Chapter 9 Crystal
Mark made me eat the eggs.
I had said I was not hungry. I had said it the way I had been saying it for nine days, which was the way of a woman who had not been hungry in the eight months since the shortwave had stopped working and Nina had stopped answering, and which was also the way of a woman whose husband had been making her eat at six in the morning for two hundred and fifty-something days and who had given up arguing with him eight months ago because arguing took energy and energy was for the radio.
Mark put the plate in front of me.
The eggs were Tess's eggs. Tess had been the kitchen lead this morning because Auriel was teething and Tess had been up since three and had decided that as long as she was up, the kitchen tent might as well have eggs, and the chickens that Cora had bartered for in Pasadena last winter had finally started laying again after the spring molt, and there were six eggs. Six.
I did not say six.
Tess had given two to Sebastian. Brecca's son, a name nobody used because Brecca had named him after a man who was not the father, and the father was Rael, and Rael was on the southern integration tour and would be back tonight from the look of the radio chatter, and the name had been a thing none of us had landed yet so we called him Brecca's.
He was three weeks old. He needed protein. Sebastian got two of the six.
That had left four.
Mark and I were each getting one. Tess had eaten one.
Loren and Kiera had taken one between them.
Loren was the man who would only take half an egg in a four-egg morning and would arrange it so that the other half went to Kiera, and Kiera was the woman who knew this and pretended not to.
The fourth egg was for Sebastian's mother, which was Brecca, who had not been eating either.
The egg was on my plate.
I looked at it.
Mark sat down across from me. He had his own egg.
He had brought the salt, a small tin Crystal had picked up at the Vegas barter market, and he set the salt between us on the kitchen table that had been an actual kitchen table since the Mojave camp had built the kitchen tent a roof eight months ago.
"Eat."
"Mark."
"Eat."
I ate.
The egg was warm. The yolk was the deep orange that chicken yolks were when the chickens had been on a real diet for two months.
The alfalfa Cora's salvage team had brought back from Bakersfield in April had brought the yolks back from the watery yellow they had been for a year.
The egg was good. I ate it. I did not say it was good.
I did not need to. Mark watched me eat. He did not say good either. He had stopped needing to say it.
He finished his egg.
He sat across from me.
He said:
"Today is day nine."
"I know."
"They are in Missouri."
"I know."
"They are two days from Urbana."
"I know."
He took my hand across the kitchen table.
He did not look at me. He looked at his egg-plate.
His thumb moved across the back of my knuckles.
Mark's hands were always cool, the Vampyren-cool, the desert-planet biology, the thing that had taken me a year to stop flinching at, and the cool felt like a creek in summer.
The cool was the thing I had learned to want.
"Crystal."
"Mark."
"They will be at Urbana in two days."
"I know."
"Drew is with them."
"I know."
"Cora signed him on the team."
"I know."
"Drew is going to bring her home."
I closed my eyes.
I had been at this kitchen table every morning for nine days.
Mark had brought me eggs. Mark had been holding my hand.
Mark had been saying they are in [place] and they are [N] days out and Drew is with them.
He had been saying Drew is with them every single morning.
He had been saying it because he had not known how else to say Cora is bringing her home and Cora has the half-Vampyren on the team and the half-Vampyren has not yet failed Cora and will not.
Mark knew Drew the way Mark knew everyone. The Vampyren-cool-eye thing. Mark would walk past a person in the salvage line and would know within thirty seconds whether the person could be relied on, and Mark had been wrong about a person twice in fifteen years.
Mark had said Drew can be relied on eight months ago when Drew had first come to the Mojave camp.
He had not been wrong.
I opened my eyes.
I said:
"He listens to her."
"I know."
"He listened to her for nine months without anyone telling him to."
"I know."
"He is going to walk through Hess to get to her."
"I know."
"Mark."
"Crystal."
"I am going to sleep tonight. I am going to sleep because Drew is with her.
I have not slept properly in two hundred and fifty-three days.
Tonight I am going to sleep because Drew is with her, and Drew is going to bring her home, and her means Deedee and her also means Cora and Drew is the man who carries both. "
Mark squeezed my hand.
"Yes."
"Mark."
"Yes."
"Tess told me yesterday that she gave him the carving."
