The Village Thinks
Feb. 2nd, 2007 04:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
i_idThis is dreadfully long.
It's an AU take on Z and his original webbers, written for an English seminar. Mostly written between midnight and 4 in the morning, mind you, so it's dreadful drivel. Don't even bother.
That said, constructive criticism is always appreciated. <3
It's an AU take on Z and his original webbers, written for an English seminar. Mostly written between midnight and 4 in the morning, mind you, so it's dreadful drivel. Don't even bother.
The Village Thinks
I meet Andre first in Allen’s skin, before I knew anything about them. I didn’t know it at the time. He was wearing that man like a suit when he saved my son, and I-
I’m sorry, this is getting confusing. I should start at the beginning.
When Jacob was alive, we liked to vacation in the San Juan Islands. Beautiful place, up near the border. Whenever we had a long weekend, the two of us would pile into my truck with our camping gear in the back and the little sailboat on its trailer, and head the two hours north. It was our guy thing. My girlfriends sometimes went camping with us in other places, but sailing was always just us.
It always went a certain way. We’d reach Anacortes about lunch time. A small town, you know the sort of place. One main street about a mile long, with franchises at one end and historical buildings and quaint little shops at the other. Jacob always pointed out the nautical flags on the light-posts, and he loved to go to all the marinas and look at the fishing boats.
The day we met Andre and Allen was in June, about two years ago. We were in the marina, launching our little sailboat, Batman. (She was black and yellow, and I let him name her.) Jacob was directing the launch-men, or trying to. They didn’t take a lot of notice of an eight-year-old boy, but he was having fun, waving them so seriously a little left or right as they lowered the boat in their great sling. I went to buy some fuel, only a few steps away, but by the time I heard the running feet, and the shouts, I couldn’t see him. My heart stopped with the sudden splash.
“Right there!” shouted a deep voice.
“Stop the sling!” yelled another, as I pushed my way back across the crowded dock, stumbling over what suddenly felt like a forest of tubes and ropes there for no reason other to trip me up. “Stop!” they yelled again, louder. “It’s going to land on top of them!”
My boat shuddered to a stop in the air just as I reached the edge of the dock, barely a foot above the surface. All I could see beneath her was the commotion of two bodies in the water, but I could hear Jacob’s panicked shouts.
“He fell in!” exclaimed a woman at my elbow, eager to impart her part of this excitement. I was about to jump in myself, but the man who’d sold me my gas grabbed onto the back of my shirt.
“Ladder’s over here,” he shouted past me to the man who was swimming now out from under Batman with my son held against his chest. I began to breathe again, and he let go as I pushed past the gawkers to the ladder, almost grabbing my son out of his rescuer’s arms when they reached it.
“Thank you,” I babbled over and over, holding the soaked, squirming boy to my chest. The man who climbed out of the water grinned, shaking off a persistent strand of seaweed from his cuff.
“No need for that,” he said. His New Jersey accent was strangely nasal for such a large man; he stood at least a foot taller than me, gruff and craggy and gaunt. He wrung out the hem of his shirt over the edge of the dock theatrically, as if saving small boys was something he did every day. “The kid’s a good swimmer. I got wet for nothing.”
In my arms, Jacob’s panicked noises had already stopped, and he returned the man’s friendly grin with a nervous smile of his own. “‘Nk you,” he said. I wasn’t ready to put him down. Now or ever.
“I’m Allen,” the giant said, offering Jacob a wide hand, which he shook solemnly. His eyes were never still, constantly flicking between us and the business resuming around us on the dock.
“M’Jake,” my son said shyly.
“Jacob Solomon,” I filled in when the hand was offered to me. “My son. And I’m Caleb.”
The launch-man shouted at me to come and get my boat then. I set Jacob down carefully, well away from the edge. “Stay here and don’t move,” I told him, reluctant to let go. “I’ll be right back for you.” I knew he was a good swimmer, but that hadn’t stopped the fear of seeing him in the water. I felt a strange reassurance, when I went to handle the lines and move Batman to a slip, to see Allen sit down beside the boy. Securing the boat, I watched him draw my shy son into conversation almost effortlessly. I set her lines and put the fuel aboard, and then ducked aboard and leaned down into the tiny cabin to get what I should have had out before I ever let Jacob on the dock; his life-jacket.
When I rejoined them, Jacob grinned up at me, showing me the piece of heavy twine in which our new friend had just shown him how to tie a sheet bend. “Dad! Mr. Allen lives on an Island!”
When I looked to him, he nodded confirmation. His eyes flicked past me to the transom of my boat, which said “Seattle, WA,” under the copyright-infringing Batsignal painted there. “It’s a couple of us, up on Cypress.” He mentioned the name of the island casually, a test for us south-sounders. I looked in the right direction, west and a little bit north to where the tall island could be seen rising beyond the town, across the invisible Guemes Channel.
“I thought that island was all state property.”
“It is.” He sounded approving. I’d apparently passed. “We’re on a land trust, technically doing research in self-sufficiency for the University. And counting eagles’ nests. Mostly, though, we just farm.”
“Where?” I asked, surprised. I’d been to Cypress before; with the exception of a few high saddles, the island was uniformly steep and thickly treed. A good place for hunting the small island deer, but not, I imagined, for farming.
“The airstrip, up on the south height.” He pointed at the dim pale patch on the dark green island. “About two hours hike up the logging roads, if you’re ever in the neighborhood. Stop by.”
He had to get going, and our conversation wasn’t much longer. We walked with him to his boat, a workmanlike little open boat, and he introduced us to his fellow islander, Irene, who had accompanied him. They were just here to shop for the things they couldn’t make themselves, the two explained as they made ready to leave. Wheat flour and sugar, shoes and a few DVDs.
“It was lovely to meet you,” Irene said, untying their stern-line while Allen started the engine. Her accent was Jersey too, though I’d originally thought it something else, and her eyes flicked up at me in precisely the way Allen’s had. Then the moment’s disconcertion was passed, and she was just a middle-aged woman again, jumping onto the boat as it drifted free. “Come and visit!” she called back, and waved. Jacob waved like a monkey until they vanished into the mill of boats that crowded the marina.
There was something about them that clung oddly to the edges of my mind, afterwards. Jacob and I took our weekend, though we didn’t go to Cypress, and he forgot all about them, I’m sure. We both came home sunburned and full of plans for the next time. I intended to go and visit them, and I got the maps of the island. The roads he’d mentioned looked steep, but doable. Maybe four miles, each way. And there seemed to be lakes to stop and see and perhaps splash in. I mentioned the idea to the boy, and he seemed all for it. Something new, after all.
He never got to go.
It was my fault. The truck I had then, a ‘91 Ford piece of junk, was on its last wheels, and I should have had the brakes checked. I shouldn’t have driven so tired. I shouldn’t have let him miss the bus, agreeing to drive him to school. I shouldn’t have followed so close in heavy traffic. But I did, on a rainy morning in September, and I rear-ended a flatbed full of lumber on the off-ramp. When I woke up in the hospital, he was gone.
