The Shelter Cycle (19 page)

“Did they go this way?”

“That's the direction they'll go, yes,” Jeremy said. “Colville, here, walk with me.”

“But what about the girl?”

“She appears to be quite happy, doesn't she?” Jeremy raised his hand to smooth back his hair, lowered it to grasp where his beard had been; he smiled, as if surprised by the skin of his face. “We can observe and we can learn. Her path is her path.”

Colville followed Jeremy through a stand of aspens, Kilo running ahead. They walked in silence, Colville trying to figure what to say, glancing back. After ten minutes, they reached a road that stretched down a slope, disappeared around a bend.

“This way,” Jeremy said, pointing. “Less than ten miles' walking, to Baker City, but I bet someone will pick you up along the way.”

“Her path is living in the woods with that man?” Colville said.

“One thing,” Jeremy said, “one thing the girl did, on her path, was to bring you to Francine again. That's the main thing. And the girl's path, there's much to be learned from it. Pay attention. She is a young woman of great Light.”

Colville thought he heard a car approaching, but none came. When he looked back, Jeremy was holding out an apple with a blue sticker on it, from a grocery store.

“You've done well,” he said. “So far. You'll figure it out as you go, as you have. Just keep paying attention; let your path reveal itself.” He pointed down the highway. “You better use the daylight, though.”

“And Kilo?”

“He's coming with me.” With that, Jeremy squinted up at the sky, nodded once, then turned away. “Kilo!”

Colville could only stand there and watch as Jeremy slipped deeper into the forest; he moved so smoothly, easily, his close-cropped head hardly rising or falling as he walked in and out between the trees, around deadfalls and boulders, Kilo following close behind.

 

 

 

The blouses and dresses on the clothesline were mostly shades of purple, blowing hard in the wind, sideways and up and down. A few were pastel blue or green, none red or black or orange, which were unacceptable colors. They symbolized evil. The Messenger taught that even red roses weren't created by God; they were made out of man's anger. The rage went into the atmos­phere and saturated the elements or the beings who made the roses. Roses were meant to be lavender, pink, yellow, or white.

I was trying to help Mrs. Young on this morning. I stretched to reach the line, dropped clothespins in the tall, dry grass. The sun was weaker now, the nights cold. The first snow hadn't fall- en yet. All along the yellow hillsides and up toward the canyon other clotheslines waved the same colors, like places where the ground had somehow torn open and blue and green and purple were seeping out.

I could hear heavy machinery, some shelters still being dug, others backfilled. The drills were more frequent now, the preparations more frenzied and anxious.

Down the slope, the Kletter boys were digging in the hillside, a pile of dark dirt next to the hole. Colville went down there to check on their progress and now returned, climbing fast and on all fours, breathing hard when he reached us. He ran a stick along the trailer's metal side, shouted something, threw the stick like a spear up toward the clouds. His white-blond hair blew out sideways, like it was rooted in his brain.

Being close to Mrs. Young made me feel how confused and clumsy and without purpose my own body was. She was talking about the Light she felt, about her baby, about how her body could scarcely contain the energy inside it. She told me about all the preparations she was making, a scrapbook that held pictures of jewels and their alchemical structures along with pictures of cells. The jewels would transmit energy to the baby while Mrs. Young decreed over the book. The diamond would crystallize the baby's will; the sapphire would provide fearlessness, the amethyst forgiveness and transmutation.

I reached for more clothespins, careful as I walked wide around Mrs. Young, afraid to brush against her belly. She said my name, reached out to touch my shoulder. There was a shock, there, a jolt from her body to mine.

T
HE BABY WAS NAKED
except for a diaper and the yellow bracelets at her wrist and ankle, a white blindfold to protect her eyes. Her skin glowed. Wells reached out and touched the clear plastic of the incubator. He leaned close. Her fingers and toes curled, so tiny, her dark hair growing in every direction. She kicked her leg. Her mouth twitched, nursed at the air. His daughter. She was five weeks premature, but healthy—she was only in the incubator as a precaution. She'd been born in the ambulance, on the way to this hospital, here in Livingston.

He was alone in the room with her. Two empty, dark incubators in the corner, a changing table, a cart of diapers and swaddling blankets. The lights hummed, shone blue. From the hallway, distant voices, passing footsteps. The baby had come last night, almost a day ago. Francine had been sleeping, recovering, during the two hours since Wells had arrived.

“Mr. Davidson?” A nurse stood in the door, behind him.

He turned. “Is she awake?”

“Probably not. It's hard to know with the eye shields on, though.”

“I meant my wife,” he said, “whether my wife's awake.”

“Would you like me to check?”

“That's all right,” he said. “I was about to.”

The nurse stepped closer, next to him, looking down at the baby. “We'll take her out to feed and change her in an hour or so,” she said. “You can hold her, then.”

“Good,” he said. “I'll be back.”

The white walls confused him; every hallway looked the same. And then, as he walked along a windowed wall, he saw Maya. She waved to him from a waiting room.

“I just left her,” she said. “She's still sleeping.”

“Am I going the right way? I'll sit with her.”

Maya reached out, touched his arm as he turned back toward the hall. “The paramedics from the ambulance last night came by to check on her.”

“Are they still here? I'd like to thank them.”

“They got called away,” she said. “But I talked to them. They told me they got lucky—the baby was so blue it was almost purple. And of course Francine wouldn't sit still. The one guy showed me a bruise on his neck where she kicked him.”

Behind Maya the waiting room was empty. Muddy boot prints tracked back and forth across the linoleum floor.

