“That’s a way of looking at it.”
“I’m just glad it isn’t Chase sitting in that chair.”
He left Peter alone. Just five minutes, and the piles of paper on his desk now seemed completely trivial. He swiveled his chair to face the window. The day had begun with clear skies, but now the weather was turning. Low clouds hovered over the city, a heavy gray mass. A gust of wind tossed the treetops, followed by a flash, whitening the sky. As thunder rolled behind it, the first drops of rain, heavy and slow, tapped the glass.
Michael, he thought, what the hell are you up to?
* * *
43
Anthony Carter, Twelfth of Twelve, had just shut off the mower when he looked toward the patio and noticed that the tea had arrived.
So soon? Could it be noon again already? He angled his chin to the sky—an oppressive summer Houston sky, pale like something bleached. He removed his hankie and then his hat to mop the sweat from his forehead. A glass of tea would surely hit the spot.
Mrs. Wood, she knew that. Though of course it wasn’t Mrs. Wood who brought it. Carter couldn’t say just who it was. The same someone who delivered the flats of flowers and bags of mulch to the gate, who fixed his tools when they broke, who made time turn how it did in this place, every day a season, every season a year.
He pushed his mower to the shed, wiped it clean, and made his way to the patio. Amy was working in the dirt on the far side of the lawn. There was some ginger there, it grew like crazy, always needing cutting back, bordered by the beds where Mrs. Wood liked to put some summer color. Today it was three flats of cosmos, the pink ones that Miss Haley loved, picking them and putting them in her hair.
“Tea’s here,” Carter said.
Amy looked up. She was wearing a kerchief around her neck; there was dirt on her hands and face where she’d wiped the sweat away.
“You go ahead.” She batted a gnat from her face. “I want to get these in first.”
Carter sat and sipped the tea. Perfect as always, sweet but not too sweet, and the ice made a pleasant tinkling against the sides of the glass. From behind him, in the house, came the bright drifting notes of the girls’ playing. Sometimes it was Barbies or dress-ups. Sometimes they watched TV. Carter heard the same movies playing over and over—Shrek was one, and The Princess Bride—and he felt sorry for the two of them, Miss Haley and her sister, all alone and stuck inside the house, waiting for their mama to come home. But when Carter peeked in the windows, there was never anybody there; the inside and the outside were two different places, and the rooms were empty, not even any furniture to tell that people lived there.
He’d had some time to think on that. He’d thought about a lot of things. Such as, what this place exactly was. The best he could come up with was that it was a kind of waiting room, like at a doctor’s office. You bided your time, maybe flipping through a magazine, and then when your turn came, a voice would call your name and you’d go on to the next place, whatever that was. Amy called the garden “the world behind the world,” and that seemed right to Carter.
How the day got on, he thought. He’d have to get back to work soon; there was a sprinkler head needed replacing, and the pool to skim, and all that edging to do. He liked to keep the yard just so for the day when Mrs. Wood would return. Mr. Carter, what a beautiful job you’ve done taking care of the place. You’re a godsend. I don’t know what I ever did without you. He liked to think of the things they’d say to each other when that day came. The two of them would have a good talk, just like they used to, sitting on the patio the way any two friends would do.
But for the moment, Carter was content to settle in a spell while the edge came off the heat. He unlaced his boots and closed his eyes. The garden was a place for thinking your thoughts, and that was what he did now. He remembered Wolgast coming to him in Terrell, which was the death house, and then a ride in a van with deep cold and snowy mountains all around, and then the doctors giving him a shot. It made him sick something awful, but that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst was the voices in his head. I am Babcock. I am Morrison. I am Chávez Baffes Turrell Winston Sosa Echols Lambright Martínez Reinhardt…He saw pictures too, horrible things, people dying and such, like he was dreaming someone else’s dreams. He’d been to school for a bit, and they’d read a book by Mr. William Shakespeare. Carter hadn’t actually read much of it himself. The words in the book were like something chopped up in a blender, that’s how confusing it was. But the teacher, Mrs. Coe, a pretty white lady who decorated the walls of her classroom with posters of animals and mountain climbers and sayings like “Reach for the stars” and “Be a friend to make a friend,” had showed the class a video. Carter liked it, how everybody was always getting in swordfights and dressed like a pirate, and Mrs. Coe explained that the main guy, who was named Hamlet, and was also a prince, was going crazy because somebody had killed his daddy by pouring poison in his ear. There was more to the story, but Carter remembered that part, because that’s what the voices reminded him of. Like poison poured in his ear.