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Conner scratched where his bandage was itching his neck. He thought of things he’d said to Rob that he’d be angry to hear himself. “I just don’t want you to go,” he said. The sarfer went over a smooth rise and sank back down, making his queasy stomach feel worse. “You can say all you want that you’ll come back, but we both know you won’t. Nobody ever does. ”
“Nobody?” She pulled her ker back over the bridge of her nose. They sailed in silence for a dune, only the slithering taunt of vipers against those red sails.
“I lied about the night she came into camp,” Conner said. “Violet didn’t make it to our tent. I was out there. ”
Vic was adjusting a line, but she stopped and stared at him. “Out where?” she asked.
“Across the gash. With three canteens and a pack of supplies. ”
“Bullshit. ”
But he could tell she believed him. That she knew. Conner fixated again on that silver sphere.
“Palmer didn’t show up, so I was going to leave Rob there by himself. I did leave Rob there. I snuck out in the middle of the night, was across the gash and a hundred paces on when I found her. ” He turned and lowered his own ker, didn’t care about the grit getting into his mouth. “So when you tell me, or you tell Palmer, or you tell Rob that you’re gonna go out there and give ’em hell or get Dad back or that you’re gonna return with him, just know that I’ve been where you are, making that decision, and I know what it’s like to lie to myself and know that I’m never coming back. ”
Vic turned away from him and lifted her goggles. Wiped at her eyes.
“I know you think you’ll try, but so did Dad. If you do this, you’re leaving us for good. And I’m gonna hate you for it. ”
Vic turned back to him. She was smiling and crying at the same time. “But you can leave Rob in that tent? Fucking hypocrite,” she said.
And in that way that often happens between siblings, cruel words were followed by laughter. Tears dripped into smiles. A flaming sun dipped behind cool mountains, and a harmless-looking silver sphere rode serenely at the bow.
57 • Swinging the Gaze of God
Vic
They thought they were making it easy on her, that they were supporting her, but accompanying her to the gash just made it worse. As did the sight of her family erecting a tent together, just like olden times. All the water and food and supplies they’d hauled, every backbreaking ounce of their hope over her return, but Conner had been right. She could lie to each and every one of them and promise that she’d be back, but she knew. Her father had known. Everyone who crosses that gash knows.
She unpacked and checked her pack, made sure she had everything. Water and jerky. Two loaves of bread. Spare ker. Her band and visor. A portable shade for sleeping during the day. The large knife Graham had given her when she’d broken the news to him. Bandages and salve. The three notes the boys had written. The five pairs of underwear that made her think of Marco and had her suppressing the urge to laugh or cry. She would wear her dive suit under the patchwork tunic cinched around her waist. The heavy sphere she left in the bottom of the pack. It seemed to let off heat, even though she’d kept it out of the sun. She felt ready. Far to the east, the grumbles and roars called to her.
“You know I’m the one who should be going,” Palmer said, as he watched her repack her bag.
“Why?” she asked. “Because you’re the oldest son?” It was a jab meant in jest, but none of her brothers seemed interested in sparring with her.
“No,” he said. “Because I owe this asshole. Because of Hap. Because I started all of this. ”
“More reason then for you to be here and see it through. ” Vic pulled two folded pieces of paper from her belly pouch and handed them to her brother.
“Fuck you,” Palmer said. He held up his hands and showed her his palms. “I’m not taking your rites. You’re coming back alive, damn you. ”
Vic grabbed his wrist and jammed the papers into his hand. “These aren’t my last rites, asshole. It’s your map. ”
Palmer looked at the papers in his hand. He inspected the map he had pulled out of Danvar, then shook the other piece of paper. “What’s this note, then?”
“That’s everything I know about diving deep. How to dive down to a thousand meters. ”
“Bullshit,” Palmer said.