“Also,” she said, “your car's here. Francine's car. They said it's fine, the tow-truck people—it was just stuck in the snow.”

“Where was it?”

“Somewhere down near Gardiner, I think. She told me she was trying to drive home, back through Yellowstone, but I think the park's been closed for the winter, by the storms.”

“Has she said anything?”

“About what?” Maya said.

“I just wish I'd been there, that she'd told me—did she say anything yesterday about what she was doing, or why?”

“She just wanted to come back for a day or two—that's all she said.”

“She should have told me,” he said.

“Yes,” Maya said. “She should have. But what matters is the baby, and that Francine's okay.”

“What's the room number, again?”

“One twenty-four. Are you okay?”

Wells went back in the direction he'd come from, turned right, then paused at the door. Slowly he eased it open.

Francine slept, ten feet away, the head of the bed tilted up so she faced him. Her bare arms were outside the blankets, an IV running to one arm, the yellow bracelet on the wrist of the other. The lamp on the bedside table shone faintly. He stepped closer.

She looked tired, and calm. Her hair was spread across the pillow, her eyes closed, her lips faintly twitching. She had done it, and he had been far away, and now he was here. He picked up her hand, held it; she stirred, and for a moment it seemed she might awaken. She settled again. It had been days, only days since he'd seen her. It felt much longer.

“You're here,” Francine said, her lips barely moving, her eyes still closed.

“Yes,” he said. “Maya called me.”

Francine didn't say anything, didn't move. He looked away, at the window, the drawn blinds. He squeezed her hand; she squeezed back.

“I saw the baby,” he said. “They say she's doing really well. I haven't held her yet. She's beautiful.”

Francine smiled. She opened her eyes halfway, turned her head to look at him.

“When can we go home?” she said.

F
ROM THE BACK SEAT
Francine could see past Wells's head as he drove, and through the windshield, through the thick flakes of snow that fell sideways, slanting down. Tall drifts on each shoulder narrowed the highway; semitrailers rushed close, coming from the other direction.

The baby wore a blue stocking cap, her dark hair sticking out one side. Her long eyelashes shifted, and her greenish blue eyes opened. She stared at Francine, those eyes halfway focused, as if she knew something, as if she was not at all surprised to find herself here. And then she closed her eyes and slept again.

They were south of West Yellowstone, now, the Tetons rising on the left. Past Rexburg, heading for Pocatello. Wells tapped a rhythm on the lid of the white plastic bucket in the passenger seat. He still hadn't asked what was in it.

“I can't wait to get home,” she said. “It'll be so nice to get her settled, to sleep in our bed, to see old Kilo.”

“Three hours, maybe,” he said. “A little longer if we stop or the weather gets worse. I wish we could have gone down 89. Past where you grew up and everything. I'd have liked to see that.”

“There's not much to see anymore,” she said. “And this road is open. This is the way I drove, coming up the other night.”

“Kilo went missing,” Wells said. “He's out, somewhere. Probably looking for you.”

“He didn't find me.”

“Once you're home, he'll come back.” Wells checked the rearview mirror. “Is she sleeping?”

“I think so.”

Francine gazed out at the pines ticking past, her head against the window. She closed her eyes. Highway 89 was the route she'd wanted to take, two days ago, when she'd left the hot springs. She'd felt the pull toward the Heart; she'd wanted to drive close, to see it, for the baby inside her to feel it. And she'd tried—she'd driven down Paradise Valley, powdery snow drifting sideways across the highway, toward Gardiner. She turned off at Corwin Springs, remembering all the times with her family in the station wagon, safe, the cars of others in the Activity in front of and behind them. It felt so close to the same, her anticipation rising—she crossed the rickety bridge, the half-frozen river rushing below; she drove past the blue and purple buildings, past King Arthur's Court and up into the narrow canyon that led to the Heart. The air thickened around her, the pull stronger, the treetops leaning in above the road. But the snow grew too deep before she could get as close as she wanted, and the car slid sideways into a ditch when she tried to turn around. It was then that her water broke, that the contractions started. She was stranded for almost an hour before the two men—one in a truck, one on a snowmobile—found her. They called the ambulance and waited with her until it came. The men were from the Activity, but she didn't know them. They didn't even know anyone she knew.

“Are you asleep?” Wells said.

“No,” she said. “Not yet.”

“While you were gone—” He glanced back in the rearview mirror, his sweet, worried eyes, then through the windshield again. “Why did you go like that?”

“I don't know,” she said. “I just did it.”

“You should have told me.”

“I'm sorry.”

“It felt,” he said. “It felt like you were trying to get away.”

“That's not it,” she said. “That's not right.”

“I would've understood,” he said. “Or tried to. I think I understand better, now.”

Outside, the snow came down thicker, faster. He switched on the wipers, switched them off.

“Maybe I shouldn't have,” he said. “Maybe you'll be angry, but I read about it—everything you wrote, about when you were growing up.”

Draft horses stood out in a field, snow on their broad backs. Tall fences against the elk surrounded haystacks. Farther away, a small herd of antelope shifted at the sound of the car, then leapt fluidly over a wheeled irrigation line that had been left out for the winter.

“Are you warm enough, back there?”

“Yes.”

“It really made me miss you,” he said. “Reading it did. Are you mad?”

“I didn't write it for you.”

“You were gone. I didn't know—”

“It's fine,” she said. “Maybe it's better, I think it is—I'm glad you read it. But I wrote it for myself.” Shifting in her seat, she looked at the sleeping baby's smooth face, adjusted the blankets. “I wrote it for her, too. So she could understand.”