My life was over, understand. It had always been just me and Jacob, the two of us together. His mother, less said about her the better, really. I named him, I raised him, and he was the whole of me. And I killed him. There’s nothing you can do after a thing like that that’s not going to taste ashen and filthy in your mouth. How could I think about going on with my life? What sort of faithless father was I?
I sank into his death like quicksand. I can admit that now. I almost let it kill me. I didn’t drink, but I acted like a drinker. Never sleeping, spending my nights drifting downtown. My girlfriend left me before the funeral, and I barely noticed. I’m not precisely sure when I lost my job, but I hadn’t gone in weeks by then. It didn’t matter. I lived off of the money I’d been saving to send Jacob to college. Pulled everything out of that account and closed it down, because it had his name on it. He was only eight and I had enough for his first two years. I’d been so proud of myself. Of us.
I still don’t know why my mind kept turning back to that day when Jacob almost drowned. I had nothing left. I wanted to talk to Allen again. He’d saved Jacob once.
No, I knew he couldn’t bring him back. But he’d saved him once. He’d held a little of his life in his hands. I needed to see him again. I had no way of getting in touch, except for one.
It wasn’t a good time to be out sailing. The wind was too stiff for little Batman, the chop too steep. Jacob would have spent the whole crossing holed up in the tiny cabin with his Gameboy, and I kept leaning to see if I’d see him in there. But it was just me alone with the spray in my face. I couldn’t tell if any of the salt drops running down were warm, and I was glad. I fought my way up Guemes Channel and across Bellingham Channel, into Secret Harbor. I knew I wasn’t supposed to, but I left Batman on the beach there, hauled above the tideline into the grass with a line looped around a tree. I wasn’t ready for a hike, I had no water-bottle, no hiking shoes. All I’d done before I left home was look at my maps, find the only place on the island that might hold the place Allen had described.
True to my luck that week, it began to rain just as I entered the trees. The coat I’d grabbed that morning was far from being foul weather gear, but again, it hardly mattered to me. I hunched my shoulders, found the trail, and put one foot in front of the other. Speed didn’t matter. I’d get there. I had no deadlines, no goal, no pressure. Just this driving need.... I still can’t understand it.
Four miles in the mud and forest. Little mud-colored salamanders skittered away from my feet as I went, and all I could think of was the way Jacob would have tried to catch them. I almost caught one for him, but the flashing of their red bellies disarmed me in a way I have no words for. I just kept climbing.
It was almost dark when I reached the end of the trail, the old airstrip that crowned this lobe of the mountainous island. Allen had mentioned farming, and I knew that this was the only place on the island flat enough to farm in this rainy corner of a rainy state. If I’d been wrong, I have no idea what I would have done, but there they were. A light gleamed at the far end of the long, pale field, and I headed towards it without pausing. The footing grew increasingly treacherous on the rocky ground as the light faded further. No moon, no stars. Heavy sullen clouds continued to pour out. Out of the trees, I was at the mercy of the rain and by the time I reached the building with the lit window, my clothes and hair were plastered to my body.
I stood in the square of light cast by that window for quite some time, I remember, staring at it but not seeing it. Dimly aware of other buildings around me in the woods, I hesitated. I didn’t know if Allen would be here. He could be in any one of these. But the only way to find out was to knock, so I shook the water out of my face and mounted the steps to the wide porch, and applied my fist to the door.
The house seemed startled. There was a sudden thrum of voices and of footsteps, and then the door flung open and I had to step back to avoid being hit by it. My heart sank. The man standing there was short and balding, not Allen. But his eyes flicked over me in just the same way, and then widened in what I was sure, very sure somehow, was recognition. He opened his mouth, but then shut it again and looked at me in polite, masked confusion.
“Can I help you?”
I pulled the lapels of my coat closer together. “Does Allen live here?” Stepped back, looked over at the darker houses.
The man looked me over again. “Allen? Someone’s here asking for you.” He stepped back, and I looked into the house for the first time. It was crowded with people, all staring at me. Two women and a child sat at a table spread with what looked like homework, and two more men occupied comfortable chairs in front of a fireplace. Allen rose out of a third, and I smiled helplessly to see him.
“Do you remember me?” I asked, praying. “Caleb Solomon. We met a few months ago, in Anacortes. On the docks?” I couldn’t say ‘when you rescued my son,’ though I wanted to.
Comprehension flashed on his face, his eyes flicking from me to the small man. “I remember you. Andre, this is Caleb. We met on the town run.”
Andre nodded and smiled, a very sweet smile. He gestured me in. “You chose a hell of a night. NOA’s predicting gale-force winds. Can I take your coat?”
I let him, peeling myself out of it. Everyone was still watching me, and I tried not to drip on their floor. “I know, I just-“
Allen interrupted my explanation with more introductions. “Caleb, you’ve stumbled into fire night, or you’d never have caught us all together. Irene, you’ve met, and that’s Laura and Rennette with her, and Don and Richard by the fire.”
I nodded to the chorus of ‘Hellos,’ and smiled at the little girl. She had to be Jacob’s age. The stocky man by the fire, Richard, looked like her.
“What brings you out here?” he was the first to ask. I had no idea how to tell all these people. I hadn’t come here for their pity.
“It’s... um.” I ran my hand through my hair, and wished for a towel. “It’s... I wanted to talk to Allen. I’m sorry, could we just...” I tipped my head back towards the door and the porch outside. “It’s... well, it’s important.”
“Sounds like it,” said Allen, frowning slightly. He glanced at Andre before nodding, and followed me back out into the rain-roaring night.
I leaned on one of the porch posts, gathering my thoughts. I’d had it all so neatly laid out on my way here, that long hike to think and plan. “Jacob died,” I began baldly, and tumbled on before he could interrupt me. And I told him everything. My culpability, my withdrawal from the world, the strange pull to come here. I talked to him the way I should have talked to a psychologist. And he just listened, amazingly. “I know I’m intruding and I’m sorry,” I finished finally, out of breath and with my throat tight. “But I can’t keep going by myself.”
His eyes flicked from me to the rain and I couldn’t watch them, so I looked at the way his sweater hung on him. He was even more gaunt than he’d been soaking wet on that dock. I wondered how old he was.
“I’m very sorry to hear that, Caleb. You’re not intruding.” A tiny pause. “Not on any of us. Come back inside? You can’t go home tonight anyway, and we have an extra bed somewhere, I’m sure.” No false empathy, no florid condolences. I soaked up his sincere sympathy, and only found more when I went inside.
“We overheard,” said Laura quietly when she brought me a cup of coffee. Andre nodded, and the men made room for me by the fire and in their conversation. I never questioned how they’d overheard me through the hammering of the rain on their metal roof, not then.
