don’t think of anything but that pump! And you keep it going!”
Molly got up, continuing to pump until Thomas was in place, ready to take over without interruption. As she started for the rear oar, Lewis said, “You take the prow.” They put the oars back
in the locks. The rain pounded them, and Thomas pumped harder. The water was sloshing about their feet, and when the lines to shore were untied the boat swung sharply into the river. The water inside the boat surged back and forth.
“Log! Coming fast! Eight o’clock!” Molly yelled.
They turned the boat, and it shot forward and they were flashing down the river, keeping abreast of the log that was off to their left.
“Stump! Twelve o’clock! Twenty yards!” Molly hardly had time to get the words out. They jerked the boat to the left and flew past the stump. The flood had changed everything. The stump had been ashore when they passed it before. The current became swifter, and they fought to get closer in. “Tree! One o’clock! Twenty yards!” They veered out again and now the log that was pacing them tumbled and came dangerously close. “Log! Nine o’clock! Three yards!”
And on they went in the blinding rain, flying past a newly created shoreline, staying even with the massive log that turned and tumbled alongside them. Suddenly Molly saw the low spot and cried, “Land! Two o’clock, twenty yards!” They drove in sharply to shore. The boat dragged on something hidden in the muddy water and the front half swung out toward the river. It rocked violently and water sloshed in over the side. Lewis and Ben quickly jumped out and, with the brown water swirling about their chests, waded toward shore, dragging the boat in after them. The boat grated over mud and stones, and now the others jumped into the water and dragged the boat higher until it was beached, tilted, but for the moment safe. Molly lay in the mud panting until Lewis said, “We’ve got to get it higher. The river’s rising fast.”
It rained throughout the night and they had to move the boat a second time; then the rain stopped and the sun shone, and that night there was a frost.
Ben cut the rations again. The storm had cost them five more days, and the river was swifter when they returned to it, their progress slower than ever.
Thomas was in the worst shape, Ben thought. He was withdrawn, sunken in depression from which no one could rouse him. Jed was next hardest hit. In time, no doubt, his symptoms would match Thomas’s. Harvey was irritable; he had turned sullen and suspicious of everyone. He suspected that Ben and Lewis were stealing his food, and he watched them intently at mealtime. Molly was haggard, and she looked haunted; her eyes kept turning toward the south and home, and she seemed to be listening, always listening. Lewis was intent on maintaining the boat, but when he stopped working, that same look was on his big face: listening, watching, waiting. Ben couldn’t assess the changes in himself. He knew they were there. Often he would look up suddenly, certain someone had spoken his name softly, only to find no one nearby, no one paying any attention to him. Sometimes he had the feeling that there was a danger he couldn’t see, something hanging over him that made him look to the sky, search the trees. But there was never anything to see. . . .
He wondered suddenly when all sexual activity had stopped. In Washington, or immediately after they left. He had decided it wasn’t working for him. It was too hard to pretend the other men were his brothers; finally, it had been too unsatisfactory, too frustrating. Somehow it had been better with Molly if only because no pretense had been necessary, but even that had failed. Two people trying to become one, neither quite knowing what the other needed or wanted. Or maybe it was hunger that killed the sexual appetite. He wrote in his notebooks.
Molly, watching him, felt as if a thick clear wall separated her from every living thing on earth. Nothing could get through the wall, nothing could touch her in any way, and where the feeling had aroused terror, never fully dormant any longer, now it simply bemused her to think of it. Every day they got closer to home, and curiously it seemed less from their own efforts than from an irresistible pull. They were powerless not to return home. The pull was steady, dragging them back just as they had dragged the boat up the bank to save it from the flood. Their every act was instinctive. And the terror? She didn’t know its source, only that waves of terror coursed through her unexpectedly, and when they did, she felt weak and cold. She could feel her facial muscles tighten during those times, and she was aware of the way her heart leaped, then paused, then raced.
And often when she had been at the oars for a long time, something else happened, and she felt a release. At those times strange visions came to her, strange thoughts that seemed untranslatable into words. She looked about in wonder and the world she saw was unfamiliar, the words she would have used to describe it useless, and only color would do, color and line and light. The terror was stilled, and a gentle peace filled her. Gradually the peace would give way to fatigue and hunger and fear, and then she could mock herself and the visions, and even while mocking, yearn for it all to happen again.
Sometimes when she was forward, watching for hazards, it was almost as if she were alone with the river that seemed to have a voice, and infinite wisdom. The voice murmured too softly to make out the words, but the rhythms were unmistakable: it was speech. One day she wept because she could not understand what it was saying to her. Ben’s hand on her shoulder roused her, and she stared at him blankly.
