After the Fall Page 10

  Dunk is, if possible, even more excited than the last time. He reminds me of one of those boy band groupies just before the inevitable fainting. I chuckle at the image of Dunk in the front row, swooning as the boys on stage, in all their glittery glory, blow kisses to their twenty thousand number-one fans.

  “How ’bout you, Taylor?”

  All chattering ceases in an instant, and the focus falls on me like I’m Captain von Trapp about to sing “Edelweiss” for the first time. The weight of those stares is enough to punch me through the wall. If it were nighttime, you’d be able to hear crickets chirping from a mile away for all the silence. There is no escape, no place to hide. And Buck knows that, the sneaky little bastard.

  “Uh, no. Thanks,” I say shakily, hoping my mildly polite decline will be enough, even though I know better. Buck’s hazel-hued laser beams have me pinned to the wall.

  “Do you know how to play?”

  Buck’s voice grins at me even as his face does its best impression of the clueless but encouraging grandfather who just wants little Johnny to join in the fun.

  Damn it, Buck.

  He’s trying to trap me. If I say yes, he can keep pestering me to play. If I say no, I am a big fat liar.

  Buck’s eyes twinkle. He is most definitely pleased with himself.

  “I used to,” I grind out through clenched teeth. I give him my nastiest glare, which only entertains him further. He damn near breaks his unassuming-old-coot façade by laughing.

  “Well, come on then,” he says, holding the guitar out to me. “Don’t be shy.”

  He is working me for all I am worth. Blood colors my cheeks, though I’m not sure whether it is more from being supremely pissed off or from being terribly embarrassed.

  I take the guitar from Buck’s outstretched hands and proceed to just stand there, staring at it dumbly. A soft chuckle from Buck breaks me out of my stupor. He moves over onto the love seat next to Margie, sliding the little boy onto his lap. I take the hint and settle onto the now open chair. Rusty ambles over and takes up residence at my feet and is quickly snoring again.

  The long-faded scent of the mahogany wafts up to my nose, and I breathe it in deeply, knowing full well I have to be imagining it. My fingers find the fret board, and I slide them along the strings, testing their tension. I wrap my right arm over the body, pulling it in so the back bumps against my chest. It feels familiar, comfortable.

  I slip the pick out from between the strings and set it down. I’ve never liked picks. They always feel unnatural between my fingers, and they have this annoying habit of flying out of my hand when I play. I always just use the side of my thumb, liking the feel of the strings vibrating against my skin as I strum. I know I can’t unleash the full power or beauty of the Martin by playing this way, but I don’t care. It feels better to me somehow. More personal.

  The audience, my audience now, quietly awaits my performance. Butterflies begin fluttering in my stomach. Of course, the fluttering feels more like angry jackhammers, and I’m pretty sure the butterflies are of the Jurassic persuasion, probably the size of Tonka trucks. I’m not really nervous about playing, or even playing for people. I have played in public before, at a little coffee house on the town square near my college, with a girl who loved Ani DiFranco. We did two songs together, and at least five people told us we sounded like the Indigo Girls, which I thought was the coolest thing ever. No, my nerves now are caused by something other than playing in public.

  “What are you going to play?”

  Dunk’s voice forges across the silence. He looks up at me expectantly, supportively, urging me forward.

  I rack my brain trying to remember something I know how to play, or at least something I can fake, and come up empty. I cannot for the life of me remember a single song, let alone the opening notes to one. I half expect people to start shouting out suggestions like they did with Buck, but they don’t. After a minute or two, people start shifting uncomfortably, but still they say nothing.

  “It doesn’t have to be anything we know. Just play from your heart.”

  Play from my heart?

  Sometimes Buck is too cheesy for his own good. I start to give him a look to tell him exactly what I think about his play-from-your-heart philosophy, but stop.

  Sonofabitch.

  My left hand finds my favorite chord, the G. My friends used to laugh about how all my songs started with a G. It is my home chord, my safe place.

