Life Sentence (7 page)

All our lunches were meager at this point in the
year, before new food was harvested in the summer. I was chewing on
some jerky that required extensive application of saliva before my
teeth could have any hope of defeating it, even if the odds were
28-to-1. I also had more of Mom’s crumbly bread and some dried
nuts. Mr. Caine had a bunch of apples from last fall that required
extensive surgery with his pocket knife to get out all the bad
spots. He shared the good pieces with me and Vera as he cut them
out. They were mealy and slightly tangy from having fermented some
in the skins, but eating is mostly about the company, I knew even
then, and for that I was grateful.

When Vera had said enough about her day, Mr. Caine
turned the conversation more towards me. “Ready for your vows,
Zoey?”

I shrugged. How was anyone ready? It was built up as
this big deal, but I still didn’t know everything expected of me.
“I guess. Dad says I’m really good at all my fighting skills.”

He kept cutting around in his apple. “I’m sure you
are. Your dad is great at that. He used to teach me all the time,
back before you were even with us. I doubt I would’ve survived
without his help.”

It was the same as in the classroom. I didn’t feel
like what we were talking about was relevant, and I wanted him to
know. “How am I supposed to feel? I just feel like I’ve been
training, and now there’s this ceremony—I went to someone’s last
year, but I don’t see what it’s supposed to mark or make different
about me.”

He kept at the apple, nodding as he worked the
knife. A smile curled up his lips as he thought, and I knew I was
in for something. “Funniest thought just occurred to me, Zoey. I
remembered as clear as crystal why I wanted to become a professor
all those years ago when I was working for it and studying all the
time—what it would offer me, teaching older students, so that some
of them could become teachers, too. For almost a decade, I prepared
to answer questions like you just asked. I got all the right words
and categories for it, for dealing with how complex it would be. I
learned several other languages, so I could study what other people
had written on a difficult topic. And now it’s so funny, because I
can’t explain it to someone for whom the answer really
matters.”

He chuckled—not like with Mr. Enders, though he had
been sincere then, too—but deeper, quieter, up from the place where
we laugh at ourselves and still feel good about it. “So I’ll try my
best, Zoey, but the words are all big and wrong, so bear with me. I
remember at some point, I realized that all real knowledge is
relational.” He looked at me for the first time since he turned
serious over lunch. “It just means that real knowledge—not mere
facts, like ‘Zoey is a girl,’ but deeper, more fundamental
knowledge, like ‘Zoey is now an adult,’ or, ‘Zoey is a good
person’—knowledge like that is not some thing floating off in the
mind of God, or off in a detached, objective plane that we get
glimpses of if we try really hard. It’s part of and made up of all
the relations Zoey has with the world around her. And forget all
the mundane, physical relations, like that Zoey is on top of the
ground or under the sky. I mean the deep relations Zoey has—that
she loves her mom and dad, and thinks her brother is goofy but
loves him anyway—those relations. You understand?”

I nodded. “I think.”

“Okay. So if all the deeper, more important
knowledge is relational, then it means that we don’t merely
know
these things—the way I know that Zoey is a scrawny
little girl, for example...”

Vera tittered at her dad’s joke at this point.

“...but that I
will
these things, I
decide
them to be true for me, I
choose
to have a
relationship with this knowledge in this way. So that’s what your
vows will be about. It’s not about whether you know how to
fight—anyone who’s seen you knows the answer to that, it’s an
objective fact. It’s about you deciding with every ounce of your
will, and then saying in public, that you commit your life to the
service of others. That’s a relationship. That’s a vow. And how are
you supposed to feel? Like you’re committing to something new and
different and important and scary. So is that how it feels,
Zoey?”

I nodded and swallowed some of the slightly sweet,
mostly sour apple. Yes, it was how I felt. It was like the change
in how I felt about boys—I wanted to keep it at bay or tame it, but
it was a shift that had taken place and I couldn’t deny it or
postpone it, and I both welcomed and feared it.

