Chapter 6 Drew #2
"It is mine to give and yours to take. That makes it yours."
I held the book.
I did not say anything for a long time.
After a while she said, quietly:
"That is the first thing I have given you that you have taken."
"It is."
"That is the first thing you have taken from anyone in nine months."
"It is."
"How does it feel."
I thought about it.
"It feels," I said, "like a small loss. Not because the giving is wrong.
Because the loss has been the shape of me for a long time, and the taking has the wrong shape, and the shape of me is going to have to change to hold the book, and the changing is the loss.
The change is what is leaving. The book is what is arriving.
The thing that is leaving was the thing that has kept me safe for eleven years.
The thing that is arriving is. I do not know what the thing that is arriving is.
It is going to be a thing. I cannot tell yet. "
"Okay."
"Cora."
"Yes."
"That is more than I have said to anyone in nine months."
"I know."
"I am going to need to be quiet for a while."
"Okay."
She sat on the desk. I sat on the bed. The book was on my knees. The dust was on my hands.
I looked at the floor.
I did not move for ten minutes. She did not move either. She did not look at me. She looked at the floor too, in a different direction, the way you sat with somebody when the sitting was the thing.
At the end of the ten minutes she stood up.
"Sylvia is coming."
"Yes."
"I'm going to head her off. Five more minutes."
"Thank you."
She went out.
The door closed.
I held the book.
I put my hand in my pocket. The stone was there.
The stone had been in my pocket every day since I was nine.
The stone was from the place I had buried Ellen.
The lot behind the apartment building, where the soil had been the only ground that the bandit cohort had not paved over by the second winter, where I had dug a shallow grave with my hands and a piece of metal and had placed Ellen in it and had marked it with three rocks because three was the number Ellen had used for emphasis when she had read me the Joads, and they were three and they were three and they were three.
I had taken one of the three rocks. I had carried it for thirteen years.
I rolled the stone between my fingers.
I had been doing this when I was deflecting. I had been doing this without knowing I was doing it, and Cora had noticed three months ago that I did this when I was deflecting, and she had not said anything about it.
I was not deflecting now.
I was just holding the stone.
I held the stone in one hand and the book in the other.
I sat on the bed.
After a while I put the book in my coat pocket. It was a paperback. It fit. I put the stone in the same pocket as the book. They sat together against my thigh.
I went outside.
Sylvia was at the second truck with the field kit out. She saw me. She did not say anything.
I held out my wrist.
She unwrapped the gauze. She inspected the stitches. She nodded.
"Five more days," she said. "Then I take them out."
"Yes."
"Drew."
"Yes."
"Cora told me you had a moment in the cabin."
"She did."
"What moment."
"A book."
"Good or bad."
"I don't know yet."
She nodded.
She rewrapped the wrist. She put the kit away.
"Drew."
"Yes."
"You did not push back at me when I told you to sleep yesterday."
"No."
"That was new."
"Yes."
"I appreciated it."
"You're welcome."
"You said 'you're welcome.'"
"I did."
"That was also new."
I did not say anything.
She closed the kit. She put the kit in the third truck. She walked away.
I stood at the second truck for a moment. The carving was still on the lead truck's dashboard. I could see it through the rear window. The 7 was facing up.
I went to the lead truck. I opened the passenger door. I sat down. I put the book in the foot well between my boots. The stone went back in my coat pocket.
Cora climbed in after a moment.
"Ready?"
"Ready."
She started the engine.
The convoy rolled out.
Cruz, on the radio: Tower.
Renn, replying: Tower.
There was no tower. There had not been a tower for a hundred and forty miles. They were doing the body-count check. The check was a way of saying I am still alive in this truck, you are still alive in that truck, we are both on the same map.
After a minute, I keyed my radio.
"Tower."
There was a pause on the line.
Cruz keyed in: "Copy. Tower."
Renn, beat after: "Tower."
I had counted myself into their check.
I had not asked. I had not been asked. I had just keyed in.
Renn said nothing about it on the radio. He just kept driving.
Cora, beside me, watching the road, said:
"Welcome to the count."
I closed my eyes for a second.
Opened them.
Drove on.
* * *
Three hours later we hit weather.
It was not the storm. The storm was still two days out.
This was the weather that came before the storm.
The front-edge atmospheric shift that the post-invasion climate produced when a system was about to arrive.
Renn picked it up on the radio first; he had a barometer on the second truck dashboard that Cruz had jury-rigged for him from a salvaged aviation instrument, and the barometer was dropping faster than the rate Renn had logged in any of the previous trip's days.
"Cora."
"Renn."
"Pressure drop. Steady. Faster than yesterday."
"How fast."
"Forty miles an hour, on the falling line. Storm is east. Maybe twenty-four hours."
"Damage."
"Hard to say. The post-invasion climate signature on this barometer is uncalibrated. Could be a thunderstorm cell. Could be the supercell I have not seen since two years ago in Kansas."
"What do you recommend."
"Make ground. We have eighteen hours before we lose visibility. Push through the Oklahoma stretch tonight, sleep in shifts at the next cache. We can be at Joplin by twenty-four hours, which puts us under cover when the storm hits."
"Copy."
We pushed.
We pushed for the next eleven hours. Renn took the second truck.
Cora took the lead. I had a four-hour rotation on the third truck because Sylvia had decided I needed driving practice, and Cruz had agreed, and I had not argued.
I drove the third truck through the Texas panhandle into Oklahoma at fifty miles an hour and did not say anything on the radio the entire time.
The carving stayed on the lead truck dashboard.
The book stayed in the foot well of the lead truck where I had left it.
At the end of the four hours Sylvia took the third-truck wheel from me. I rode out the storm-front leg as her passenger. The book was a hundred feet ahead, in the lead truck, with Cora.
We crossed into Oklahoma at sunset.
The barometer kept falling.
The sky was the color of bruise.
The convoy held the diamond.
I had not made a single mistake on the road.
Sylvia had told me on the radio, twice, that I was a good driver.
The first time had been at the second hour.
The second time had been at the fourth hour.
Sylvia did not give compliments. Sylvia gave evaluations.
The evaluation had been good, and Sylvia did not say good unless she meant it.
The cab was warm. The wipers cycled.
I had not read the book today. I had looked at it twice. Once when I had put it in the foot well, once at a fuel stop two hours later. I had not opened it. The cover was the Lange photograph. The dust-bowl mother. The mother who had been about to lose her son.
I thought about Tess.
About Tess giving me the carving with a 7 on it.
About Crystal handing Cora the Polaroid.
About Ellen Reyes reading the Joads to a half-Vampyren four-year-old in a half-collapsed apartment in Phoenix, who had grown up to drive a third truck across Oklahoma in the dark for a woman he had not yet figured out how to thank.
The storm was twenty-four hours out.
The road was holding.
The carving was on the dashboard ahead.
The book was in the lead-truck foot well ahead.
The team was a unit.
The count was holding.
The convoy rolled on.