Page 20
“Training for what?”
Silas kept his gaze to the floor. He drew something that looked like a deer, making Xs for the horns.
“The older boys become hunters when they turn fifteen,” Benny answered.
“So your brother was fifteen,” I said. I’d assumed Paul was a child, because of all the picture books. But he must have started with the simplest things he could find. “And he was teaching himself to read?”
Benny nodded. “Do you know how to read?” he asked.
“I do,” I said.
“Will you teach me?”
“Yes,” I said, “I will. ”
For the first time since I’d met him, Benny smiled, revealing a missing front tooth. With a sudden inspiration I grabbed Silas’s stick and kneeled on the floor. I scratched the word quickly, without thinking, into the hard earth. Then, in one swift motion, I underlined it. “Do you know what that is?” I asked.
Silas stared at the letters and back at me, as though he was surprised that my hand had made those letters appear. He shook his head.
“That’s your name,” I said, pointing at the letters one by one. “S-I-L-A-S. ” Then I scribbled another word below it. “And this spells Benny. ”
Benny smiled, his one front tooth jutting out at an angle.
Silas stared at me, his mouth forming a small O. “Silas,” he repeated, pressing his fingers to the ground.
I set the stick down and stood, flushed with pleasure. “Wait here, for just a minute,” I said, thinking of all those books that sat, unread, on Paul’s old desk. “I’ll be right back. ”
BENNY STOOD IN FRONT OF THE MUD WALL, SCRATCHING out the letters with a stick. “Yes, that’s right,” I said, as the room of boys watched in silence. He finished the Y and stood back, spelling out the word in block letters.
“Benny,” he read, his face exploding in a toothless grin.
“Very good,” I said, taking the stack of children’s books off the table. What started as the two little boys etching their letters in the ground had grown as a few of the older boys had poked their heads into the room and taken seats.
“Let’s read a book,” I said, pulling one off the top of the pile. When I had retrieved them, I was delighted to recognize a few from School. “Once there was a tree,” I read, showing the pages around so everyone could see. “And she loved a little boy. And every day the boy would come—” I paused. Silas’s hand was raised. It was the very first thing I’d taught them, after I began the lesson and they all tried to shout over one another.
“What do you mean she loved him? What is that?” he asked.
Kevin, the boy with the cracked glasses, let out an annoyed sigh. “It means he wants to kiss a girl. It’s what happened before the plague. ” He smiled up at me, a pink- cheeked, bashful smile.
“Kiss a girl?” Silas asked incredulously.
Huxley perked up. “No, it’s not that. This is a tree. The tree isn’t kissing the boy. ”
“What are you guys talking about,” Silas asked, twisting his face in confusion.
“You can love anyone,” I interrupted, looking around at the group. “Love is just”—I searched for the right words—“caring about someone very deeply. Feeling like that person matters to you, like your whole world would be sadder without them in it. ” I thought about Pip’s staccato laugh, or jumping from bed to bed with Ruby, the way we always did Saturday mornings, when we were waiting for our showers.
After a long pause, Benny glanced up. “I loved my brother,” he said.
“I loved my mother,” a fifteen-year-old named Michael added.
“I loved my mother, too,” I said. “I still do. That’s the thing—it never goes away, even if the person does. ” I waited a moment, then opened the book again. “So every day the boy would come and gather her leaves and make them into a crown—”
“Kevin! Michael! Aaron! Where are you?” Leif’s voice boomed down the hall. He turned the corner, his muscular body streaked with ash and mud. Those black, marble eyes stared at me again, not betraying any feeling. “Where are the buckets?”
A few of the older boys sprang up from the floor. “We were going to do it after . . . after we finish the book. ”
“The book?” Leif asked, stalking toward them. He did not look at me, kept his head turned, as though I were the table, a chair, the floor beneath his feet. “You will do it now, because you were supposed to do it this morning. I want all the buckets of rainwater inside, around the fire. ”
“Can’t it wait a few minutes? We’re almost done,” I said before I could stop myself.
The boys turned, surprised at the sound of my voice.
Leif stepped toward me, his musky smell filling the space between us. “Wait for what?” He snatched the book from my hand. “This? These boys don’t need to be reading children’s books. They need to learn to fend for themselves. ”
“And they’ll be able to. ” I straightened up. “But they also should be able to understand a basic road sign, or how to write their own name. ”
Leif looked around at the class, nearly a dozen of them packed tightly together in the small space. His mouth opened and closed slowly, like a fish washed onshore, struggling to breathe. Then he met eyes with Kevin, the oldest in the room, and nodded.
“You can fill the buckets immediately after your lesson. As for you . . . ” He looked at me. Despite his cold gaze I could’ve sworn I noticed a lightness in his expression, a soft give around his lips, the closest thing I’d ever seen to a smile. “If you’re going to stay here and teach these boys then you should know what they’re about. The older ones”—he pointed with his thick finger to Kevin and Aaron, who were cooling their backs on the mud wall—“will be leaving the dugout soon, on hunting and guard duty. The initiation ceremony begins the day after next, at sundown. ” He went out the door, stooping so his head didn’t hit the dip in the ceiling.
I looked back at the class, the book still in my hands. I could feel the shifting of power, as real as if the earth beneath me had changed. Energy surged through my body and I spoke the words, the cavern seeming bigger now. “And every day the boy would come and gather her leaves . . . ”
Chapter Fifteen
LATER THAT NIGHT, WHEN ARDEN’S CHOKED COUGHS had given way to the rhythmic breaths of sleep, I grabbed the flashlight from its nest in the floor and started back into the tunnels. The camp was quiet. The twisting corridor was empty. After a few days there, I understood the basic underground structure, the five pathways that came out of that circular main room, creating a starlike formation beneath the massive hill. I turned and made my way down the second tunnel, counting the doorways in the dark.
I kept thinking of Benny’s brother, Paul, who had sat at that desk in the corner practicing his letters, who had stretched out on the same mattress as I had, studying the cracks in the mud ceiling. Maybe the day that he’d died, he had sensed it, like an oncoming storm. Or maybe he had slung his bow over his shoulder as he did every morning and taken off for the hunt. Maybe he had passed by Benny’s room, not wanting to wake him, not knowing it was the last time—until he was locked in the tumult of the wave, churning in the white water, pulling the river into his lungs.