The Night Parade(71)

“And you think you’re just going to convince her to hop in an RV with you and the girls and drive up to some mountain somewhere?”

“I can.” The words issued out of Burt’s mouth in a breathy whisper. David could tell he had already convinced himself of this point, too. “I can do it. And you should talk to your wife, too, David. You need a plan. You can’t just sit here and hope that some miracle will happen and things will get better.”

David turned again and glanced at the nearest TV screen. A mother with blood on her face was clutching a small child to her breast. The child’s arms and legs flailed, its eyes bugging out like the eyes of a lizard. There was the absence of thought behind those eyes, replaced by nothing but hallucinatory insanity. Just when the image had grown too intense to keep watching, the TV cut to some amateur footage of people jumping off the roofs of buildings. David had to look away.

Later, David cancelled his afternoon classes and went home early. When he drove past the charred skeleton of Deke Carmody’s house, he was surprised to find that the memory of that horrible night at Deke’s house now seemed no more important than all the other terrible snapshots that scrolled on a nonstop loop through his head: Sandy Udell, the screaming mothers, suicidal people plummeting from rooftops to their deaths, the frequent absences of his students as well as the other deaths on campus, the ice cream man who lost his mind right there in the cul-de-sac that December night that now seemed a million years ago. There was also Kathy’s increasing depression, something she freely acknowledged and accepted with inevitable finality. She had become withdrawn, and even her interactions with Ellie appeared rote and unemotional. Her blood test had come back negative for the virus, as had the tests both David and Ellie had most recently taken—the government had mandated quarterly blood tests for all citizens by this point, done alphabetically and by county—yet Kathy shambled through her days and evenings like someone sentenced to death.

When he pulled the car into the driveway, he saw Ellie on the front lawn beside the hedgerow that ran the length of the house. At the sound of his approach, she turned and watched him shut down the car. She waved and he waved back as he got out.

“Hi, Little Spoon,” he said, walking across the lawn toward her. Brown crickets springboarded into the air and rebounded off his shins while gnats clotted around his face. He swatted the gnats away. “Whatcha doing?”

“Delicate work,” Ellie said. She was holding a shoe box in one hand while holding back one of the branches of the hedgerow with the other. “I’m trying to be careful, but I can’t get back there to reach them.”

“Reach what?”

“The eggs.”

For a moment he had no idea what she was talking about. But then he recalled the bird nest below her bedroom window, and the three spotted eggs nestled within it.

“You sure that’s a good idea?” he said.

“The mother never came back,” Ellie advised, “and I’m not just going to let them be abandoned.”

David eyed the shoe box before reaching out and shoving the branches of the hedgerow out of the way. “So, what’s the plan? You’re going to be their surrogate?”

“Huh?”

“Their adoptive mother.”

“Oh. Yes. Of course. Why not?”

“Because they’re eggs,” he said. Between two prickly boughs he spied the nest—a brownish-gray meshwork of twigs and dead leaves and blades of grass and bits of paper and cellophane all meticulously knitted together. Inside, the eggs looked profoundly delicate, and it amazed David that any birds in the history of the world had ever survived.

“They’re just eggs now,” Ellie corrected.

“And they’ve been eggs for quite some time,” David said. He gathered the nest out of the tangle of branches and handed it over to Ellie. “They aren’t going to hatch, baby.”

“You don’t know that,” she said.

“I’m pretty sure. It’s been so long, they would’ve hatched by now.”

“You don’t know that,” she insisted, holding out the shoe box with its lid open. “Besides, it isn’t right that they should be abandoned like that. Someone needs to take care of them.”

“All right,” he acquiesced, setting the nest into the box, then brushing his hands along the legs of his trousers. “So I guess now you’re the mama bird.”

“What word did you say before?” she asked, peering down at the nest in the box. She cradled it against her breast.

“Surrogate,” he said.

“Surrogate,” she repeated. Then she frowned. “That doesn’t sound nice at all,” she added.





35


He woke her just before dawn, and in silence they cleaned themselves up, pulled on fresh clothes, and made their way out to the car without muttering a single word to each other. It wasn’t until they were heading west on I-70 with the sun creeping up along the rear windshield that Ellie asked where they were going.

“I spoke to Uncle Tim last night,” he explained. “We’re supposed to meet him at a campground in Colorado. We’ve still got a lot of driving to do.”

“Why a campground?”

“Uncle Tim’s just being cautious, and I can’t say I disagree with him. Also, I don’t think he wanted me driving the whole way.”