Part 31 (1/2)

”How can you be here, Mrs. Tiebold? We're beyond the border.”

”The Place has gone,” Grace Tiebold said. ”It just went.”

4.

AURA DIDN'T RELAX UNTIL THEY HAD CROSSED THE RAIL BRIDGE OVER THE RIFLEMAN AND CLIMBED THE slope to the tunnel mouth. It wasn't a long tunnel. When she looked through it, the far opening appeared the size of one of her own fists. Still, she didn't like to venture into it. She turned to the man, who was limping behind her. He stopped and stood at some distance from her.

She called out to him. ”I don't think either of us is in a fit state to have to run.” She wanted to complain that this did concern him too, and why should she have to be the leader? She gestured at him to join her.

He came up, reluctantly, and peered into the tunnel.

Laura saw that he was as pale as ever, and slick with sweat. His s.h.i.+rt was open, and she could have counted all his ribs.

”We can go over the headland,” she said. ”It takes longer, but we can just creep along.”

”This is your stamping ground,” he said. ”Lead on.”

”I'll need a leg up,” she said, and went to the side of the b.u.t.tressed tunnel mouth to show him where they'd have to climb.

It was a struggle, but eventually they both managed the steep part and got into the scrub. From the top of the headland, Laura pointed out the beach where there was a fresh stream. ”No more than two hours,” she promised. ”We'll rest there.”

The man looked back at the Awa Inlet. His slack, exhausted face registered surprise.

”What?” Laura said.

”The causeway,” he said. ”It's not there.” He was terribly puzzled. He rubbed his eyes and squinted. ”I'm shortsighted, but even I couldn't miss a strip of black across the Inlet. That is the Awa Inlet?”

”Yes.”

”I don't understand. I helped build that b.l.o.o.d.y thing.”

Laura put out a hand and touched his forearm. He flinched and s.n.a.t.c.hed it away. She said, ”Tell me your story.”

He glared at her. ”And I don't understand why you're not running away from me.”

”Tell me your story,” Laura said again. She kept her gaze level and calm. She stared into his eyes-eyes the color of oil and hot with hatred and suspicion and hurt. She said, ”We're going to have to help each other all the way down the slope. So, as we go, you can tell me your story.”

He put a finger in the outer corner of one of his eyes and pressed the eye into a slit. Laura had seen one of her gla.s.ses-wearing school friends do that when she'd put her own pair down somewhere and was looking around for them. ”How old are you?” he asked, trying to get a good look at her.

”Five months ago I turned sixteen.”

”You're just a kid.”

”A kid?” She was unfamiliar with the usage.

”A kid.”

”I suppose you think I just flaked out in the forest?” said the man. ”I guess I must have. I was trying to do something. Something incredible. Of course it didn't work. It wasn't ever going to work. I must have been crazy. I had strange ideas in my head that I guess I resorted to in a time of need. I should be dead. I should have keeled over dead and deluded. Gone off in a happy fantasy.”

Laura interrupted him. ”No. I wish you'd start at the beginning.”

”I was starting at the point where I'm dead and discover there's no heaven.” He sounded as though he hated his story-and himself.

”Please,” Laura said. She held the branch of a bush so that it wouldn't flick back into his face. When he took it, she saw his tattered nails and b.l.o.o.d.y nail beds. He must have dug his grave using only his hands.

”All right,” he said, and began again. ”You can see by my trousers what I am.”

”No,” said Laura.

”Do you mean no, you can't see that I'm a convict, or no, don't start there? Maybe you want me to start with my birth?” He was sarcastic.

”Yes. Start there.”

”Well-how is your history, girl?” he asked. Then, without waiting for an answer, he just began.

”My mother was a dreamhunter, but the Place disappeared before I was born. I didn't have a father. I lived with Mother and Grandfather, who wasn't ever a well man. He taught me to play the violin. We lived on a small trust fund my mother had. She'd had a famous uncle. Her uncle made films. But when I was still an infant, he went to the Ross Sea with one of those expeditions, and he died there. His daughter, my mother's cousin-they were very close, they wrote each other letters every week for years. This cousin had married a man no one in the family much liked, and she went with him to live in another country. It was a kind of exile, I think. After the Ross Sea, my mother's aunt joined her daughter. I can just remember her-the widow-she used to bring me expensive chocolates whenever she visited.

”Grandfather pa.s.sed away when I was eight. After that we lived quietly. I went to a little country school. My mother died in the Influenza when I was ten. When she was dying, she burned all her cousin's letters. I was left to suppose that she hadn't wanted me to know them-her cousin, and her cousin's husband.

”After she died I went to live with her father's sister, who sent me to school and gave me more music lessons. Even after its lonely beginning, my life should have been not too bad, but I got into trouble because people did, in the years when things were at their worst, with the bread lines and men walking the roads looking for work. You see, even with all those men out of work, and willing to work for the price of food, the b.l.o.o.d.y government still had its Prosperity Measures-the penal code.”

He broke off. ”I don't expect you to agree with me about this. You're a well-dressed girl with rounded vowels.”

”I'm glad I've got something rounded,” Laura said.

They had stopped in a patch of shade. Flies had found them-or him, for he was rank with filth. They were too tired to go on right away.

He said, ”How do you like my story so far?”

”I hate it.”

”Not enough romance?” he said, acid.

Laura burst out laughing. He sounded so like Sandy. Her laugh was affectionate, and he was rather thrown by it. ”Oh-just go on,” she said, wiping her eyes.

”If you stepped over the line, back then,” he said, ”you'd end up contributing to the economy in some involuntary way-believe me. I got into trouble during the worst years of the Depression, the very worst. My violin was my means of making money-but no one was hiring musicians. I p.a.w.ned my violin to buy food. But I couldn't bear not having it. I'd patrol the p.a.w.nshop window looking at it. And one evening, I just broke the gla.s.s and took it.

”I got caught and sent to prison. I had a light sentence, I was with the chicken chokers and the disgruntled men who set fire to their employers' wheat fields. The work they gave men on light sentences wasn't exactly hard labor, and I was young and fit. But the wardens were s.a.d.i.s.ts. One day I witnessed something very cruel. Impossibly cruel. I lost my temper, attacked the guard, and injured him badly. After that I was in for twenty years. I was very young, and at first I didn't understand twenty years. What young person understands twenty years?

”I worked building the causeway, and on the Howe Peninsula digging bird s.h.i.+t for the nitrate trade. I worked in the coal mine at Westport. Over time I lost all hope, except of escape, which isn't much of a hope on an island, even a big island like Southland.

”Then came the riot in the prison, and the fire. I escaped with a couple dozen other men. We took a sloop from the wharves, but none of us were sailors and we foundered off Pillar Point on the west coast of So Long Spit. The search party and their dogs caught up with us on the Spit, and, at some point, I left the others and took to the sea. I was lucky. I was carried by the rising tide back along the sh.o.r.e of Coal Bay to Debt River.

”And this is where my story will become incoherent to you-or very interesting possibly, because you're a bit of a strange girl, aren't you?”