Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (18 page)

       When she could see, she gasped. Someone had spread her paintings out, had stood them all up around the walls, on chairs, on the old desk she never had used. She went into the other room, where she had painted, and there on the bench that Mark had used for his clay, instead of the half-dozen crude figures he had shaped, there were dozens of clay objects: pots, heads, animals, fish, a foot, two hands . . . Weakly Molly leaned against the doorframe and wept.

       The room was bright when she pushed away from the door. She had delayed too long; she had to hurry now. She ran down the stairs and out of the house, picked up her bag, and started climbing the hill. Two hundred feet up she stopped and began to search for the spot she and Mark had found once: a sheltered spot behind blackberry bushes, protected by an overhanging ledge of limestone. From there she could see the house but could not be seen from below. The bushes had grown, the spot was even more hidden than she remembered. When she finally found it she sank down to the ground in relief. The sun was high, they would know by now that she was gone. Presently a few of them would come to look over the Sumner house, not really expecting to find her, but because they were thorough.

       They came before noon, spent an hour looking around the house and yard, then left. Probably it would be safe now to return to the house, she thought, but she did not stir from her hole in the hill. They returned shortly before dark, and spent more time going over the same ground they had covered before. Now she knew it was safe to go to the house. They never went out after dark, except in groups; they would not expect her to wander about in the dark alone. She stood up, easing the stiffness out of her legs and back. The ground was damp, and this spot was cool, sheltered from the sun.

       She lay on the bed. She knew she would hear him when he entered the house, but she couldn't sleep, except in a fitful, dream-filled doze: Ben lying with her; Ben sitting before the fire sipping pink, fragrant tea; Ben looking at her painting and becoming pale . . . Mark scrambling up the stairs, his legs going this way and that, a frown of determination on his face. Mark squatting over a single leaf of a fern, still rolled tightly at the end, and studying it intently, as if willing it to uncoil as he watched. Mark, his hands pudgy and grimy, gleaming wet, pushing the clay this way, smoothing it, pushing it that way, frowning at it, oblivious of her . . .

       She sat up suddenly, wide awake. He had come into the house. She could hear the stairs creak slightly under his feet. He stopped, listening. He must sense her there, she thought, and her heart quickened. She went to the door of the workroom and waited for him.

       The cold hand squeezed harder. Molly felt for the doorframe behind her and held it tightly. "Why do you come here?" she whispered. "Why?"

       "It's all your fault! You spoiled everything. They laugh at me and lock me up. . ."

       "And you still come here. Why?"

       Suddenly he darted to the workbench and swept it clean. The elephant, the heads, the foot, hands, everything crashed to the floor and he jumped up and down on the pieces, sobbing incoherently, screaming sounds that were not words. Molly didn't move. The rampage stopped as abruptly as it began. Mark looked down at the gray dust, the fragments that remained.

       "I'll tell you why you come back," Molly said quietly. She still held the doorframe hard. "They punish you by locking you up in a small room, don't they? And it doesn't frighten you. In the small room you can hear yourself, can't you? In your mind's eye you see the clay, the stone you will shape. You see the form emerging, and it is almost as if you are simply freeing it, allowing it to come into being. That other self that speaks to you, it knows what the shape is in the clay. It tells you through your hands, in dreams, in images that no one but you can see. And they tell you this is sick, or bad, or disobedient. Don't they?"

       He was watching her now. "Don't they?" she repeated. He nodded.

       "Mark, they'll never understand. They can't hear that other self whispering, always whispering. They can't see the pictures. They'll never hear or get a glimpse of that other self. The brothers and sisters overwhelm it. The whisper becomes fainter, the images dimmer, until finally they are gone, the other self gives up. Perhaps it dies." She paused and looked at him, then said softly, "You come here because you can find that self here, just as I could find my other self here. And that's more important than anything they can give you, or take away from you."

       He looked down at the floor, at the shambles of the pieces he had made, and wiped his face with his arm. "Mother," he said, and stopped.

       Now Molly moved. Somehow she reached him before he could speak again and she held him tightly and he held her, and they both wept.

       "I'm sorry I busted everything."

       "You'll make more."

       "I wanted to show you."

       "I looked at them all. They were very good. The hands especially."

       "They were hard. The fingers were funny, but I couldn't make them not funny."

       "Hands are the hardest of all."

       He finally pushed away from her slightly, and she let him go. He wiped his face again. "Are you going to hide here?"

       "No. They'll be back looking for me."

       "Why did you come here?"

       "To keep a promise," she said softly. "Do you remember our last walk up the hill, you wanted to climb to the top, and I said next time? Remember?"

       "I've got some food we can take," he said excitedly. "I hide it here so when I get hungry I'll have something."

