“No one will be hurt. I’ll scare the pants off them, but that’s all.”
“I hate asking you for help. You always do this. You make things mysterious that don’t have to be mysterious, because you like to keep everyone wondering about you. It’s a cheap high.”
“Don’t deny me my little pleasures. You’re going to get everything you want. There’s no reason I can’t have a little of what I want, too.”
“I’m not getting everything. If I could do what you can do, I wouldn’t need to beg for your help. Please—John. Can’t you at least try to teach me?”
His gaze shifted past her to the furnace and back. “Might as well ask a fish to teach you how to breathe underwater. Now go away. My sides hurt and I need to get some sleep. Don’t come back without cigarettes.”
“Did you try and teach her? Sarah?”
He seemed to shrink from her. For an instant, there was so much shock and hurt in his eyes it was as if she had slugged him in the ribs. “No. Not me.” Which was, she thought later, an odd sort of denial. He stretched out, turning onto his good side, so she was looking at the bony curve of his back. “Don’t you have other people to look after? Give someone else the soothing balm of your bedside manner, Nurse Willowes. I’ve had all I can take.”
She rose and put her shoes on. Zipped herself into her parka. Collected her bag. She stopped with her hand on the latch.
“I spent three hours hiding in a cupboard today, with my ex not a dozen feet from me. I had three hours to listen to him talk about the things he’s done to the sick. Him and his new friends. Three hours to listen to him talk about things he’d do to me if he had half a chance. From their point of view, we’re the bad guys in this story. If he sees me again he’ll kill me. If he had the opportunity, he’d kill everyone in camp. And after he did it, he’d feel he had done a good day’s work. In his mind he’s that guy in the cowboy hat from The Walking Dead, wiping out the zombies.”
To this, the Fireman said nothing.
She continued, “You saved me once. I will owe you for that the rest of my life, however long that happens to be. But if I die in the next couple of months, and you could’ve taught me how to be like you—how to protect myself? It’ll be just the same as if you hid in the woods that night and let Jakob kill me.”
Bedsprings creaked uneasily.
“I’m going to live to have this baby. If God can help me make it through the next three months, I’ll pray. If Carol Storey can keep me alive, I’ll sing ‘Kumbaya’ with her till my throat is hoarse. And if you can teach me something useful, Mr. Rookwood, I will even put up with your superior attitude and lack of manners and half-baked philosophy lectures. But don’t imagine for a minute I’m going to drop it. You’ve got some keep-alive medicine. I want it.” She opened the door. The wind wailed in a tone that was at once both terrifying and melodic. “One other thing. I didn’t say I don’t have any cigarettes. I said I don’t have any cigarettes for you. And I won’t . . . until you put your teacher hat on and give me my first class in surviving spontaneous combustion. Until that day, my Gauloises will stay in my shopping bag.”
As she shut the door, he began to yell. Harper learned a few new obscenities on her way back to the boat. Cunt-swill was a good one. She would have to save that one for a special occasion.
9
Harper didn’t know anyone was waiting for her on the dock until the boat bumped up against it and someone reached down to take the bow.
“Help you out there, Nurse?” Jamie Close offered a hand.
It was as if the darkness itself were speaking. Harper could hardly make out Jamie’s squat, chunky figure against the black swaying pines and the black turmoil of black clouds in a black sky. Someone else was with her, cleating the front of the boat. Allie. Harper knew her by her lithe, boyish frame and quick grace.
Harper took Jamie’s hand, then hesitated. The cloth sack of supplies was pushed in under the bench on which she sat, a canvas shopping tote containing the rum, cigarettes, instant coffee, and tea, among other things. What was hers belonged to all, according to the old rules of camp—but she was writing her own rules now. If liquor and smokes could buy the Fireman’s secrets, then camp would have to do without.
Harper reached under the seat and plucked the first aid kit from the top of the sack. She rose, leaving the rest behind.
She looked past Jamie, trying to catch Allie’s eye, but the girl had already stood up from the cleat and turned her back. She was trembling—from rage, Harper thought, not the cold. She had her rifle over her shoulder. So did Jamie.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get back sooner, Allie. I understand if you’re mad at me. If you’re in any kind of trouble at all, I’ll talk to Ben or Carol or whoever, and make them understand you bear no responsibility. But I don’t see why you should be in trouble. I said I was going to check on the Fireman and come back and that’s what I did. More or less.”
“You left out the part about goin’ home first, though, din’cha, Nurse?” Jamie said.
So they knew she had taken a detour on her way to the Fireman’s island. She had kept to the trees as she headed out of camp, but had looked back once and wondered if Michael, up in the church tower, was peering down at her. The eye in the steeple sees all the people.
“The infirmary was short on some critical supplies. Fortunately I knew I could get what I needed from my own basement.”
The two fell in on either side of her. Harper was reminded of a police escort walking a prisoner into court.
Jamie said, “That was all kinds of fortunate. You know what else was fortunate? You weren’t clubbed to death with pool sticks. We was fortunate, too. We was fortunate they didn’t follow your tracks, into the woods and all the way back to camp. Oh, yeah. We seen ’em. The Cremation Crew that turned up right after you went in. We both had our rifles but Allie told me I’d have to be the one to shoot you. She couldn’t bear the thought of doing it herself. We hid in the woods watchin’ till we lost the daylight. Then there wasn’t no point.”
Harper and her escorts came out of the firs and up alongside the soccer pitch, a snowy basket filled with moonglow. Harper couldn’t tell if the thudding pain in her abdomen was a cramp of tension or the baby driving a heel into her.
“Allie,” Harper said, “I’m sorry I scared you. I shouldn’t have put you through any of that. But you have to understand, I can’t bear the thought of sending a kid into danger when it’s something I can do myself. And you’re a kid. All of you Lookouts are kids.”
“See, but you did put us in danger. You put the whole camp in danger,” Jamie told her.
“I was careful. They wouldn’t have found my tracks.”
“They didn’t need to find any tracks. They only needed to find you. Maybe you think you wouldn’ta said nothing, but it’s funny how a pool cue up the snatch will loosen someone’s lips. You shouldn’ta gone. You knew you shouldn’ta gone. And what tore Allie up the worst was knowing she shouldn’ta let you. We made promises to keep people safe. To keep well-meaning dipshits like yourself in camp, under watch. All the Lookouts promised Mother Carol—”
“Mother WHO? She’s no one’s mother, Jamie.” Harper thought Mother Carol and the Lookouts sounded like a band that might’ve been playing Lilith Fair in 1996.
“We promised her and we promised each other and we blew it. Carol was sick to death when she heard you were gone. Like she hasn’t been through enough already.”
“Fine. You’ve said what you had to say. Tell Carol you delivered her message, and next time if I feel like a breath of fresh air, I’ll be sure to try and drop her a note. And Allie, you can quit the silent treatment. I’m a little too old to be impressed by that one. Got something to say? Do me a favor and spit it out.”
Allie turned her head and glared at Harper with wet, accusing eyes. Jamie snorted.