“It looks like Jonestown,” Maxine said, surveying the whole sorry sight.
She wasn’t that far off the mark. The way bodies had all dropped in the grass, some lying alone, others in groups, looking as though they might have been hand in hand when the fatal moment came. It had the feel of a mass suicide, no question. Had the sun been on them directly, no doubt the stench would have been nauseating. But the air was cool beneath the heavy canopy; the smell was more like that of festering cabbages than the deeper, stomach-turning stench of rotting flesh.
“Why so few flies?”
Tammy thought on this for a moment. “I don’t know. They weren’t properly alive in the first place, were they? They had ghosts for fathers and animals for mothers. Or the other way round. I don’t think they were flesh and blood in the same way you and I are.”
“That still doesn’t explain why they came here to die like this.”
“Maybe the same power that ran through Katya and the ghosts ran through them too,” Tammy said. “And once it was turned off — ”
“They came back to the house and died?”
“Exactly.”
“And the dead?” Maxine said. “All those people. Where did they go?”
“They didn’t have anything to keep them here,” Tammy said.
“So maybe they’re out wandering the city?” Maxine said. “Not a very reassuring thought.”
As Maxine talked, Tammy plucked some large leaves from the jungle all around, and then went back amongst the corpses, bending to gently lay the leaves-which she’d chosen for their size-over the faces of the dead.
Maxine watched Tammy with a mingling of incomprehension and awe. It would never in a thousand years have occurred to her to do something like this. But as she watched Tammy going about this duty she felt a surge of simple affection for the woman. She’d endured a lot, and here she was, still finding it in her heart to think of something other than her own comfort, her own ease. She was remarkable in her way: no question.
“Are you done?” she asked, when Tammy was all but finished.
“Almost,” she said. She bowed her head. “Do you know any prayers?”
“I used to, but … ” Maxine shrugged, empty-handed.
“Then I’m just going to make something up,” Tammy said.
“I’ll leave you to it then,” Maxine said, turning to go.
“No,” Tammy said. “Please. I want you to stay here with me until I’m finished.”
“Are you sure?”
“Please.”
“Okay,” Maxine said.
Tammy bowed her head. Then after taking a few moments to decide what she was going to say, she began. “Lord,” she said. “I don’t know why these creatures were born, or why they died … ” She shook her head, in a kind of despair, though whether it was about the words or the situation she was attempting to describe, Maxine didn’t know; perhaps a little of both. “We’re in the presence of death, and when that happens we wonder, it makes us wonder, why we’re alive in the first place. Well, I guess I want to say that these things didn’t ask to be alive. They were born miserably. And they lived miserably. And now they’re dead. And I’d like to ask you, Lord, to take special care of them. They lived without any hope of happiness, but maybe you can give them some happiness in the Hereafter. That’s all. Amen.”
Maxine tried to echo the Amen, but when she did so she realized that these hesitant, simple words coming from so unlikely a source, had brought on tears.
Tammy put her arm around Maxine’s shoulder. “It’s okay,” she said.
“I don’t even know why I’m crying,” Maxine said, letting her head drop against Tammy’s shoulder while the sobbing continued to wrack her. “This is the first time I’ve cried like this, really cried, in Lord knows how long.”
“It’s good to cry. Let it come.”
“Is it really good to cry?” Maxine said, recovering herself slightly, and wiping her nose. “I’ve always been suspicious when people say crying’s good for you.”
“Well it is. Trust me.”
“You know, Tammy, I don’t know if anyone has ever told you this, but you’re quite an amazing lady.”