Chapter 17 Drew
The clay shape on my doorframe was a small wolf or a bear and I knew without being told that Auriel had made it.
I had not been at my tent for twenty-four days.
The tent had been on the southern edge of the camp the whole time.
The walls had been weathered by twenty-four days of Mojave high-desert wind and the canvas had a small fade-line along the south-facing wall that had not been there when I had left, and the small pile of foreign-objects-from-the-wire I had kept at the back of the tent had been added to twice while I was gone.
Somebody had been doing the dawn-perimeter walk in my absence.
The somebody had left the objects in the same pile.
The pile had two new pieces of bent rebar, one piece of a broken fence-post hinge, and one piece of corroded barbed wire.
The somebody had been Tomas. The pile had Tomas-style organization.
The somebody had been doing the work I had been doing for nine months because the work was the work and the work did not stop when the worker was on a road trip in Illinois.
I stood at the tent door.
The clay shape was a small wolf-or-bear. The clay was the dirty-grey-tan of Mojave clay. The shape had been pushed onto the doorframe by a small sticky hand and then left there to dry, and the dry had set, and the small clay shape had become a permanent feature of the doorframe.
I touched the shape.
The clay was hard.
I did not move it.
I went inside.
The tent was the way I had left it. The cot at the south wall, the small wooden shelf above the cot with the books that had been there since I had arrived at Mojave nine months ago.
Ellen's Grapes of Wrath on the shelf, the original copy with the marginal notes, untouched on the shelf for nine months; a salvaged copy of East of Eden I had not opened; a paperback To Kill a Mockingbird I had read once in year four.
And the small carved-wood box at the foot of the cot that I had used to hold the dry rations I did not store in the kitchen.
I sat on the cot.
I put the new Steinbeck. The Pampa Steinbeck, the one I had read aloud to Cora in the truck cab through Oklahoma and Missouri and into the Sierra Nevada. On the shelf next to Ellen's copy.
The two books sat together.
The new copy had no marginal notes. Ellen's copy had her marginal notes. The two copies were both The Grapes of Wrath. Both were mine. The two were the same book and a different book.
I sat with the two books for a moment.
I took down Ellen's copy. I had not taken it down in nine months.
I held it in my hands. The cover was the same Lange photograph.
The dust-bowl mother. The dust on the cover was nine months of Mojave dust on top of the eleven years of Phoenix-and-then-everywhere-else dust on top of the 1962 dust the paperback houses had not bothered to clean off the original print run.
I wiped the cover with my sleeve. The dust came off in a small soft cloud.
I opened the book.
The marginal notes were in pencil. Pencil faded over eleven years. I had been afraid of the fading for nine months. The fading was the worst-case I had been carrying.
The notes had not faded.
The notes were the same notes. Casy the preacher: the soul lesson.
In Ellen's hand, in the right margin of chapter four.
Tom Joad: the choice. In the left margin of chapter twelve.
The road is the country. At the bottom of chapter sixteen.
Rose of Sharon: the body's last gift. At the end.
The hand was the hand. The pencil was the pencil. The notes were the notes.
I closed the book.
I put it back on the shelf next to the new one.
The two copies were both there.
The two copies were both mine.
I took the stone out of my pocket.
I put the stone on the shelf next to Ellen's copy.
The stone had been in my pocket for fourteen years.
The shelf had been waiting.
I sat back.
There was a small noise outside the tent. Sylvia.
"Drew."
"Sylvia."
"Side."
"Healing."
"I am going to do the last bandage change."
"Yes."
She came in. She had the field kit. She unwrapped the side. She did the inspection. She did not say anything for thirty seconds. The medic-pause.
She said: "Closed. Three days early. The half-Vampyren healing rate is faster than my projection. I am going to need to update Brecca's notes on you. You will have a scar. The scar is going to be the scar a person sees when you take your shirt off. There is no way around that."
"Yes."
"Drew."
"Yes."
"You are okay with the scar."
"Yes."
"You did not say the scar is a giving."
"The scar is a thing. The scar is mine. The scar is now Cora's. The scar is the count's. I do not have to call the scar a giving. The scar is its own thing. The scar is the body remembering."
She put the field kit down.
She nodded.
"Good."
"Sylvia."
"Yes."
"Thank you for the work."
"You are welcome."
"All of it."
"Yes."
"Sylvia."
"Yes."
"I want to learn from Brecca."
She looked at me.
"What."
