Adam became aware of lying on the floor, of aching pains in his limbs where they’d struck his chair and the table. He couldn’t see—at least, nothing he could make sense of—but his mind was filled with waves of light of different colors, dominated by a washed-out red background with punctuating lines and shapes of fierce indigo.
“Sweet Jesus.” That was Uncle Teddy.
Then Adam was being lifted, hands at his shoulders and calves. The motion was awkward and swaying. His boots and then a shin banged against something before the blood rushed to his lowered head. Going down porch steps. The quality of the light in his mind changed once he was outside. He tried to say something, but he had no words, no way to speak them. He just wanted to tell them, It’s okay. You can leave me here. I’m done.
Air brushed his areas of exposed skin—face, neck, hands and ankles, one side of his stomach. It’s cold, he thought, but still could not say. His body could, though, and although the racking convulsions had stopped, he began to shake.
“Shit!” That was Harlan. “Put him by that tree.”
Adam felt the ground beneath him, cool and slightly damp, and he could smell the mulchy odor of rich soil and rotting leaves. Yes. Here. Just leave me here.
But there were hands under his shoulders again, tugging him until he could feel the incipient swell of a neighboring tree trunk through the ground.
“Adam,” Harlan said, and Adam felt his gloved hand against his cheek. “This isn’t going to be pleasant, but just remember. You can trust me.”
Then Harlan was next to him, on the ground. He knew that—he didn’t know how he knew—until somehow Adam could see them all from above: Adam’s body, shielded by Harlan (thank God—the sight of his jean-clad, shivering legs was disturbing enough), and Teddy standing on Adam’s other side, with a wispy, endearing bald spot at the crown of his head. Harlan removed his gloves and grasped Adam’s bare hand with his own, volatile one.
The old man lay on the ground, dead. He had to be dead—there was so much blood and his mouth hung open. A rifle lay on the ground and Harlan kneeled next to Lawrence, face angry.
Adam jerked away. He dug his heels into the earth and kicked, but Harlan grabbed his wrist and pushed his chest back down to the ground. “Shh, relax.”
An incredible pain shattered Adam’s skull, and he had no choice but to relax, to lie still and hope he died. Harlan kept one hand on his wrist and placed the other palm on the ground. And then, something happened. The pain eased, and Adam watched it and the flashing lights—the ones he’d seen in his mind—travel through Harlan’s hands and through Harlan himself, finally draining into the earth. Harlan’s words in the hospital about Adam healing Rachel came back to him: Like using your blood to put out a fire when there’s a bucket of water handy.
“Exactly,” Harlan said, as if he had spoken out loud. “Now let somebody else do the bleeding for once.”
Teddy appeared—Adam hadn’t realized he’d left—with a navy wool blanket and a piece of cardboard. He tossed the cardboard on the ground next to Adam and spread the blanket over him. Adam smelled a slight odor of mustiness and cedar even though the blanket only reached his chest. Teddy made his way awkwardly to the ground, tugging the cardboard beneath his rear end. Then he leaned against the tree, grunting as he settled into place. He said, “It’s going to be a long night.”
Night? He was right; it was dark already. When had it gotten dark? The blanket began to feel less like a blanket and more like a restraint. Adam squirmed beneath it, but he lacked the strength to get as far as his elbows. He couldn’t even lift his head. His eyes fell shut.
Adam felt the back of a weathered hand brush his forehead and sighed.
“He’s okay,” Teddy said. “Considering. How’d he get to be grown without knowing about all this?”
“Huh,” Harlan grunted. “You really have to ask?”
Adam was warm—warmer on one side than the other—and content to just be and breathe. And listen.
“Iris,” Teddy said, answering his own question. “She never wanted to believe, and honestly, only someone who disbelieved as much as she did could have lived with Lawrence as long as she did.”
“Yeah,” Harlan said.
There was a whumping sound (new log on the fire), followed by renewed popping and crackling. Without the men’s voices as a tether, Adam began to drift away. Until, “Teddy, what do you think his chances are?”
“Good,” Teddy said, a little too quickly. “I think they’re good. I’ll regret how Virgil turned out until the day I die, but the fact is, he never had a chance. His boy does.”
And Adam was gone.
“Charlotte?”
The boy wailed and wriggled in his arms, stretching out a chubby hand with its now misshapen thumb, desperate to reach his mother. Virgil touched the flesh of her bloody arm with a firm finger, and it was like poking a particularly bony cut of meat—yielding, but not responsive. “I know you’re still in there. I love you, and I’ll make this right.”
He slammed his head into the car frame as he backed out of the car with the boy in his arms, but it was just one more sensation in a hurricane of sensations. The boy screamed and tried to climb over his shoulder, to his mother. That’s when Virgil began to cry. No matter what happened, whether he was successful or not, nothing would ever be the same. They could never be the family he’d imagined. He felt a piece of himself dying with every step he took away from his wife. But this was the only way. And it had to work. Why else would the wreck have happened here, so close to a place that was so special to his father, and to his father before him?
It was dark, he didn’t have a flashlight, and he hadn’t been here since he’d married Charlotte, but his feet still knew the way. The ground was mostly level and perpetually blanketed in leaves, but they were the softer, quieter leaves of summer, the ones from previous seasons well on their way to returning to the earth. In the fall, there was a crisp edge to the top layer of leaves underfoot that had only just released their hold on life. Sounds traveled differently then, too, and even more so in the winter. The summer canopy absorbed sounds that traveled unimpeded past the leafless trees and snow-covered ground of winter. He told himself that’s why he couldn’t hear anything from the wreck, from Charlotte or from anyone come to rescue her from outside.
The boy’s cries had also diminished to a vague mewling. As they neared their destination, he looked less for his mother and clung instead to his father, burying his face against Virgil’s bloody neck. Finally, there was a soft glow ahead, as the barest hint of light reached them from above. Death brings clarity, his own father had said. Which was why Lawrence Rutledge came to this place of death, of barren trees and hostile soil, to pray. And to offer sacrifices…
Adam gasped. The organic strobe of the campfire and the evergreen boughs overhead helped push the panic away. The other world had lost its hold. Adam didn’t know whether it was because he’d pulled himself free, if that world had lost interest in him, or if someone else had pushed it away. But right now, it didn’t matter. He shivered, and the motion drained his remaining strength. His eyes drifted shut again as Harlan draped another blanket over him.
“It’s okay, son,” Harlan whispered in his ear, placing his hand on Adam’s forehead as he had in the hospital. “Don’t worry. We’re right here.”