Into That Darkness (15 page)

On the highway a route had already been cleared by heavy trucks. Traffic was backed up close to the hospital with the injured being brought in from all over the city and Lear pulled to one side and parked at the crest of the road overlooking the hospital grounds and he stuffed their provisions under a blanket in the canopy and locked everything carefully.

Just in case, he said.

Mason nodded. He was looking down at the crowded tents in the parking lot and at the huge crumbled edifice of the hospital itself and he felt something darkening inside him. The faces of entire wings had sheared off and the central building looked to have stoven in upon itself.

A hand on his shoulder.

Come on, son.

Look at them all, he whispered. There's so many of them.

He looked at Lear and Lear nodded.

She could be anywhere.

Yes.

Mason could feel a lump in his throat and he swallowed it down.

The crowds were sluggish in the heat and the eyes of those they met seemed dulled with pain. They clambered along the shoulder of a roadway filled with abandoned cars, their shirts dampening in the sunlight as they went. And then they were half-sliding down a grassy hill into that sprawling city of tents, and shouldering on, through the crowds, seeking word.

Underfoot was asphalt, painted white lines. There were figures squatting on boxes, leaning up against tent posts, clutching bundles of clothes to their chests. Everywhere tarps were strung up on thin ropes or wires as if to build small enclosures and in these spaces a strange assortment of electronics, suitcases, cookingware, packages and parcels, their owners glowering watchful over them. Mason saw a woman leaning at a bucket, washing her hair. A group of men in bandages regarded the old man trudging past and Mason watched their etched faces feeling uneasy. When one glanced at him he looked quickly away. He could hear babies crying, men shouting. The air was sour, dark with the stink of open food and unwashed skin.

Lear shoved his way through the crowds, a head taller than most, his fierce visage turning hawklike in the sharp sunlight.

This isn't the hospital, he said abruptly. He stopped, ran his tongue along the inner wall of his cheek. He was sweating.

Mason said nothing.

We're in the refugee tents, Lear said. We need to get over to the hospital.

Is that where my mom is?

The old man's grey hands were scarred and blistered and thick. He reached out, took Mason's hand.

But Mason was studying a girl in a green dress who stood half-obscured by a strung-up sheet. Her face begrimed, her blonde hair chopped savagely short at her collar. She was staring at him with dark ringed eyes and she said nothing and she looked very abandoned and very alone.

He felt sick. He felt sick with the fear of it.

They were directed towards a blue tent marked
17
-C
but they found themselves turned around in the winding alleys between the tents and had to retrace their steps and ask again before they found it. The refugee chaos gave way to a maze of vast green tents and tarped amphitheatres and it was here the old man furrowed his brow and studied him and said, I don't know if you should come in.

Mason peered past the old man at the dark entrance. He could see nothing beyond it.

There'll be a lot of hurt people in there, Lear said.

I'm not stupid.

No.

I know what's in there.

The old man studied him and then nodded and they went in.

Inside all was shaded purple as if the very light were bruised. Mason peered about. He did not understand why they had been sent here. Outside was crowded and busy and draining but here in this place all felt uneasily still.

It was a big tent. There was a line of nurses still masked and scrubbed sitting on a wood bench with their heads bowed, arms folded. Flood lamps had been ratcheted into the posts nearby and other lights stood on small steel tripods and all had been shut off and three plastic-sheeted operating tables stood scrubbed and vacant. A radio was playing softly in one corner.

Mason saw dark splatters on the tarps hanging nearby which he understood at once to be blood. He thought of his mother and then he closed his eyes. When he opened them one of the seated nurses was very slowly lifting her head, as if just coming to. Her skin was almost as grey as the old man's but her blue eyes were clear.

Lear cleared his throat. We're trying to find the wards, he said. I think we're a little lost.

She gestured tiredly back the way they had come.

Just keep walking towards the ruins, she said. You'll find them easy enough. Go to where the soldiers are. You do know it's all wrecked, don't you?

Yes.

She nodded and seemed as if she might say something but then she did not.

We're looking for his mother.

The nurse looked at Mason. I hope you find her.

Mason said nothing.

She was brought in yesterday, Lear added. We just don't know where.

The nurse watched them from under her heavy lids but said nothing more.

They went out. The morning was already hot and there was little shade and they walked in the direction the nurse had suggested. When they reached the edge of the destruction Lear raised a hand to the crown of his head. Where the hospital should have stood there loomed only cliffs of rubble, collapsed medical wings, the gutted walls of buildings tottering like bombed-out ruins.

My god, Lear said under his breath.

Mason said nothing.

There were fires burning amid the rubble and in the blasted sunlight a faint roar of trucks and cranes and a distant clatter of stones like soft applause. Mason thought he would feel something like he had felt the day before but he did not. He saw diggers drifting from heap to heap and their shouts carried to him and he saw wending up the slopes of the rubble antlike columns of men. He lowered his eyes. His shadow and Lear's shadow in the earth.

And then he started to cry.

He was surprised to be crying. He stared across at Lear in alarm and he was gulping air but he did not stop crying. Lear did not go to him nor did he speak and Mason stood with his hands loose at his sides and cried silently. He knew his mother would not be here. He knew it with the same clarity that he had believed the night before.

After a time he ran a sleeve across his eyes.

Feel better? the old man asked softly.

Mason shook his head.

Well.

It's not fair.

No. It's not.

She didn't do anything. She didn't do anything.

We'll find her.

You don't even believe that. You don't.

The old man said nothing to that.

They turned back. Mason followed the old man past a low-slung tarp under which a young woman sat distributing water and then the old man turned and studied the cloudless sky and then he trudged heavily back. He took the proffered water and lifted his chin and drank deeply with his eyes on Mason as he drank. Then he passed the bottle across. Mason was parched and tired and drank for a long time then wiped his mouth with his sleeve.

