Chapter 10
Francis waited until the chores were done.
That was deliberate. He didn't want to hand Junior a hard thing first thing in the morning, before the boy had eaten, before the day had settled. He wanted the light good and the belly full and the world as steady as it got out here, before he tilted it.
So he worked alongside his son the whole morning.
Hauling water. Checking the seedbeds. Feeding the two goats Ruth's people had brought up the road, half starved, that were fattening now on spring grass.
And Junior worked beside him, chattering, telling him about a rabbit Sofia had almost caught and about a game they'd invented and about how his new tooth had come in almost all the way now, see, Dad, look, feel it.
Francis felt it. The new tooth, filling the gap the old one had left. Time passing. His boy growing, even here, even now, in the ruins of everything.
It made what he had to do harder. It always did.
Around midday he took Junior out past the fields, to the low rise where you could see the whole spread of the farm below and the plain rolling away to the horizon. It was a good spot. A thinking spot. He'd come out here alone some evenings to plan.
They sat down in the grass together.
"I want to talk to you about something," Francis said.
"Something serious. Man to man. And I'm going to tell you the truth about it, all of it, the way I always do, even the hard parts. Because you're old enough now, and because you deserve the truth, and because I don't lie to you. You know I don't lie to you."
Junior's face went still. He'd learned to read that tone. Every child in the new world had learned to read that tone.
"Okay," Junior said. Careful. "You're doing the voice. The bad news voice."
"I am," Francis admitted. "I'm doing the bad news voice. I'm sorry. Here's the bad news."
He looked out at the plain a moment, gathering it, and then he looked back at his son and gave it to him straight.
"I have to go away for a while," Francis said. "Not forever. But for a while. Weeks, maybe. I have to go out there, across the plain, to do something important. Something that's going to help keep you and everybody here safe from the bad men. The Combine. The ones with the trucks."
Junior's face didn't move for a second. Then it did. Then everything in it moved at once, the way an eight-year-old's face does, no hiding anything.
"No," he said. "No. You can't go. Dad, you can't leave, why do you have to leave, why can't Nathan go, or Cole, why does it have to be you—"
"Because I'm the only one who can do it," Francis said gently.
"It's a thing that needs a certain kind of person. A person who can move without being seen. A grey man. And I'm the grey man, buddy. It's the thing I know how to do that nobody else here can do as well. Nathan's a fighter. Cole's tough. But being invisible,
moving through dangerous places without getting caught, that's mine. It has to be me. If it could be anybody else, I promise you, it would be."
"Then don't do it at all," Junior said, and his voice was climbing now, thin and desperate. "Just don't do it. We're safe here. We have the farm and the water and the walls, you said, you said we were safe here—"
"I said safe isn't a place," Francis said quietly.
"Remember? By the fire. Safe is a thing you make and keep making. And this is me making it. This trip. It's hard, and it's scary, and I don't want to go any more than you want me to. But if I don't go, then when the fall comes, the bad men take our harvest, and then we're weak and hungry all winter,
and then they own us, the way they own everybody out there. And I'm not going to let that happen to you. I made your mom a promise. To keep you safe, whatever it takes. And whatever it takes, right now, means I have to go do this hard thing."
At the mention of his mother, Junior's face crumpled.
"But what if you don't come back," he said.
And there it was, the real thing, the thing under all of it, and his voice broke on it.
"What if you go out there and the bad men get you like they got Mom. What if you go and you don't come back and then I don't have anybody, I don't have Mom and I don't have you and I'm all alone—"
And Francis pulled his son against him and held him, held him hard, because this was the thing, this was the exact thing, the thing that had scared him more than any warlord.
"Listen to me," Francis said into the boy's hair.
"Listen. I'm going to tell you the truth, because I don't lie to you, so here's the truth. It is dangerous. I won't tell you it's not, because that would be a lie, and you'd know it was a lie, and then you'd be scared and not able to trust me on top of it. It's dangerous. There's a chance,
a real chance, that something happens to me out there and I don't come home. That's true. I won't pretend it isn't."
Junior sobbed against his chest.
