for two days it had been raining; the wind was gusting at thirty knots and increasing. “we have to get the boat out of the water,” lewis said.
they had covered the entire boat with oiled canvas, but water seeped in through cracks and now and then a wave lapped over the side and spilled down into the boat. more and more frequently something heavy rubbed against the boat or crashed into it.
molly pumped and visualized the river behind them. there had been a bank hours back, but since then there had been no place they could land safely.
“an hour,” lewis said, as if answering her thoughts. “shouldn’t take more than an hour to get to that low bank.”
“we can’t go back!” thomas shouted.
“we can’t stay here!” harvey snapped at him. “don’t be an idiot! we’re going to get rammed!”
“i won’t go back!”
“what do you think, ben?” lewis asked.
they were huddled together in the prow; molly was in the midsection manning the pump doggedly, trying to pretend her aching muscles away. the boat shuddered under a new impact, and ben nodded.
“can’t stay here. not going to be a picnic getting back downriver.”
“let’s get at it,” lewis said, and stood up.
they were all wet and cold, and afraid. they were within sight of the swirling waters of the shenandoah where it joined the potomac, and the eddies that had nearly swamped them on the first leg of their trip now threatened to break the boat apart. they could get no closer to the shenandoah until the flood subsided.
“thomas, relieve molly at the pump. and, thomas, remember, you don’t think of anything but that pump! and you keep it going!”
molly got up, continuing to pump until thomas was in place, ready to take over without interruption. as she started for the rear oar, lewis said, “you take the prow.” they put the oars back in the locks. the rain pounded them, and thomas pumped harder. the water was sloshing about their feet, and when the lines to shore were untied the boat swung sharply into the river. the water inside the boat surged back and forth.
“log! coming fast! eight o’clock!” molly yelled.
they turned the boat, and it shot forward and they were flashing down the river, keeping abreast of the log that was off to their left.
“stump! twelve o’clock! twenty yards!” molly hardly had time to get the words out. they jerked the boat to the left and flew past the stump. the flood had changed everything. the stump had been ashore when they passed it before. the current became swifter, and they fought to get closer in. “tree! one o’clock! twenty yards!” they veered out again and now the log that was pacing them tumbled and came dangerously close. “log! nine o’clock! three yards!”
and on they went in the blinding rain, flying past a newly created shoreline, staying even with the massive log that turned and tumbled alongside them. suddenly molly saw the low spot and cried, “land! two o’clock, twenty yards!” they drove in sharply to shore. the boat dragged on something hidden in the muddy water and the front half swung out toward the river. it rocked violently and water sloshed in over the side. lewis and ben quickly jumped out and, with the brown water swirling about their chests, waded toward shore, dragging the boat in after them. the boat grated over mud and stones, and now the others jumped into the water and dragged the boat higher until it was beached, tilted, but for the moment safe. molly lay in the mud panting until lewis said, “we’ve got to get it higher. the river’s rising fast.”
it rained throughout the night and they had to move the boat a second time; then the rain stopped and the sun shone, and that night there was a frost.
ben cut the rations again. the storm had cost them five more days, and the river was swifter when they returned to it, their progress slower than ever.
thomas was in the worst shape, ben thought. he was withdrawn, sunken in depression from which no one could rouse him. jed was next hardest hit. in time, no doubt, his symptoms would match thomas’s. harvey was irritable; he had turned sullen and suspicious of everyone. he suspected that ben and lewis were stealing his food, and he watched them intently at mealtime. molly was haggard, and she looked haunted; her eyes kept turning toward the south and home, and she seemed to be listening, always listening. lewis was intent on maintaining the boat, but when he stopped working, that same look was on his big face: listening, watching, waiting. ben couldn’t assess the changes in himself. he knew they were there. often he would look up suddenly, certain someone had spoken his name softly, only to find no one nearby, no one paying any attention to him. sometimes he had the feeling that there was a danger he couldn’t see, something hanging over him that made him look to the sky, search the trees. but there was never anything to see. . . .
he wondered suddenly when all sexual activity had stopped. in washington, or immediately after they left. he had decided it wasn’t working for him. it was too hard to pretend the other men were his brothers; finally, it had been too unsatisfactory, too frustrating. somehow it had been better with molly if only because no pretense had been necessary, but even that had failed. two people trying to become one, neither quite knowing what the other needed or wanted. or maybe it was hunger that killed the sexual appetite. he wrote in his notebooks.
