Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (27 page)

       Bruce agreed. "Like the Winona sisters' comingof-age party next week."

       Later that day Barry told Mark he was to attend the party. Mark had never been formally accepted into the adult community, and would not be honored by a party just for him.

       He shook his head. "No, thank you, I'd rather not."

       "I didn't invite you," Barry said grimly. "I'm ordering you to attend and to participate. Do you understand?"

       Mark glanced at him quickly. "I understand, but I don't want to go."

       "If you don't go, I'm hauling you out of this cozy little room, away from your books and your solitude, and putting you back in our room, back in the lecture rooms when you're not in school or at work. Now do you understand?"

       Mark nodded, but didn't look at Barry again. "All right," he said sullenly.

       The party had started already when Mark entered the auditorium. They were dancing at the far end, and between him and the dancers a group of girls stood whispering. They turned to look at him, and one of them left the group. There was giggling behind her, and she motioned her sisters to stop, but the giggling continued.

       "Hello, Mark," she said. "I'm Susan."

       Before he realized what she was doing she had slipped off her bracelet and was trying to put it over his hand. There were six little bows on the bracelet.

       "No," Mark said hurriedly, and jerked away. "I . . . No. I'm sorry." He backed up a step, turned and ran, and the giggling started again, louder than before.

       He ran to the dock and stood looking at the black water. He shouldn't have run. Susan and her sisters were seventeen, maybe even a little older. In one night they would have taught him everything, he thought bitterly, and he had turned and run. The music grew louder; soon they would eat and then leave in couples, in groups, everyone but Mark, and the children too young for the mat play. He thought of Susan and her sisters and he was first hot, then cold, then flushing hot again.

       "Mark?"

       He stiffened. They wouldn't have followed him, he thought in panic. He whirled around.

       "It's Rose," she said. "I won't give you my bracelet unless you want it."

       She came closer, and he turned his back and pretended to be looking at something in the river, afraid she would be able to see him in the dark, see the redness he could feel pounding in his neck and cheeks, sense his wet palms. Rose, he thought, his age, one of the girls he had trained in the woods. For him to blush and become bashful before her was more intolerable than running from Susan had been.

       "I'm busy," he said.

       "I know. I saw you before. It's all right. They shouldn't have done that, not all of them together. We all told them not to."

       He didn't reply, and she moved to his side. "There's nothing to see, is there?"

       "No. You'll get cold out here."

       "You will too."

       "What do you want?"

       "Nothing. Next summer I'll be old enough to go to Washington or Philadelphia."

       He turned angrily. "I'm going to my room."

       "Why did I make you mad? Don't you want me to go to Washington? Don't you like me?"

       "Yes. I'm going now."

       She put her hand on his arm and he stopped; he felt he couldn't move. "May I go to your room with you?" she asked, and now she sounded like the girl who had asked in the woods if the mushrooms were all dangerous, if the things in the trees had told him how to find his way, if he really could become invisible if he wanted to.

       "You'll go back to your sisters and laugh at me like Susan did," he said.

       "No!" she whispered. "Never! Susan wasn't laughing at you. They were scared, that's why they were all so nervous. Susan was most scared of all because she was picked to put the bracelet on you. They weren't laughing at you."

       As she spoke she released his arm and took a step back from him, then another. Now he could see the pale blur of her face. She was shaking her head as she talked.

       "Scared? What do you mean?"

       "You can do things no one else can do," she said, still speaking very softly, almost in a whisper. "You can make things no one ever saw, and you can tell stories no one ever heard, and you can disappear and travel through the woods like the wind. You're not like the other boys. Not like our elders. Not like anyone else. And we know you don't like any of us because you never choose anyone to lie with."

       "Why did you come after me if you're so afraid of me?"

       "I don't know. I saw you run and . . . I don't know." He felt the hot flush race through him again, and he began to walk. "If you want to go with me, I don't care," he said roughly, not looking back. "I'm going to my room now." He could not hear her footsteps for the pounding in his ears. He walked swiftly, making a wide berth of the auditorium, and he knew she was running to keep up. He led her around the hospital, not wanting to walk down the brightly lighted corridor with her at his heels. At the far end he opened the door and glanced inside before he entered. He let the door go and almost ran to his room, and he heard her quick footsteps as she came after him.

       "What are you doing?" she asked at the doorway.

       "I'm putting the cover over the window," he said, and his voice sounded angry even to him. "So no one can look at us. I put it there a lot."

       "But why?"

       He tried not to look at her when he climbed down from the chair, but again and again he found himself watching. She was unwinding a long sash that had gone around her neck, criss-crossed at her breasts, and circled her waist several times. The sash was violet, almost the color of her eyes. Her hair was a pale brown. He remembered that during the summer it had been blond. There were freckles across her nose, on her arms.

       She finished with the sash and now lifted her tunic, and with one motion took it off. Suddenly Mark's fingers seemed to come to life and without his willing it they began to pull off his tunic.

       Later she said she had to go, and he said not yet, and they dozed with his arms tight about her. When she again said she had to go, he woke up completely. "Not yet," he said. When he woke the second time it was daylight and she was pulling on her tunic.

       "You have to come back," Mark said. "Tonight, after dinner. Will you?"

       "All right."

       "Promise. You won't forget?"

       "I won't forget. I promise."

       He watched her wind the sash, and when she was gone he reached out and yanked the cover from the window and looked for her. He didn't see her; she must have gone through the building, out the other end. He rolled over and fell asleep again.

