6
On the second anniversary of the crash of Nationwide Flight 353, Joe Carpenter sat on a quiet beach in Florida, in the shade of a palm tree, watching the sea. Here, the tides came to shore more gently than in California, licking the sand with a tropical languor, and the ocean seemed not at all like a machine.
He was a different man from the one who had fled the fire in the San Bernardino Mountains. His hair was longer now, bleached both by chemicals and by the sun. He had grown a moustache as a simple disguise. His physical awareness of himself was far greater than it had been one year ago, so he was conscious of how differently he moved these days: with a new ease, with a relaxed grace, without the tension and the coiled anger of the past.
He possessed ID in a new name: birth certificate, social security card, three major credit cards, a driver’s license. The forgers at Infiniface didn’t actually forge documents as much as use their computer savvy to manipulate the system into spitting out real papers for people who didn’t exist.
He had undergone inner changes too, and he credited those to Nina—though he continued to refuse the ultimate gift that she could give him. She had changed him not by her touch but by her example, by her sweetness and kindness, by her trust in him, by her love of life and her love of him and her calm faith in the rightness of all things. She was only six years old but in some ways ancient, because if she was what everyone believed she was, then she was tied to the infinite by an umbilical of light.
They were staying with a commune of Infiniface members, those who wore no robes and left their heads unshaven. The big house stood back from the beach and was filled at almost any hour of the day with the soft clatter of computer keyboards. In a week or two, Joe and Nina would move on to another group, bringing them the gift that only this child could reveal, for they travelled continuously in the quiet spreading of the word. In a few years, when her maturing power made her less vulnerable, the time would arrive to tell the world.
Now, on this anniversary of loss, she came to him on the beach, under the gently swaying palm, as he had known she would, and she sat at his side. Currently her hair was brown. She was wearing pink shorts and a white top with Donald Duck winking on her chest—as ordinary in appearance as any six-year-old on the planet. She drew her knees up and encircled her legs with her arms, and for a while she said nothing.
They watched a big, long-legged sand crab move across the beach, select a nesting place, and burrow out of sight.
Finally she said, “Why won’t you open your heart?”
“I will. When the time’s right.”
“When will the time be right?”
“When I learn not to hate.”
“Who do you hate?”
“For a long time—you.”
“Because I’m not your Nina.”
“I don’t hate you any more.”
“I know.”
“I hate myself.”
“Why?”
“For being so afraid.”
“You’re not afraid of anything,” she said.
He smiled. “Scared to death of what you can show me.”
“Why?”
“The world’s so cruel. It’s so hard. If there’s a God, He tortured my father with disease and then took him young. He took Michelle, my Chrissie, my Nina. He allowed Rose to die.”
“This is a passage.”
“A damn vicious one.”
She was silent a while.
The sea whispered against the strand. The crab stirred, poked an eye stalk out to examine the world, and decided to move.
Nina got up and crossed to the sand crab. Ordinarily, these creatures were shy and scurried away when approached. This one did not run for cover but watched Nina as she dropped to her knees and studied it. She stroked its shell. She touched one of its claws, and the crab didn’t pinch her.
Joe watched—and wondered.
Finally the girl returned and sat beside Joe, and the big crab disappeared into the sand.