molly, watching him, felt as if a thick clear wall separated her from every living thing on earth. nothing could get through the wall, nothing could touch her in any way, and where the feeling had aroused terror, never fully dormant any longer, now it simply bemused her to think of it. every day they got closer to home, and curiously it seemed less from their own efforts than from an irresistible pull. they were powerless not to return home. the pull was steady, dragging them back just as they had dragged the boat up the bank to save it from the flood. their every act was instinctive. and the terror? she didn’t know its source, only that waves of terror coursed through her unexpectedly, and when they did, she felt weak and cold. she could feel her facial muscles tighten during those times, and she was aware of the way her heart leaped, then paused, then raced.
and often when she had been at the oars for a long time, something else happened, and she felt a release. at those times strange visions came to her, strange thoughts that seemed untranslatable into words. she looked about in wonder and the world she saw was unfamiliar, the words she would have used to describe it useless, and only color would do, color and line and light. the terror was stilled, and a gentle peace filled her. gradually the peace would give way to fatigue and hunger and fear, and then she could mock herself and the visions, and even while mocking, yearn for it all to happen again.
sometimes when she was forward, watching for hazards, it was almost as if she were alone with the river that seemed to have a voice, and infinite wisdom. the voice murmured too softly to make out the words, but the rhythms were unmistakable: it was speech. one day she wept because she could not understand what it was saying to her. ben’s hand on her shoulder roused her, and she stared at him blankly.
“did you hear it too?” she asked, keeping her voice as soft as the river’s.
“what?” he sounded too brusque, too harsh, and she pulled away. “what do you mean?”
“nothing. nothing. i’m just tired.”
“molly, i heard nothing! and you heard nothing! we’re pulling in to rest, stretch our legs. you get some tea.”
“all right,” she said, and started around him. but then she paused. “what was it we heard, ben? it isn’t the river, is it?”
“i told you i heard nothing!” he turned away from her and stood stiffly in the prow of the boat to guide the men at the oars in to shore.
when they turned the last curve in the river and came upon the familiar fields, they had been away from their brothers and sisters for forty-nine days. thomas and jed were both drugged into insensibility. the others rowed numbly, starved, dull-eyed, obeying a command stronger than the body’s command to stop. when small boats approached and hands took the lines and towed them to the dock, they continued to stare ahead, not believing yet, still in a recurring dream where this had happened repeatedly.
molly was pulled to her feet and led ashore. she stared at her sisters, who were strangers to her. and this too was a recurring dream, a nightmare. she swayed, and was grateful for the blackness that descended on her.
the sunshine was soft in the room when molly opened her eyes; it was very early morning and the air was cool and fresh. there were flowers everywhere. asters and chrysanthemums, purples, yellows, creamy whites. there were dahlias the size of dinner plates, shocking pink, scarlet. the bed was absolutely still, no water lapping about it, no rocking motions. no odors of sweat and moldy clothing. she felt clean and warm and dry.
“i thought i heard you,” someone said.
molly looked at the other side of the bed. miri, or meg, or . . . she couldn’t tell which one.
“martha has gone for your breakfast,” the girl said.
miriam joined them and sat on the edge of molly’s bed. “how are you now?”
“i’m all right. i’ll get up.”
“no, of course you won’t get up. breakfast first, then a rubdown and a manicure, and anything else we can think of that will make you more comfortable, and then if you don’t fall asleep again, and if you still want to get up, then you may.” miriam laughed gently at her as molly started to rise and sank back down again.
“you’ve been sleeping for two days,” said miri, or meg, or whoever it was. “barry’s been here four times to check on you. he said you need to sleep all you can, and eat all you can.”
there were dim memories of rousing, of drinking broth, of being bathed, but the memories refused to come into sharp focus.
“are the others all right?” she asked.
“they’re all fine,” miriam said soothingly.
“thomas?”
“he’s in the hospital, but he’ll be fine too.”
for many days they babied her; her blistered hands healed and her back stopped aching, and she regained some of the weight she had lost.
but she had changed, she thought, studying herself in the large mirror at the end of the room. of course, she was still thin and gaunt. she looked at miri’s smooth face, and knew the difference lay deeper than that. miri looked empty. when the animation faded, when she was no longer laughing or talking, there was nothing there. her face became a mask that hid nothing.