  I have written four songs in my life, three of which were so unmemorable I forgot them mere days after having written them and probably couldn’t remember even a single word if I was administered truth serum or put under hypnosis. But as my fingers find their home, there is one song I do remember.

  My right hand floats over the strings. My left hand switches chords instinctively. I close my eyes, giving myself over to a melody I haven’t played in a long time. The guitar sings beautifully. I only hope my own voice can match it.

  Oh well. In for a penny…

  I am surprised at how steady my voice is as I begin to sing. I expected it to be shaky, to fade in and out while I stumbled and stuttered out the lyrics. But the words fall smoothly from my lips as I work my way through the first verse. I keep my eyes closed. I am partly afraid of seeing people writhing on the floor, clutching their ears in agony. Of course, that wouldn’t be the guitar’s fault.

  The music leads me, and I allow myself to be led. My lips pass the words without thought, my fingers craft the chords without intention. I am lost to the music, and to the moment. For the first time in a long time, I feel free of the burden of life after the plague.

  I wind my way through the chorus and second verse, my voice and my playing growing stronger. I can hear nothing save the music I am creating. It fills my ears and flows through my body. It is like the ocean crashing against my skin, overwhelming every part of me.

  As I leave the bridge and enter the third verse, I finally trade the darkness behind my eyelids for the light of the front porch.

  I don’t know how long she’s been here, or how much she has heard of my pitiful excuse of a song, but it doesn’t matter. She is here, her eyes upon me, speaking to me, shining for me. There are tears there, yes, but they do not fall. They don’t need to.

  It all feels easy, simple…normal. Sitting here, playing this guitar, singing for a bunch of mostly strangers, it feels like the world isn’t a wasteland, like I didn’t watch people die or Washington crumble or spend months struggling to survive as I crawled across America. It feels familiar and surprisingly good. It almost feels like maybe there can be more to life after the end of the world than just surviving it. Maybe it’s not pointless to dream of a future. Maybe I can dare to believe I can love and be loved, here on a tiny farm in the middle of nowhere, with a woman who captivated me from the moment I saw her.

  A few weeks ago, or a few days ago, or even a few hours ago, I would have rejected such a notion instinctively, purging the idea that anything could ever be normal again. The world had changed too much. I had changed too much. Everywhere I have been since leaving DC has been steeped in misery. Even the places where I have briefly found refuge along the way, places with people willing to provide food and shelter for a night or two, have been awash in sorrow, steeped in a desperation so palpable it simply mirrored my own. Children cry through the night in those places, their tears falling thick as rain in a summer storm for a world they are barely old enough to remember. Then there are the other places, where people take what they want and want more than you have to give. In those places, places like Pittsburgh, tears only provoke the infliction of more agony.

  Until now, my life has been about my journey home. I have given no thought to what happens after I keep my promise to my father, no consideration to what will happen when I have to face the truth of whether they are alive or dead. But things are different now, and I know I want them to be. I must still go home, for myself and for my family, but maybe that does not have to be the end of my story. Maybe
it’s time to look beyond Asheville, to what happens after. Here, in this place, I feel safe for the first time in five months, and people who care about me are offering me a place to belong. Sitting here with this guitar in my lap, staring into Kate’s eyes, I allow myself to feel something other than pain or sorrow. I allow myself to care. And for the first time in forever, I dare to allow myself to just be.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The next few days pass as days should, as they used to before…well, just before. I spend one more night in the farmhouse, just to be on the safe side, Buck says, but then I am deemed well enough to move back to the dorm. I have supervision, of course. Buck comes by to check on me, as does Margie. Dunk spends most of his free time lurking about, chatting up a storm. Then there are the others, people I have barely met or don’t know at all, knocking on my door and poking their heads in just to say hello. It seems like everyone has a vested interest in my well-being, and while part of me wants to be annoyed by all the attention, I can’t really say I mind it all that much.