But I stayed. They helped me get very pleasantly drunk that night, after little Rennette went to bed, and Andre, whose house that one turned out to be, gave me his guest bedroom upstairs under the eaves. I slept like the dead.
The next day was too stormy to leave, so no one questioned when I didn’t. Or the day after. Instead, I threw myself in as general dogsbody, helping with the hundred small chores of a farm. The farm was almost a small commune. Aside from the main house, where Andre lived, there were four small cabins, a scattering of outbuildings, and a barn painted dark green and tucked well back into the woods that housed three horses, two cows, and a half-grown steer. And a mostly disassembled generator, which is where they put me to work. Don drafted me the second morning to help him scrub each piece in a tub of vinegar, laying them back out on the hard-swept wood floor once they were spotless.
“We depend on this machine,” he said gruffly, tapping the housing. “A little too much, but we like our electricity. We’re on the spare right now.” Don was no conversationalist, unless he was in a certain mood. It was a few hours before that mood hit him, a few hours of near-silent scrubbing broken only by a few conferrals about the placement of this part or that. I’d been enjoying the quiet work. Something about this place felt like a band loosening around my chest. I could breathe here without fearing I was betraying Jacob.
But eventually, Don’s eyes flicked up to me and back to his hands. “What’d you do, back on the mainland?” he asked, New Jersey touching his accent. It made him sound just a little like a gangster, and Don rather looked it.
“I was a writer,” I said, poking my ratty toothbrush into the cogs of the piece I was working on. Interest flared bright in his face as I finished, “For Journeys. It’s a travel magazine....”
“So, going to write an article about this place?” he asked with a chuckle.
I shook my head and didn’t answer. I’d never felt less like writing. Don looked disappointed for a moment, then shook his head as if shaking off a fly before getting back to work.
I didn’t leave when the storm let up, either. I kept finding things to do, and none of them commented when I kept showing up for meals. I repaired a corner of the chicken coop, and let Rennette teach me how to weed the carrot patch under the supervision of her father. One of the adults was always in sight, it seemed. Sometimes it felt as if I were always being watched with that same flickering gaze. Only the short man, Andre, never seemed to be checking up on me. He spent most of his time with Allen, though I was never sure what they were doing.
I’d been there a week when I realized something. I was helping Laura cook lunch in the big house, a big pot of potato soup. Everything in it was from this farm. But that’s not what I realized. I looked over from the gas stove at Rennette, who was sitting on a high stool peeling potatoes. She was a bright little girl, eagerly competent around the farm with quick fingers and long hair just the color Jacob’s had been. But I’d been there for seven days and I had yet to see her play. She had toys; there was a fantastic dollhouse on the porch of the cabin that was hers and Laura’s and Richard’s. But it was set up perfectly the way an adult might do it, and she spent her evenings doing problems out of one textbook or another, never complaining, though occasionally bored.
“How long have you lived out here?” I asked Laura as I stirred the milk over the heat.
“Hm?” She rinsed off her handful of chives, just picked from the window box. “Oh.... Almost twenty years? Nineteen, I think.” She smiled shyly. “We all moved here at once, built all this together.”
“It’s a magnificent endeavor,” I said genuinely. I admired them, the self-reliant sufficiency of this life. “Was your daughter born here?”
She glanced over at Rennette, and for just a moment, there was something in her face that took my breath away, a guilt and a horrible, horrible regret. Then her eyes flicked up and it was gone. “No, I spent the last month of my pregnancy on the mainland. Richard’s a bit of a worrywart, and we took out a room in a hotel.” Her smile was serene now and I wondered if I’d imagined what I’d seen. “But she’s grown up here.”
“Has to be hard,” I said quietly. “Unless there are other kids on the island?”
“No, just her. On the whole island, there’s only us and the rangers down by Eagle Harbor.”
The conversation moved on, and I had the feeling she was trying to distract me. From just what, I wasn’t sure. But it wasn’t the only time I got that feeling. Any time I brought up how long they’d lived here, or why these very disparate people had all chosen this serene exile, gazes would flicker and a Jersey accent would slip into their voice as they changed the subject. The eeriest moment was when Rennette did it, in exactly the same manner. Her expression for just a moment was something too old and too.... I’m not certain. But not the face of a child.
After that, I retreated a little into myself. Jacob’s face had never looked like that, I was relatively certain. I’d been here for two weeks by then, and the peace of mind I’d sought and found here was beginning to fall apart. Too many little things. I excused myself from breakfast and that morning’s chores and hiked up farther into the hills. I found a perch, a rocky bluff with a view of grey Rosario Strait and the islands beyond it.
I took Jacob’s picture out of my wallet and set it on my knee, just where he used to sit when he was an infant. This one was a snapshot, a picture I’d taken of him a summer ago. He grinned up at me, proudly displaying his Mariner’s hat and the string of blue and yellow dock perch he’d caught all by himself.
“Jake,” I murmured to him, smoothing the picture against my knee. “What am I going to do?” I’d come here to find sanctuary and the place was beginning to make me so uneasy. “Should I go home? Do I....” I was talking to my dead son, asking his advice like an oracle. “I miss you.”
I came back down when the afternoon began to cool, bringing with me the last of the mountain cranberries in the hat that Andre’d leant me. I thought Laura might like them. I stopped at their cabin, and was about to knock on the door when an angry voice from within froze me in place.
“Andre, she needs to go to school. Even the guy who has known her for twelve days can tell she’s not normal!”
I couldn’t hear a response.
“No, I know it would be a strain. This is the wrong way to raise a child!” Laura sounded furious, and I couldn’t bring myself to either knock or step back. “She’s never had a chance to be a child, you greedy-“
Her voice cut off a moment before Richard spoke up behind me. “Caleb, you need something?” he asked, his eyes flicking from me to the door, as if he could discern with his eyes how much I’d heard.
“I, ah....” I remembered the hatful of berries, and held them out inanely. “I brought these for your wife. Thought she might like to dry them.”
The door swung open, and Laura peered out. Her eyes flicked at me, at Richard, at the berries. “Those look lovely, Caleb. I’m sorry, now’s not a very good time.... But I think Allen was looking for you earlier. If you just put the berries in the kitchen in the big house, I’ll be up in about an hour.”
Richard stepped around me, all but crowding me off the small porch. I was left with no dignified choice but to retreat, deeply disturbed. Allen caught up with me halfway to the big house. It felt so neatly planned, I couldn’t help but feel paranoid.
“Allen, I just heard the strangest argument....” I stopped, dead in my tracks. Andre was standing on the porch of the big house, watching me, expressionless. “Between Laura and Andre.”
Allen looked over his shoulder at the other man. “You sure? Andre and I’ve been going over the books all evening.”
I couldn’t get an answer out of him. Andre went back inside and Allen kept me with him for the better part of an hour, making dinner for the two of us in his own cabin. He was at his most garrulous, running our conversation from cranberries to hunter-gatherer societies to the evolution of agriculture as practiced here on Cypress Island. I allowed myself to be distracted. Allen was my touchstone, the reason I was here.
