YAAN-10
The hole in Jake’s pattern wasn’t formed by sadness.
Sadness: As with happiness, as well as with beauty, joy, love, freedom, and many other coherencies, there is but one word in our language to describe hundreds, even thousands, of vaguely similar patterns that coil from entities; and while some of these patterns that are called sadness did swim within the frayed and tangled ends of the strands of Jake’s pattern that fringed the hole in it, their force of action upon those strands was quite limited. They hadn’t made the hole, nor did they keep those strands from re-connecting across it.
Yet, these patterns were always there, intertwined with the beautiful strands of his pattern, so that, simplistically, it could be said that he was always sad, or at least that sadness was always with him. I knew this, nobody else did, and nobody else thought of him as sad, excepting possibly Rook, to some extent, so this was a thing between us, a shared thing; but if I were to rely on my shadow eyes, the eyes of what would be considered my physical body, then I would think that he had never been sad, except on that walk to Farmer Green’s from the Corner, where we had left Drud to rest, and then again the day several years later that I left for school. That day, bouncing along the Calico Way in Hector Dallidoe’s buckboard, I was most certainly “sad,” for Mom had sent me away.
The Calico Way is a winding, undulating dirt road (and dusty that time of year, the latter half of summer) through patches of forestland, farmland, and scrubland, and a few small settlements—“a little bit of everything to enjoy,” as Mom had said—but for much of the trip I wasn’t paying much attention to the scenery. I was looking down at the floor of the buckboard and crying.
I was excited about going—going away, seeing a new place, seeing more of the world. I’d seen the patterns of the Dallidoes’ farm and of Farmer Green’s farm, and the Corner, and the pattern of the surrounding forest, and loved watching the constant shifting of these patterns and the interplay between them, but I also sensed they were a tiny tiny portion of a much greater pattern, and I wanted to see more of that pattern, and more smaller patterns within it in all their unique beauty. But at the same time, at another level of consciousness, it seemed like I was being pushed away, and cut away, cast out, rejected. Intellectually, of course, I knew, one, that that was absurd, that Mom was simply giving me the opportunity to see more of the greater pattern of things, and two, that I was welcome back at any time, and would be welcomed back whenever I returned, by Mom as well as by Rook and Jake, and everyone else. I wasn’t truly “going away,” I was just going to school.
Yet Mom hadn’t asked me if I wanted to go, she had told me that I was going, and my heart, whatever the intellect might say to it, wondered what I had done to be evicted. Additionally, the physical act of leaving everything I’d ever known, everybody I’d ever loved, whether or not I was being forced away or was leaving on my own, would and did cause a sentimental sadness, a wrenching of the heart, of its own.
On the day set for my departure, Hector Dallidoe was going up to Clarks Hill to make some purchases, which he planned on bringing back on the bed of his buckboard, and he had agreed to make a short detour to drop me off at the school, and so there I was.
And who was sitting with me in the buckboard? Jake. He had made a show of volunteering to come along to help Hector load his purchases onto the trailer, but I knew that Mom had asked him to accompany me. He’d sauntered up just as we were about to depart (and after Mom and I had already said our good-byes) and said to Hector, “I think I’d better come along to help.” Hector, not taking the hint, had said he thought he could handle it pretty easily himself, so Jake, with his best look of fake-surprise, had said, “I don’t see how that could be.” Hector had just waved him away, but Jake had persevered, “You’ll get swindled. Those city fellows are way smarter than you, which admittedly isn’t saying much, but you’ll need me to protect your interests.” To which Hector had replied, indulgently exasperated, “Exeter, the purchases have already been made, I’m just picking them up.” Not to be stymied in the execution of his charade, Jake had insisted, “But you’re so dumb, Hector, you’ll pick up the wrong stuff, I’m sure of it,” at which point Hector had finally relented and said, “Well, suit yourself.” Jake, then, had said, “Well, I’ve got stuff to do for old Green, but if you’re going to debase yourself pleading like this for me to come along I guess I’ll have to!” and sitting down next to me in the back shaking his head, added, “Some people…”
I knew he was trying to make me feel better, but his silliness actually made me feel worse. By attempting to make me feel better, he was telling my aforementioned dumb heart that it needed to feel better, hence that it wasn’t feeling well right now. And why wasn’t it feeling well right now? Because, my intellect reasoned, something was changing. Something was ending.
