The Truth of the Matter (23 page)

She lifted her finger to her lips. I fell silent.

We waited there together. We listened to the noises outside.

I could hear Rose moving out there, moving around the side of the house. I could hear his footsteps. I could hear him pulling open the shed door nearby. For a moment, I could even hear him banging around in the shed, searching for me.

A moment later, I heard the shed’s big door close again.

Then I heard Rose say: “What do you think?”

Another man answered him, “Well, the dogs think he went in this direction for sure. But the trail’s old and the road—you know, there’s been a lot of truck traffic, chemical stuff. It makes it confusing for them. They got pretty tentative about a half mile back. I don’t know . . .”

“The lady of the house says she hasn’t seen him.”

“You believe her?”

There was a pause as if Rose was considering the question. Then he said, “Why would she lie? Why would she hide him?”

“Maybe he’s in there, you know . . . with a gun or something. Maybe she was speaking under duress.”

“Yeah, I thought of that . . . ,” said Rose.

“You think we ought to go in? Search the house?”

There was another pause. Rose said, “It’s gonna be dark soon. We’re running out of time. West is smart. He knows we’ll knock on doors. I think he’s a lot more likely to stick to the woods, maybe head north, try to make Canada. Let’s go back a ways and search the forest a little more while there’s still some daylight left.”

“You got it.”

I heard their footsteps on the dirt drive. I heard their car doors open and
thunk
shut. Another second or two and the car’s engine started. Then they were driving away, the tires crunching on the rocky ground.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Margaret and Larry

I heard the woman breathe a sigh of relief above me. I guess I breathed a sigh myself. She patted my shoulder.

“You’ll be safe for a little while, at least,” she said.

She rose from the bed and sat down on the chair again, brushing her hair wearily out of her face.

“Why did you help me?” I asked her. “Why did you tell Rose I wasn’t here?”

She smiled, but she didn’t answer. She just said, “You hungry at all? You must be.”

The minute she asked the question, I realized: Yeah! I was hungry! I was very hungry. “I am, as a matter of fact.”

“That’s good. That’s a good sign. I’ll make you something to eat.”

“I don’t want to trouble you . . .”

She gave a sort of gentle laugh. “It’s a bit late for that, sweetheart. You’ve been plenty of trouble already.”

I laughed a little too. “Why did you?” I said. “Why did you lie to Rose? Why did you protect me?”

She still didn’t answer. She handed me a juice box. “Here, drink this, get your strength up. You’re going to need it.”

“But . . .”

She stood up. “Let me go make you something to eat. Then we’ll talk. My name is Margaret, by the way.”

“Charlie,” I said. “Charlie West.”

She gave another smile, a wry smile this time. “So I’ve heard.”

She went out of the room. I worked myself into a sitting position. I put the pillow up against the wall and propped my back against it. I stuck a straw in the juice box and sipped it. I could feel myself getting better, stronger, with every minute.

I could hear the woman—Margaret—moving around in the kitchen, pots and pans banging against each other. It was a comforting sound. It reminded me of being back at home, lying in bed in the morning, listening to my mom making breakfast before she called me to go to school.

I sipped the juice. I listened to the sounds. My mind drifted. After a while, I just sat there in the bed, the juice box forgotten in my hand. I gazed off into space.

I was thinking about my dream. The dark garden maze. The dark figure standing at its center. I felt a stirring of excitement and revelation as the images came back to me. My free hand lifted slowly to my face, to my jaw. I felt through my skin to the place just behind my last molar. Yes. Yes, I remembered now. What the man said in the dream—it was all true, all real.

After the jury found me guilty of Alex’s murder, I had been put in a cell in the county jail. While I was there, someone had come to me . . . No, wait. It wasn’t just any someone. It was Milton. Yes. It was Milton One—the technician from the bunker, the Asian guy who had had the controller that worked Milton Two. He had come to me in my cell, wearing a white coat. He was pretending to be a dentist. He had installed the device in my gums— the device the man in the maze had talked about. He had installed it just where I was touching now, just behind my teeth. It was a tiny computer. There was a pattern of taps I could make on it with my teeth—complicated and precise so I would never set the device off by accident. But once I did set the device off, it would release an experimental chemical into my mouth. When I swallowed it, the chemical would eliminate part of my memory.