He finally faltered over the remnants of dinner, the words trailing off over his glass of wine. He seemed to forget I was there for a moment, frowning and rubbing his chest.
“Allen, you okay, man?”
“Mm?” He seemed to remember himself. “Oh, of course. Just an old circus injury acting up.” But he looked so much more tired, just suddenly.
“Should I leave you to sleep?”
“Probably.” He smiled sheepishly. “I’m an old man, Caleb. Gotta get my beauty rest.”
I set my glass by the sink. “It’s been a confusing night, Allen. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Going back to the big house with Andre didn’t appeal to me. But it was a relatively mild night, for autumn in Washington, so I climbed into the loft of the barn. The hay up there was sweet and comfortable, I’d already learned.
But I found more than hay, that night. The first time I’d been up there, the bales had been stacked neatly and loose hay piled against them, making a nice place to sleep. But it was occupied now. It took me a little while to accept what my eyes were telling me. Batman lay in that loft, her mast down and lying along side, sail furled neatly. My boat was in the commune’s barn.
Before I could process this, before I could force my mind to begin analyzing what this meant, there were footsteps on the loft stairs, and bouncing, wavering light. I whirled, and there was Andre, his flickering eyes and expression quiet as ever.
“Caleb,” he said before I could say anything. “I can understand why you came here. But you’ve overstayed your welcome as a guest by a bit.”
I gaped at him. “What the hell is my boat doing up here?” If I’d overstayed my welcome, how did he expect me to leave like this?
“Just a safety measure.” He set down his flashlight and sat on a bale by the stairs. I was pretty sure I could get past him if I had to, but... something in me urged me to hear him out. “I’ve noticed that you’ve noticed something different about us.”
I nodded guardedly. I remember thinking that the whole scene felt like something from a movie. “Something. But if you think it’s time for me to leave, I’ll leave. But I’ll need my boat.” Obviously.
“No, that’s not what I said,” he said with a bit of a smile. The light up here made him look frightening, like a child’s nightmare of a clown. “You’re going to want to sit down for this, Caleb.”
I did. I didn’t know why at the time, but I backed up to the nearest bale and sat, waiting for his explanation. But an explanation isn’t what came.
The only way I can describe it is to describe the sensations. The light from Andre’s flashlight was suddenly blinding, a piercing ray. I threw up my hands to shield my eyes, but they did nothing, and I realized it wasn’t from the flashlight, it was from the man. The light illuminated everything about me, but... it wasn’t my body that felt flayed by its uncompromising glare, it was my mind. I tried to cry out, and couldn’t remember how. Andre was there, here, and everywhere, his voice and gaze and touch on my every thought and memory. He saw everything I hid from myself. Jacob’s mother, crying as she ran out the door to never return. Jacob’s last scream. And I saw inexplicable things; red light and a long, black tunnel. Tears ran unknown down my face as I was laid open.
And then closed again, folded back into my self and proper shape by a tender touch. Good man, said a voice in my mind and it was absolution. My eyes flicked open, flicked to focus on the man still sitting across from me. Caleb, you’re one of us now.
I knew, now, why the secrecy, why the unease with my presence. They were hiding, Andre and his circle, for that’s what they were. Here to be hidden and safe and I’d been a threat, but now I was part of their circle. Their family.
I watched Andre quietly when he left me my mind again. I could feel his touch still there, like a maker’s mark on the inside of my skull, but he wasn’t thinking my thoughts for me now. He smiled a little. “I’m sorry, Caleb. You’re a writer. You would have told.” I couldn’t tell anyone, now.
The next day, everything was different. There were eyes watching through mine. All the reservations the others had had towards me were gone. What point, when we were linked like this? Part of me railed against it, thrashed and beat at Andre’s silent and unshakable touch. Part of me accepted it. It filled a void. Allen watched me with some regret, until his eyes flickered and he smiled.
After a few days, Allen and Don came up to me, and handed me a hammer. “We picked the spot for your cabin.”
I set aside the gun I’d been cleaning, loaned by Richard. We’d gone rabbit hunting that morning. “I don’t want a cabin,” I said, waiting to feel the tell-tale flicker of my eyes. “I don’t want to stay.”
Allen and Don looked at each other, and me, and Allen spoke in a lowered voice. “Caleb, you wanted to stay before this happened. Be fair. Give us a chance.” A chance, he said, as if this were a temporary thing. There was nothing temporary about the way Z weighted down my mind.
“I don’t appreciate-“ I was interrupted, not cut off. Thank Andre for small favors. His quiet voice was unwelcome in my head.
Caleb, give it time. I may be able to change my mind someday. He sounded far too reasonable. With a grunt, I reached for the hammer.
My cabin began to go up quickly. I chose a site not far from the others, but out of sight, and they let me. We all cleared brush and set the foundation in a single afternoon, and the next day, Allen and I laid the floor while Don and Richard build the walls flat, and then raised them into position. The women built window frames and doors.
Allen’s heart attack came while we were raising the roof-tree. He was hauling on the rope when his grip slipped, and if the rest of us hadn’t caught it, the great beam would have crashed down. “Help him!” I shouted, working to lower it slowly. Andre was suddenly there in person, his shoulder under Allen’s. He couldn’t make it to the bench; he helped him lie down.
“Allen, don’t die on me!” Andre’s shout was panicked, both aloud and resonating in our minds. We all flinched, feeling it. Equal parts desperation and fear, both for himself and for the dying man.
For Allen was dying. We gathered around him, but no one ran for the radio to call for help. We could feel him going, and he held Andre’s hand as tightly as he could. “Never b’grudged you,” he murmured to our communal captor, and smiled up at him. I shuddered at the feel of death against my mind. The shudder spread, that black cold creeping into all of our consciousness. Andre clung to Allen in more ways than one, but the pull was too great. He went, and for a moment, I thought he was going to take all of us too. I reeled, and perhaps I fell. All I could, all any of us could see and feel for endless heartbeats was the void, and then there was light, stunningly bright.
I stared willfully into it. And someone stared back. Allen laughed, and I heard/felt/sang his farewell to Andre. There are no words. The place he was going, the light, was a multitude. It was the sum total of life and the living and the dead.
And I saw Jacob. And he saw me.
And the light closed.
I think if I’d been alone then, I would have broken. Have shattered into a million pieces. But I wasn’t. And would never be again.
I meet Andre first in Allen’s skin, before I knew anything about them. I didn’t know it at the time. He was wearing that man like a suit when he saved my son, and I-
I’m sorry, this is getting confusing. I should start at the beginning.
When Jacob was alive, we liked to vacation in the San Juan Islands. Beautiful place, up near the border. Whenever we had a long weekend, the two of us would pile into my truck with our camping gear in the back and the little sailboat on its trailer, and head the two hours north. It was our guy thing. My girlfriends sometimes went camping with us in other places, but sailing was always just us.