       And now, Mark thought, he was happy. The nightmares were gone, the sudden flashes of terror that he couldn't explain stopped sweeping over him. The mysteries had been answered, and he knew what the books meant when the authors spoke of finding happiness, as if it were a thing that perseverance would lead one to. He examined the world with new eyes, and everything he saw was beautiful and good.

       During the day while studying, he would stop, think with terrible fear that she was gone, lost, had fallen into the river, something. He would drop what he was doing and race from building to building searching for her, not to speak to her, just to see her, to know she was all right. He might find her in the cafeteria with her sisters at such times, and from a distance he would count them and then search for the one with the special something that separated her from all others.

       Every night she came to him, and she taught him what she had been taught by her sisters, by the other men, and his joy intensified until he wondered how the others had stood it before him, how he could stand it.

       In the afternoons he ran to the old house, where he was making her a pendant. It was the sun, two inches in diameter, made of clay. It had three coats of yellow paint, and he added a fourth. In the old house he read again the chapters on physiology, sexual responses, femininity, everything he could find that touched on his happiness in any way

       She would say no one night soon, and he would give her the pendant to show he understood, and he would read to her. Poetry. Sonnets from Shakespeare or Wordsworth, something soft and romantic. And afterward he would teach her to play chess, and they would spend platonic evenings together learning all about each other.

       Seventeen nights, he thought, waiting for her. Seventeen nights so far. The cover was over the window, his room was clean, ready. When his door opened and Andrew stood there, Mark jumped up in a panic.

       "What's wrong? Has something happened to Rose? What happened?"

       "Come with me," Andrew said sternly. Behind him one of his brothers watched.

       "Tell me what's wrong!" Mark yelled, and tried to run past them.

       The doctors caught his arms and held him. "We'll take you to her," Andrew said.

       Mark stopped trying to yank away, and a new coldness seemed to enter him. Wordlessly they walked through the building, out the far end, and along the pathways cleared in the snow to one of the dormitories. Now he struggled again, but briefly, and he permitted them to lead him to one of the rooms. At the door they all stopped, and then Andrew gave Mark a slight push and he entered alone.

       "No!" he cried. "No!"

       There was a tangle of naked bodies, doing all the things to one another she had told him about. At his scream of anguish she raised her head, as they all did, but he knew it was Rose his eyes had picked out of all the rest. She was on her knees, one of the brothers behind her; she had been nuzzling one of her sisters.

       He could see their mouths moving, knew they were talking, yelling. He turned and ran. Andrew got in front of him, his mouth opening, closing, opening. Mark doubled his fist and hit blindly, first Andrew, then the other doctor.

       "Where is he?" Barry demanded. "Where did he go this time of night?"

       "I don't know," Andrew said sulkily. His mouth was swollen and it hurt.

       "You shouldn't have done that to him! Of course he went wild with his first taste of sex. What did you think would happen to him? He's never had it with anyone at all! Why did that foolish girl come to you?"

       "She didn't know what to do. She was afraid to tell him no. She tried to explain everything to him, but he wouldn't listen. He ordered her back night after night."

       "Why didn't you come to us about it?" Barry asked bitterly. "What made you think shock treatment like that would take care of the problem?"

       "I knew you'd say leave him alone. You say that about everything he does. Leave him alone, it'll take care of itself. I didn't think it would."

       Barry went to the window and looked out at the black, cold night. The snow was several feet deep, and the temperature dropped to near zero almost every night.

       "He'll come back when he gets cold enough," Andrew said. "He'll come back furious with all of us, and with me in particular. But he will come back. We're all he has." He left abruptly.

       "He's right," Bruce said. He sounded tired. Barry looked quickly at his brother, then at the others, who had remained silent while Andrew reported. They were as worried about the boy as he was, and as tired as he was of the apparently endless stream of troubles caused by him.

       "He can't go to the old house," Bruce said after a moment. "He knows he'd freeze there. The chimney's plugged, he can't have a fire. That leaves the woods. Even he can't survive in the woods at night in this weather."

       Andrew had sent a dozen of the younger brothers to search all the buildings, even the breeders' quarters, and another group had gone to the old house to look. There was no sign, of Mark. Toward dawn the snow started again.

       Mark had found the cave by accident. Picking berries on the cliff over the farmhouse one day, he had felt a cold draft of air on his bare legs and had found the source. A hole in the hill, a place where two limestone rocks came together unevenly. There were caves throughout the hills. He had found several others before this one, and there was the cave where the laboratories were.

       He had dug carefully behind one of the limestone slabs, and gradually had opened the mouth of the cave enough to get through it. There was a narrow passage; then a room, another passage, another larger room. Over the years since finding it he had taken in wood to burn, clothes, blankets, food.

       That night he huddled in the second room and stared dry-eyed into the fire he had made, certain no one would ever find him. He hated them all, Andrew and his brothers most of all. As soon as the snow melted, he would run away, forever. He would go south. He would make a longer canoe, a seventeen-foot one this time, and steal enough supplies to last him and he would keep going until he reached the Gulf of Mexico. Let them train the boys and girls themselves, let them find the warehouses, find the dangerous radioactive places if they could. First he would burn down everything in the valley. And then he would go.

       He stared at the flames until his eyes felt afire. There were no voices in the cave, only the fire crackling and popping. The firelight flickered over the stalagmites and stalactites, making them appear red and gold. The smoke was carried away from his face and the air was good; it even felt warm after the cold night air. He thought about the time he and Molly had hidden on the hillside near the cave entrance while Barry and his brothers searched for them. At the thought of Barry, his mouth tightened. Barry, Andrew, Warren, Michael, Ethan . . . All doctors, all the same. How he hated them!