  They used to talk about paradigm shifts when I was in college, though to be honest, I never paid much attention. I had a bad habit of skipping classes and spending my days experiencing the non-academic parts of college life, going on road trips for no good reason, playing Frisbee in the quad, hanging out with friends in coffee shops and talking about all the things we would fix when we were finally running the world. Not that it really matters now, except that I have been wondering a lot about paradigm shifts over the last few days, and wishing just a little that I had paid more attention in school. The one thing I know is something has changed, both inside me and in the world around me. Something significant.

  Among the parade of nursemaids and well-wishers is Kate. She left quickly after my performance on the porch, without a word but not without a smile. That smile had been a beginning. Kate is waiting when I return to room 39. Buck hands me off and excuses himself. I say nothing at first, unable to find anything close to the right words. Kate, too, is quiet, settling me into the bed, fluffing my pillow, putting away my extra clothes, tucking me in. I had forgotten what it feels like, being taken care of in such a way, and the devil inside screams at me to fight it, to shout that I am not a child needing to be taken care of. But there is this other voice, one which sounds strangled but vaguely familiar, telling me to just shut up and melt into the bed and soak up the gentle care that is being offered. I listen to that second voice, leaving the demon to fume and pout in his corner. Paradigm shift.

  Once Kate is finished making me comfortable and has tucked me in just a little tighter, she drags the chair from beneath the desk over to the side of my bed. Out of a backpack I hadn’t noticed, she slides out a pile of paperback novels, setting them on the nightstand. The spines face her, and I can’t make out the titles. She studies them for a while, her head tilted in contemplation. My curiosity is muted by the fact that as she studies the books, she scrunches up her nose and purses her lips in the most adorable way. With a triumphant grunt and a nod of her head, she slips one of the books out of the stack and onto her lap.

  Kate begins to read, and I burst out laughing before she finishes the first sentence. She has managed to pick one of my favorite books, Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I choose not to consider the astronomical odds of her picking that particular book for fear of making my head explode from the math. She pauses, her eyebrow raised at me, questioning my interruption. I promise her I won’t panic. She grins and starts again.

  She spends the rest of the afternoon and evening reading to me. It is surreal on many levels, not the least of which is she is reading to me, and I am letting her, and it seems perfectly normal to both of us.

  She has a radio voice, mocha rich and marble smooth. It is hypnotizing, her voice. It cradles me, rocking me to sleep and then wrapping me in its care when I awake. I have no sense of time and no concern for the lack of it. Sometime that night, we finish the book and start another, the first story blending into the second like some wonderful dream from which you never want to wake.

  Eventually, my napping gives way to real slumber. In the morning, when the light streaming in through the window finally grows harsh enough to light my world through my curtained eyes, I wake to find her still sitting in that rickety old chair. Her stocking feet are propped up on the edge of my bed, her only seeming concession to her own comfort the act of having taken her shoes off at some point in the night. Her head hangs down low on her chest, rising and falling in a deep rhythm, her neck bent forward in a way that makes me cringe in sympathy for the stiffness I know she will feel when she wakes up.

  I want to make her breakfast in bed like they used to on TV, to carry back a tray laden with pancakes and syrup and juice and bacon, with a small flower, maybe a tulip, carefully arranged in a bud vase in the center. It is a ridiculous notion, and yet the urge is strong. I begin to slowly shift under the covers, trying to inch my way out of the bed so as not to wake her, despite the inherent clumsiness that has taken up residence in my still-recovering body. I choose to ignore the fact that I am acting like we aren’t on a farm in the middle of nowhere with an encampment full of survivors, where meals are prepared by the pound instead of for two. And that I can’t cook. And that breakfast in bed is far too intimate of a gesture for our situation, regardless of the peculiar intimacy we already seem to share.

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  Her eyebrow is raised at me, as I know it will be. I shrink back down into the mattress and pull the blanket up under my chin.

  “Stretching?” I reply lamely.

  “Uh-huh.” The eyebrow ticks higher. “Wanna try again?”

