‘Is that being sarcastic or something, Brother?”
“No. I mean it’s good shooting.”
“Yes, it is.” Off he trotted, tootling his whistle.
The camp seemed empty. I knew that Nena was in her quarters. I wandered around, wondering who was watching me. Somebody had to be on the gate. Alvor the silent one, if they hadn’t rotated the duty. Persival had to be somewhere.
I thought it out during my aimless stroll in the misty rain. I had not passed any test. I had not proved anything to anybody. So somebody wanted to know how badly I wanted to take off. Would I go down the road or start out cross-country? What would Tom McGraw do? They had an Tom’s money, and they were trying to locate his girl. So why not use up a piece of the rainy afternoon calling on the pretty little woman he had carried back to camp? Ask her how she was doing.
I rapped on the door and she called, “Come in?”
“How you doing?”
“Okay, I guess. I was so damn mad at myself. Sister Nena, the gazelle. See how she floats through the air.” She was on the bunk. She had been reading.
‘~What’s the book?”
She closed it and handed it to me. Worn binding, dog-eared pages. The Loving Elect by Sister Elena Marie. “Hasn’t anyone given it to you yet?”
‘first I ever heard of it.”
“You should read it. You should have your own copy. I guess somebody just forgot. It’s wonderful. She’s a great woman, truly great. I miss seeing her. I used to see her when I was in the regular camps. She used to visit. She still does that sometimes, I think.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Five years. More than five. Nearly six.”
“Back when you were twelve years old?”
She laughed. “Hardly. I’m t~venty-eight.”
“You don’t look it. Nobody would guess. Were you at more than one of the regular camps?”
“Oh, sure. You get moved around. They don’t want you to sink roots anywhere except in the Church. And a lot of us get moved because family has come to try to take us home. When we’re already home in the best sense of the word. My mother spent a lot of time and money trying to find me and take me away. But that was a long time ago.”
“Where is she now?”
“I wouldn’t have the faintest clue, Brother. She is nothing to me. I have no interest in her.”
“She’s your mother, dike Fm Kathy’s father.”
‘7hat’s a biological happenstance, Brother Thomas. I don’t think we’ll discuss that further. You have
The Green Ripper no right of approval or disapproval over anything I do or think or am.”
‘Tm just trying to understand is ale”
‘~Don’t try. Just accept. You’re not open enough, Brother. You are closed up tight Sister Elena Marie says there are answers which have to come before the questions.”
“Makes no sense to me.”
&e looked at me with exasperation. “Will you try something with me? Will you let me try to show you something? Will you really try to cooperate, by that I mean letting things happen that try to happen?”
“Sure. Try what?”
“Can you sit there, on the floor, and cross your legs Buddha style?”
I sat and managed it, with a certain amount of creaking, saying, ‘untangling myself will be some” thing else again.”
She smiled and settled down in front of me, not wincing at all as she moved her taped ankle into position, so close that our Knees touched. “We take each other’s hands like this, so that you are feeling the pulse here, in my left wrist, and I am feeling your pulse in your left wrist. Let the hands and forearms rest like this. Yes, so there’s no strain. After a little while, if we are doing it right, our pulse rates will become identical, and quite slow. Like sixty beats per minute. Now you look into my eyes, not in any sharp focus because then you look at one eye or the other. Kind of unfocus a little, so you see them both. Unfocus as if you were looking beyond me. You can feel my pulse? Good. Now what you have to do is take long slow breaths. On each in- halation you say three words very slowly and distinctly inside your head. We are one. And you say it silently and in the same rhythm as you exhale. 1311 match my breathing to yours, and then it should stay matched without my thinking about it. You say the words until they are meaningless, just sounds, like a mantra. What you have to do is concentrate on looking into my eyes and trying to hear the silent words I am saying. Try to hear my words inside your head and I try to hear yours inside mine. Stay aware of the pulse and the slow breathing. Keep your back straight and your eyes just a little unfocused. And try to kind of… give yourself to it, and let it happen. Start now. No, wait. I forgot. Don’t let any outside thoughts come into your head. If you start to think of anything beside pulse, breathing, looking, listening, and the words, it sets you back. Okay. Go.”