“we’ll never let you out of sight again!” martha whispered, coming up behind her. the others echoed it vehemently.
“i thought of you every day, almost every minute,” miri said.
“and we all thought of you together each evening after dinner. we just sat here in a circle on the mat and thought of you,” melissa said.
“especially when it got so long,” miri said in a whisper. “we were so afraid. we kept calling you and calling you, silently, but all of us together. calling you home over and over.”
“i heard you,” molly said. her voice sounded almost harsh. she saw miriam shake her head at the sisters, and they fell silent. “we all heard you calling. you brought us home,” molly said, softening her voice with an effort.
they hadn’t asked her anything about the trip, about washington, about her sketchbooks, which they had unpacked and must have looked at. several times she had started to speak of the river, the ruins, and each time she had failed. there was no way she could make them understand. presently she would have to get to work on the sketches, using them as guides and drawing in detail what she had seen, what it had been like from start to finish. but she didn’t want to speak of it. instead they talked of the valley and what had happened in the seven weeks of molly’s absence. nothing, she thought. nothing at all. everything was exactly as it always had been.
the sisters had been excused from work in order to speed molly’s recovery. they chatted and gossiped and caught up on mending and took walks and read together, and as molly’s strength returned, they played together on the mat in the middle of the room. molly took no part in their play. toward the end of the week, when they dragged the mat out and opened it, miriam poured small glasses of amber wine and they toasted molly and drew her to the mat with them. her head was spinning pleasantly and she looked at miriam, who smiled at her.
how beautiful the sisters are, she thought, how silky their hair, and smooth their skin; each body was unmarred, flawless.
“you’ve been away so long,” miriam whispered.
“something’s still down there on the river,” molly said foolishly, wanting to weep.
“bring it home, darling. reach out and bring back all the parts of you.”
and slowly she reached out for the other part of herself, the part that had watched and listened and had brought her peace. that was the part that had built the clear hard wall, she thought distantly. the wall had been built to protect her, and now she was tearing it down again.
she felt she was speeding down the river, flying over the water, now swirling brown and muddy and dangerous, now smooth and deep blue-green and inviting, now white foam as it shattered over rocks . . . she sped down the river and tried to find that other self, to submerge it and become whole again with her sisters . . . over her the trees murmured and beneath her the water whispered back, and she was between them, not touching either, and she knew that when she found that other self she would have to kill it, to destroy it totally, or the whispers would never go away. and she thought of the peace she had found, and the visions she had seen.
not yet! she cried silently, and stopped her race down the river, and was once more in the room with her sisters. not yet, she thought again, quietly. she opened her eyes and smiled at miriam, who was watching her anxiously.
“is it all right now?” miriam asked.
“everything is fine,” molly said, and somewhere she thought she could hear that other voice murmur softly before it faded away. she reached out and put her arms about miriam’s body and drew her down to the mat and stroked her back, her hip, her thigh. “everything is fine,” she whispered again.
later, when the others slept, she stood shivering by the window and looked out at the valley. autumn was very early. each year it came a little earlier than the previous year. but it was warm in the large room; her chill was not caused by the season or the night air. she thought of the mat play and tears stood in her eyes. the sisters hadn’t changed. the valley was unchanged. and yet everything was different. she knew something had died. something else had come alive, and it frightened her and isolated her in a way that distance and the river had not been able to do.
she looked at the dim forms on the beds and wondered if miriam suspected. molly’s body had responded; she had laughed and wept with the others, and if there had been one part of her not involved, one part alive and watchful, it had not interfered.
she could have done it, she thought. she could have destroyed that other part with miriam’s help, and the help of the sisters. she should have, she thought, and shivered again. her thoughts were chaotic; there was something that had come to live within her, something that was vaguely threatening, and yet could give her peace as nothing else could. the beginnings of insanity, she thought wildly. she would become incoherent, scream at nothing, try to do violence to others or to herself. or maybe she was going to die. eternal peace. but what she had felt was not simply the absence of pain and fear, but the peace that comes after a great accomplishment, a fulfillment.
and she knew it was important that she let the visions come, that she find time to be alone in order to allow them to fill her. she thought of the sisters despairingly: they would never permit her to be alone again. together they made a whole; the absence of one of them left the others incomplete. they would call and call her.
