Chapter 18 Cora #2
"You have always been useful in a way that does not require a fight.
The fight was never the thing you were good at.
The fight was the thing you were available for.
You have been useful in the not-fight ways for nine months.
You walked the perimeter. You handed Brecca the bandage.
You held Auriel. You did the wall-repair.
You took the dawn-watch. You have been useful in the not-fight ways the whole time.
Tomorrow you start to do the formal work.
That is good. That is right. That is the next thing.
But you have not just become useful tomorrow.
You have been useful for nine months. The camp has been counting on you for nine months.
The camp knew. The camp did not say. I am telling you now because the camp does not say because the camp does not have to say.
I am saying because. Drew. I am saying because you should know. "
He looked at me.
He said: "Cora."
"Yes."
"I want to live in the family tent."
I did not move for a second.
"With Crystal and Mark and Deedee."
"No. With you. I want. I want us to have a tent. The way the families have tents. I want to be. Cora. I want to be a family with you. I have not had a family since Ellen. I want one. I want you. I want the tent. I want. I want what Crystal and Mark have. Not the same. Different. Ours. I want ours."
I sat with my hands in the rosemary trimmings.
I said: "Drew."
"Yes."
"Yes."
He looked at me.
"Yes."
"Yes, Drew. Yes. I want it too. I have wanted it for. I do not know how long. Months. The whole road trip. Maybe before. I want a tent with you. I want to be a family with you. I want. Yes. The answer is yes."
He nodded.
He said: "I am going to build the tent. Cruz has been holding canvas at the supply tent for me. He gave me the canvas yesterday. He said he had been saving it. He said he had known since day three of the convoy. He had given it to me. I have the canvas. I will build the tent."
"Where."
"Where do you want it."
I looked around. The kitchen tent was south.
The rosemary bed was at the south corner of the kitchen tent.
The family tents were east of the kitchen.
Crystal and Mark's tent was the eastern-most. Tess and Kal's was the second eastern-most. Brecca and Rael's tent was at the medical tent's northern edge.
The southern edge of the camp, where Drew's tent had been for nine months, had been the place Drew had chosen because the southern edge was the place that cost the camp the least if Drew had a bad night.
I looked at the empty patch of dirt between Crystal's tent and Tess's tent.
I said: "There."
He looked.
"Between the families."
"Yes."
"Okay."
"Drew."
"Yes."
"That puts us right between Crystal and Tess and across the path from Brecca. We are going to be in the center of the gossip web."
"Yes."
"You're okay with that."
"Yes. Cora. I have spent eleven years at the southern edge. I am ready for the center."
"Okay."
"Okay."
He stood up.
He helped me up.
We walked to the supply tent together.
Cruz had the canvas folded on the counter.
He had eight pieces. The pieces had been pre-cut to the tent dimensions Drew would need.
Cruz had been working on the cuts for ten days.
Cruz had told nobody. Cruz had been planning this from somewhere east of Albuquerque, on the road, where Cruz had been watching Drew and Cora and had been doing the Marine-quiet-decision and had been ready to act as soon as the camp had room for the action.
Cruz did not say anything when Drew and I came in.
He just handed us the canvas.
He said: "Two days. I will help with the framing."
Drew said: "Thank you."
Cruz said: "You are welcome."
We carried the canvas to the patch between Crystal's tent and Tess's tent.
We started to build.
The camp came to help. Loren came with the framing wood.
Tomas came with the perimeter-stakes. Kiera came with the rope.
Brecca came with Sebastian on her shoulder and helped tie the seam-line corners with one hand.
Tess came with Auriel on her hip. Mark came with the small flat-rocks he used to weigh down the canvas edges.
The whole camp built the tent.
The tent was up by sunset.
I stood at the door.
Drew was beside me.
The clay shape from his old tent was on the doorframe of the new tent.
Auriel had come over an hour ago, walked by Tess to the old tent doorframe, pointed at the shape, and said eh-eh.
Tess had carefully unstuck the clay shape from the old frame, brought it to the new tent doorframe, and pressed it on. The shape was now on our tent door.
The doorframe was the door.
Drew put his hand on the doorframe.
He said: "Ours."
I said: "Ours."
We went inside.
The tent had two cots, pushed together. The kitchen-tent-canvas-from-Mara's-canvas-cut was the floor.
The shelf was already on the south wall.
