question.
Get too close, feel too much, and you’re sunk. That’s what she’d told Marcus. What she believes.
Caddie forces herself from the hospital room into the hallway and halts before a window that overlooks an inner courtyard where recovering patients sit surrounded by extended families. The floor feels gritty beneath her feet. She leans against a wall. She’s done here.
As she fights sluggishness, an emaciated man moves past, one hand pressed against the wall for support. The patient’s eyes are large above hollow cheeks. Each step is a labor. He’s maybe twenty-five years old, strikingly young for one so strikingly ill.
The flesh is weak.
The first time she’d heard the minister say that, she thought he referred to Grandma Jos, who had been having more and more accidents as her eyesight worsened, who’d cut herself that very morning with a paring knife. And Caddie wondered, how did he know, this minister? How did he know that Grandma Jos was aging fast? Did he, as God’s emissary, have God’s ability to see straight into their home? Was Grandma Jos really right, with her faith that seemed so inept?
Later, much later, when she learned the minister meant something else, something obscure about lust and sin and redemption, she rejected his interpretation as overblown and unrealistic, the explanation of the cloistered. No, she’d been right from the start: “the flesh is weak” was a maxim—or, better, a protest cry—about the inescapable vulnerability of the human body. Everyone has to die—in an armchair, on the pavement, in a bed. Caddie can’t prevent it.
She turns to leave and almost runs into two orderlies rushing past, pushing empty beds. “Fucking son-of-dog Zionist settlers,” one curses loudly to the other.
“Any dead?” Caddie calls after them.
The orderly glances at her over his shoulder. “Yeah. There’s dead.”
“How many?” she asks, but he’s already moving out of earshot. To her right, there is a quick movement, and she turns to see the man with the silk tie lean forward from a chair against the wall as though he, too, is waiting for the answer. His hands rest on his lap, cupping a cell phone. His dark curlscontrast with his angled cheeks and chin. His mouth is a narrow leaf. A deep dimple cleaves his chin. His eyes sweep down the hallway, following the orderlies, then anchor on her. His stare is intense, yet vacant. Caddie has seen this expression before. In the woman, smelling of vinegar and sweat, who collapsed on her in front of a bombed building. In the child whose father had been shot that same day. In Sven, that afternoon.
“Something happened to you.” He says it to her, even though she’s thinking it of him. He speaks English with an accent. Russian, she thinks.
“Many things.” She speaks with deliberate indifference as she begins walking away.
“The earth is hungry, it takes as it needs,” he calls after her. “If we knew where we were going to fall, we could spread straw.”
It sounds like something he has said before many times, a personal truism that is unfamiliar to her. His tone, however, is familiar. And he speaks as though he recognizes her.
But no. He’s a stranger, just some stranger. Caddie stiffens her shoulders. “Poetic,” she says. “And ridiculous. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He isn’t angered by her curtness. In fact, he seems amused, maybe slightly intrigued. The way Marcus would be. He’s about to speak again. She doesn’t want that. She turns and strides down the hall, making her escape.
Three
A NOTHER TANGLED NIGHT . Dreams of childhood, and of guns.
She’s a girl again, grasping a Remington by its barrel. Comforted by its solidity, thrilled by its smooth wood beneath her fingers. Then, in a single breath, she’s an adult, aiming the rifle with intent to shoot. Her target is large and blurred. She’s about to fire when it becomes human, with eyes. In the background, she hears the voice of a
Get too close, feel too much, and you’re sunk. That’s what she’d told Marcus. What she believes.
Caddie forces herself from the hospital room into the hallway and halts before a window that overlooks an inner courtyard where recovering patients sit surrounded by extended families. The floor feels gritty beneath her feet. She leans against a wall. She’s done here.
As she fights sluggishness, an emaciated man moves past, one hand pressed against the wall for support. The patient’s eyes are large above hollow cheeks. Each step is a labor. He’s maybe twenty-five years old, strikingly young for one so strikingly ill.
The flesh is weak.
The first time she’d heard the minister say that, she thought he referred to Grandma Jos, who had been having more and more accidents as her eyesight worsened, who’d cut herself that very morning with a paring knife. And Caddie wondered, how did he know, this minister? How did he know that Grandma Jos was aging fast? Did he, as God’s emissary, have God’s ability to see straight into their home? Was Grandma Jos really right, with her faith that seemed so inept?
Later, much later, when she learned the minister meant something else, something obscure about lust and sin and redemption, she rejected his interpretation as overblown and unrealistic, the explanation of the cloistered. No, she’d been right from the start: “the flesh is weak” was a maxim—or, better, a protest cry—about the inescapable vulnerability of the human body. Everyone has to die—in an armchair, on the pavement, in a bed. Caddie can’t prevent it.
She turns to leave and almost runs into two orderlies rushing past, pushing empty beds. “Fucking son-of-dog Zionist settlers,” one curses loudly to the other.
“Any dead?” Caddie calls after them.
The orderly glances at her over his shoulder. “Yeah. There’s dead.”
“How many?” she asks, but he’s already moving out of earshot. To her right, there is a quick movement, and she turns to see the man with the silk tie lean forward from a chair against the wall as though he, too, is waiting for the answer. His hands rest on his lap, cupping a cell phone. His dark curlscontrast with his angled cheeks and chin. His mouth is a narrow leaf. A deep dimple cleaves his chin. His eyes sweep down the hallway, following the orderlies, then anchor on her. His stare is intense, yet vacant. Caddie has seen this expression before. In the woman, smelling of vinegar and sweat, who collapsed on her in front of a bombed building. In the child whose father had been shot that same day. In Sven, that afternoon.
“Something happened to you.” He says it to her, even though she’s thinking it of him. He speaks English with an accent. Russian, she thinks.
“Many things.” She speaks with deliberate indifference as she begins walking away.
“The earth is hungry, it takes as it needs,” he calls after her. “If we knew where we were going to fall, we could spread straw.”
It sounds like something he has said before many times, a personal truism that is unfamiliar to her. His tone, however, is familiar. And he speaks as though he recognizes her.
But no. He’s a stranger, just some stranger. Caddie stiffens her shoulders. “Poetic,” she says. “And ridiculous. You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
He isn’t angered by her curtness. In fact, he seems amused, maybe slightly intrigued. The way Marcus would be. He’s about to speak again. She doesn’t want that. She turns and strides down the hall, making her escape.
Three
A NOTHER TANGLED NIGHT . Dreams of childhood, and of guns.
She’s a girl again, grasping a Remington by its barrel. Comforted by its solidity, thrilled by its smooth wood beneath her fingers. Then, in a single breath, she’s an adult, aiming the rifle with intent to shoot. Her target is large and blurred. She’s about to fire when it becomes human, with eyes. In the background, she hears the voice of a
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