The young woman turned her face towards them. Her pitted cheeks long scarred over, her milky eyes unmoving. She was blind.

The sun climbed a pale sky. The light blurred, shimmered. They trudged down into the mess of the wards and went from tent to tent through the drifting crowds. Mason felt a growing dread inside him. At last Lear led him into a vast ward and they stood at the edge of that darkness waiting for their eyes to adjust, the old man rubbing his face with his hands. Mason was remembering his mother with her ruined hand, the old man so serious in that smouldering dark. The tent they had entered was crowded and clamorous and Mason saw the old man lift his head, peer angrily at the rows of the wounded.

The beds were hospital beds with bars on their sides and they went slowly down the aisles. Mason tried not to look too closely. The bloodstained bandages. The haunted eyes. The groans and weeping and crying out. The air was very bad and he was afraid he might be sick.

She's not here, he whispered. Arthur? She's not in here.

No.

Then they were standing at the far side of the tent watching a nurse approach.

Can I help you? she asked.

No, Mason said.

The old man frowned. We're looking for someone. Her name is Clarke.

Is she supposed to be here?

Is anyone?

The nurse looked at him wearily. I beg your pardon?

Is anyone supposed to be here?

She shrugged. After a moment she said, If you don't see her, she's not here.

Where would we find her?

The nurse was pressing the back of her wrist against her forehead and Mason saw the pinched lines around her mouth, the red skin where her collar was rubbing.

You looked in the other wards? she asked.

Some of them.

She smiled bitterly. There's no order here, she said. No one's keeping any records. I'm sorry.

It's alright. Thanks.

She nodded, went on her way.

The old man looked at Mason. How are you holding up?

I want to go.

Okay.

They slipped back out into the crowded alleys between the tents and the old man led him across to a makeshift counter and they waited in line there. A young man was distributing sandwiches and they each took one and found a seat on the ground nearby. The sandwiches were wrapped in a greasy brown paper and when Mason peered about he saw crumpled brown wrappers all over the ground. He felt very tired.

What do you think is in these? the old man murmured.

Mason had not taken a bite.

The old man peeled back the top piece of bread, studied the mess there.

It's not chicken. Jesus.

Arthur?

Mm.

Arthur.

What is it.

What if she went back home. Back to the house.

The old man chewed and studied him with shadowed eyes and swallowed slowly. She was hurt, son. You know that.

She could have gone home though. Maybe she's waiting for me there.

I don't know. I don't think so.

Mason stared at his dusty shoes.

The old man cleared his throat. Well. Okay. Do you want to look for her there?

Kat could be there too. She could've gone home too.

Mason. There are a lot of wards here. We haven't even been through half of them. You don't think we should finish looking here first?

Mason said nothing.

What is it, son?

He shrugged.

The old man got to his feet. Well. We won't find her sitting here.

They found a smaller ward to one side of the main tents and made their way across to it. The old man looked defeated, disappointed in something Mason did not quite understand though he felt it too. It was not sadness, not exactly. They went in and stood next to a low folded table and stared in exhaustion at the rows of cots. A nurse and a doctor with white hair were speaking nearby.

The arm's shattered in the second quadrant, the doctor was saying. I don't know what happened to her.

Mason stared at the wounded in their cots.

They found her in the street, the nurse said.

Lear turned to them. Who? Is her name Clarke?

Mason's eye slid down the second aisle, up the shadowy recesses of the third.

The nurse turned her head. Excuse me?

Bed after bed of blanketed figures, unmoving.

Who are you? the doctor asked.

And then Mason was no longer listening. He felt tense, electric with some kind of fear he did not understand and then Lear's hand loosened in his own and let him go. A stained cot, a shifting body under sheets, an arm heavily bandaged and held up out of the bedding. She was still. She was so still. Her haunted face a disc of burnished light.

Something kicked inside his chest.

And then he was pulling away from the old man and running towards her.

You have to be careful with what you have got. Or else you will lose it.
Or somebody will take it when you are not looking. That is what people
are like. Tobey Blekkenmeyer is like that.

Yes Kat is pretty. She is a horrible singer though her voice sounds like
a crow being tortured to death. Tobey Blekkenmeyer said she was a lesbian
but he does not even know what a lesbian is. He just said it because
she dyed her hair blue once. I know she is pretty because she looks like
Mom, they both have green eyes. Once after supper Kat drove us to the
old mall that is going to be torn up next year, I said what are we doing
and she grinned and parked and got out but she left the keys in the ignition.
It was in July and the sun was still red in the sky. She came around
to my side and opened the door and told me to slide over. Why should I
slide over I asked. If you do not want to drive well that is fine with me
she said. Drive, I said. For real? Don't make me change my mind she
said and I smiled and said Holy shit.

It was hard to see over the steering wheel. She showed me where to
put my feet. I had to stretch to reach. You have to push down one pedal
and slowly let the other up to get the car to go. It kept jolting to a stop.
Don't laugh I said. Okay okay she said take it easy, don't be mad. Then I
turned the keys and stalled again. I started laughing too. We did not tell
Mom about me driving, it was our secret.

Another time Kat and her friend Leah drove us out to the caves in
Langford. Leah is tall and plays basketball and her arms are very strong.
Kat parked by the blackberry bushes we used to pick over for Mom's pies
and followed a path up the hill towards the old trestle. Leah led us down

through the long grass and along a ravine and up another path to a dark
narrow opening. There were pop bottles and plastic wrappers in the
grass. Leah went in and Kat went in and I hurried after them. I said
Kat? but she just hushed me. Inside it was very dark and the air was
cool. Where are you? I whispered. Hello?