Chapter 14 Crystal #2
She sat down on the kitchen bench. Cassi came over and sat next to her. Cassi put her arm around her mother's shoulders. Elena let her. Elena leaned into her daughter the way the daughter had been leaning into the mother for two years. The lean was reversed. The lean was new.
Outside the tent the camp went about its morning.
The garden was in. The kitchen was cooking.
The kids were in the schoolhouse. The perimeter was watched.
The radio was on Loren's table. The trucks were getting ready for the salvage run Cruz had planned for the day before the convoy was due home. The Mojave camp was the Mojave camp.
In the middle of the kitchen tent, four women held each other.
Elena and me and Tess and Brecca.
Mark and Loren and Cassi and Kiera and Rael, who had come in from the dormitory tent now, hair tousled from sleep, stood around us.
The five husbands and the five wives.
Plus Sebastian on Brecca's shoulder.
Plus Auriel on Tess's hip.
Plus Elena leaning on Cassi now, who had been leaning on me a minute ago.
The count was holding.
The count was going to hold for the next nine days.
The convoy was coming home.
* * *
The day went by.
I did the work. I had been doing the work for two hundred and sixty days.
The work was the work. I had not stopped doing the work in eight months.
The salvage run Cruz had planned needed final inventory.
The garden needed weeding. Sebastian needed his feeding window covered while Brecca did the medical tent.
Auriel needed her afternoon nap rotation.
The dinner needed prep. The dinner was a thing the camp would eat at six. The dinner was the thing the camp did.
I did the work.
At three in the afternoon I went to the family tent.
I sat on the cot.
I pulled Deedee's blanket out from under the cot.
The blanket had been folded for two hundred and sixty days.
The folds had set. The blanket was the soft that only the long-folded fabric had.
I had not been able to wash the blanket because washing would have meant the folds would have set differently.
I had folded the blanket only once in eight months.
The folds were the folds Deedee would remember.
The blanket would smell like the eight months.
Like the camp, like the canvas, like the small lemon-sachet I had stuck in the folds in year four when she had been four, like Mark's bandolier-leather from the bandolier that had hung over the cot for the whole eight months because Mark had been in the family tent with me for the whole eight months.
The blanket smelled like home.
I held the blanket.
I unfolded it.
Six folds.
I folded it back. The six folds went back into place.
I refolded it differently. Seven folds.
Then I unfolded that and refolded it again. Six folds. Six was the right count for the blanket. Six had always been the right count for the blanket. The blanket was a six-fold blanket. Cora's seven-stack count was not the blanket's count. The blanket was Deedee's count and Deedee's count was six.
I held it on my lap.
I unfolded it one more time. I lay it across my knees.
The blanket was the small pale blue thing it had been when Deedee had picked it out at the Mojave kitchen barter market at age four, the color of a sky in the hour after sunset, with a small darker-blue stitch along the edge where Mara had repaired the corner the year Deedee had dragged the blanket through the rosemary and torn it.
Mara's stitches were tighter than mine. Mara had taught me stitching in year two.
I had not been a natural. Mara had been.
Mara had stitched the blanket and then later in the day had stitched a fighter named Joe's forehead and then later still had stitched a Vampyren-defector named Loma's hand, and all three of the stitches had held for three years.
I touched the stitch on the corner of the blanket.
I had not touched Mara's stitch in eight months.
I sat with the blanket on my knees for a long time.
I let myself say her name in my head. Mara.
Mara. Mara. Six times. Six was the count for Mara.
Six was the count for the blanket. Six was the count Cora did not write and that Mara had written every day of her life because Mara had not had Cora's fear of six.
Mara had counted in sixes because sixes were the count of a hand that had lost a thumb in the year-two combat, and the four fingers plus the cracked palm-knuckle was six, and Mara had counted on the six because the six was the count she had.
I refolded the blanket. Six folds. The folds set easily, the way folds did when the fabric remembered.
I put the blanket back under the cot.
I went outside.
Mark was at the wood pile, splitting kindling for the dinner stove. He looked up when I came out.
I said: "Mark."
"Crystal."
"They are at Springfield."
"I know."
"Sylvia gave us the count."
"I know."
"Mara. Mark, Mara."
He set down the axe.
He came across the dirt.
He held me.
I cried for the second time today.
I had cried for ninety seconds at the radio. I had stopped. I had done the work. I had folded the blanket. The crying had been waiting. I had let it wait. The crying was now done waiting.
I cried at the wood pile for maybe four minutes.
Mark held me.
After a while I said: "They will be home in nine days."
"I know."
"Mara is in the truck-bed."
"I know."
"Cora is bringing her home."
"I know."
"Mark."
"Yes."
"I have been sleeping for eight nights now. Tonight is the ninth."
"Yes."
"I am not going to stop sleeping until they are home."
"No."
"I am going to keep sleeping. I am going to sleep through the next nine nights. Mark. I am going to be alive when they get to the gate."
He said: "Yes, Crystal. You will be alive."
He held me at the wood pile.
The afternoon went by.
The convoy was a thousand and forty-three miles away.
The count was holding.
I went to the kitchen tent.
I made dinner.
The camp ate.
I slept.
In Missouri, the convoy made camp at the same bridge Cora and Drew had cried at on the way out.
The bridge was the bridge that the team had passed through on the outbound trip and was now returning to on the inbound trip.
The bridge was a marker. Cora put the lead truck on the same side of the bridge she had parked on outbound.
Drew sat with her at the back of the truck. They did not say much.
Sylvia made tea.
Drew drank the tea.
Cora drank the tea.
Renn took the watch.
Veron held the second-watch.
Cruz took the third.
The convoy slept.
I slept at Mojave.
The count was holding.
The convoy was coming home.
I did not know about the bridge moment yet. I did not know about the Drew-Cora bridge until they got back to Mojave and Cora told me about it under the rosemary at Mara's burial seven days later.
I slept.
When I woke up, day sixteen, Mark was at the wash basin again.
Tess was at the stove.
Brecca was at the corner cot with Sebastian.
Auriel was on Tess's hip.
Auriel said: "Eh."
Tess said: "Yes, baby."
Auriel said: "Eh-eh-eh."
Tess said: "Yes."
Mark looked at me.
"They are at Joplin."
"I know."
"Crystal."
"Mark."
"They are seven days from the gate."
"Yes."
"Seven."
"Cora is going to like that one. Tell Loren on the radio. Cora will hear it. She'll know we counted."
Mark smiled.
He had not smiled in eight months.
I smiled.
I had not smiled either.
The smile was a thing.
The count was holding.
Seven days to the gate. Seven.