At the same time, I didn’t want him to know that he was making me feel worse, because that would make him feel bad, so I hid my emotions from him: I hung my head so that he wouldn’t see me crying. Part of me, too, felt ashamed that I was crying, over this, this little nothing, as my intellect knew it was. Jake wouldn’t cry about such a trifle; and even though intellectually, I knew that he wouldn’t think less of me because I was crying, and even though, additionally, I knew he wouldn’t ridicule me for it, and even though I’d actually wished to be the target of his jibes many times before as he so humorously derided others and never me, my heart was afraid that he would for the first time today, because, after all, nothing today was as it had ever been, and I didn’t want him to, not today. So, I sat there with my hands on my knees and hung my head down, my chin against my chest, and hoped he wouldn’t talk to me.
If he did talk to me, I’d have to look up to reply to him, and right away, my cover would be blown. In other words, my tears-hiding artifice was a poor one, doomed not to work, yet there was little else I could do. And it did work, at least in effect—he never said a word to me until I had stopped crying. The only time he spoke at all, in fact, between The Corner and the outskirts of Clarks Hill, was, as we bumped and swerved through a tiny stronghold of shacks and mills called Burpy almost exactly halfway there, to call up to Hector Dallidoe, “You better let the horses steer, Hector!” Otherwise, he was as silent as the trees we passed under, as silent as the half-grown corn and fields of grain we passed between, as silent as the cattle lounging in rolling fields of patchy grass and hazy sunshine and looking at us mildly as we passed, as we creaked along, dust curling around us, caking slowly but inevitably on our arms and legs that had become sticky with sweat in the old heat of Hobwan. Field after field, he was silent, as I hung my head and looked at the dry straw-strewn wood of the buckboard bottom and listened to the cloppity-clop of Hector’s team.
To collect myself, which I thought I needed to do before getting to the school, I willed myself to focus on something besides my dejection, and started trying to think of some of Rook and Jake’s worst antics—Jake’s funniest jibes, Rook’s most memorable understatements, their unrelenting, elaborate, thumbing of their noses at any person, rule, or institution which sought to exercise control over them, or others. But while various random images fleeted through my memory, my mind wouldn’t, for some time, lock onto anything, instead ever returning to my disconsolation. Finally, though, squeezing inwardly, and at the same time squeezing my eyelids together, I began getting images. It wasn’t of the funny things they’d done, though; it was of just them: Rook raising an eyebrow; Jake smiling to himself; Rook gazing down in wonder at Lake Latalla, as his exotic beautiful pattern of a hundred blues danced its human-alien dance; Jake’s mask of cynical bemusement falling away for a moment as I came around a corner to reveal a profound joy, as his entity pattern glowed with his unique powder brilliance. And more and more, these images of them were interposed with ones of Mom: washing our clothes or our dishes in the faded stone basin in our kitchen; carrying some greens across the yard; tending the firepit in our hut, the light of the fire illuminating her white, unsmiling, freckled, face with uneven light; sitting on our old couch with me, listening to me chatter, smiling every now and then with a quiet but unshakable joy that had been forged by fire, her yellow, gold, and green pattern always moving in slow, sure, careful coils.
By the time I was carried from my self-indulgence by these memories of the outward-looking lives of those I loved most, and I looked outward, myself, we had come to the area of rich estates outside of Clarks Hill. I was wonderstruck by them, because though the houses of these estates were three or four times as large as any house I’d ever seen other than Farmer Green’s, and probably twice as large as his, and their yards vast, and painstakingly and elaborately decorated, their patterns were much less complex than those of the simple homesteads I was used to seeing in the country around the Corner. In those places, strands of the entity patterns of the homesteaders and their families and their friends and many others who lived in the area, were bonded together in all sorts of intricate designs, and tangled, as well, with the patterns of their animals and crops and the raw materials of their houses themselves; but here, though the houses and yards were so big, their patterns were comparatively small, and the number of interacting entity patterns that gave the place its true pattern, was small as well, which didn’t necessarily make the places less beautiful than the simple homesteads I knew so well, just less elaborate.
Jake, seeing my expression, thought I was enamored of them, and, winking, said, “Nah, you don’t want to live there.”
I smiled, and we made small talk the rest of the way, looking at the scenery together in the sticky sunlight, first these opulent estates, then the more rudimentary homes along the straight cobblestone streets of Clarks Hill, and then the school itself. Seen from afar, it looked more like a miniature fortress, or what I imagined a fortress might look like: a massive conglomeration of block and brick encircled by a high wall of pink and orange stone with no entry except a tall, ominous, black gate—which was, however, open.