It always went a certain way. We’d reach Anacortes about lunch time. A small town, you know the sort of place. One main street about a mile long, with franchises at one end and historical buildings and quaint little shops at the other. Jacob always pointed out the nautical flags on the light-posts, and he loved to go to all the marinas and look at the fishing boats.
The day we met Andre and Allen was in June, about two years ago. We were in the marina, launching our little sailboat, Batman. (She was black and yellow, and I let him name her.) Jacob was directing the launch-men, or trying to. They didn’t take a lot of notice of an eight-year-old boy, but he was having fun, waving them so seriously a little left or right as they lowered the boat in their great sling. I went to buy some fuel, only a few steps away, but by the time I heard the running feet, and the shouts, I couldn’t see him. My heart stopped with the sudden splash.
“Right there!” shouted a deep voice.
“Stop the sling!” yelled another, as I pushed my way back across the crowded dock, stumbling over what suddenly felt like a forest of tubes and ropes there for no reason other to trip me up. “Stop!” they yelled again, louder. “It’s going to land on top of them!”
My boat shuddered to a stop in the air just as I reached the edge of the dock, barely a foot above the surface. All I could see beneath her was the commotion of two bodies in the water, but I could hear Jacob’s panicked shouts.
“He fell in!” exclaimed a woman at my elbow, eager to impart her part of this excitement. I was about to jump in myself, but the man who’d sold me my gas grabbed onto the back of my shirt.
“Ladder’s over here,” he shouted past me to the man who was swimming now out from under Batman with my son held against his chest. I began to breathe again, and he let go as I pushed past the gawkers to the ladder, almost grabbing my son out of his rescuer’s arms when they reached it.
“Thank you,” I babbled over and over, holding the soaked, squirming boy to my chest. The man who climbed out of the water grinned, shaking off a persistent strand of seaweed from his cuff.
“No need for that,” he said. His New Jersey accent was strangely nasal for such a large man; he stood at least a foot taller than me, gruff and craggy and gaunt. He wrung out the hem of his shirt over the edge of the dock theatrically, as if saving small boys was something he did every day. “The kid’s a good swimmer. I got wet for nothing.”
In my arms, Jacob’s panicked noises had already stopped, and he returned the man’s friendly grin with a nervous smile of his own. “‘Nk you,” he said. I wasn’t ready to put him down. Now or ever.
“I’m Allen,” the giant said, offering Jacob a wide hand, which he shook solemnly. His eyes were never still, constantly flicking between us and the business resuming around us on the dock.
“M’Jake,” my son said shyly.
“Jacob Solomon,” I filled in when the hand was offered to me. “My son. And I’m Caleb.”
The launch-man shouted at me to come and get my boat then. I set Jacob down carefully, well away from the edge. “Stay here and don’t move,” I told him, reluctant to let go. “I’ll be right back for you.” I knew he was a good swimmer, but that hadn’t stopped the fear of seeing him in the water. I felt a strange reassurance, when I went to handle the lines and move Batman to a slip, to see Allen sit down beside the boy. Securing the boat, I watched him draw my shy son into conversation almost effortlessly. I set her lines and put the fuel aboard, and then ducked aboard and leaned down into the tiny cabin to get what I should have had out before I ever let Jacob on the dock; his life-jacket.
When I rejoined them, Jacob grinned up at me, showing me the piece of heavy twine in which our new friend had just shown him how to tie a sheet bend. “Dad! Mr. Allen lives on an Island!”
When I looked to him, he nodded confirmation. His eyes flicked past me to the transom of my boat, which said “Seattle, WA,” under the copyright-infringing Batsignal painted there. “It’s a couple of us, up on Cypress.” He mentioned the name of the island casually, a test for us south-sounders. I looked in the right direction, west and a little bit north to where the tall island could be seen rising beyond the town, across the invisible Guemes Channel.
“I thought that island was all state property.”
“It is.” He sounded approving. I’d apparently passed. “We’re on a land trust, technically doing research in self-sufficiency for the University. And counting eagles’ nests. Mostly, though, we just farm.”
“Where?” I asked, surprised. I’d been to Cypress before; with the exception of a few high saddles, the island was uniformly steep and thickly treed. A good place for hunting the small island deer, but not, I imagined, for farming.
“The airstrip, up on the south height.” He pointed at the dim pale patch on the dark green island. “About two hours hike up the logging roads, if you’re ever in the neighborhood. Stop by.”
He had to get going, and our conversation wasn’t much longer. We walked with him to his boat, a workmanlike little open boat, and he introduced us to his fellow islander, Irene, who had accompanied him. They were just here to shop for the things they couldn’t make themselves, the two explained as they made ready to leave. Wheat flour and sugar, shoes and a few DVDs.
“It was lovely to meet you,” Irene said, untying their stern-line while Allen started the engine. Her accent was Jersey too, though I’d originally thought it something else, and her eyes flicked up at me in precisely the way Allen’s had. Then the moment’s disconcertion was passed, and she was just a middle-aged woman again, jumping onto the boat as it drifted free. “Come and visit!” she called back, and waved. Jacob waved like a monkey until they vanished into the mill of boats that crowded the marina.
There was something about them that clung oddly to the edges of my mind, afterwards. Jacob and I took our weekend, though we didn’t go to Cypress, and he forgot all about them, I’m sure. We both came home sunburned and full of plans for the next time. I intended to go and visit them, and I got the maps of the island. The roads he’d mentioned looked steep, but doable. Maybe four miles, each way. And there seemed to be lakes to stop and see and perhaps splash in. I mentioned the idea to the boy, and he seemed all for it. Something new, after all.
He never got to go.
It was my fault. The truck I had then, a ‘91 Ford piece of junk, was on its last wheels, and I should have had the brakes checked. I shouldn’t have driven so tired. I shouldn’t have let him miss the bus, agreeing to drive him to school. I shouldn’t have followed so close in heavy traffic. But I did, on a rainy morning in September, and I rear-ended a flatbed full of lumber on the off-ramp. When I woke up in the hospital, he was gone.
My life was over, understand. It had always been just me and Jacob, the two of us together. His mother, less said about her the better, really. I named him, I raised him, and he was the whole of me. And I killed him. There’s nothing you can do after a thing like that that’s not going to taste ashen and filthy in your mouth. How could I think about going on with my life? What sort of faithless father was I?
I sank into his death like quicksand. I can admit that now. I almost let it kill me. I didn’t drink, but I acted like a drinker. Never sleeping, spending my nights drifting downtown. My girlfriend left me before the funeral, and I barely noticed. I’m not precisely sure when I lost my job, but I hadn’t gone in weeks by then. It didn’t matter. I lived off of the money I’d been saving to send Jacob to college. Pulled everything out of that account and closed it down, because it had his name on it. He was only eight and I had enough for his first two years. I’d been so proud of myself. Of us.
