Midnight by Anna Dove (books for new readers .TXT) 📕

Walking to the brook, he cupped his hands under its surface and splashed water onto his face. The coolness soothed him. Sitting for a moment with the water dripping off his face, he watched as the stones below current reflected the moonlight. A memory flashed through his mind--himself as a child, picking up stones from the bottom of a lake that had that perfect round, flat shape for skipping. He would pull back his arm, and send the stones flying across the shining surface, in perfect arcs, as if they were alive, until the stones lost momentum and plunked down one final time. It struck him that his life was the same as that of a stone being skipped--hurtling through time, up, down, up, down, until at last it sinks. He wished he had never been picked up from the bottom of the lake, never been flung out into the air at all.

He drank long from the brook, and relieved himself, and then went to the bunker and laid down. He could not sleep. His eyes roved from branch to branch lining the makeshift roof above him. The babbling of the brook went on and on, never ceasing.

His hands sought the mossy earth and he grasped the softness in his hands. Since he was alive, he would rather not die, he decided. He liked the spongy moss and the clean, gurgling brook. He breathed deeply and the cool night air filled his lungs. He prayed to no one in particular, voicing his concern that he might not live through the next two days, and that made him feel a little better, but not much.

The air became a little warmer presently, and some birds began to sing. Jack realized that it would soon be morning. He drank the bottle of water, got up and refilled it, and then laid the new bottle by his moss pillow. He noticed a headache.

By noon, he was not himself, as the chemicals in his body ravaged his internal systems.

The woods surrounding him shaded him from the sun as he writhed suffering. They spread their leaves peacefully over him, as if they were trying to help. The ground was soft and kind beneath him, supporting his shaking frame. Singing hopefully in the treetops, the cardinals flashed to and fro agitatedly, wishing that they had human hands to help this poor soul. Sympathy was in the grain of the tree bark, dripping from the dew in the grass, ripe in the berries that fell from the bushes. The earth absorbed his cries, did not tremble as he tore in agony at it and pounded his head against it in rhythmic succession.

As dusk fell, Jack had fallen deathly quiet, having crawled back into his shelter. His head lay motionless on the pillow, and the breeze wafted over him, sifting some of the leaves on his little roof into the air, where they fluttered quietly to the ground.

16.  The Search

“Everyone who got where he is has had to begin where he was.”

―

Robert Louis Stevenson

A few days after having set sail, and yearning for dry land, our travelers docked at the marina by the lighthouse in Havre de Grace, Maryland. Haley felt an instantaneous rush of relief as she saw the familiar buildings beyond a row of trees. They climbed from the boat onto the dock, on which Haley had spent much time as a younger person, writing or reading or watching the sailboats pass.

The cool April night air nipped at their noses, and they pressed on, pushing forward their feet one after another in a weary manner. They were tired, they were hungry, they were chilled.

Haley glanced at Junetta, fearing that the older woman might be lagging, but the grandmother’s leather boots kept pace in the grass, slow but steady. She marveled at the endurance and tenacity with which Junetta carried on; the woman seemed to have inner wells of stamina in reserve, kept away until the moment required their usage.

Elizabeth paused for a moment and took a package of crackers from the backpack, and passed it around. They all drank from the water bottle and then wordlessly continued on.

Havre de Grace is sunk in a valley, bordered by hills that lead up to the town of Aberdeen. Haley’s childhood home was halfway up this hill, in a little agricultural community with evenly spaced modest homes on two or three-acre plots. There were gardens and small pastures for animals.

For the first time, the attack suddenly became very personal to Haley. One can desensitize oneself to horrible events when one is not personally involved with or related to the people suffering. Haley had, in an attempt to preserve emotional and mental stability, disengaged with the victims of the attack, avoiding eye contact with anyone on the street, pushing from her mind the images of falling planes, screaming children, smashed-up cars, the universal expressions of terror and helplessness that had been sketched on the faces of everyone that day. She had barricaded herself away from all of it, focusing on the pressing matter of survival. Yet now, passing the darkened homes of neighbors she knew, of friends who she had grown up with, an overwhelming sense of anger mixed with some real fear overcame her and tears welled into her eyes.

Two hours after docking in the Harbor, they finally found themselves standing in front of the house in which Haley grew up. It was a modest rancher, very unique, with stone portions around the front door and red barnlike slatted wooden exterior walls. A flower garden with a few blooms and many weeds grew to their left; Haley remembered planting tulip bulbs with her mother Judith the previous fall. They had put them in just before the frost. She remembered pulling weeds, watering plants, watching as little buds grew, hunting for monarch caterpillars amongst the milkweed.

Haley looked up