When we came to a halt in front of the gate with a scrape of hooves and a groan of wood, it was a bit of an intimidating sight. The gate, larger than it looked from a distance, four or five paces wide, the height of three adults, with iron bars as thick as Jake’s arms, gave the place not really a menace, but an official-ness that was almost menacing to me, who had grown up with little official-ness of any sort. And the rock wall, surrounding, protecting, the school from what? Raiders? Narians? only added to this feel of official-ness.
Jake jumped off the buckboard, landing on the dusty cobblestone with a slap, scuffle, and a small billowing of dust about his feet. Then he leaned back in to grab my two bags, which held almost everything I owned: all of my shirts and pants and undergarments, a cloak, a winter coat with scarf and gloves, a few books, and pencils and paper. Rook, I thought, would have grabbed the bags as he jumped, and had them in hand when he landed, and done it so smoothly that I wouldn’t have realized he was grabbing them until he was standing there in the road with one under each arm waiting with eye-smiling patience for me to disembark. I didn’t mention this to Jake though; he, while not as strong as Rook, handled the bags, which were heavy for me, as if he were carrying sacks of loose straw. I told him, instead, because it appeared he might come through the gate with me, that I could handle them. Hector was waiting for him, I said, and we shouldn’t make him wait.
As he surrendered them to me, he said, “You know that Mrs. Camden’s a teacher here, don’t you?”
Our eyes met, and I think for the first time in many years of knowing him, certainly one of the first times, I caught him with a serious, concerned, compassionate look upon his face.
He added, then, in his more usual tone, “In fact, the first time you see her, tell her I trust that she’s as ignorant and unappealing as ever.”
“I trust,” I told him, “that you know I’m not going to say that.”
He smiled. “Of course not. You wouldn’t say something like that. You’re going to say that I said it.” He paused, and then added, “Okay?”
When I didn’t respond, he repeated, “Okay?”
“Okay, okay,” I allowed, sighing, “I’ll do it.”
He looked at me dubiously, but said, “Okay, see you later, then.” He hesitated as if he might say something more—as if he thought he should say something more, or wanted to—then, not finding the proper words, or any words at all, perhaps, he regarded me a moment longer with his sharp blue eyes, gave me a small wave, and turned to get back on the buckboard.
I caught him, though, and pressing the side of my face against his thick-muscled chest, his sweaty smelly shirt, I hugged him, to his discomfort (he put his hand lightly on my back, as if he didn’t know exactly what to do), and I mumbled something about how I’d miss him; and then we parted; I was alone, facing the unknown.
As I lugged my bags through the towering iron gateway of the stone colossus that was the Institute wall, I heard Hector ask Jake if he’d rather sit up beside him now, and Jake crack, “Not really, but I suppose you’ll be offended like a woman if I don’t.” I looked back once more, maybe to wave, I don’t know, maybe for one last look at some remnant of my life up to that point, maybe because I knew what I would see; and Jake was watching me go, while Hector and the horses waited for him, gazing straight ahead, the horses at least in an attitude of infinite forbearance.
The strands of Jake’s pattern that were all twisted and curled up at the fringes of the hole in his entity had opened and were twining towards me, dividing into a fine web of many tendrils, encircling me in a blind, desperate, and of course futile attempt to protect me. Revealed, to my surprise, by the opening of these long-crinkled strands were two other patterns, or, as I could see at once, replicas, echoes, of those patterns. Within seconds of being exposed, these echo-patterns, not having the self-sustaining quality that living entities do, began to dissipate, like the smoke of a pitfire.
“No,” I cried, dropping my bags and running to Jake, “You mustn’t! You mustn’t! They’ll be gone! I’ll be okay, Jake, I’ll be okay, don’t worry about me, you have to protect them.”
Surprise, then worry, then confusion, then a dawn of rudimentary understanding passed across his face in quick succession. I hugged him again, sobbing, “You have to protect them, not me.”
“Okay,” he whispered, “It’s okay.” The slightest pressure of his fingers upon the back of my head was, from him, like unto the tightest of embraces.
“You’ll do anything to keep from going in there, won’t you?” he said, regarding me smiling with his shrewd blue eyes, after I had let go of him. He pointed. “Now, go! And remember my message to Mrs. Camden.”
Passing through the gate, I looked back one last time. Hector was nudging the horses onward, Jake was up beside him on the wide driver’s seat of the buckboard, with his head hanging down, his hands clasped behind his head, and his elbows covering any possible view one might get of his face. But his pattern was whole.