The Water Keeper(3)

Life had been different with him in it.

Over the course of his career, Fingers had been in multiple places where making noise could get him killed, which is why he learned to communicate with numbers corresponding to the Psalms—earning him the nickname “Fingers.” The trick meant whoever he was talking with either had to know the Psalms as well as he did or have access to a Bible.

As Fingers’ life drained out into the ocean, he pulled me toward him and forced out, “Tell me . . . what you know . . . about sheep.”

We had started this way. We would end this way. I tried to smile. “They tend to wander.”

He waited. All of these were lessons he’d taught me. Each a year or more in the learning.

“They get lost often.”

“Why?”

“Because they can.”

“Why?

“Because the grass is always greener . . .”

“And that’s called?”

“Murphy’s law.”

“Good.”

“They’re easy prey. The lion is never far.”

A nod.

“They seldom find their way home.”

He prompted me. “So they need . . .”

“A shepherd.”

“What kind?”

“The kind who will leave the warmth of the fire and the safety of the flock to risk the cold, the rain, and sleepless nights to . . .” I trailed off.

“To what?”

“Find the one.”

“Why?”

I was crying now. “Because . . . the needs of the one . . .” The words left me.

He closed his eyes and laid his hand flat across my chest. Even now, he was taking me to school—showing me the reason he lay dying in my arms. He’d gone after the one and turned her into seven.

He pulled himself toward me. One last moment of strength. “Need to give you—” He reached inside his shirt and pulled out a blood-soaked letter. The handwriting was hers.

He placed it flat against my chest. “Forgive her.”

I stood incredulous. “Forgive her?”

“She loved you.”

Blood spilled from the corner of his mouth. The flow was deep red. He shook me. “To the end—”

I held the letter and forgot how to breathe.

He spoke through the gurgle. “We’re all just broken children—”

I stared at the paper. The weight of hopelessness. Tears spilled out of my eyes.

He reached up with his one working hand and thumbed them away. He was crying too. We’d searched for so long. Gotten so close. To have failed at the end was . . .

He tried to smile and then to speak, but his words were failing. Instead, he wrapped his fingers around the chain hanging around my neck. The weight of his arm broke the chain, and it spilled over his fingers; the cross he’d brought me from Rome swayed with the movement. “She’s home now. No regret. No pain. No sorrow.”

A moment passed. He closed his eyes, floated, and whispered, “One more thing . . .”

My hands were warm and slippery from the water and the blood. I could no longer feel his pulse. I knew what he wanted, and I knew it, too, would hurt. Not able to let him go, I just pulled him to my chest and held him while the life drained out and the darkness seeped in.

He whispered in my ear, “Spread my ashes where we started . . . at the end of the world.”

I held back a sob while my tears puddled. I stared six hundred miles south in my mind’s eye. “I can’t—”

He crossed his arms, the chain still dangling. He was smiling just slightly. I looked out across the water, but my heart had blurred my eyes and I couldn’t see a thing. I nodded for the last time. He let go and his body lay limp in my arms. His words were gone. He’d spoken his last. Only his breath remained.

I leaned in, managed a broken, “I’ll miss you.” He blinked. It was all he had left. I rallied what little strength of my own remained. “You ready?”

His eyes rolled back, then he drew a last surge of energy from the depths and focused on me. While he may have been ready, I was not. The words of his life were draining off the page, black to white. From somewhere, he mustered a final word. With his eyes closed, he tapped me in the chest, murmuring, “Don’t carry her. That one’ll kill you—”

With one hand beneath his neck and one hand covering the hole in his chest, I spoke out across the water. Echoing what he’d taught me. “In the name of the Father . . . the Son . . . and the . . .” He blinked, cutting a tear loose, and I pushed him beneath the surface.

I held him there for only a second, but it was long enough for his body to go limp as the last of the air bubbles escaped the corner of his mouth and the water turned red.

Though bigger than me, his body felt light as I lifted him. As if his soul was already gone. When he surfaced, his eyes were open but he wasn’t looking at me. At least not in this world. And the voice I’d heard ten thousand times, I could hear no more. I dragged him to shore and laid him on the sand, where the waves washed over his ankles. That’s when I noticed his hands. His crossed arms lay flat across his chest, and yet his fingers were speaking loudly enough for heaven to hear: “2–2.”

“It is finished.”

I pulled him to me and cried like a baby.