"I want to learn from Brecca. The medical work.
I want to know how Brecca does what she does.
I want to be the second-medic at the camp.
I want to be the redundancy that the redundancy has.
I want Sylvia to be the second-medic. I want to be the third.
I want to learn from both of you. I want.
Sylvia. I have been at the perimeter for nine months and I want to come inside.
I want to do something with my hands besides be the night-watch.
The night-watch is mine. I will still do the night-watch.
But the daylight hours, I want to learn medicine.
I want to be useful in the way that does not require a fight.
The fight is. Sylvia. The fight is the day I would rather not have to be the asset on.
I would rather be the asset on the days when there are no fights.
Those are most of the days. I want to learn the most-of-the-days work. "
She looked at me.
She nodded.
She said: "I will tell Brecca tonight. Brecca has been waiting for you to ask for nine months. Brecca will start the work with you on day three back."
"Day three back."
"Brecca will let you have two days for Cora. Then she will start the work."
"Yes."
"Drew."
"Yes."
"Welcome to the medical tent."
I nodded.
She closed the field kit. She went out.
I sat on the cot.
I looked at the shelf.
The two Steinbecks. The stone. The small carved-wood box. The salvaged paperback that I had not opened. The East of Eden.
I put my hand on the new Steinbeck.
I said, quietly, to Ellen: "I will read the death of Casy to her in a cabin in the Sierra Nevada someday. I will. I am not ready yet. I will be."
The Pampa Steinbeck did not have Ellen's notes.
The Mojave Steinbeck did.
The two copies sat together on the shelf.
I stood up.
I went outside.
The clay shape was on the doorframe.
I did not move it.
I went to find Cora.
She was at Crystal's tent.
* * *
Crystal's tent had not seen this many people in three years.
Crystal sat on her cot with Deedee on her lap.
Mark sat beside her. Cora was on the small wooden crate by the tent wall.
Brecca and Rael had come in. Brecca with Sebastian on her shoulder.
Tess and Kal had come in. Tess with Auriel on her hip.
Cassi had come in with Elena on her arm.
Loren was at the tent door, with Kiera. Sylvia was outside, doing the post-arrival medical sweep on the Urbana kids in the second truck, with Nina and Jet and Saul folded into the camp's adoption network.
The tent was full.
I came in.
I stood at the door beside Loren.
Nobody said anything for a long moment.
Then Crystal looked up at me.
Crystal said: "Drew."
"Crystal."
"Come here."
I went.
She stood up. She handed Deedee to Mark. She came to me. She held me.
I did not move.
She held me for a long time.
She said: "Thank you."
I said: "You are welcome."
She said: "Drew."
"Yes."
"You brought her home."
"Yes."
"You brought both of them home."
"Yes."
"You brought all of them home except Patrick and Mara."
"Yes."
"I am not. Drew. The math is not the count.
The count is the people. The people you brought home are the people.
I am not going to count what I do not have.
I am going to hold what I do have. You brought home what you could bring home.
I am going to thank you for what you brought. I am thanking you. Drew. Thank you."
I said: "You are welcome."
She held me.
After a while she said:
"Sit. Drew. Sit. The team has been on a truck for twenty-four days. Sit. Tess has soup. Tess has been making soup since dawn. There is soup for all of us. Sit."
I sat.
The tent was the family tent. Mark and Crystal's family tent.
The family tent had not been a place I had been before.
The family tent had been Cora's tent, in the sense that Cora was the kind of person Crystal welcomed into the family tent for the small evening conversations that the camp's families did, but it had not been my tent.
I had been the southern-edge tent. I had been the cot-with-the-bookshelf.
I sat in the family tent.
Tess gave me soup.
I ate.
The soup was Tess's soup. Tess's soup had the salt that Crystal had pre-located on a salvage run in year three and the carrots that the camp garden had grown for two summers and the beans that Crystal had been trading for at Vegas for six months.
The soup was the camp's soup. The soup was the work of seven different people. The soup was the count.
I ate the soup.
The tent settled around me.
Mark moved to the cot-edge next to mine.
He had Deedee on his lap. He did not say anything for a moment.
Mark and I had not had a conversation in nine months.
Mark had nodded at me four times in those nine months.
The nods had been the nods of a Vampyren-father acknowledging a half-Vampyren-adult who was on his camp's roster. The nods had not been anything else.
He said: "Drew."
"Mark."
"My daughter."
"Yes."