"But here's the rest of the truth," Francis said.
"And this part's just as true as the scary part. I am very, very good at this. This one thing. Better than anybody. I crossed a whole dead city full of bad men to get to you, remember? All that way, through all of that, and I made it, because I know how to be a ghost. I know how to not get caught.
I know how to see the danger before it sees me and slip away in the dark. That's the thing I'm best at in the whole world. So the chances are, the chances are really good, that I do this thing careful and grey and smart, and I come home to you. That's the most likely thing.
I want you to hold onto that. The most likely thing is that I come back."
Junior pulled back and looked up at him, his face wet and red.
"Promise," he said. "Promise you'll come back."
And Francis felt the whole weight of it, because this was the moment, this was the exact moment Ruth had warned him about, the moment where every soft part of him wanted to say the lie. I promise, I promise, of course I'll come back, nothing's going to happen to me, I promise.
It would have been so easy. It would have made the boy feel better for an hour.
And it would have been a lie. And Junior would half know it was a lie. And the day it mattered, the day Francis needed his son to believe him about something true, the boy would remember that his father had promised something no man could promise, and he would not know what to trust.
Don't lie to him. Whatever you do.
"I can't promise that," Francis said gently.
"And I'm sorry. I know that's not what you want to hear. But I don't lie to you, buddy, not even to make you feel better, not even now. No man can promise he'll come back from something dangerous. Your mom couldn't have promised it. Nobody can. And if I promised it and then something happened,
I'd have died a liar, and you'd never be able to trust anything I told you again. So I'm not going to lie to you. Even though it would be easier. Even though I want to."
Junior's face fell, and Francis caught it, held his son's face in both hands before the boy could crumble.
"But here's what I can promise," Francis said.
"And this one's real. This one I can swear to you on your mother's grave. I promise you that I will do everything, everything, in my power to come home to you. I will be more careful than I have ever been about anything in my life. I will not take one single risk I don't have to.
I will think about your face every single day, every hour, and it will make me careful, because I will not leave you alone in this world if there is any way in heaven or earth to avoid it. I promise you that I will fight to come home with everything I have. That one's real. That one I can keep.
Do you understand the difference?"
Junior sniffed, and thought about it, the way he thought about everything now, seriously, old before his time.
"You can't promise you'll come back," he said slowly. "Because nobody can promise that. But you can promise you'll try as hard as anybody's ever tried."
"That's exactly it," Francis said, and his throat was tight. "That's exactly the difference. The first one's a lie. The second one's the truth. And I'd rather give you a true hard thing than a sweet lie. Always. That's how I love you. With the truth, even when it's hard."
Junior wiped his face with his sleeve.
"Okay," he said, wobbly but real. "Okay. I understand. I don't like it. But I understand."
Francis pulled him close again.
"There's one more thing," he said. "The most important thing. Even more important than me coming home. And I need you to really hear it."
"What."
"You will not be alone," Francis said. "That's the thing I need you to know all the way down. Even in the worst case. Even if the scary thing happens and I don't come back. You will not be alone. Not for one minute. Because look what we've got now, buddy. Look at all of them. Maya,
who fixes everybody. Nathan, who'd take a bullet for you without thinking twice. Ruth, and Ruger, and Nell, and Sofia, and Cole, and all of them. Twenty of us now. And every single one of them loves you and would die for you and would raise you and keep you safe if it ever came to that.
You're not one boy with one dad anymore. You've got a whole family now. A big one. And it doesn't come apart if one person's gone. That's the whole point of a family. That's the whole reason we built it."
He pulled back and looked his son in the eye.
"Your mom's in your heart, right? You carry her. She's not gone, not really, because she's in you. Well, I'd be in there too, if it came to it. And you'd still have all of them. You would never, ever be alone. I made sure of that. Everything I've built here, all these people,
all this braiding us together, it was partly so that you would never be alone again, no matter what happens to me. That's a father's job now. Not just to protect you myself, but to build a world around you that keeps protecting you even if I'm gone. And I've done that. Look around. I've done that.
You're the safest, most loved boy on this whole plain. Whatever happens to me."