Vic grabbed him by the shoulders and waited for him to look up at her. “Even with the right suit and visors, those depths will kill you without batting an eye. There’s no breathing down there. And your suit will feel like it’s gonna rip you apart until you get below three hundred. But it can be done. I’ve marked some of my favorite sites on your map there. Also some others that I think look promising. I made a key on the back so you can understand my notes. My advice to you right now is to send divers dumb as me down there. Don’t take that chance yourself. You’ve got nothing to prove. ” She tapped him on the shoulder. “You stay alive,” she said. “You were the one. ”
Palmer lifted his goggles and wiped tears away from his eyes. He lowered them back down and studied the map and the notes. “How’re these not your last rites?” he asked. He looked up at her. “You’re not coming back, are you?”
Vic hugged her brother, and Palmer returned the embrace. “Take care of yourself,” she said.
“I will. ” His voice was a whisper.
“And Rob and Conner. ”
“I will,” he said.
She let him go and turned away before lifting her own goggles and wiping her own eyes. Rob ran toward her from the tent and crashed into her legs, throwing his arms around her. “Not yet,” he told Vic. “Don’t go yet. ”
Vic knelt down and hugged her little brother. “I’ll be back soon,” she told him. Rob frowned. There was sand on his lips. Vic lifted his ker from around his neck and adjusted it snug across his nose. He was the hardest one to lie to because he was the smartest. “Take care of your new sister,” she said.
Rob nodded. Conner came to her side with her canteens. He lifted her heavy pack and held it for her the way a diver held another’s tank. She stood and slipped her arms through the backpack straps, cinched the belt down snug over her hips, then took the canteens one at a time.
“Damn thing’s heavy,” Conner said, referring to the pack but probably more directly referring to the bomb. He stood and rubbed his shoulder. Something unspoken passed between the two of them, the sort of communication that happens beneath the sand when throat whispers become another’s thoughts. The two of them had dived together, had salvaged lives together, and they had salvaged something between them by doing so.
Vic gave her brother a hug. He slapped her pack and whispered something lost to the wind. And then Vic turned toward the gash and saw her mother waiting out there, just like she’d found her mom the night their dad had disappeared. Vic left her siblings behind, waved one more time toward the tent where Violet was standing alone, then strode out to meet her mom, dreading this goodbye the most.
“I can’t talk you out of this,” her mother said.
Vic laughed, thinking on how hard so many people had tried. “When’s the last time you talked me out of anything?” she asked. She meant it to be fun, to keep that goodbye from being so serious that she couldn’t leave, but most of all to lift her mother’s hopes that she might return.
“I lost you once. I don’t want to lose my daughter again. ”
Vic glanced back at the tent. “You’ve got a new daughter to watch over,” she said. “Think of it as an even trade—”
“Don’t you give me that bulls—” her mother started.
“I’m not giving shit,” Vic said. She felt the blood in her veins grow cold, the chance at humor lost. “I’m not giving, Mom. I’m taking. That’s what I’m doing. I’m taking my father back from them. I’m going to take their city and make them pay for the one we lost. Tit for tat, Mother. They owe us, and I’m gonna make the
m pay. ”
“No. You’ll cross that gash and you’ll die for nothing. ” Her mother was crying. It was the hardest thing Vic ever bore seeing, her mother vulnerable and weak and … human. Her mom didn’t even wipe away the tears, just let them gather sand from the wind.
“You did your best by us, Mom. You weren’t given packed sand to walk across. I know that. I wouldn’t have done half as good as you did. ”
With that, Vic hitched up the heavy pack and turned away from the campsite. It was the highest compliment she could’ve paid. She could’ve told her mom that she loved her, but neither of them would’ve believed that. Love was earned and hard-fought and cherished. It was Marco’s face and his rough palm on her cheek. It wasn’t something a family got just for being a family. But her mom had done more with a shitty hand and honest play than a bluffer with an ace up his sleeve. Vic knew this was true as she crossed that hard break in the desert sand, that jagged divide between the then and the now—like a row between lovers or between family members, a wound that permanently mars a relationship, that moves it from courtship and passion to resigned cohabitation, that turns a daughter into an enemy, so that the best one can hope for is that she becomes a friend.