  I decide to see how far into her hairline I can make that eyebrow go.

  “Okay, fine. You caught me,” I say, my words laced with defeat. “I was going jogging.”

  She stifles a laugh.

  “Really,” she replies, more statement than question. She is apparently up for our little game.

  “No, not jogging. Rock climbing.”

  “Mm-hmm.”

  “Water skiing?”

  She almost breaks with that one.

  “Because there’s that big lake out back.”

  “Okay, scratch the water skiing. I was making that up.”

  “Really.”

  “Yeah,” I say shyly. I hang my head a little. “I was covering.”

  “Covering for what?” she says with a note of concern.

  Nervously, I say, “For what I really wanted to do.”

  I search her eyes, which have grown wide.

  “You can tell me.”

  I look away for a moment, gathering my courage.

  She leans forward expectantly.

  “What I really want?” I say, scooting up in the bed, my eyes once again taking hers. She leans even closer.

  “Yes?”

  “To go to clown school.”

  Both eyebrows hit her hairline. She looks like an owl. I think she might hoot.

  I let out an easy grin, savoring my victory. She knows she’s been had. I wait for her to retaliate. Instead, she laughs.

  “I can see it now. You. Polka dot tie. Big red nose. Jumbo-sized shoes.”

  “Don’t forget the suspenders.”

  “I bet you’d wear the hell out of a pair of suspenders.”

  I start to chuckle, but it dies in my throat. Her tone has changed. I feel a flush creep up my cheeks. She looks up at me through her eyelashes, all innocence and seduction. I swallow hard. My blood stirs. There is no longer any question about how I feel about her, and she knows it.

  So she gets up and reaches for the door, leaving me sputtering on the bed.

  “You’re leaving?”

  She turns back to me, giving me most charming grin I have ever seen.

  Damn.

  “I’ll be back later.”

  Then, with a wink, she is gone, leaving me alone with the knowledge that I am simply no match for her. But I like a challenge.<
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  I shake my head, deciding to get up and test my legs in the privacy of my…well, privacy. Turns out they are stronger than I thought they would be. All of me feels stronger, actually. If I didn’t know better, I might actually think I had never been sick.

  I get dressed, deciding to take my newfound strength out for a spin. A cautious, non-exertive spin—I’m not entirely crazy—but a spin nonetheless. I know I’m not yet well enough to resume my journey to Asheville. I try to ignore the guilt I feel over being relieved that I do not have to leave just yet.

  I go down to the mess, thankful to discover I haven’t slept past breakfast. I gratefully gobble down a bowl of oatmeal, swirled generously with brown sugar and cinnamon. The few stragglers in the dining hall all wave or say hi before heading out for their daily chores and responsibilities. I feel a bit like some D-list celebrity, back when we still had those.

  After breakfast I walk. I have no destination, no sense of purpose. I have forgotten what it is like to walk without need. It is exhilarating, albeit tiring. I ramble along, watch men and women working at the boundaries of the land, watch others tend to livestock and work crops, hear the children laughing under Kate and the other teachers’ loving guidance, feel the breeze touch my skin and simply enjoy the sensation, instead of trying to decipher what the air holds next for me.

  I find a small cluster of trees and nestle in, watching the day slip by without me. Clouds billow and drift apart, like some unseen hand is playing with giant balls of cotton. I try to see patterns in the sky, dragons riding the wind before melting into bunnies and castles and ice cream cones. As a child I spent hours upon hours staring up at the sky, lying in the grass, seeing worlds of wonder in the clouds. It came easily to me then. It comes easily no longer. This sky is devoid of dragons.

  “UFOs or signs of rain?”

  Dunk really is a strange boy.

  “What?”

  He kicks at a stray stone in the grass, shoving his hands into the depths of his jean pockets.

  “Around here, someone spends that much time staring up at the sky, they’re either trying to figure out when it’s gonna rain or they’ve recently had a close encounter with some little green men and are waiting for the mother ship to return.”