Others had made contributions as well. Allie Storey put in a plastic Iron Man mask for when he was on secret missions and needed a disguise. Renée Gilmonton had appropriated eighteen short books from the camp library, one that would be right for each year of her son’s life, starting with Wheels on the Bus and ending with Of Mice and Men. Don Lewiston had made a present of a ship in a bottle. Carol Storey offered Harper a View-Master full of pictures of historic places that were all gone now. These days, the Eiffel Tower was a blackened spear puncturing a sky of smoke. The Strip in downtown Las Vegas was a charred wasteland. But in the View-Master, the neon lights and spouting fountains would be bright forever.
When the last stragglers had filed into the chapel, Father Storey climbed the steps to the podium, took his thinking pebble out of his mouth, and said, “I thought I would reverse the usual order of things tonight and get my blab out of the way before we sing and join the Bright. I apologize in advance. Much as I do love to hear myself talk, I know the songs are my favorite part of the night. I imagine you feel the same way. Sometimes I think with half the world on fire—with so much dying and so much pain—it’s a special kind of sin to sing and feel good. But then I think, well, even before Dragonscale, most human lives were unfair, brutal, full of loss and grief and confusion. Most human lives were and are too short. Most people have lived out their days hungry and barefoot, on the run from this war and that famine, a plague here and a flood there. But people have to sing anyway. Even a baby that hasn’t been fed in days will stop crying and look around when they hear someone singing in joy. You sing and it’s like giving a thirsty person water. It’s a kindness. It makes you shine. The proof that you matter is in your song and in the way you light up for one another. Other folks may fall and burn—will fall and burn. There isn’t one of us who hasn’t seen it happen. But here no one burns. We shine. A frightened, faithless soul is perfect kindling—”
“Amen,” someone murmured.
“—and selfishness is as bad as kerosene. When someone is cold and you share your blanket, you’re both warmer than you would’ve been alone. You offer the sick your medicine and their happiness will be your medicine. Someone probably a lot smarter than me said hell is other people. I say you’re in hell when you don’t give to someone who needs, because you can’t bear to have less. What you are giving away then is your own soul. You have to care for each other or you walk on cinders, a matchstick ready to be struck. That’s what I believe, anyway. Do you believe it?”
“I do,” Ben Patchett said from Harper’s right. Others said it with him. Harper herself.
Sitting there in the pews, she felt as in love as she had ever been with Jakob in their happiest hours . . . or more so. Not with any one man or woman but with all of them, the whole church full of believers. All her fellow travelers in the Bright. There had been moments in the last few weeks when it seemed to her she was discovering what it was like to be in love for the very first time.
Jakob had told her that all acts of altruism were secretly acts of selfishness, that you were really only doing for others to please yourself. And he was right, without ever really understanding what he was right about. He thought altruism was worthless if it brought you happiness—that it wasn’t really al truism at all—without seeing that it was all right to feel good about making other people feel good. When you gave your happiness away, it came back twofold. It kept coming and coming, like the loaves and fishes. Its impossible increase was, maybe, the one miracle that would never be disproved by science. It was the last wonder allowed to religion. To live for others was to live fully; to live only for yourself, a cold kind of death. The sugar was sweeter when you gave it to someone else to taste.
She had not thought she was a religious person, but in the church at Camp Wyndham, she had discovered everyone was religious. If you had it in you to sing, you had it in you to believe and be saved.
With the possible exception of the Fireman, perhaps. The Fireman was watching Father Storey with an expression of calm detachment, and blowing smoke rings. He wasn’t smoking a cigarette. He was just making the rings from somewhere in his throat, fat cloudy circles that rose in rippling hoops. He caught Harper watching and grinned. Show-off.
Father Storey slipped his glasses off, polished them on his sweater, and put them back on. “I guess someone doesn’t believe it, though. About two months ago someone started helping themselves to items from the kitchen. Nothing much—a little milk, some potted meat. Hardly worth mentioning. When you think about it, stealing a few cans of Spam might even be looked upon as doing us all a kindness. Then some other things went missing from the girls’ dorm. Emily Waterman had a teacup taken, her lucky cup of stars. A bottle of nail polish was swiped from the Neighbors girls. Five days ago, someone stole my granddaughter’s locket from under her pillow. I’m not sure it matters that it was gold, but it had a picture of her mother in it, all Allie had left of her, and it broke her heart to lose it. Then, yesterday, the thief helped herself to Nurse Willowes’s care package for her unborn child. I believe most of you know about her care package, what she’s been calling the Portable Mother.”
Father Storey put his hands in his pockets and rocked from the hips and for a moment his glasses flashed, reflecting the candle on the podium, becoming circles of red flame.
“I am sure whoever took the things from the girls’ dorm must feel very ashamed and frightened. There isn’t a person in this room who hasn’t suffered terribly since finding themselves marked with the ’scale, and under a strain like that, it can be easy to act impulsively, to take from someone else, without thinking how you would hurt them. I say to the person who took these things, and who sits among us now: you have nothing to fear by coming forward.”
“Don’t bet on it,” Allie whispered, and the Neighbors twins stifled nervous laughter. There was no amusement on Allie’s face, though.
“It would take bravery of the deepest kind to use your voice and speak up and admit what you did. But if you tell us the truth—if you raise your voice to give back—everyone in this room will shine for you. The happiness we all feel when we sing will be nothing compared to it. I know it. It will be sweeter than any song, and every heart here will give you something better than the things you took. They’ll give you forgiveness. I believe in these people and their goodness and I want you to know the same things about them that I know. That they can love you even after this. Everyone here knows what makes the Dragonscale glow. Not music—if it was just the music, my deaf grandson wouldn’t glow with us. It’s harmony—harmony with one another. No one will shame you or ostracize you”—he lowered his chin and gave the room an almost-stern look over his glasses—“and if they do I will set them right. In this place we raise our voice in song, not in contempt, and I believe whoever took these things could no more help themselves than my grandson can help being deaf. Believe in us and I promise: it will be all right.” And he smiled so sweetly Harper’s heart broke a little. He was like a child, gazing into a July night and waiting on fireworks.
No one moved.
A floorboard creaked. Someone cleared their throat.
The small candle wavered on the lectern.
Harper discovered she was holding her breath. She dreaded the thought that no one would speak and that they would disappoint Father Storey, would erase that smile. He was the last innocent man in the world and she could not bear for that to change. The thought—ludicrous but intense—came to her that she ought to say she had stolen the things, but of course no one would believe that, and she hadn’t stolen them, so she couldn’t return them.