Apricot brandy (33 page)

But the strangeness of that salvation seemed to distract the sheriff from his train of thought, and Sal finished for him. “She told us the rock is deep here in these foothills and hard for it to travel through. She also said that it, the thing in the earth and its demons… that it’s going to keep changing its path. Going to start
dividing
and
spreading
.”

Kyle cleared his throat and said, “This is all-out war.”

“
La guerra a la muerte.
” This unexpected Spanish came from Sheriff Ruddy. “Everywhere. Everywhere green things grow… .”

“For right now,” Helen said, touching Karen’s cheek, “you two can rest. You both look utterly exhausted. Come on, here’s a pair of bedrolls. There’s still an empty campsite up on that hill there and a faucet you can wash up under.”

There were no trees or any green cover at all, but the site lay in a fold in the terrain and for all they could see of their fellow refugees, they might have been alone on the planet.

“I’ll take a hike and you wash up first,” Kyle said.

She crouched by the faucet, rinsing her body, drenching her hair and wringing it out. She was utterly alone on the face of the earth, in a hollow under a stark blue sky. To know that Mom and Susan— and Dad now, too— in some way, still lived in that sky did nothing to heal that perfect solitude. The sun and the earth were two tiny cogs of an immense machine. What difference did she or anyone she had loved make in that vastness? What weight did her pain have? Or the slight understanding it had brought her? One naked woman, crouched on a naked hill under a silver stream, beneath an endless blue?

She stood up, shivering in the morning air, the only warmth about her the heat of her tears running down her cheeks.

Then it dawned on her that in fact, she had, in fact, found a treasure, that she possessed something after all, possessed something of great value. She had met a man with an upright spirit and a caring heart who, without a moment’s hesitation, had risked his life to save hers.

“Kyle!” she called. She had to keep wiping her eyes, because tears kept streaming from them. “Kyle, come here.”

He appeared on the ridge and stopped, seeing her naked and weeping. “Karen? Are you all right?”

Still wiping her eyes, she unrolled the sleeping bags and spread them in the sun. “You bathed me when I needed it, Kyle. Remember?”

“Yes,” he said gravely. “I would do anything for you, Karen. You know that, don’t you?” He had not taken a step towards her. As if he feared this moment, if he tried to enter it, would vanish.

“I know you are a good man. I know that… I love who you are. Come here, undress, and let me bathe you. Let’s lie in the sun, side by side… .”

And they did that.

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