He drinks when he’s worried. When a thought begins to wear at him like a river against soft wood.
“You think Colette’s baby won’t survive?” he asks, his voice cold, grating against my ears.
“She needs a doctor,” I echo what I said at the gathering. “Her heartbeat is weak. I don’t think she’ll last much longer.”
He moves closer to me, then sinks onto the couch—I can hear the depression of the cushions—and he scrapes his hands through his hair, pulling tightly. “We should prepare a ceremony,” he says. “I’ll have one of the men construct a coffin, and we should mark a space in the cemetery. Let it be done quickly, so the community can mourn and then move on.”
A wall of air builds inside my throat. “She’s not even gone yet.”
“You know there’s nothing we can do.”
“We could try.”
He makes a sound through his exhale—a tired irritation. A weariness I don’t fully understand.
“We can’t just do nothing,” I press, easing onto the couch beside him.
He shifts, leaning forward, his breath bitter and hot. “This isn’t nothing,” he says, words like sharpened blades. “This is surviving. This is keeping our community alive.”
“Everyone except Colette’s baby.”
“Yes.” He’s stopped pretending now. He’s given up trying to smooth over the ugliness of his words. “I will sacrifice the one for the many. I do this for you. For all of them.” A hand waves in front of him, I can hear the shush of the air. “You know this better than anyone.”
I press my palms against my knees, wanting to push away the hurt welling up behind my eyes. I need something I don’t know how to ask for. I need him to reach out and touch me, soothe the scraping thoughts racking at my skin, but he might as well be a hundred yards away from me. I can hear the distance in his voice.
“It’s still out there,” he continues. “Beyond our valley. You can hear the trees separating, can’t you? The wood peeling away. It will kill anyone who tries to leave.”
I know he can see the answer in my face—I have heard the trees. In the deepest hours of night, they crack themselves apart, trying to rid themselves of disease. The sound echoes over the valley and it keeps me up, unable to sleep.
“It isn’t safe, Bee.” He reaches out now, for the first time, and touches my hand gently, like he’s afraid I might pull away. I close my eyes and absorb the warmth from his touch. We sit like this for a while, in the quiet of our own thoughts, until he says, “I feel like I’m losing control.” There it is, the idea always nagging at him: the one that never leaves him alone, a ticking inside his rib cage like a beetle looking for a way out. He fears the community doesn’t trust him like they trusted Cooper. He fears his role as our leader won’t last, that in time they will see that he was never as good as Cooper—the man who they followed into these mountains. The man they trusted with their lives.
I worry his paranoia will be the thing to finally tear him wide open for all to see—a festering wound he’s been carrying all this time.
He releases my hand and pushes up from the couch, and my heart breaks a little.
“You’re not losing control,” I offer. I feel the urge to stand as well, to press my lips to his, to comfort him in that way. But I resist. Not yet. “They just want to believe the child could be saved somehow. They’re afraid.”
He paces to the fireplace and back, footsteps heavy against the floor. “They should be afraid.” I imagine him shaking his head, his gaze sinking to the floor, his mouth turned down. I imagine a darkness in his eyes and an uncertainty leveled across his brow. “They should fear what’s out there, they should know fucking death is waiting for us in those trees, waiting for someone stupid enough to cross the perimeter and bring back an illness that would destroy us all. And still, they talk of leaving, of going in search of a doctor, as if they’ve forgotten.” He stops pacing and I can hear his heart banging irregularly against his ribs. He’s looking at me. “Still,” he says, the breath tight against his teeth, “they want to defy our rules.”
“It’s not defiance,” I answer. “It’s hope. Because next time it might be one of them who needs a doctor. And they would want us to risk everything to save them.”
“It’s just a child,” he says coolly. “Just one life.”