Chapter 4 Drew #2
"Yes."
"What does that nod mean."
He looked ahead. The radio crackled. Sylvia's voice on the lead truck channel, telling Cora the convoy was ready to move. Cora's voice answering. Copy.
Renn put the truck in gear.
"In Vegas," he said, "before the invasion, a senior warrior of my cohort would nod to a junior who had served well.
The junior was not always in the same unit.
Sometimes the junior had been on a different mission, and the senior had heard of the work and had not been there to see it, and the nod was the way the senior said I have heard and the work was good.
I do this for you because I have not been there to see your work, and what I have heard is good. "
"What have you heard."
"I have heard that you killed nine bandits in a wash yesterday with a rifle and a blade and brought back a working motorcycle.
That you held the corner of the Vegas strip-mall perimeter for five hours without moving.
From Cora three days ago at the council table, when she was telling Marta why you were on the team — that you have been walking the Mojave perimeter at dawn for nine months without anyone asking you to.
That you handed Brecca a bandage when no one else would.
That you visit Auriel every other day at Tess's tent and that you have not yet accepted a cup of tea. "
"That last one is not work."
"That last one is work, half-blood. You hold the baby. The mother sleeps. That is work. I have done it for my own brother's child, in my unit, on Vampyr. It is the work that earns the nod most."
I did not know what to say to that.
I closed my eyes.
The truck moved.
I slept for the next two hours and forty-three minutes.
Sylvia did not come to wake me. Renn did not come to wake me.
I woke on my own, with the carving still on the dashboard of the lead truck a hundred feet ahead, and the sun was at six o'clock and we were deep into New Mexico, and Cora was on the radio with the third truck about a small detour we needed to take around a collapsed bridge.
I sat up.
Renn looked at me.
"Three hours."
"You let me have the extra hour."
"You needed it. The convoy can afford it. We are still on Cora's schedule."
"Renn."
"Yes."
"Thank you."
"It is the senior's job."
"You are not my senior."
"On this convoy I am. You have not held the night watch with a unit before. I have. I know what the body takes. I will tell you when to sleep. You will sleep. We will both pretend this conversation did not happen."
I closed my eyes again. I did not sleep.
I just sat with my eyes closed and listened to Renn drive.
Renn drove the way Cora drove. Careful, even, the same steady-grip the Vampyren-warrior cohort had been trained into during their unit time.
I had not asked Renn about his unit time in nine months. I would, eventually. Not on this trip.
* * *
We made camp at a former rest stop east of Gallup at sunset.
Cora set the watch rotation. Renn first. Cruz second. Sylvia third. I was off-rotation again. Sylvia had decided.
I did not argue.
I sat at the back of the lead truck with Cora.
She had the route map out. She was making small marks on it. Fuel counts, the cache projection adjusted for the bandit-bike's added range, the time we had gained in Vegas and the time we had lost at Holbrook. She had the seven-fold ledger habit. The marks were in stacks of seven.
I watched her mark.
She caught me watching.
"What."
"You're marking in sevens."
"Yes."
"Did you do that in the council."
"Yes."
"Loren did not look at the marks."
"Loren never looks at the marks. Loren has known about the marks for two years. He does not mention them."
"Cora."
"Yes."
"Tell me about Mira."
She looked up.
"Mira."
"The girl. Five years old. The one I will not pass the rebar to. The one in the schoolhouse who counts to fifty. I want to know what she means to you."
"That is a question I would have expected you not to ask."
"It is a question I would not have asked yesterday."
"What changed."
"You said her name."
"Whose name."
"Talia's name."
Cora put down the pencil. She closed the ledger.
"Mira."
"Yes."
"Mira reminds me of Talia."
"How."
"The way they hold their hands. The way they ask questions you do not have answers to. The way they make adults feel responsible for the question and not for the answer. Talia did that. Mira does that. Different girls. Same gravitational field."
"Cora."
"Yes."
"Tell me Talia's story. The whole story. Not the council version. The story you told yourself in the bathroom that day."
She looked at me for a long time.
