Chapter 19 Drew #4
He showed me with the hands that had tied twenty-eight sutures and had held Sebastian and had assisted Veron and had passed instruments to Brecca's right elbow.
He showed me with the hands that had carried me out of the gap eleven days ago and had carried Mara to the truck and had carried Deedee from the boiler-room door to Sylvia's field kit.
He showed me with the hands of a man whose hands had been the hands of giving for nine months at the perimeter and one month on the road and three days at the inside of the camp.
The hands gave.
I gave back.
The cot was the cot. The tent canvas was the tent canvas.
The shelf was the shelf. The Polaroid and the two Steinbecks and the stone and the mug and the carving with the 7 were all on the shelf and they watched.
The clay shape on the doorframe was the clay shape and it watched.
The rosemary smell came in through the seam.
The Mojave dusk came up against the canvas and turned the canvas the deep rust the canvas went when the day was done.
We were quiet because the camp was quiet at this hour.
Crystal and Mark and Deedee at the family tent next door, fifteen feet away.
Tess and Kal and Auriel twelve feet east. The quiet was the quiet of two people who knew the canvas walls of a tent in a camp were not the walls of a cabin in the Sierra Nevada.
The quiet was the quiet of two people who had agreed without agreeing that the camp would not have to know more than the camp wanted to know.
The quiet was also the quiet of two people who did not need to say much because the saying had been done in the body.
He kissed my throat.
He kissed the inside of my wrist where Sylvia had drawn the unit of blood at the gap.
He kissed the bandage-scar at my elbow where the needle had gone in.
He said, quiet: "This is the place your blood went out."
I said: "Yes."
"The scar at my side is the place it went in."
"Yes."
"The two scars are the same scar in two bodies."
"Yes."
He kissed both. He kissed mine. Then he turned and kissed his own scar at the side, which he had been able to reach since the wound had closed, but which he had not yet kissed because the kissing-of-one's-own-scar had been a thing Drew had not yet thought about being allowed to do.
He kissed the scar. He said quietly to himself, in the half-Vampyren-clinical register he used when the thing he was telling himself was a thing he had been needing to tell himself for a long time: "The structure is the structure.
The structure is mine. The structure is hers.
The structure is ours. The structure is allowed. "
I said: "Drew."
He said: "Yes."
"You just told yourself."
"I did."
"That is the thing you have been not letting yourself say for eleven years."
"It is."
"You said it tonight."
"I did."
"To the tent."
"To the tent."
"Drew."
"Yes."
"Welcome to the count."
He looked at me. The half-Vampyren cool-gold of his eyes was the gold I had been thinking about without naming. The not-saying that had become the saying. The saying that was now, fully, the saying.
He kissed me.
The body finished what the body was doing.
The body finished slower than last night because last night had been the first night in our tent and tonight was the second night and the second night was the night the body knew the tent.
The body knew the cot. The body knew the canvas.
The body knew the cool palm at the heart and the warm palm at the side.
The body knew the count. The count was holding.
We finished.
We did not move for a long time. His head was on my collarbone the way it had been on my shoulder forty minutes ago, except his weight was now on me fully and the careful was gone.
He was asleep again before he had finished saying Cora into my collarbone.
He had said the Co and not gotten to the ra.
The ra was somewhere in the half-Vampyren-sleeping register, and I would hear it when he woke.
I held him.
The route map was at the foot of the cot.
The sevens on the map were the sevens.
The clay shape on the doorframe was the clay shape.
The shelf had the things.
The camp around us was the camp.
I closed my eyes.
* * *
Drew
I woke at three in the morning.
The lantern was out. Cora was asleep against me, her cheek on my collarbone, the bandage-scar at her elbow against the scar at my side. The two scars were nearly touching where the two bodies met. The structure was the structure.
I thought, then, of Ellen.
I thought of the marginal notes in the Grapes of Wrath on the shelf above us, Rose of Sharon: the body's last gift.
Ellen had circled the line with a pencil that had not faded in eleven years.
Ellen had read me the chapter when I was six and had told me it was the most important chapter in the book, and I had not yet understood.
Ellen had read it to me anyway. Ellen had been preparing me for a moment she would not be alive to see.
The moment was tonight.
I did not say it out loud. The saying was for some other night. The not-saying was the saying. Ellen had taught me the not-saying. The not-saying was sometimes the right register.
I held Cora.
I slept again.