In San Sobel, no one approached him either. He saw them, the strays, hiding in the shadows, skittering from one bolt-hole to the next, but they would not come near. He walked alone through the town’s ruin, his eyes set on the horizon, his mind fixed on his mission, and he came upon the woman quite unexpectedly. She did not see him. She was not even aware of him. She stood at the edge of a weed-grown lot and stared fixedly at the remains of what had once been a school. The name was still visible in the crumbling stone of an arch that bridged a drive leading up to the school’s entry. SAN SOBEL PREPARATORY ACADEMY. Her gaze was unwavering as she stood there, arms folded, body swaying slightly. As he approached, he could hear small, unidentifiable sounds coming from her lips. She was worn and haggard, her hair hung limp and unwashed, and she looked as if she had not eaten in a while. There were sores on her arms and face, and he recognized the markings of one of the cluster of new diseases that were going untreated and killing with increasing regularity.
He spoke to her softly, and she did not reply. He came right up behind her and spoke again, and she did not turn.
When finally he touched her, she still did not turn, but she began to speak. It was as if he had turned on a tape recorder. Her voice was a dull, empty monotone, and her story was one that quite obviously she had told before. She related it to him without caring whether he heard her or not, giving vent to a need that was self-contained and personal and without meaningful connection to him. He was her audience, but his presence served only to trigger a release of words she would have spoken to anyone.
He was my youngest child, she said. My boy, Teddy. He was six years old.
We had enrolled him in kindergarten the year before, and now he was finishing first grade. He was so sweet. He had blend hair and blue eyes, and he was always smiling. He could change the light in a room just by walking into it. l loved him so much. Bert and I both worked, and we made pretty good money, but it was still a stretch to send him here. But it was sort a good school, and we wanted him to have the best. He was very bright. He could have been anything, if he had lived.
There was another boy in the school who was a little older, Aaron Pilkington. His father was very successful, very wealthy. Some men decided to kidnap him and make his father pay them money to get him bark. They were stupid men, not even bright enough to know the best way to kidnap someone. They tried to take him out of the school. They just walked right in and tried to take him. On April Fools’ Day, can you imagine that? I wonder if they knew. They just walked in and tried to take him. Bur they couldn’t find him. They weren’t even sure which room he was in, which class he attended, who his teacher was, anything. They had a picture, and they thought that would be enough. But a picture doesn’t always help.
Children in a picture often tend to look alike. So they couldn’t find him, and the police were called, and they surrounded the school, and the men took a teacher and her class hostage because they were afraid and they didn’t know what else to do, I suppose.
My son was a student in that class.
The police tried to get the men to release the teacher and the children, but the men wouldn’t agree to the terms the police offered and the police wouldn’t agree to the terms the men offered, and the whole thing just fell to pieces. The men grew desperate and erratic. One of them kept talking to someone who wasn’t there, asking, What should he do, what should be do? They killed the teacher. The police decided they couldn’t wait any longer, that the children were in too much danger. The men had moved the children to the auditorium where they held their assemblies and performed their plays. They had them all seated in the first two rows, all in a line facing the stage. When the police broke in, they started shooting. They just . . . started shooting. Everywhere. The children…