The two Steinbecks were on the shelf. The stone was on the shelf.
The Polaroid of Deedee, Deedee had given it back to me at the gate; Deedee had also told me later, in the family tent, that I should keep it because the Polaroid was from her year-one self and her year-eleven self lived at Mojave now, the Polaroid was on the shelf.
The chipped diner mug was on the shelf.
The Steinbeck-Pampa-copy was open to chapter twenty-eight.
We sat on the cots.
Drew said: "Cora."
"Yes."
"I am going to read the death of Casy to you tonight."
"You said you would do it in a cabin in the Sierra Nevada."
"This is our cabin in the Sierra Nevada. This is the cabin. This is the tent. This is. Cora. This is the place. The Sierra Nevada was the metaphor. The cabin was the metaphor. The tent is the cabin. I am ready."
I leaned against him.
He opened the book.
He read.
The Joads buried Casy on a hill outside Bakersfield.
Casy died saying you fellas don't know what you're doin'.
Ellen had read this to Drew when he was six.
Drew read it to me at twenty-six, in our tent, on Easter Sunday, on day twenty-four of a trip he had taken with me to bring six people home and had returned with twenty-three counting Mara, and had come back to the camp where Mara would be in the rosemary forever and Talia's name would be in the camp forever and Drew and I would be in our tent forever.
He read.
I listened.
After he finished, he closed the book.
He set it on the shelf between the two Steinbecks. The Pampa copy and Ellen's copy, both on the shelf, in our tent, in the camp.
He sat back on the cot.
He said: "Cora."
"Yes."
"Ours."
I said: "Ours."
The lantern hissed once and steadied. The canvas above us had the slow soft sway of canvas when the night air outside the tent had not yet found its temperature.
The clay shape on the doorframe was the clay shape.
The rosemary smell was through the seam of the door, coming off the bed Crystal had been trimming all afternoon and which I had finished for her at sunset.
Tess's tent was twelve feet east. Crystal's tent was fifteen feet west. The camp around us was the camp.
I touched his face.
The half-Vampyren cool of his cheek was the temperature I had been thinking about without thinking.
Ninety-five, a few degrees under human, the difference I had stopped flinching at in the truck cab on day eighteen and which I had now begun to want.
His pulse was at the soft place under his jaw.
The double-pulse-rhythm of his one heart played the two notes the way it always did when his body had decided not to brace.
I said: "Drew."
"Yes."
"We are home."
"Yes."
"The truck cab was the truck cab. The cabin was the metaphor. The tent is the cabin. The tent is also not the cabin. The tent is the tent."
He smiled.
The smile was the third or fourth I had seen from him. The count was getting harder to keep. I had stopped trying to keep it on the smiles two days ago.
He said: "What is the tent."
"The tent is ours. The tent is the place where you and I are not on the road.
The tent is the place where Sylvia does not knock at the back-cot.
The tent is the place where the count of seven stars in a rear window is now the count of canvas-seam stitches in the south wall.
I counted them this afternoon when Cruz was framing the corner.
Forty-two. Six rows of seven. The seam-count is the seam-count.
The seam-count is the count we have here.
The road's count is the road's. We are not on the road anymore. "
"Cora."
"Yes."
He leaned forward. He kissed me. The kiss was not the truck-cab kiss. The truck-cab kiss had been we have time. This kiss was we have the time. The difference was small. The difference was a definite article. The article meant the time was a thing the body could touch.
He did the small careful unbutton at the side of my shirt.
The same careful as the back-cot in the truck cab on day eighteen.
The same Drew-trained-to-be-precise hand.
The hand had been at the medical tent today for nine hours, tying sutures on pig-leather, learning Brecca's Theo-grip, passing instruments to Veron's right elbow while Brecca did the integration physical.
The hand had been giving all day in the clinical-pass.
The hand was now giving in the body-pass.
The two were the same hand. The hand had been the hand of giving the whole time.
The tent knew. The tent had been built around the hand.
I caught his wrist.
I said: "Slow."
He said: "Yes."
"Not because we have to. Because I want to know what slow is here.
Slow in the truck cab was slow with the cab cooling-tick and the bench seat and the Polaroid on the bench.
Slow here is going to be different. The canvas.
The shelf. The lantern. The clay shape. I want to learn what slow is in our tent.
The tent is going to know us. I want to teach the tent. "
He nodded.
He slowed.