The sun was almost down. The rest-stop pavement was warm under the truck. The convoy's third-shift watcher, Sylvia, she had volunteered, was on the south perimeter humming something I could not place.
"I will tell you the story in Urbana."
"Why Urbana."
"Because I am going to tell it in the bathroom where it happened.
To Nina. To whoever is alive. I have been planning to tell it for three years.
I am going to tell it once and you are going to hear it because you are going to be there when I tell it, and you are going to be there because you are on the team, and you are on the team because I signed the paper.
That is what I am going to do. I am going to tell it once and then I am going to take Deedee home. "
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"Okay."
"You're not going to push me to tell it now."
"No."
"Why."
"Because Tess told me the six is yours and the seven is the carving's. The story is yours. I will hear it in Urbana, in the bathroom, when you tell it. Not before."
"Drew."
"Yes."
"Thank you."
I looked at her. The light was almost gone. The corner of her mouth, the scar, caught the last of the gold. I had not yet figured out what to do with the scar. I was not going to figure it out tonight.
She picked up the pencil. Opened the ledger. Started a new column.
I watched her mark in sevens.
After a while she said:
"You handed Brecca a bandage. Renn just told you."
"Renn told me he had heard. Yes."
"Why did you hand her the bandage."
"Because she was bleeding."
"You don't hand things to people, Drew. You don't pass things. You don't loan. You don't give. Brecca was on the wrong side of the room and the gauze was on the right side and you handed her the bandage. Why."
I thought about it.
I had not thought about that day in nine months.
It had not come up. Brecca had not brought it up.
I had not brought it up. The fact that Renn had heard about it, the fact that anyone had told Renn, meant Brecca had told Rael, and Rael had told someone, and the someone had told Renn.
I had not known until thirty seconds ago that Brecca had ever told anyone.
"Because Brecca was bleeding from her own table," I said.
"Brecca was at the medical tent. She was the medic.
She was the one who bandaged people. There was no one else to bandage her.
The bandage was twelve feet from her hand and her hand was holding pressure on her own thigh, and if I had not handed her the bandage she would have had to release the pressure and walk to the gauze and the artery would have been a question I did not want her to have to answer.
So I handed her the bandage. I did not consider it giving. I considered it not letting her bleed."
"Drew."
"Yes."
"That is giving."
"Cora."
"It is. You handed Brecca the bandage because you did not want her to bleed. You did not want her to bleed because you cared what happened to her. That is giving. The reason was love, not transaction. The hand-off was a gift."
I did not say anything.
She let it sit.
After a while she said:
"You hand things to me too, Drew. You handed me the rebar. You moved my fuel column. You handed me the route through the Bay. You did not consider those gifts. They were."
"Cora."
"Yes."
"That is more than I am ready to hear tonight."
"Okay."
"Okay."
"I will not push it."
"Thank you."
She closed the ledger. She moved one of the small stones off the corner of the route map. The map rolled itself partly closed. She did not unroll it.
"Sleep, Drew. Sylvia is going to come check on you in an hour and you are going to be asleep when she does, and she is going to nod and not say anything. That is the goal."
"Yes."
She walked away.
I sat at the back of the truck with the carving in my hand. The 7 was still on the bottom. The unfinished feet caught the last of the light. Tess had whittled the body. Kal had carved the head. The feet were the part neither of them had gotten to.
I thought: Auriel will outlive Cora by a hundred years.
I will outlive Cora by maybe seventy. Deedee will outlive her mother by something we cannot calculate yet.
The three of us are the count Tess and Mark and Crystal will leave behind.
We are the seven, and the six, and the something else. We are the ones who will remember.
I had not thought that thought before.
I had not been able to think it before because thinking it would have meant the math was real, and I had not been ready for the math to be real.
The math was real.
Cora had signed me on the team. Tess had burned a 7 into the carving. Brecca had handed me the bandage. Renn had nodded. Sylvia had ordered me to sleep. The math was real.
I held the carving.
I closed my eyes.
I slept.
When Sylvia came at oh-two-hundred to check on me she found me asleep at the back of the truck with the carving in my hand and the 7 still facing up.
She did not wake me. She nodded. She did not say anything.
She walked away.