I still don’t know why my mind kept turning back to that day when Jacob almost drowned. I had nothing left. I wanted to talk to Allen again. He’d saved Jacob once.
No, I knew he couldn’t bring him back. But he’d saved him once. He’d held a little of his life in his hands. I needed to see him again. I had no way of getting in touch, except for one.
It wasn’t a good time to be out sailing. The wind was too stiff for little Batman, the chop too steep. Jacob would have spent the whole crossing holed up in the tiny cabin with his Gameboy, and I kept leaning to see if I’d see him in there. But it was just me alone with the spray in my face. I couldn’t tell if any of the salt drops running down were warm, and I was glad. I fought my way up Guemes Channel and across Bellingham Channel, into Secret Harbor. I knew I wasn’t supposed to, but I left Batman on the beach there, hauled above the tideline into the grass with a line looped around a tree. I wasn’t ready for a hike, I had no water-bottle, no hiking shoes. All I’d done before I left home was look at my maps, find the only place on the island that might hold the place Allen had described.
True to my luck that week, it began to rain just as I entered the trees. The coat I’d grabbed that morning was far from being foul weather gear, but again, it hardly mattered to me. I hunched my shoulders, found the trail, and put one foot in front of the other. Speed didn’t matter. I’d get there. I had no deadlines, no goal, no pressure. Just this driving need.... I still can’t understand it.
Four miles in the mud and forest. Little mud-colored salamanders skittered away from my feet as I went, and all I could think of was the way Jacob would have tried to catch them. I almost caught one for him, but the flashing of their red bellies disarmed me in a way I have no words for. I just kept climbing.
It was almost dark when I reached the end of the trail, the old airstrip that crowned this lobe of the mountainous island. Allen had mentioned farming, and I knew that this was the only place on the island flat enough to farm in this rainy corner of a rainy state. If I’d been wrong, I have no idea what I would have done, but there they were. A light gleamed at the far end of the long, pale field, and I headed towards it without pausing. The footing grew increasingly treacherous on the rocky ground as the light faded further. No moon, no stars. Heavy sullen clouds continued to pour out. Out of the trees, I was at the mercy of the rain and by the time I reached the building with the lit window, my clothes and hair were plastered to my body.
I stood in the square of light cast by that window for quite some time, I remember, staring at it but not seeing it. Dimly aware of other buildings around me in the woods, I hesitated. I didn’t know if Allen would be here. He could be in any one of these. But the only way to find out was to knock, so I shook the water out of my face and mounted the steps to the wide porch, and applied my fist to the door.
The house seemed startled. There was a sudden thrum of voices and of footsteps, and then the door flung open and I had to step back to avoid being hit by it. My heart sank. The man standing there was short and balding, not Allen. But his eyes flicked over me in just the same way, and then widened in what I was sure, very sure somehow, was recognition. He opened his mouth, but then shut it again and looked at me in polite, masked confusion.
“Can I help you?”
I pulled the lapels of my coat closer together. “Does Allen live here?” Stepped back, looked over at the darker houses.
The man looked me over again. “Allen? Someone’s here asking for you.” He stepped back, and I looked into the house for the first time. It was crowded with people, all staring at me. Two women and a child sat at a table spread with what looked like homework, and two more men occupied comfortable chairs in front of a fireplace. Allen rose out of a third, and I smiled helplessly to see him.
“Do you remember me?” I asked, praying. “Caleb Solomon. We met a few months ago, in Anacortes. On the docks?” I couldn’t say ‘when you rescued my son,’ though I wanted to.
Comprehension flashed on his face, his eyes flicking from me to the small man. “I remember you. Andre, this is Caleb. We met on the town run.”
Andre nodded and smiled, a very sweet smile. He gestured me in. “You chose a hell of a night. NOA’s predicting gale-force winds. Can I take your coat?”
I let him, peeling myself out of it. Everyone was still watching me, and I tried not to drip on their floor. “I know, I just-“
Allen interrupted my explanation with more introductions. “Caleb, you’ve stumbled into fire night, or you’d never have caught us all together. Irene, you’ve met, and that’s Laura and Rennette with her, and Don and Richard by the fire.”
I nodded to the chorus of ‘Hellos,’ and smiled at the little girl. She had to be Jacob’s age. The stocky man by the fire, Richard, looked like her.
“What brings you out here?” he was the first to ask. I had no idea how to tell all these people. I hadn’t come here for their pity.
“It’s... um.” I ran my hand through my hair, and wished for a towel. “It’s... I wanted to talk to Allen. I’m sorry, could we just...” I tipped my head back towards the door and the porch outside. “It’s... well, it’s important.”
“Sounds like it,” said Allen, frowning slightly. He glanced at Andre before nodding, and followed me back out into the rain-roaring night.
I leaned on one of the porch posts, gathering my thoughts. I’d had it all so neatly laid out on my way here, that long hike to think and plan. “Jacob died,” I began baldly, and tumbled on before he could interrupt me. And I told him everything. My culpability, my withdrawal from the world, the strange pull to come here. I talked to him the way I should have talked to a psychologist. And he just listened, amazingly. “I know I’m intruding and I’m sorry,” I finished finally, out of breath and with my throat tight. “But I can’t keep going by myself.”
His eyes flicked from me to the rain and I couldn’t watch them, so I looked at the way his sweater hung on him. He was even more gaunt than he’d been soaking wet on that dock. I wondered how old he was.
“I’m very sorry to hear that, Caleb. You’re not intruding.” A tiny pause. “Not on any of us. Come back inside? You can’t go home tonight anyway, and we have an extra bed somewhere, I’m sure.” No false empathy, no florid condolences. I soaked up his sincere sympathy, and only found more when I went inside.
“We overheard,” said Laura quietly when she brought me a cup of coffee. Andre nodded, and the men made room for me by the fire and in their conversation. I never questioned how they’d overheard me through the hammering of the rain on their metal roof, not then.
But I stayed. They helped me get very pleasantly drunk that night, after little Rennette went to bed, and Andre, whose house that one turned out to be, gave me his guest bedroom upstairs under the eaves. I slept like the dead.
The next day was too stormy to leave, so no one questioned when I didn’t. Or the day after. Instead, I threw myself in as general dogsbody, helping with the hundred small chores of a farm. The farm was almost a small commune. Aside from the main house, where Andre lived, there were four small cabins, a scattering of outbuildings, and a barn painted dark green and tucked well back into the woods that housed three horses, two cows, and a half-grown steer. And a mostly disassembled generator, which is where they put me to work. Don drafted me the second morning to help him scrub each piece in a tub of vinegar, laying them back out on the hard-swept wood floor once they were spotless.
“We depend on this machine,” he said gruffly, tapping the housing. “A little too much, but we like our electricity. We’re on the spare right now.” Don was no conversationalist, unless he was in a certain mood. It was a few hours before that mood hit him, a few hours of near-silent scrubbing broken only by a few conferrals about the placement of this part or that. I’d been enjoying the quiet work. Something about this place felt like a band loosening around my chest. I could breathe here without fearing I was betraying Jacob.