So now I knew. I knew what had happened to me. I had been recruited by Waterman to infiltrate the Homelanders. Because of my closeness to Sherman, because of Sherman’s conviction that I could be convinced to join him, because of my karate skills, because of my sure and certain commitment to American liberty, I had been a perfect candidate for the job. The rest I didn’t remember yet, but I could guess. I must’ve succeeded in my task. I infiltrated the Homelanders as planned. But somehow, it had gone wrong. I had been caught. Captured. I had been strapped to the metal chair in that white room and tortured. And in order to protect Waterman and his friends, I had set off the device in my mouth and swallowed the chemical that made me forget a year of my life.

It all made sense now. It all made sense at last.

I thought of myself in the dream again, standing at the center of the garden maze, talking to that murky figure. Who was he, I wondered? Was he Waterman? Or was he the other man, my other contact, the one Waylon was searching for, the man who could still identify me as an agent working for America?

I struggled to delve past the dream images, into my memory. But before I could give it much consideration, I was distracted by something: the smell of bacon and eggs coming out of Margaret’s kitchen. The house was small and the smells reached me full force and I suddenly realized, full force, just how incredibly hungry I was. I licked my lips as my mouth watered.

It was only then, as the smells brought me back to myself, that I realized someone was watching me.

Startled, I turned to the door. It was the boy—the boy from the photographs, the little boy who had come in with Margaret when they caught me inside their house— Margaret’s son. I had heard his name just before I collapsed. What was it?

“Larry,” I said aloud.

He was just outside the door, hiding behind the frame, fearfully peeking in around the edge of it. He was a little guy, his face thin and pale. He had dark circles under his eyes and a frowny, worried expression. When I spoke his name, he ducked back behind the door and out of sight. But after a moment, he peeked out at me again.

“Hey, Larry, how’s it going?” I said.

“Fine,” he murmured shyly.

I noticed he was clutching something in his fist.

“What’ve you got there?” I asked him. “You bring something to show me?”

He had. He opened his hand and held it out so I could see.

“Soldiers,” I said.

“Marines,” he corrected me.

“Marines, right. They’re the best, aren’t they?”

He nodded.

I remembered the photographs I’d seen in the living room. “Your dad’s a Marine, isn’t he?”

The boy nodded. “Only he got killed in Afghanistan.”

“Wow,” I said. “That’s really sad. I’m sorry.”

“He’s in heaven now.”

“I hear Marines get to go to the head of the line up there.”

That made Larry smile. With a little more confidence, he said, “Because he was fighting for people to be free.” And then he added: “Like you are.”

Before I could react, Margaret’s voice came from the living room. “Hey there, you. Didn’t I tell you to stay in your room?”

Now she came back into view. She was carrying a tray with my food on it. Larry gave the tray the eye.

“I’m hungry too,” he said.

“Well, we’re gonna eat just as soon as I feed our guest, all right?”

“How come he gets to have breakfast when it’s dinnertime?”

“Because he’s been sick.”

“I feel sick too,” said Larry.

“No, you don’t. Now get back in your room before I hang you by your toes and tickle your nose to make you sneeze upside down.”

“Yuck,” he said. “That’s disgusting.” He gave me a glance.

“See you, Larry,” I said.

He waved and shuffled away from the door.

She came in and handed me the tray to set down on my lap. Eggs, toast, hash brown potatoes. I was so hungry, I could barely get out a “Thank you” and say a silent grace before I tore into it. Margaret sat in the chair and watched me shovel the food into my mouth with a small smile on her lips.

“You say grace?” she asked me.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“All right. Well, it’s good to see you eat, that’s for sure.”

I answered with my mouth full. I could barely stop eating long enough to get the words out. “How long have I been here?”

“A night and a day. It’s getting toward evening again now.” She had a soft, kind voice. It was like her face: tired but somehow peaceful. She looked and sounded like a woman who was on a long, hard journey but knew she was headed for a good place.

“You have a nice son,” I said to her.

“Yes, I do. Thank you.”

