Chapter 12 Drew #2
She said: "Drew."
"Yes."
"You don't have to."
"I know."
"You will, eventually."
"I will."
"Okay."
"Cora."
"Yes."
"Where is Mara."
"In the second truck. Wrapped. We are taking her home. Crystal is going to bury her under the rosemary by the kitchen tent."
"Patrick."
"Missing. Hess-cell took him alive. We do not know where. We will come back for him. I told the team after Hess fell. We will not press now. We will run a separate operation when we are home. Patrick is the first thing on the Mojave council's docket when we get back. The decision is made."
"Deedee."
"In the cot two cots over. She is sleeping. She is going to live. Fever broke. She woke once, called me by name. She is going home with us."
"Nina. Jet. Saul."
"All going home. The kids. The eleven of them. We are bringing everyone. The second truck is going to be packed. We are using the bandit-bike for fuel-extension."
"Cora."
"Yes."
"The count."
"The count is seven returning. Deedee. Nina. Jet. Saul. The kids, eleven. That is fifteen. Plus the team, five, that is twenty. Plus Mara, who we are taking home in the second truck, which is twenty-one. Patrick is not on the count. Patrick is the next operation."
"Cora."
"Yes."
"Twenty-one is a multiple of seven."
"I know."
"You arranged the count."
"No. The count arranged itself. I noticed it when I added it up an hour ago.
I cried again. I did not mean to. The count is seven times three.
Three of the sevens are people I came for.
The fourth seven would have been Mara plus Patrick plus five of the kids, if Mara had been alive and Patrick had been with us.
The fourth seven is not whole. The fourth seven is the seven I am leaving for the next operation. The next time I drive east."
He was quiet for a long moment.
He said, slow, the half-Vampyren register low and steady the way it went when the body was saying a thing the body had decided: "Our count, Cora. Ours."
I went still.
He said it again. "Our count. Ours."
"Drew."
"Yes."
"You said it."
"I did."
"You said our and you said ours. Twice. In a row."
"Yes."
"That is. Drew."
"I know. Cora. I know."
"You are going to tell that to Crystal."
"Yes. When we are home. Not on the radio."
"She is going to."
"I know."
"Drew."
"Yes."
"Sleep."
"I."
"Drew. Sleep. The blood is doing its work. Sylvia says you sleep eight hours and then we move out tomorrow morning. The fever will pass by then. The wound will be closed enough to travel. Sleep."
"Yes."
She put her hand on the cot, on the edge nearest mine. She did not touch me. The hand was just there.
I closed my eyes.
I slept.
* * *
I dreamed of Ellen.
I dreamed of her reading the Joads to me on the floor of the half-collapsed apartment in Phoenix.
I dreamed of her voice. I dreamed of the small marginal notes in pencil in the cheap paperback she had owned, the notes she had been writing for the boy she would not be alive to teach.
I dreamed of the first chapter, to the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth, and I dreamed of Ellen's hand turning the page.
I dreamed of myself at seven, at the small lot behind the building, with the three rocks in my hands.
I dreamed of myself at twenty-one, on a cot in a boiler room, with Cora's blood in my veins.
I dreamed of Ellen smiling at me.
I dreamed of her saying: let her give it, Drew. Let her give it. That is what the giving is for. Let her give it.
I woke up.
It was morning.
Cora was on the cot next to me. She was asleep. Her hand was still on the edge of the cot. The hand had not moved in eight hours.
The bandage on her elbow was the same one.
I looked at the hand.
I put my hand on her hand.
The first time I had touched her of my own accord.
She did not wake up.
I held her hand.
I held it until Sylvia came in with breakfast and Cora woke up and we did not say anything about the hand and the day began.
* * *
We moved out at noon.
Nina and Jet and Saul and the eleven kids loaded into the convoy with the team.
The second truck was packed. Veron rode in the third with Cruz.
Renn drove the second. I rode in the lead with Cora and Sylvia.
Sylvia had decided she would ride in the lead for the first day of the return so she could monitor my wound at hour-by-hour intervals.
Deedee was on Cora's lap.
The Polaroid was in Cora's chest pocket.
Deedee was awake.
She was the kind of awake that the post-fever six-year-old was: quiet, watchful, sleeping every few hours, eating only when prompted.
She was the awake that meant she would be awake-and-talking by week's end.
She had not yet said much. She had said Cora twice.
She had said Drew once, the first time she had seen me.
She had not been afraid of me. The half-Vampyren-eyes Cora had told me about, the ones I had not yet seen, were the same gold-flecked-brown as mine, and Deedee had seen mine and had said Drew without flinching.
The not-flinching had been the thing. I had nodded at her.
She had nodded back. The nod had been the start.
We drove.
The Steinbeck was on the cab shelf.
The carving was on the dashboard.
The chipped diner mug was in the cup-holder.
The stone was in my coat pocket.
The book was at my feet.
The blade was at my hip.
Cora's hand was on my hand on the seat between us.
I did not pull away.
I drove west.
Cora drove the second day. I drove the first because Sylvia had decided that driving used less of my healing-energy than being a passenger, which I had not understood but had accepted.
The road rolled.
The count was holding.
Twenty-one returning. Mara in the truck-bed. Patrick the next operation. Five team. Seven Lucian at Mojave once Veron was integrated. Sebastian three weeks old. Auriel six months. Deedee six years on Cora's lap. Cora at the wheel. Me in the seat beside her with her hand on mine.
The count was holding.
The count was going to hold all the way home.