But eventually, Don’s eyes flicked up to me and back to his hands. “What’d you do, back on the mainland?” he asked, New Jersey touching his accent. It made him sound just a little like a gangster, and Don rather looked it.
“I was a writer,” I said, poking my ratty toothbrush into the cogs of the piece I was working on. Interest flared bright in his face as I finished, “For Journeys. It’s a travel magazine....”
“So, going to write an article about this place?” he asked with a chuckle.
I shook my head and didn’t answer. I’d never felt less like writing. Don looked disappointed for a moment, then shook his head as if shaking off a fly before getting back to work.
I didn’t leave when the storm let up, either. I kept finding things to do, and none of them commented when I kept showing up for meals. I repaired a corner of the chicken coop, and let Rennette teach me how to weed the carrot patch under the supervision of her father. One of the adults was always in sight, it seemed. Sometimes it felt as if I were always being watched with that same flickering gaze. Only the short man, Andre, never seemed to be checking up on me. He spent most of his time with Allen, though I was never sure what they were doing.
I’d been there a week when I realized something. I was helping Laura cook lunch in the big house, a big pot of potato soup. Everything in it was from this farm. But that’s not what I realized. I looked over from the gas stove at Rennette, who was sitting on a high stool peeling potatoes. She was a bright little girl, eagerly competent around the farm with quick fingers and long hair just the color Jacob’s had been. But I’d been there for seven days and I had yet to see her play. She had toys; there was a fantastic dollhouse on the porch of the cabin that was hers and Laura’s and Richard’s. But it was set up perfectly the way an adult might do it, and she spent her evenings doing problems out of one textbook or another, never complaining, though occasionally bored.
“How long have you lived out here?” I asked Laura as I stirred the milk over the heat.
“Hm?” She rinsed off her handful of chives, just picked from the window box. “Oh.... Almost twenty years? Nineteen, I think.” She smiled shyly. “We all moved here at once, built all this together.”
“It’s a magnificent endeavor,” I said genuinely. I admired them, the self-reliant sufficiency of this life. “Was your daughter born here?”
She glanced over at Rennette, and for just a moment, there was something in her face that took my breath away, a guilt and a horrible, horrible regret. Then her eyes flicked up and it was gone. “No, I spent the last month of my pregnancy on the mainland. Richard’s a bit of a worrywart, and we took out a room in a hotel.” Her smile was serene now and I wondered if I’d imagined what I’d seen. “But she’s grown up here.”
“Has to be hard,” I said quietly. “Unless there are other kids on the island?”
“No, just her. On the whole island, there’s only us and the rangers down by Eagle Harbor.”
The conversation moved on, and I had the feeling she was trying to distract me. From just what, I wasn’t sure. But it wasn’t the only time I got that feeling. Any time I brought up how long they’d lived here, or why these very disparate people had all chosen this serene exile, gazes would flicker and a Jersey accent would slip into their voice as they changed the subject. The eeriest moment was when Rennette did it, in exactly the same manner. Her expression for just a moment was something too old and too.... I’m not certain. But not the face of a child.
After that, I retreated a little into myself. Jacob’s face had never looked like that, I was relatively certain. I’d been here for two weeks by then, and the peace of mind I’d sought and found here was beginning to fall apart. Too many little things. I excused myself from breakfast and that morning’s chores and hiked up farther into the hills. I found a perch, a rocky bluff with a view of grey Rosario Strait and the islands beyond it.
I took Jacob’s picture out of my wallet and set it on my knee, just where he used to sit when he was an infant. This one was a snapshot, a picture I’d taken of him a summer ago. He grinned up at me, proudly displaying his Mariner’s hat and the string of blue and yellow dock perch he’d caught all by himself.
“Jake,” I murmured to him, smoothing the picture against my knee. “What am I going to do?” I’d come here to find sanctuary and the place was beginning to make me so uneasy. “Should I go home? Do I....” I was talking to my dead son, asking his advice like an oracle. “I miss you.”
I came back down when the afternoon began to cool, bringing with me the last of the mountain cranberries in the hat that Andre’d leant me. I thought Laura might like them. I stopped at their cabin, and was about to knock on the door when an angry voice from within froze me in place.
“Andre, she needs to go to school. Even the guy who has known her for twelve days can tell she’s not normal!”
I couldn’t hear a response.
“No, I know it would be a strain. This is the wrong way to raise a child!” Laura sounded furious, and I couldn’t bring myself to either knock or step back. “She’s never had a chance to be a child, you greedy-“
Her voice cut off a moment before Richard spoke up behind me. “Caleb, you need something?” he asked, his eyes flicking from me to the door, as if he could discern with his eyes how much I’d heard.
“I, ah....” I remembered the hatful of berries, and held them out inanely. “I brought these for your wife. Thought she might like to dry them.”
The door swung open, and Laura peered out. Her eyes flicked at me, at Richard, at the berries. “Those look lovely, Caleb. I’m sorry, now’s not a very good time.... But I think Allen was looking for you earlier. If you just put the berries in the kitchen in the big house, I’ll be up in about an hour.”
Richard stepped around me, all but crowding me off the small porch. I was left with no dignified choice but to retreat, deeply disturbed. Allen caught up with me halfway to the big house. It felt so neatly planned, I couldn’t help but feel paranoid.
“Allen, I just heard the strangest argument....” I stopped, dead in my tracks. Andre was standing on the porch of the big house, watching me, expressionless. “Between Laura and Andre.”
Allen looked over his shoulder at the other man. “You sure? Andre and I’ve been going over the books all evening.”
I couldn’t get an answer out of him. Andre went back inside and Allen kept me with him for the better part of an hour, making dinner for the two of us in his own cabin. He was at his most garrulous, running our conversation from cranberries to hunter-gatherer societies to the evolution of agriculture as practiced here on Cypress Island. I allowed myself to be distracted. Allen was my touchstone, the reason I was here.
He finally faltered over the remnants of dinner, the words trailing off over his glass of wine. He seemed to forget I was there for a moment, frowning and rubbing his chest.
“Allen, you okay, man?”
“Mm?” He seemed to remember himself. “Oh, of course. Just an old circus injury acting up.” But he looked so much more tired, just suddenly.
“Should I leave you to sleep?”
“Probably.” He smiled sheepishly. “I’m an old man, Caleb. Gotta get my beauty rest.”
I set my glass by the sink. “It’s been a confusing night, Allen. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Going back to the big house with Andre didn’t appeal to me. But it was a relatively mild night, for autumn in Washington, so I climbed into the loft of the barn. The hay up there was sweet and comfortable, I’d already learned.
