This meadow becomes less real to him than the fields in the dog’s mind, the chuckle of this brook less convincing than the croak of toads in her clear and vivid dreams.
Spates of shivers build into continuous trembling as Curtis more clearly experiences the dog’s profound joy. This isn’t simply the joy of running, of springing agilely from log to mossy rock; this isn’t just the joy of freedom or of being fully alive, but the piercing joy that comes with the awareness of that holy, playful Presence.
Running with her in the dreams, Curtis seeks a glimpse of their constant companion, expecting suddenly to see an awesome countenance looking out from the layered fronds of the ferns or gazing down from the cathedral trees. Then the dog’s ultimate wisdom, arising from her perfect innocence, is shared with Curtis, and he receives the truth that is simultaneously a revelation and a mystery, both a euphoric exaltation and a profound humbling. The boy recognizes the Presence everywhere around him, not confined to one bosk of ferns or one pool of shadows, but resonant in all things. He feels what otherwise he has only known through faith and common sense, feels for one sweet devastating moment what only the innocent can feeclass="underline" the exquisite rightness of creation from shore to shore across the sea of stars, a clear ringing in the heart that chases out all fears and every anger, a sense of belonging, purpose, hope, an awareness of being loved.
Mere joy gives way to rapture, and the boy’s awe grows deeper, an awe lacking any quality of terror, but so filled with wonder and with liberating humility that his trembling swells into shakes that seem to clang his heart against the bell of his ribs. At the moment when rapture becomes peals of bliss, his shaking wakes the dog.
The dream ends and with it the connection to eternity, the joy-inducing nearness of the playful Presence. A sense of loss shudders through Curtis.
In her innocence, waking or sleeping, the dog lives always with the awareness of her Maker’s presence. But when she’s awake, Curtis’s psychic bond with her isn’t as profound as when she sleeps, and now he cannot share her special awareness as he did in her dreams.
The iridescent blues of summer sky shimmer down, becoming golden currents as they descend, greening in meadow grass, sparkling silver in the purling brook — as though the day takes inspiration from one of those 1940s jukeboxes that phases ceaselessly through a custom rainbow, silently waiting for the next nickel to be dropped.
Nature never seemed this vivid before; wherever he looks, the day is electrified, radiant, shocking in its beauty and complexity.
He wipes his face repeatedly, and each time that he lowers his hands, the dog licks his fingers, partly in consolation, partly with affection, but also because she likes the taste of his salty tears.
The boy is left with a memory of transcendence, but not with the feeling of it, which is the core of the experience — yet he doesn’t mourn the loss. Indeed, life would be unlivable if at every moment he felt the full intimacy of his spiritual bond with his Maker.
The dog was born in that state of grace. She is accustomed to it, and she is comfortable with her awareness because her innocence leaves her unfettered by self-consciousness.
For Curtis, as for humankind, such spiritual intensity must be reserved for a life beyond this one, or for many lives beyond, when deep peace has been earned, when innocence has been recaptured.
When he can stand, he stands. When he can move, he leaves behind the shade of the tree.
His cheeks are stiff with dried tears. He wipes his face on his shirt sleeves and takes a deep breath filtered by the cotton cloth, relishing the faint lemony fragrance of the fabric softener used in Mrs. Hammond’s laundry and the patina of scents laid down by hundreds of miles of experience since Colorado.
The apex of the sky lies east of the sun, for noon has come and gone while they have been at rest under the tree.
Refreshed, Old Yeller ambles along the stream bank, sniffing yellow and pink wildflowers that nod their bright heavy heads as if conferring on a matter of importance to flowers everywhere.
A vagrant breeze, seeming to spring first from one quarter of the compass and then from another, lazily wanders the meadow.
Suddenly Curtis finds the scene to be dangerously lulling. This is no ordinary day, after all, but day three of the hunt. And this is no ordinary meadow. Like all fields between birth and death, this is potentially a field of battle.
As before, the threat will approach from the east, trailing the sun. If sanctuary can ever be found, it lies in the west, and they must at once ford the stream and move on.
He whistles the dog to his side. She is no longer his sister-becoming. Call her sister-become.
Chapter 37
Leaving without explanation, F. Bronson closed the office door behind her.
From every side, feline stares fixed Micky with the intensity of security cameras. She felt as if the absent F still watched her magically through the unblinking eyes of these photo familiars.
The issue had become not the danger to Leilani, but Micky’s reliability, her integrity or lack of it.
Now the heat wasn’t just a condition, but a presence, like a clumsy man too eager in his passion, all moist hands and hot breath, pressing and persistent, suffocating in his need.
She would have sworn the sultry air was thick with the scent of fur, a musky redolence. Maybe F had cats at home, real cats, not just posters. Maybe she carried their dander on her clothes, in her hair.
Micky sat with her hands tightly clutching the purse in her lap, and when a minute had passed, she closed her eyes against the stares of the cats. She closed them also against the false yet convincing perception that the office was rapidly growing smaller, that it had become correctional in design, with the sterility and the restrictive proportions known to inspire either rehabilitation or suicide.
Claustrophobia, nausea, and humiliation steeped Micky with more debilitating effect than did the heat, the humidity, and the scent of cats. But what distressed her more than all these things was an anger cooking in her heart, as bitter as any brew concocted in a cauldron full of goat blood, eye of newt, and tongue of bat.
Anger was a reliable defense, but one that allowed no chance of final victory. Anger was a medicine but never a cure, briefly numbing the pain without extracting the thorn that caused the agony.
Now she could afford anger less than ever. If she answered F’s bureaucratic arrogance and insults with the double-barreled blast of sarcasm and ridicule that she had used to cut down formidable targets in the past, her petty satisfaction would come at Leilani’s expense.
F had left the room most likely to instruct the receptionist to call the police to check out Micky’s story of an early release from prison. After all, she might be a dangerous fugitive who had come here, dressed in a coral-pink suit and pleated white shell and white high-heeled shoes, to steal the office coffee fund or to abscond with an entire carton of that electrifyingly well-written pamphlet about the link between secondhand cigarette smoke and the alarming rise in the number of child werewolves.
Trying to dampen her anger, Micky reminded herself that her choices — and hers alone — had landed her in prison and had led to the humiliation that now both humbled and galled her. F. Bronson hadn’t hooked her up with the deadbeat document forger who had taken her down with him. Nor was F responsible for Micky’s bull-headed refusal to turn state’s evidence on that useless man in return for probation instead of hard time. She alone had made the decision not to rat out the bastard and to trust that the jury would see in her the misguided but innocent woman that she really was.
The door opened, and F entered the office.