John felt no guilt with accepting. Too often, someone else would offer a meal of watery soup or a stew with some fragments of squirrel or raccoon mixed in with wild onions and greens, and he always politely refused such paltry fare, not because he wasn’t hungry but because it was one extra meal that whomever he was visiting could better use with their raggedy-clad children.
The entire extended family, Franklins and their newly adopted charges, gathered around their dining room table, Ernie standing to offer grace while all joined hands. The room was actually warm in spite of the cold wintry blast swirling outside their south-facing windows, the fireplace glowing hot with heavy crackling logs stacked in. John felt a wave of nostalgia with the gathering. He often lost track now of exactly what day of the week it was. In warm weather, going to church on Sunday had become a looked-forward-to weekly event in the college’s chapel, which was still under repair from the battle back in the spring.
But with the harsh weather of the last month and Makala’s advanced state of pregnancy, the walk from their home up to Gaither Hall had been set aside. It wasn’t just the gathering around a family table for a filling meal that hit hard; it was the way everyone held hands with heads lowered, offering a prayer of thanksgiving that filled him with emotion.
Perhaps Linda and Ernie were putting on a bit of show for their guest and new lodgers, but then again, he knew they were above that. It was a continuation of old Southern traditions, of family and friends gathered together for a Sunday afternoon of sharing and thanksgiving.
And that realization hit him now as well. When was Thanksgiving? Was it next week, or was it already past? Had they lost touch with that after but two and a half years?
As Ernie ladled out each bowl in turn and passed it on, John found he could not help but watch it hungrily. The meat did not strike him as fresh—it most likely came from a freeze-dried can of emergency rations—but it was still meat, mixed in with what appeared to be real potatoes and a sprinkling of greens. What truly set his mouth to watering was not just the stew but the scent of freshly baked bread as well. Part of the modern kitchen fixtures had been pulled out long ago, with an old-fashioned kitchen woodstove set in as a replacement, with Linda leaving the table for a moment to pull a large loaf of bread out of the oven and setting it down in front of Ernie to be cut into thick slices and then passed around as well.
Stew and bread set before him, he looked down at the feast and found it hard not to fill up with emotion, wishing that Makala was here as well. He felt guilty that such a meal was before him.
“John Matherson, don’t let that get cold!”
He looked up and saw Linda gazing at him not sternly but with a glint of affection, as if reading his thoughts. “There’s more than enough to go around, and I’ll have a bowl and a slice of fresh-baked bread for you to take home to your good wife.”
He could not find the voice to reply and simply nodded, not used to such maternal gestures, especially now that Jen was gone.
He ate in silence and barely listened to the family chatter, teasing of a brother to their daughter implying she might be expecting, the grandchildren announcing that they planned to go sledding down the driveway, Ernie admonishing that there was still the wood splitting and hauling detail to see to.
As for the students now living with them, Linda, without any overt show, just quietly walked behind them with a steaming ladle and put a bit of extra stew in each of their bowls. No one else at the table complained about this second helping, and John felt a flood of emotion as Samantha looked up at Linda, whispered a thank-you, and then struggled and failed to hold back tears of gratitude for a meal unlike any she had most likely seen in years. Linda leaned over to hug her, and the girl began to cry openly.
No one spoke, and then, to help cover the girl’s embarrassment with her emotional display, one of the grandchildren insisted she go sledding with them after the meal was done.
It was the most John could recall having eaten in weeks—or was it months? Perhaps the meal the evening after the battle that had taken out Fredericks when he and those who had fought that day were each handed to eat at one sitting, at John’s insistence, an entire MRE from the stockpile they had captured. Nearly four thousand calories of food all in one sitting.
As he looked around at those gathered with him, a favorite hymn came to mind that Aaron Copland had titled “Simple Gifts.” As if there were some sort of mental prompting, with the meal done, the daughter got up, went over to the piano in the living room, thumbed through a layer of sheet music, picked out a piece by Debussy that John recognized, and began to play.
There was a moment of silence from the others as they listened appreciatively. It flashed John to the day he was in Gaither Chapel with Makala and a student was singing the haunting song “Try to Remember,” a song that so symbolized to John the world they now lived in. The daughter just simply playing a song took John to the thought of a world that must have existed even before his own time, when a family would gather for Sunday dinner, and then afterward someone would play the piano and perhaps others might even sing.
We’ve lost so much, he realized, but then again, maybe we are learning again about the simple gifts of still being alive. The gifts of a warm, filling meal, family and friends together, and rather than the cluttering noise of some ridiculous game turned up too loudly on a television afterward, it was instead a family entertaining themselves while the cold wind of winter swept down from out of the mountains and across icicle-coated orchards and snow-drifted fields beyond.
He realized, that at this moment, whatever was about to come … it was good to be alive.
CHAPTER TEN
“John, wake up. Wake up! We’re under attack!”
It was the dream, the jumble of dreams that always ended with him bolt upright in bed, sweat soaked, shivering. Out on the desert, the Bradley up ahead burning, racing forward to find the medics already pulling out the charred bodies, two of them still alive, faces burned black, red mouths open, screaming, and he stood helpless, could do nothing other than stare in shock … Doc Kellor pulling back a blanket revealing Ben, the father of his grandson, features contorted in the agony of death … then Jennifer …
“John, wake up!”
He was sitting up, shaking, the room freezing cold, Makala’s arms around him, kissing him awake. He opened his eyes. This time, there was no soothing, kissing his forehead, wiping the sweat from his face, whispering it was okay; it was just “the dream” again.
“You’ve got to wake up now. Reverend Black’s on the phone. We’re being attacked!”
He nodded, standing up, bare feet hitting the freezing-cold floor, shocking him, Makala helping him to put on a heavy bathrobe, steadying him as consciousness returned.
“Who’s calling?”
“Reverend Black. John, there are helicopters circling.” She started to lead him to the sunroom where the phone was.
“Who? Where?”
She picked up the receiver of the phone, an old-fashioned black rotary unit, and handed it to him.