better!” she called after me. The guard smirked. I wanted to slap him, but could barely manage to nod as I stumbled down the corridor.
I kept walking until I reached the riverbank. I found our boat, a long, broad skiff, equipped with five days' worth of food, gallons of gas and water, tents, and for appearance's sake, a crate of bomb disposal equipment-tools, plastic explosives, blasting wire, and a little ten-cap hell box. There was one other small item, too, one that I'd secreted from Gurley's office and now kept hidden in a knapsack. I wouldn't fail Lily this time: I'd brought Saburo's map.
I looked it all over and then I sat, the good friend. I stared across the river and listened for some sign of Gurley-the whine of a boat, the crack of a gunshot.
CHAPTER 17
I'VE SEEN RONNIE FIRE A GUN ONLY ONCE, BUT IT WAS TO great effect.
A couple had lost their child. A tiny child. A baby girl, who, like Lily's child, was stillborn. But the baby was terribly early, terribly small, and the whole thing so horrifying that when the couple was asked immediately afterward if they'd like the hospital to “take care of things,” they numbly agreed without knowing what they were agreeing to.
The hospital cremated the body.
They found this out a few days later, when the husband returned to claim the body. He was told it had been cremated; shocked, he asked for the remains; alarmed, the hospital told him there weren't any. Our bodies are mostly water, the man was told, and tiny babies like yours-they sometimes simply evaporate. There's nothing left.
The man returned to his wife, and then, beyond grief, even past rage, the two found me. I did what I could-I arranged a memorial service for their child, I offered to secure an empty burial plot where they could at least place a marker. But they wanted more.
So I summoned Ronnie. He talked with me, and then with the couple, and then he told them to meet him outside the hospital in two days' time, at 5 P.M.
Though it was July, the sky had gone dark early black with threatening clouds. The first drops landed on my windshield as I parked. I found Ronnie and the couple in the small play yard outside the hospital, and watched as he threw a handful of ashes north, then south, then east and west. The couple looked on, stupefied.
This sounds like a myth. It is not; I was there. (Though saying so makes it sound all the more mythic, I know.)
Ronnie dusted his hands of the ashes and reached into a small pouch. I expected him to remove some amulet or tiny mask; instead, he removed an old, rusted.38. (It may have been mine; the parishioners had given one to me “for my safety,” but I'd hidden or lost it and it had been missing for years.)
The wife looked terrified and grabbed her husband. The husband maintained a kind of crumbling defiance: shoot me, his face said. Shoot us both. We no longer want to live.
But Ronnie shot at God instead. He raised the gun over his head, shouted angrily, and fired. It's hard to describe how perfect an act this was, but the evidence was on the couple's faces, first the husband's, then the wife's: here was the angry retort they'd wanted to send to heaven, futile as an oath, but so completely satisfying.
Ronnie wasn't finished, though. Or heaven wasn't.
The rain began. Slowly, and then heavier and heavier. The couple started to move toward shelter, but Ronnie told them to stay. They looked puzzled, sad, depleted. Ronnie held his face to the sky, soaking it. Then, looking at the couple, he slowly wiped his face and presented them his hands, water pooling in the creases of his palms.
It was pouring now, so I couldn't hear what he said then, but I could just about make out his lips.
They were too stunned to move at first. Then the mother and father raised their faces to the flood and wept, as the clouds returned their daughter.
MIDNIGHT CAME, and there was no sign of Gurley. Above, a tumble of clouds arrived, and with them, an early twilight. I was still studying the sky when the jeep pulled up behind me. I turned to see: Gurley and an MP were in front, Lily in back. Somehow, Gurley had made it back across the river from town, silent and invisible.
“Everything ready?” Gurley said, and then repeated himself as he looked everything over. I nodded, and started to ask a question, but by then, he was already moving back to the jeep, where the MP was unlocking Lily's cuffs. Gurley then walked Lily toward the boat, one hand of hers in two of his. Every so often, he would whisper to her, and she would smile. Beyond, I could see the MP taking great pains to appear professionally disinterested in all that was taking place.
“Thugs,” Gurley said to me when they reached the boat. “Imagine: handcuffs.” He took one of Lily's hands to help her aboard. “I'm only sorry I didn't come to your aid sooner, dearest. You must forgive me. Thugs.” He followed Lily into the boat, and turned to me. “Handcuffs? Can you imagine? Find out his name, and when we get back, make sure that he is severely dealt with,” Gurley said. I turned to look back up at the MP, who was now getting into his jeep. “Too late,” Gurley said quickly. “Fair enough, just get in, get in. Cast off, skipper, or whatever you do.” Lily was staring across the river at the town, which was disappearing into a haze of cooling fog. “Mademoiselle,” Gurley said. “I insist you choose the seat of preference.”
Lily gave him a quiet smile, nodded to me, and went to the bow. I started the motor in one pull, cast off, and pointed us out into the middle of the river. The man who'd issued me the boat said I was crazy to be setting out so late; we were likely to run aground before we'd gotten five hundred yards. I studied the surface of the water for any clues. Gurley looked back at the town. And then Lily turned, leaned so I could see her face behind Gurley's back, and gave me a smile. Bigger than the one she'd given Gurley-I was sure of it. “Louis,” she said, just mouthing the word. And then she half extended a hand, and mouthed two more words: “Follow me.”
WITHIN AN HOUR, the clouds had gone, but the sun was done with us anyway. The thin tundra twilight had finally dimmed into a kind of night, more blue than black. We would have to land soon and make camp, but Gurley showed no signs of stopping. He sat in the middle of the boat, between Lily and me, and scanned the horizon. I suppose he might have been searching for Saburo, but his look was so vacant and the light so poor, I wasn't sure what he was doing or thinking.
Lily, on the other hand, watched the water before us intently. She had had me slow down, and whenever she thought I needed to adjust my course, she would point one way or the other, and yip. It was eerie, that sound-I would not have thought a single, clipped syllable would be enough to convey that she was speaking a different language, but it was. It completed the scene, really: wartime Alaska had always been a strange place, but we were streaming into something altogether different, a kind of dreamscape, where every reference point had been replaced with a not-quite-identical twin. The sky was a blanket, the water was ink, and there, in the bow of the boat, a woman I once knew was speaking a language I did not. Not English, not even Yup'ik. I could feel the blue dark slither up my skin.
Gurley barely managed to break the spell when he finally called for us to stop. I could hardly see Lily now, but it seemed as though she nodded her head without looking back at him. A few seconds went by, and then all of a sudden, I could see her face floating in the gloom. Though it sounded as though