Mr. Caine squeezed my shoulder. “That’s all I can do
to explain it, Zoey. But you know your dad and I think you’re
ready, and that should tell you something. I remember the day I
first saw you. We were having a bit of a bad day, let’s say. There
had been a lot of killing and destruction and I wasn’t sure we were
going to make it. I was scared, really scared, but for one moment I
forgot my fear and thought only of you, how the only thing I wanted
was for you to survive. And now you’ve not only done that, you’ve
grown into as good a person as any of the rest of us. You’ll never
disappoint any of us. Just know that, and I think your vows will be
the way they’re supposed to be.”

I nodded as I bit another apple piece. It was mushy
and sour, not like you expected or wanted an apple to be. I didn’t
like it, exactly, but I knew it was the way an apple was supposed
to taste in June, and that was enough for me.

In the days that followed, I continued to explore
the storage units and find useful and interesting things. Even
though I was sad that I had a family I could no longer remember, I
remained curious and eager to learn about all the things the world
still held that were beautiful or good or true. There were a lot of
tools in the storage units, and I probably could have figured out a
way to get through the fence, but I’ll admit I was too scared to
try it. For now this seemed a good enough place to pursue my
reeducation.

I found a lot of books in the storage units. I think
this place was for storing things people didn’t really want, or at
least things they didn’t want where they could get them easily and
use them. So it surprised me there were so many books there,
because books were just what I wanted, though I noticed the other
people in there with me didn’t seem nearly as interested in them.
The only things that held their attention for more than a second
were shiny things made out of metal, or things with buttons and
knobs, and even these they just dropped after a few minutes.

Maybe the books hadn’t just been forgotten in this
storage place—maybe they had been put there in case of emergency,
to survive whatever it was that had happened to make all the people
leave the city or die. Maybe there had been a war or a natural
disaster, and this was the special facility to guard against such
eventualities by preserving the people’s knowledge and other
special items. I liked that thought better; it made me feel as if I
were fulfilling an obligation to study what had gone before and
keep it alive. That seemed like what a professor should do. If
that’s even what I was. But it was what people in general should
do, I think, so what I was before didn’t matter anyway.

It was then that I first tried writing my ideas
down. I had found some paper, along with some pencils and pens, and
though most of them didn’t work, a few had useable points, and I
tried writing with those. It proved as impossible as speech. I
couldn’t read it myself afterwards, even though I knew what it was
supposed to say, so it would be completely useless for
communication. Something was wrong with my body and kept me from
doing these basic things. That’s why it was so lucky I eventually
found this typewriter, but that didn’t come until later.

Some days passed. A big, springtime storm blew
through and the sign above us came crashing down into our area. No
one else seemed to notice, but I made a point of finding a broom
and sweeping the broken bits away. Then a few days after that,
Milton and Will brought more people to stay here with us.

“Look at him,” Will said as he and Milton studied
me. “He’s changed his clothes. Like he cares what he’s
wearing.”

I looked at what I was wearing and frowned. Well, if
I
really
cared what I was wearing, I think I would have
hunted around for something a bit nicer than
this
. A faded
flannel shirt and some scratchy woolen pants? Hardly the height of
fashion or vanity. The shoes were the only things that fit and felt
right on me. But I couldn’t very well walk around, crunching every
time I moved because of all the dried blood on my clothes, and with
that big hole in my middle making me feel cold all over. It was
just common sense, though I did wonder again why I hadn’t thought
of it before, back in the city.

Then I looked at the other people in the storage
area with me, the ones I’d come with and the ones who had just
entered, and I saw that most of them were torn open in places, or
had parts missing, and most all were covered in dried blood, but
they didn’t seem at all interested in new clothes. It wasn’t like
I’d kept the clothes to myself or hidden them like the breakable
stuff. Once I’d found the ones I put on, I left the box out, but
the other people just rummaged through it and flung the things
around and I had to keep straightening it up again. But I left it
out anyway. It wasn’t like the breakable things. If the other
people liked throwing the clothes around rather than wearing them,
that was their right, and I had no authority to prohibit them. It
was sort of my job now, when I wasn’t reading or looking at other
things, to pick up after them. I didn’t mind. It gave me a purpose,
more responsibilities, and I liked that.