“Why did he say that? About me fighting for freedom.”

She only smiled.

“I guess I’ve been talking in my fever, huh?” I said.

She nodded slowly. “You have.”

I guess I should’ve been upset about that—you know, upset that I’d given myself away and all. But for some reason, it didn’t bother me. I knew instinctively that I could trust this woman. It wasn’t just that she’d protected me from Rose or taken care of me in my delirium or that her husband had been a Marine. It was partly all those things, I guess, but it was also just something about her, something about the way she was.

“Did I tell you everything?” I asked her.

“I guess. It was all pretty confused, but I guess you told me enough. It’s quite a story.”

“I’m only remembering it now myself.”

“So I gathered. They gave you something?”

“Some kind of chemical, yeah. It made me forget the last year.”

There was nothing left on my plate by this time but the yellow yolk of the eggs and a piece of toast. I mopped up the yolk with the toast and took a bite.

“I’m sorry about your husband,” I said.

“Swallow first. I can’t understand you.”

I worked the toast down. “I’m sorry about your husband.”

She didn’t answer right away. She nodded. After a moment, she leaned forward in her chair, putting her elbows on her knees and looking down at the floor. “It broke my heart,” she said. “He was the best man I ever knew or ever expect to know, and I miss him every day and our boy misses him.” She lifted her head and looked at me with a peculiar, intense look. “But now I’m going to tell you something about that. All right?”

“Yeah . . . sure,” I said.

“No, I mean, really. Look at me, Charlie.”

I looked at her, the last piece of bread lifted halfway to my lips.

She said: “A broken heart is not the worst thing in the world. And neither, when it comes to that, is death. You can’t get through a good, strong life without coming upon both of them one way or another, without looking them both straight in the eye. But if I could go back in time and protect myself from my broken heart by living my life in fear, by saying yes to every bully and slave driver who came along, by scuttling away from my duty and from my country and from the things I love and believe in, I wouldn’t do it, and my husband wouldn’t have done it, and he wouldn’t want me to do it. You understand what I’m telling you, Charlie?”

Still holding the toast, I half shook my head. I wasn’t sure I did understand.

“What I’m telling you is that your mama is going to be all right. You did what you had to do. And a woman who raised a boy like you is going to understand that one day and it’ll serve to heal her heart, trust me.”

Suddenly, tears sprang to my eyes. It happened so fast, it took me by surprise, and I couldn’t help it, I couldn’t stop it. Embarrassed, I set the toast down and wiped the tears away with my palm as quickly as I could. I was afraid if I didn’t, Margaret would come over to the bed and try to comfort me, and then I knew I would break down for real.

She was a smart woman, though. Instead of coming to my side, she stayed right where she was, in her chair. She studied the floor until I was done.

“I hated to hurt her,” I said. It was hard to speak. “Until now, I’d forgotten about that part of it, you know. Now that I remember, I remember how much I hated to hurt her . . .” I wanted to say more—a lot more, but that was all I could get out just then.

“I know you did,” said Margaret. “And she’ll know too one day. But for now, it’s better she have a broken heart than a son who can’t stand up for what’s right when the time comes.”

I nodded. I opened my mouth. I was about to talk again when I felt a terrible pain—as if a fist had grabbed me on the inside and twisted my stomach. I gritted my teeth and doubled over.

“Oh, no!”

Margaret was out of her chair and at the bed in a moment. She took the tray away and set it aside. She sat down next to me.

“What’s the matter?” she said.

I clutched at my stomach. For a minute I couldn’t answer. “I have these attacks . . . memory attacks, I call them. They gave me the antidote for the amnesia medicine. It’s bringing back my memory, but it makes me . . .” I grunted with pain. “It makes me sick.”

She put her hand on my forehead. Her palm felt cool against my hot skin. “Can you fight it? Keep it off. I don’t think your body can take much more punishment right now.”

I closed my eyes, trying to will the pain down. As I did, scenes flashed through my mind. I couldn’t tell if they were memories or dreams or even memories of dreams. I seemed to be traveling through that dark maze again. It was like a scene from a first-person-shooter video game. The trellis walls with their thorny vines came at me and went past.