“Did you hear it too?” she asked, keeping her voice as soft as the river’s.
“What?” He sounded too brusque, too harsh, and she pulled away. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing. Nothing. I’m just tired.”
“Molly, I heard nothing! And you heard nothing! We’re pulling in to rest, stretch our legs. You get some tea.”
“All right,” she said, and started around him. But then she paused. “What was it we heard, Ben? It isn’t the river, is it?”
“I told you I heard nothing!” He turned away from her and stood stiffly in the prow of the boat to guide the men at the oars in to shore.
When they turned the last curve in the river and came upon the familiar fields, they had been away from their brothers and sisters for forty-nine days. Thomas and Jed were both drugged into insensibility. The others rowed numbly, starved, dull-eyed, obeying a command stronger than the body’s command to stop. When small boats approached and hands took the lines and towed them to the dock, they continued to stare ahead, not believing yet, still in a recurring dream where this had happened repeatedly.
Molly was pulled to her feet and led ashore. She stared at her sisters, who were strangers to her. And this too was a recurring dream, a nightmare. She swayed, and was grateful for the blackness that descended on her.
The sunshine was soft in the room when Molly opened her eyes; it was very early morning and the air was cool and fresh. There were flowers everywhere. Asters and chrysanthemums, purples, yellows, creamy whites. There were dahlias the size of dinner plates, shocking pink, scarlet. The bed was absolutely still, no water lapping about it, no rocking motions. No odors of sweat and moldy clothing. She felt clean and warm and dry.
“I thought I heard you,” someone said.
Molly looked at the other side of the bed. Miri, or Meg, or . . . She couldn’t tell which one.
“Martha has gone for your breakfast,” the girl said.
Miriam joined them and sat on the edge of Molly’s bed. “How are you now?”
“I’m all right. I’ll get up.”
“No, of course you won’t get up. Breakfast first, then a rubdown and a manicure, and anything else we can think of that will make you more comfortable, and then if you don’t fall asleep again, and if you still want to get up, then you may.” Miriam laughed gently at her as Molly started to rise and sank back down again.
“You’ve been sleeping for two days,” said Miri, or Meg, or whoever it was. “Barry’s been here four times to check on you. He said you need to sleep all you can, and eat all you can.”
There were dim memories of rousing, of drinking broth, of being bathed, but the memories refused to come into sharp focus.
“Are the others all right?” she asked.
“They’re all fine,” Miriam said soothingly.
“Thomas?”
“He’s in the hospital, but he�
�ll be fine too.”
For many days they babied her; her blistered hands healed and her back stopped aching, and she regained some of the weight she had lost.
But she had changed, she thought, studying herself in the large mirror at the end of the room. Of course, she was still thin and gaunt. She looked at Miri’s smooth face, and knew the difference lay deeper than that. Miri looked empty. When the animation faded, when she was no longer laughing or talking, there was nothing there. Her face became a mask that hid nothing.
“We’ll never let you out of sight again!” Martha whispered, coming up behind her. The others echoed it vehemently.
“I thought of you every day, almost every minute,” Miri said.
“And we all thought of you together each evening after dinner. We just sat here in a circle on the mat and thought of you,” Melissa said.
“Especially when it got so long,” Miri said in a whisper. “We were so afraid. We kept calling you and calling you, silently, but all of us together. Calling you home over and over.”
“I heard you,” Molly said. Her voice sounded almost harsh. She saw Miriam shake her head at the sisters, and they fell silent. “We all heard you calling. You brought us home,” Molly said, softening her voice with an effort.
They hadn’t asked her anything about the trip, about Washington, about her sketchbooks, which they had unpacked and must have looked at. Several times she had started to speak of the river, the ruins, and each time she had failed. There was no way she could make them understand. Presently she would have to get to work on the sketches, using them as guides and drawing in detail what she had seen, what it had been like from start to finish. But she didn’t want to speak of it. Instead they talked of the valley and what had happened in the seven weeks of Molly’s absence. Nothing, she thought. Nothing at all. Everything was exactly as it always had been.
The sisters had been excused from work in order to speed Molly’s recovery. They chatted and gossiped and caught up on mending and took walks and read together, and as Molly’s strength returned, they played together on the mat in the middle of the room. Molly took no part in their play. Toward the end of the week, when they dragged the mat out and opened it, Miriam poured small glasses of amber wine and they toasted Molly and drew her to the mat with them. Her head was spinning pleasantly and she looked at Miriam, who smiled at her.