"She told me too."
"She put a 7 on it."
"She told me that too."
"I did not know what that meant when she told me.
I am not Tess. I am not Cora. I do not count in sevens.
Tess told me, Cora counts in sevens because she will not count to six.
Tess told me, Drew will not know what six is for nine days but he will know by the end.
I asked Tess what six was. Tess said: six is the count in the bathroom that Cora has not been able to say out loud for three years.
Drew is going to make her say it. Drew does not know that yet.
Drew is going to do it because Drew is the man who hands Brecca a bandage when she is bleeding.
Drew is the man who reads the Joads to a woman driving a truck across Oklahoma.
Drew is the man who knows how to count without having to. "
Mark was looking at me.
"Tess said all that."
"Tess said all that."
"In one breath."
"In one breath. She was making eggs at the time. She did not stop making eggs."
"Tess."
"Tess."
He squeezed my hand again.
I looked at the empty egg-plate.
"Mark."
"Yes."
"I want to sleep tonight."
"You will."
"I want to sleep tonight and I want to wake up in two days and have the convoy be at Urbana and have Nina be alive and have Deedee be alive and have Cora come home with both of them and Patrick and Jet and Saul and Mara.
And Drew. And the team. I want them all to come home.
I want the count to be the count we sent out plus the count we sent for, intact, undivided, all of it. "
"Crystal."
"Yes."
"It will not be all of it."
"I know."
"You know."
"I know. Mark. I know. I have known for two months. I do not need you to tell me. I need you to sit across from me with the egg-plate and the salt and to say Drew is with them and to not have to say the other things. Are you listening."
"Yes."
"Good."
He let my hand go.
He stood up.
He picked up both plates.
He walked them to the wash basin.
He came back.
He sat down on the bench beside me, on my side of the kitchen table, the way he used to sit at the Chicago breeding-pool table in the year-two summer when he had been on watch and I had not yet known I was going to fall for him. He put his arm around my shoulders.
I leaned into him.
I cried.
I had cried at least once a day for two hundred and fifty-three days.
The crying had become a habit. Not surprising, and not catharsis.
Just the way the body did the small daily release of the thing the body could not put down.
I cried for maybe ninety seconds. Mark did not say anything.
Mark held me. The Vampyren-cool of his arm was on my back.
The tent canvas was warm in the morning sun.
Outside the tent somebody was singing — the low chant the cohort Vampyren did when the sun was coming up, the chant Renn would be doing right now somewhere in Missouri, and the synchronization felt like a thing.
I stopped crying.
I sat up.
I wiped my eyes.
I said: "Tell me about the convoy."
Mark said: "They are at a bridge in Missouri. Hess is two days behind them. They will reach Urbana ahead of Hess. Renn confirmed last night at twenty-two-thirty on the long-radio."
"Renn confirmed."
"Renn confirmed."
"How was Renn's voice."
"Calm. The cohort-tone. Renn's cohort-tone."
"That's good."
"It is good."
"Cora?"
"Cora was on the radio after Renn. She sounded. Crystal."
"What."
"She sounded different."
"Different how."
"Lighter. The way Cora sounds when she has finished a thing she has been carrying."
"What thing."
"I do not know. I asked Renn afterward, on the side band. Renn said: Drew told her something on the bridge. The something landed. Cora cried. Drew did not move. They sat together for the rest of the night. Sylvia covered them with blankets. The team did not mention it in the morning."
I went still.
"Drew told her something."
"Yes."
"On the bridge."
"On the bridge."
"Mark."
"Yes."
"Drew told her about the count."
"What count."
"The count from the Drake raid. The count Cora has been carrying for eleven years. The one we don't talk about."
Mark looked at me.
"You know about the count."
"I know about the count, Mark. I have known about the count since the first night after we got to Mojave from Chicago and Cora helped me set up the family tent and we drank from the same bottle of moonshine and I told her about losing Deedee at Urbana and she told me about Talia in the bathroom.
I have known about the count for three years.
I have not said anything because Cora did not want me to say anything.
I have been carrying the count for her. Tess has been carrying the count for her.
Brecca has been carrying the count for her.
Loren has been carrying the count for her.
None of us have said it. We have all known. "
"And Drew."