       "Good. We'll use it. We'll start as soon as it gets light enough to see."

rest of the sky unmarred, breathtakingly clear. Each hill, each mountain in the distance, was sharply outlined; no haze had formed yet, the breeze was gentle and warm. The silence was so complete that the woman and boy were both reluctant to break it with speech, and they walked quietly. When they paused to rest, she smiled at him and he grinned back and then lay with his hands under his head and stared at the sky.

       "What's in your big pack?" he asked as they climbed later. She had made a small pack for him to carry, and she still carried the laundry bag, now strapped to her back.

       "You'll see," she said. "A surprise."

       And later he said, "It's farther than it looked, isn't it? Will we get there before dark?"

       "Long before dark," she said. "But it is far. Do you want to rest again?"

       He nodded and they sat under a spruce tree. The spruces were coming down the mountains, she thought, recalling in detail old forestry maps of the region.

       "Do you still read much?" she asked.

       Mark shifted uneasily and looked at the sky, then at the trees, and finally grunted noncommittally.

       "So did I," she said. "The old house is full of books, isn't it? They're so brittle, though, you have to be careful with them. After you went to sleep every night I sat up and read everything in the house."

       "Did you read the one about Indians?" he asked, and rolled over on his stomach and propped his head up in his cupped hands. "They knew how to do everything, make fires, make canoes, tents, everything."

       "And there's one about how boys, a club or something, used to go camping and relearn all the Indian methods. It can still be done," she said dreamily.

       "And what you can eat in the woods, and stuff like that? I read that one."

       They walked, rested, talked about the books in the old house, talked about the things Mark planned to make, climbed some more, and late in the afternoon they came to the summit of the mountain and looked down over the entire valley, all the way to the Shenandoah River in the distance.

       Molly found a spot that was level and sheltered, and Mark finally got to see the surprise she had prepared for him: blankets, some preserved food, fruits, meat, six pieces of cornbread, and corn to pop over the open fire. After they ate, they pushed spruce needles into mounds and Mark rolled up in his blanket and yawned.

       "What's that noise?" he asked after a moment.

       "The trees," Molly said softly. "The wind moves up there even when we can't feel it down here, and the trees and wind tell each other secrets."

       Mark laughed and yawned again. "They're talking about us," he said. Molly smiled in the dark. "I can almost hear the words," he said.

       "We're the first human beings they've seen in a long time," she said. "They're probably surprised that there are any more of us around."

       "I won't go back either!" Mark shouted at her. They had eaten the last of the cornbread and dried apples, and the fire was out, the ground smoothed around it.

       "Mark, listen to me. They will put me back in the breeders' compound. Do you understand? I won't be allowed out again. They will give me medicines that will keep me very quiet and I won't know anything or anyone. That will be my life back there. But you? You have so much to learn. Read all the books in the old house, learn everything you can from them. And one day you might decide to leave, but not until you're a man, Mark."

       "I'm staying with you."

       She shook her head. "Remember the voices of the trees? When you're lonely, go into the woods and let the trees talk to you. Maybe you'll hear my voice there too. I'll never be far away, if you listen."

       "Where are you going?"

       "Down the river, to the Shenandoah, to look for your father. They won't bother me there."

       Tears stood in his eyes, but he didn't shed them. He lifted his pack and put his arms through the harness. They started down the mountain again. Midway down they stopped. "You can see the valley from here," Molly said. "I won't go any farther with you."

       The new dormitory was dark except for the pale lights spaced regularly in the halls. Mark darted down the hallway and went inside one of the rooms. There was too little light to make out details; only the shapes of sleeping boys on the white beds could be seen at first. The windows were dark shadows.

       Mark stood by the door silently and waited for his eyes to adjust; the shapes emerged from darkness and became dark and light areas—arms, faces, hair. His bare feet made no sound as he approached the first cot, and again he stopped; this time his wait was shorter. The boy on the cot didn't stir. Slowly Mark opened a small bottle of ink, made from blackberries and walnuts, and dipped a fine brush into it. He had been holding the ink next to his chest; it was warm. Moving very carefully, he leaned over the sleeping boy and quickly painted the numeral 1 on the boy's cheek. The boy didn't move.

       Mark backed away from the first bed, went to another, and again paused to make certain the boy was sleeping deeply. This time he painted a 2.

       Presently he left the room and hurried to the next one. He repeated the procedure there. If the boy was sleeping on his stomach, his face buried in the covers, Mark painted a number on his hand or arm.

       Shortly before dawn Mark put the top back on his bottle of ink and crept to his own room, a cubicle large enough to contain only his cot and some shelves above it. He put the ink on a shelf, making no attempt to hide it. Then he sat cross-legged on his bed and waited.

       He was a slightly built boy, with dark, abundant hair that made his head seem overlarge, not conspicuously so, but noticeable if one examined him closely. The only startling feature was his eyes, a blue of such intensity and depth that they were unforgettable. He sat patiently, a slight smile playing on his lips, deepening, leaving, forming again. The light outside his window brightened; it was spring and the air had a luminosity that was missing in other seasons.