M. Wren - A Gift Upon the Shore

“What is it, Isaac?”

“It’s time for supper. We’re having pea soup!” Pea soup is one of his favorites; he likes the green color.

I laugh. “Then we’d better get at it.”

After another quiet meal in an atmosphere heavy with tension, I busy myself building fires in the living room and bathroom, then carry a bucket of water into the bathroom and put it on top of the stove to heat. This is the children’s bath night. Every night is someone’s bath night, but we’re lucky if each of us gets a bath once a week.

But first, evening service, and I wait impatiently until the family leaves the house for the church. I go to the kitchen, take one of the oil lanterns out of the cupboard, light the wick with a strip of kindling dipped into the stove’s firebox. More pots of water squat on the stove top in preparation for the baths. I go out the backdoor, hear a hymn raggedly sweet in the twilight: “Nearer My God to Thee.” The yellow glow of the lantern precedes me along the east wall of the new wing and around to the north side. The wind, heavy with moisture not yet resolved into rain, whips around the corner. Inside the storeroom, the air smells of dust and rust, and the floor-to-ceiling shelves are filled with crates, jumbles of tools, loops of rope and chain and electric wire, empty cans, buckets, glass jars, pipes and plumbing fixtures, house paint and turpentine, stacks of lumber, nails and screws, nuts and bolts. The lantern casts dense shadows as I search for that small, wooden box. Perhaps I remember it so clearly—and everything about the dynamite—because I didn’t want it here. It was a bitter symbol of humankind’s violent history. I can even remember that Jerry brought exactly twenty sticks to Amarna. He used five to blow out the spring.

The light falls on a box marked in stenciled letters: DYNAMITE. The box has been recently moved; there are clean areas in the dust on the shelf. I open the lid, my pulse rushing in my ears. The sticks seem innocuous, perhaps an inch in diameter and eight inches long, wrapped in thick, oily, yellow-brown paper. There is no hint of their lethal potential, except the word printed in faded black: DANGER.

I count five sticks. Ten are missing.

I replace the lid, turn the lantern on the hand-lettered message on the smaller box next to the dynamite: BLASTING CAPS—FUSE. I don’t bother to look inside. I’ve seen enough. Too much.

When I return to the house, I put away the lantern and go into the living room, where Shadow is sleeping on the couch. I build up the fire, then sit down beside her, stare into the flames, and remember evenings with Rachel here while we were still alone, then her casual “lessons” with Luke at this same fire. And in the last ten years there were many evenings when the family gathered here to talk or sing. I’m not sure when we stopped having those evening gatherings. Their cessation was a gradual thing. It began with Rebecca’s death three years ago.

I take a deep breath, let it out in a sigh, and consider my options.

At least, now that I’m sure of Miriam’s intentions, I can stop her. I can tell Jerry and the others that the dynamite is missing and demand a search. I wonder where she’s hidden it.

I hear myself sighing again. I can’t look to Jerry and the family to help me. But, Mary, why would any of us steal the dynamite ? And if I explain why, they won’t believe me.

Still, they might if Miriam succeeds. Which will be too late.

And even if I can stop her from destroying the books now, she has an advantage over me: an advantage of nearly forty years. I am constantly reminded that I’m an old woman. I’m lucky to have lived this long, and I can’t count on living much longer. There is in Miriam’s eyes that banked fire that tells me she is impatient to do something now . But if I stop her now, she has only to learn patience, to wait until I die. I wonder how long it will be after my death before all the family joins her in a Pauline frenzy of book burning.

No, I can’t simply stop her. I must negate her influence, just as she must negate mine. And perhaps age has an advantage. You learn deviousness when you can no longer, physically, solve problems in a more direct fashion.

I hear rain slapping at the windows, a hard rain that will undoubtedly last all night, and I smile. I won’t have to worry about her dynamiting the vault tonight. A storm might make her act of god more plausible—she could say god struck the vault with lightning—but it has its drawbacks. For one thing, it would be difficult to light a fuse in a driving rain. For another, she couldn’t avoid getting soaked. None of the waterproof coats and boots are left. Now we arm ourselves against the rain with wool and leather, which once wet take hours to dry. It wouldn’t make her story that she was asleep before the blast credible if she or any of her clothing were wet with rain.

No, she’ll have to make her attempt on a clear night. That means I can sleep tonight. And I’ll need it. There’ll be no rest for the wicked for many nights to come.

Now that I truly understand the threat facing me, I feel a deep calm, a mental clarity. On this fifth day of May I wake ready to take up the gauntlet and capable of being amiable and almost garrulous at breakfast—much to the confoundment of the adults, especially Miriam. School is again an invigorating experience, although I have to curb my tendency to lecture on general principles as if this were my last lesson.

By noon, the clouds from last night’s storm are breaking up to let the sun make shining spangles on the gray-green sea. After midday meal I manage to corner Jerry in private long enough to ask him to join Stephen and me for our lesson. He is irritable and almost eager to turn me down until I tell him I’m going to read his father’s letter. For a moment he seems stunned, then he squares his shoulders and nods.

I go to my room and open the bottom drawer of the chest on the east wall. My souvenir drawer. I sift through it like an archaeologist on a midden, unearth letters my father wrote to me; a bottle of L’Interdit perfume; my college diploma; the sketchbook Rachel gave me when I left with Luke for the Ark; the sole copy of October Flowers ; the handcuffs awarded to Jim Acres by the Shiloh Apies garrison—the key is still attached by a string; a blue silk scarf that was a gift from my mother on my sixteenth birthday; the first piece of fossil wood I found on the beach here; Topaz and the first Shadow’s collars.

There. In a flat, wooden box, Luke’s letter. The paper—ordinary typing paper, a relic from Before—rustles like dead leaves. The letter was written in ink with a blunt nib; the handwriting is large and childlike, and page after page becomes more erratic, and by the last page almost illegible. Jerry told me Luke worked at it a few minutes at a time while he fought the nameless fever that had already killed over half his Flock.

I close the drawer and pull myself to my feet. When I reach the deck, I find both Jerry and Stephen leaning against the railing, Jerry watching me as I approach, Stephen looking seaward. When Stephen turns, finally, and looks at me, I feel an inexplicable chill. It’s what I saw in his eyes in the split second when he first focused on me that engendered the chill.

Doubt. Was that it? But why? And I remember that he was oddly withdrawn in school this morning. I attributed it to the familial tension of which he and all the children are so intensely, so silently aware.

No, this is something more, something new, but I’m distracted when Jerry asks, “Is that the letter?” He looks at it fixedly.

I sink into one of the chairs, gesture toward the other. “Yes, this is the letter. Have a seat, Jerry.”

He shrugs, nods at Stephen, who sits down beside me, while Jerry remains standing, arms folded in an attitude of mixed suspicion and uncertainty. Stephen is again looking out at the sea, as if he has no interest in the letter.