Milton now looked at me and my new clothes. This
time I didn’t pretend not to notice him, so I looked back, though I
had put my books away when I heard them coming. There was no sense
in having them know everything about me, until I knew more about
them and their intentions. Milton smiled his odd smile again. I
remembered a word for it later: he had a very
eccentric
smile. That’s the right word. But it was a nice smile. It made me
think he cared, and while he was surprised at what I’d done, it
didn’t upset or alarm him. If anything, he seemed rather pleased. I
half hoped he’d give me more things to do around the little
compound, but I didn’t know how to ask him that, or even if it was
his place to do so. “Are you happy in there?” he asked.

I shrugged. I could’ve been a bit more enthusiastic,
I suppose, but I still didn’t like them feeling as though they were
doing me a favor by keeping me locked up, even though it was true
that it was sort of where I wanted to stay now. “We don’t want to
hurt you,” he continued. “Do you understand that?”

I looked at Will for a minute, then back to Milton
before I shrugged again.

Milton looked at Will, and then back at me. “Yes,
Will can hurt you, if you try to get out or if you try to hurt
someone else. It’s not safe for people like you to be wandering
around freely, because you might hurt someone else. But you can
stay here and be safe. All right?”

This time I nodded, because I appreciated that he
had gone to the trouble of explaining why I had been put there. He
probably knew what I had done to the woman back in the city, and he
certainly couldn’t have known how I felt afterwards and how I would
never do that again. Even if he had known how I felt, I couldn’t
blame him for not trusting me. And he must have been able to see
how the other people around me pressed on the fence and tried to
get to Will to attack him. As he had said the last time he had come
by, things seemed to be the way they should be. And I was glad for
it, though still a little sad by being lonely in here and unable to
communicate with others.

Will and Milton left after that. I liked how Milton
had some sense of my need for privacy and didn’t stay and watch me
longer. I got my books back out. I was reading a biography of
Abraham Lincoln and I liked it very much. I had some of the same
problems with reading that I had with everything else—my body
wouldn’t cooperate. In particular, my eyes kept slipping in and out
of focus, like I couldn’t control them. But it just slowed me down,
and time was one thing I certainly had in abundance.

As I was reading, I noticed someone from the new
batch of people had approached my cubicle. At first I kept reading,
as the other people had always just shuffled by without really
noticing or trying to interact with me. But this person stood near
me, swaying slightly and looking at me, so I put the book down, so
as not to be rude, and because now I was curious about this new
neighbor.

I don’t suppose staring at her was any less rude,
but I didn’t know what else to do at first. I already knew speaking
was out of the question. Smiling hadn’t seemed to work properly
with Milton and Will, and motions of my head or shrugging could
only work if she asked me something, which seemed highly unlikely.
So I sat just observing her.

She was in a summer dress, faded to a grey with
darker splotches so you couldn’t tell what the pattern or color had
been. Her left side was terribly mangled, a stretch of bloody cloth
mixed with torn flesh from her neck to her abdomen. Her left breast
might have been in there somewhere, but it was indistinguishable.
On top of this mess, her head tilted to the left side and slightly
forward. Her blond hair was pulled down on that side and was stuck
to her left eye and to her neck with dried blood. Her right eye was
a brilliant blue. It didn’t sparkle, of course—none of our eyes do
since we don’t have tears to moisten them, which was something else
I envied the people who can speak—but it was a couple shades darker
than the sky on a sunny day. It was how I imagined an uncut and
unpolished sapphire would look, though I had to admit I only
remembered the word “sapphire” and that it was a kind of bright,
blue jewel; I did not recollect actually seeing one myself. And
this one tiny disk of perfect, living blue around a black pinprick
was now fixed on me, and I could feel its intensity and vitality
filling me up.