Malorie(57)

“Welcome,” Henry says.

Tom sits on the bench. Between them is a small table. And on that table is a notebook.

“Where’s your friend Nathan?” Tom asks.

“Nate? He got off.”

“Got off…the train?”

Henry smiles. “We can do that any time we want. Even you.”

Tom looks to the notebook just as Henry points at it.

“It’s just my thoughts, really,” Henry says. He acts bashful, but Tom can see the man is proud of what he has written down. “Who am I to think anybody else would give a hoot about what I have to say…Yet, after seventeen years of observations, one begins to find their own important. Especially in a world where one is told not to look.”

Observations.

Tom likes the word. He thinks of himself between cars, looking at the world through glasses he fashioned himself out of material from the office at Camp Yadin.

“I’d like to read it,” Tom says.

Truth be told, he was hoping for something a little more interesting than a notebook. Olympia would probably like this more than he would. But the pages left by the census man have done something to change Tom’s tune about the written word. And the power therein.

“Really?” Henry says. Again, a big kid. A genuine smile. Wide eyes. And those big hands that now reach for the book and slide it Tom’s way. “Feel free.”

Tom didn’t necessarily expect the man wanted him to read it right now, but where else does he have to be? Mom doesn’t know he’s in here, and that’s good enough for now. If Henry wants Tom to know his thoughts on the creatures, on the world, why not? He can tell Henry doesn’t think like Malorie does. Not at all. For starters, he’s not wearing a fold and hasn’t asked Tom about one yet. Then there’s the lack of anxiety, ever present in Malorie. That stiff sense of rules.

Tom flips the notebook open. As he does, he hears Malorie standbys.

Even a drawing might drive you insane.

Are there photos in this book? Should Tom wear his glasses?

“Don’t worry,” Henry says, as if he’s completely read Tom’s mind. “No pictures in there. Only words.”

Still, Malorie would be worried.

Even a description might do it, Tom.

He tries to shake off thoughts of Malorie as Henry reads his mind again.

“A mother like the one you described upon entering my room sounds like one who is perhaps not made for the new world. Please, I don’t mean to offend when I speak this way, but I’ve always talked openly and honestly and I’m not going to change that now. It sounds to me your mother would be better off as a hermit.”

Tom thinks Henry’s exactly right. On the first page of the open notebook he reads:

THOUGHTS ON HOW THIS ALL BEGAN: HYSTERIA IN DROVES



Tom can’t tell if the words make him uneasy or if he’s just so excited to be here, talking to a stranger about the creatures, that his stomach is turning.

He reads on. But what he reads must be impossible. Henry writes as if he’s seen one, a creature, before.

Tom looks to him. To the big kid who is no longer smiling but whose face seems to be all eyes beneath the shadow of the upper bunk.

“No doubt some of the observations therein will be difficult to believe, given the upbringing you’ve had,” Henry says. “But the more you read, and the more you experience the concept that they are, in fact, observable, the less unfathomable they become. And isn’t that just it? Doesn’t your mother tell you that you can’t look at them because you can’t understand them, that your mind is too small to do it?”

“Yes.”

“Well, Tom,” Henry says. He leans forward, his features emerging from those shadows. “I’m allowed. Do you know what that words means, given this context?”

Allowed. Tom thinks of the woman Athena Hantz in Indian River. She claimed to simply accept the creatures. Even to live with one. Has Henry done the same?

“Yes.”

Henry nods.

“And my permission doesn’t stem from some biological lottery.” He points a finger to his right temple. “It’s born up in here.”

Tom, electrified, understands.

“So,” Tom says, “then…you’ve seen one?”

Henry smiles. But his eyes do not.

“Many.”

For the first time in his life, Tom can’t believe his ears.

“What…” he starts, then he’s out with it. “What are they like?”

Henry holds Tom’s gaze for what feels like a long time. Tom expects the man to break out with enthusiasm, to stand up, to gesticulate as he describes them. Instead, it feels like something frosty occurs within Henry’s head, and his eyes go cold with it.

“Why don’t you try your glasses?” Henry says.

Tom laughs. Nervously. Here he’s in this stranger’s room, a man who repudiates every fiber of Malorie’s being, a man who breaks another rule with every single thing he does and says, a man who somehow intuited the glasses were more than old-world eyewear.

“You wore them between cars,” Henry says. “I saw you. As you looked at the world your way. And did you see anything out there to drive you mad? Are you mad, Tom?”

“I’m not. No.”