But I found more than hay, that night. The first time I’d been up there, the bales had been stacked neatly and loose hay piled against them, making a nice place to sleep. But it was occupied now. It took me a little while to accept what my eyes were telling me. Batman lay in that loft, her mast down and lying along side, sail furled neatly. My boat was in the commune’s barn.
Before I could process this, before I could force my mind to begin analyzing what this meant, there were footsteps on the loft stairs, and bouncing, wavering light. I whirled, and there was Andre, his flickering eyes and expression quiet as ever.
“Caleb,” he said before I could say anything. “I can understand why you came here. But you’ve overstayed your welcome as a guest by a bit.”
I gaped at him. “What the hell is my boat doing up here?” If I’d overstayed my welcome, how did he expect me to leave like this?
“Just a safety measure.” He set down his flashlight and sat on a bale by the stairs. I was pretty sure I could get past him if I had to, but... something in me urged me to hear him out. “I’ve noticed that you’ve noticed something different about us.”
I nodded guardedly. I remember thinking that the whole scene felt like something from a movie. “Something. But if you think it’s time for me to leave, I’ll leave. But I’ll need my boat.” Obviously.
“No, that’s not what I said,” he said with a bit of a smile. The light up here made him look frightening, like a child’s nightmare of a clown. “You’re going to want to sit down for this, Caleb.”
I did. I didn’t know why at the time, but I backed up to the nearest bale and sat, waiting for his explanation. But an explanation isn’t what came.
The only way I can describe it is to describe the sensations. The light from Andre’s flashlight was suddenly blinding, a piercing ray. I threw up my hands to shield my eyes, but they did nothing, and I realized it wasn’t from the flashlight, it was from the man. The light illuminated everything about me, but... it wasn’t my body that felt flayed by its uncompromising glare, it was my mind. I tried to cry out, and couldn’t remember how. Andre was there, here, and everywhere, his voice and gaze and touch on my every thought and memory. He saw everything I hid from myself. Jacob’s mother, crying as she ran out the door to never return. Jacob’s last scream. And I saw inexplicable things; red light and a long, black tunnel. Tears ran unknown down my face as I was laid open.
And then closed again, folded back into my self and proper shape by a tender touch. Good man, said a voice in my mind and it was absolution. My eyes flicked open, flicked to focus on the man still sitting across from me. Caleb, you’re one of us now.
I knew, now, why the secrecy, why the unease with my presence. They were hiding, Andre and his circle, for that’s what they were. Here to be hidden and safe and I’d been a threat, but now I was part of their circle. Their family.
I watched Andre quietly when he left me my mind again. I could feel his touch still there, like a maker’s mark on the inside of my skull, but he wasn’t thinking my thoughts for me now. He smiled a little. “I’m sorry, Caleb. You’re a writer. You would have told.” I couldn’t tell anyone, now.
The next day, everything was different. There were eyes watching through mine. All the reservations the others had had towards me were gone. What point, when we were linked like this? Part of me railed against it, thrashed and beat at Andre’s silent and unshakable touch. Part of me accepted it. It filled a void. Allen watched me with some regret, until his eyes flickered and he smiled.
After a few days, Allen and Don came up to me, and handed me a hammer. “We picked the spot for your cabin.”
I set aside the gun I’d been cleaning, loaned by Richard. We’d gone rabbit hunting that morning. “I don’t want a cabin,” I said, waiting to feel the tell-tale flicker of my eyes. “I don’t want to stay.”
Allen and Don looked at each other, and me, and Allen spoke in a lowered voice. “Caleb, you wanted to stay before this happened. Be fair. Give us a chance.” A chance, he said, as if this were a temporary thing. There was nothing temporary about the way Z weighted down my mind.
“I don’t appreciate-“ I was interrupted, not cut off. Thank Andre for small favors. His quiet voice was unwelcome in my head.
Caleb, give it time. I may be able to change my mind someday. He sounded far too reasonable. With a grunt, I reached for the hammer.
My cabin began to go up quickly. I chose a site not far from the others, but out of sight, and they let me. We all cleared brush and set the foundation in a single afternoon, and the next day, Allen and I laid the floor while Don and Richard build the walls flat, and then raised them into position. The women built window frames and doors.
Allen’s heart attack came while we were raising the roof-tree. He was hauling on the rope when his grip slipped, and if the rest of us hadn’t caught it, the great beam would have crashed down. “Help him!” I shouted, working to lower it slowly. Andre was suddenly there in person, his shoulder under Allen’s. He couldn’t make it to the bench; he helped him lie down.
“Allen, don’t die on me!” Andre’s shout was panicked, both aloud and resonating in our minds. We all flinched, feeling it. Equal parts desperation and fear, both for himself and for the dying man.
For Allen was dying. We gathered around him, but no one ran for the radio to call for help. We could feel him going, and he held Andre’s hand as tightly as he could. “Never b’grudged you,” he murmured to our communal captor, and smiled up at him. I shuddered at the feel of death against my mind. The shudder spread, that black cold creeping into all of our consciousness. Andre clung to Allen in more ways than one, but the pull was too great. He went, and for a moment, I thought he was going to take all of us too. I reeled, and perhaps I fell. All I could, all any of us could see and feel for endless heartbeats was the void, and then there was light, stunningly bright.
I stared willfully into it. And someone stared back. Allen laughed, and I heard/felt/sang his farewell to Andre. There are no words. The place he was going, the light, was a multitude. It was the sum total of life and the living and the dead.
And I saw Jacob. And he saw me.
And the light closed.
I think if I’d been alone then, I would have broken. Have shattered into a million pieces. But I wasn’t. And would never be again.
That said, constructive criticism is always appreciated. <3
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Date: 2007-02-02 05:58 pm (UTC)Only things I can see that you need to change is that, unless I wasn't paying enough attention, you had Allen mention the circus in passing only once and I don't think you had previously. Also, at one point you call Andre 'Z', even though you haven't mentioned his last name. Tiny points, stuff that is easy to do because you've lived with these characters for a year now, so no biggie.
I loved it. Very well done, excellently written and lovely. ^,^
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Date: 2007-02-02 05:59 pm (UTC)Anyway, brilliant.
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Date: 2007-02-02 06:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 06:34 pm (UTC)A fantastic job of the making up of the shit. A lovely way to start my morning, reading this. I now wish to visit this island, yes I do.
Critique part...well, I think Caleb's addition to the web was a bit vague, which sort of makes sense because even he has no idea what's going on. Us Shop people know, we know all about this, but the casual reader might find it a bit confusing. "He did what to whom?"
Perhaps a little addition to that bit - a mindvoice conversation perhaps, might cement the idea in the reader's brains, that this commune is actually a psychic collective.
We are BORG...
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Date: 2007-02-02 06:39 pm (UTC)criminally insaneboys who can't function in polite society. Eagle Harbor and Cypress Head, however, are perfectly open and lovely, and there are two geocaches.no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 06:41 pm (UTC)*smirk*
no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 06:41 pm (UTC)