Vic wiped the mud off her cheek, hating herself as she left the gash behind. And then she stopped and lowered her heavy pack there in No Man’s Land. She turned, pulled her ker down around her neck, and ran back, felt near to her youth again, was crying like the little girl she never wanted to be, never wanted to be. And her mom’s arms were wide. No questions. Just tears streaking down her face. A line in the sand that was nothing, not even there, taken in stride.
“Thank you,” Vic muttered into her mother’s neck. “Thank you, Mom. Thank you. ”
Which was more than love. And it sustained her as she went back to her burden—that crack in the sand a thing that could be crossed and re-crossed—and she headed dead into the wind and toward the horizon, her mother’s reply echoing in her ear, accompanying her on that long march, whispered there at the edge of No Man’s Land and over the insolent flap of that untamable tent:
“My sweet girl. My sweetest Victoria. ”
58 • A Rap Upon Heaven’s Gate
Conner was the one who spotted it. On the seventh night, stoking the fire with a metal rod left over from incorrectly assembling the tent, he lifted his eyes to a sudden white glow on the horizon. It was a burst of daylight like the sun had forgotten the time and had leapt out of bed, rushing, late to work.
Conner shouted for the others, and his mother and Rob and Violet poured from the tent. Palmer rushed over from the other side of the campsite, buttoning his trousers, having gone downwind for a piss. Together, they watched the glow. It bloomed like a radiant flower. It was so bright it required turning away, required looking at it askance, required giving it the same quarter as the noonday sun.
“Jesus,” Palmer whispered.
There was no doubting that a city had just vanished. Conner had seen bombs go off before. Spotting the blast of a normal bomb was a chore from two dunes away. This came to life from over the horizon.
“Vic,” Rob said, sniffing.
Their mother put a hand on his shoulder. “She’ll be fine,” she said, but Conner didn’t think she sounded sure. She couldn’t know. None of them could know.
And then the noise hit after some long consideration. A rumble in their chests and bones. A deep growl of the earth and a howl in the heavens. The wind seemed to shift a moment later, and the sand startled into chaos and turbulence. They held on to one another. Violet took Conner’s hand and squeezed it, and he realized that their little sister was the only one who had ever been there, that she was the only one who had any sense of what had just been harmed. Conner could practically feel her longing to rush that way and see for herself.
“They’ll know we’re here now,” Palmer said.
“They’ve known,” their mother told them. “They’ve always known we’re here. They know we suffer. Now, they’ll give a shit. ”
The uncharacteristic language brought silence. A heavy stillness. It took several heartbeats for Conner to realize what was wrong. It would’ve been easy to not notice at all, to go on not noticing for days and days, so steady had been that backdrop of infernal noise that its absence could almost not register. But he heard it, somehow. He heard that quiet far over the horizon.
“Listen,” he whispered. “The drums. They’ve stopped beating. ”
••••
There was food and water for five more days, but they made it last eight. Vic had told them not to wait, but they waited. Their mother told them not to hope, but they hoped. Eight more days of camping, of the tent hot at noon and chilly at night, of a quiet shared, a story to pierce the silence, the relief of occasional laughter, the most time ever spent together, time spent talking and thinking. There were stories of Vic to go along with stories of Father. A long wait for some return. If not a person strolling over the horizon, then at least an apparition. If not an apparition, then some word. If not a word, at least a sign.
Palmer spoke of Danvar. A finger in a rip by his belly, he confessed to a murder and their mother held him like he was a boy again. And Conner saw a man in his elder brother’s sobs. It was all life would ever be, as the days and nights drew out and half-caps of water were sipped. No one would ever go back to Springston, for there was no town. They would live in the tent until the food and water was gone, such was the drawing out of night and interminable day as dreams and stories mixed and a week felt like a summer, and the moon went from a sliver to a pregnant disc, and even the rhythms and howls of the wind could be sensed and foreseen, like an old man who has watched the sands with such burning intensity for a wrinkle of years that he could paint a picture of a landscape that is not yet but will be.