Justin Cronin - The Twelve

“It’s chess.”

“Chest?”

Caleb rolled his eyes. “No, chess . It’s a game. I can teach you if you want.”

Peter glanced at Amy, who laughed. “You’ll lose,” she said.

After dinner and dishes, the three of them went to the common room, where Caleb set up the board and explained the names of the various pieces and the moves they could make. By the time he got to the knights, Peter’s head was spinning.

“You really can keep all this straight in your mind? How long did it take you to learn to play?”

He shrugged innocently. “Not long. It’s pretty simple.”

“It doesn’t sound simple.” He turned to Amy, who was wearing a cagey smile.

“Don’t look at me,” she protested. “You’re on your own.”

Caleb waved over the board. “You can go first.”

The battle commenced. Peter had considered taking it easy on the boy—it was, after all, a children’s game, and no doubt he would quickly get the hang of it—but he instantly discovered how badly he had underestimated his young opponent. Caleb seemed to anticipate his every tactic, responding without hesitation, his moves crisp and assured. In growing desperation Peter decided to attack, using his knight to take one of Caleb’s bishops.

“Are you sure you want to do that?” the boy asked.

“Um, no?”

Caleb was studying the board with his chin resting on his hands. Peter could sense the complex movements of his thoughts: he was assembling a strategy, imagining a series of moves and countermoves projected forward in time. Five years old, Peter thought. Amazing.

Caleb advanced a rook three spaces, taking Peter’s other knight, which he had inadvertently left open. “Watch,” he said.

A quick exchange of pieces and Peter’s king was boxed in. “Checkmate,” the boy declared.

Peter stared hopelessly at the board. “How did you do that so fast?”

Beside him, Amy laughed—a warm, infectious sound. “I told you.”

Caleb’s grin stretched a mile wide. Peter understood what had happened; first the swimming, now this. His nephew had effortlessly turned the tables on him, showing Peter what he was capable of.

“You just have to think ahead,” Caleb said. “Try to see it like a story.”

“Tell me the truth. How good are you at this?”

Caleb gave a modest shrug. “A few of the older kids used to beat me. But not anymore.”

“Is that so? Well, set it up again, youngster. I want my revenge.”

Caleb had racked up his third straight victory, each more mercilessly decisive than the last, when the bell sounded, summoning him to the dormitory. The time had passed too quickly. Amy departed for the girls’ quarters, leaving Peter to escort the boy to bed. In the large room of cots, Caleb exchanged his clothing for a nightshirt, then knelt on the stone floor at the side of his bed, hands pressed together, to say his prayers, a long series of “God bless”es that began with “my parents in heaven” and concluded with Peter himself.

“I always save you for last,” the boy said, “to keep you safe.”

“Who’s Mouser?”

Mouser was their cat. Peter had seen the poor creature lounging on a windowsill in the common room—a pitiful rag of a thing, flesh drooping over his brittle old bones like laundry on a line. Peter drew the blanket up to Caleb’s chin and bent to kiss him on the forehead. Sisters were moving up and down the lines of cots, shushing the other children. The room’s lights had already been extinguished.

“When are you coming back, Uncle Peter?”

“I’m not sure. Soon, I hope.”

“Can we go swimming again?”

A warm feeling spread through his entire body. “Only if you promise we can play more chess. I don’t think I have the hang of it yet. I could use a few pointers.”

The boy beamed. “I promise.”

Amy was waiting for him in the empty common room, the cat nosing around her feet. He had to report to the barracks at 2100; he and Amy would have only a few minutes together.

“That poor thing,” Peter said. “Why doesn’t anybody put him down? It seems cruel.”

Amy ran a hand along the animal’s spine. A faint purr trembled from him as he arched his back to receive her touch. “It’s past time, I suppose. But the children adore him, and the sisters don’t believe in it. Only God can take a life.”

“They’ve obviously never been to New Mexico.”

A joke, but not entirely. Amy regarded him with concern. “You look troubled, Peter.”

“Things aren’t going very well. Do you want to know about it?”

She considered the question. She seemed a little pale; Peter wondered if she was feeling all right.

“Maybe some other time.” Her eyes searched his face. “He loves you, you know. He talks about you all the time.”

“You’re making me feel guilty. Probably I deserve it.”

She lifted Mouser to settle him on her lap. “He understands. I’m only telling you so you know how important you are to him.”

“What about you? Are you doing okay here?”

She nodded. “On the whole, it suits me. I like the company, the children, the sisters. And of course there’s Caleb. Maybe for the first time in my life I actually feel… I don’t know. Useful. It’s nice to be just an ordinary person.”

Peter was struck by the frank, easy flow of the conversation. Some barrier between them had dropped. “Do the other sisters know? Besides Sister Peg, I mean.”

“A few do, or maybe just suspect. I’ve been here for five years, and they’d have to notice I’m not aging. I think I’m a bit of a wrinkle to Sister Peg, something that doesn’t really fit her view of things. But she doesn’t say anything about it to me.” Amy smiled. “After all, I make a mean barley soup.”

Too quickly, the moment of his departure was at hand. Amy walked him to the entrance, where Peter pulled the wad of bills from his pocket and held it out to her.

“Give this to Sister Peg, all right?”

Amy nodded without comment and slid the scrip into the pocket of her skirt. Once again she pulled him into a hug, more forcefully this time. “I really have missed you.” Her voice was soft against his chest. “Be safe, all right? Promise you’ll do that.”

There was something fraught in her insistence, a feeling, almost, of finality, a graver parting. What wasn’t she saying? And something else: her body was giving off a feverish heat. He could actually feel it pulsing through the heavy fabric of his uniform.

“You don’t have to worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

“I mean it, Peter. If anything happened, I couldn’t …” Her voice trailed away, as if pulled to the currents of a hidden wind. “I just couldn’t is all.”

Now he was certain: there was something Amy wasn’t telling him. Peter searched her face for what it was. A faint glaze of perspiration shone on her brow.

“Are you okay?”

Taking his hand in her own, she lifted them in concert, pressing her palm against his so that the pads of their fingers were just touching. It seemed a gesture with equal measures of togetherness and parting, connection and separation.

“Do you remember when I kissed you?”

They had never spoken of this—her quick, birdlike peck at the mall, the virals streaming toward them. Much had happened, but Peter had not forgotten. How could he?

“I always wondered about that,” he confessed.

Their raised hands seemed to hover in the darkened space between them. Amy studied them with her eyes. It was as if she were attempting to divine a meaning she herself had made. “I’d been alone so long. It’s nothing I can even describe. But all of a sudden, there you were. I couldn’t believe it.” Then, as if jarred from a trance, she withdrew her hand, her face suddenly flustered. “That’s all. You better go—you’ll be late.”