moment. His brow furrowed until he found the memory.
“Was I the one who died in the bathtub?”
“Yes, Dad.”
“I’m so sorry I left you.”
“I know you are.”
“Let me look at you, honey.”
Christopher brought the key to his father’s eyes and sawed through the thick thread keeping his father blind. He pulled the thread out through his father’s eyelids and dropped it to the ground. His father opened his eyes, bewildered, as if this dark cave were the brightest sun he’d ever seen. He blinked like a newborn until his eyes adjusted to the light. He looked down at his son. Then, he smiled.
“You’re so big now.”
His father reached out to hold him, but the string held his arm in place. Christopher moved his hand to help him. When he finally touched the string in his father’s hand, he was surprised. There was nothing special about it. It wasn’t made of steel. It reminded him of the time he watched the old movie about the circus with his mother. He saw a baby elephant tied to a post with a steel chain. The baby ripped and scratched and tried to get free, but the chain wouldn’t break. Then, he saw a grown elephant tied to a post with nothing but a little piece of rope. He asked his mother how the little piece of rope held the big elephant in place. She explained that they chain the babies until they give up.
The elephants think that little piece of rope is still a chain.
Christopher thought. He didn’t know if it would work or not, but he had to try.
“Dad,” he said. “I think you can put the string down now.”
“I can?”
Christopher gently held his father’s hand. He felt the moment of his death. The final second when his father changed his mind. He wanted to live. He couldn’t bear to be away from his family. But it was too late. But it wasn’t too late. It was never too late.
Christopher’s father let go of the string.
He stood still for a moment, waiting for a sky to fall. But it never did. He stepped out of the bloody bathtub. He knelt down and held his son with both arms. His shirt smelled like tobacco. Christopher held his father as he looked around the hive at hundreds of mailbox people. They were all connected. The town and the tunnels. All connected by an invisible string. No one was holding the mailbox people in place. They were holding themselves. The mailbox people weren’t the nice man’s soldiers.
They were his slaves.
Christopher heard the moaning. All of the mailbox people were actually asking for deliverance. Christopher finally understood the screams. The anger. The madness. All he could hear anymore were the words “Help me.” He felt the heat being turned up. The frogs stuck in a boiling pot not understanding that the fire was a fever under their skin. They were inside the valley of the shadow of death, but the valley was not a place outside of them. It was inside.
The valley is us.
Christopher picked up his father’s string and held it tightly in his hands. He brought the string to his lips, took a deep breath, and pushed the words down the string. Like a child making a telephone with two tin cans.
“You are free now.”
Chapter 128
The sheriff felt the blood rush through his temple. He saw the girl with the painted nails dead in her hospital bed. He turned to run through the door to find a doctor as he had a hundred times already. He was a hamster on a wheel, trying to outrun a past that was always right in front of him. It had never occurred to him that he didn’t need to run.
Until now.
“You are free now.”
He didn’t know where the voice came from. But there it was in his mind like a seed in soil. The sheriff stopped running. He turned and walked back to the hospital bed. He faced her. His heart in his throat. He knelt down. A bear of a man who suddenly felt so small. The sheriff closed his eyes and held her like a father. He saw light dance behind his eyelids.
When the sheriff opened his eyes, he looked at the girl with the painted nails. But she wasn’t a little girl anymore. She was a grown woman. Maybe thirty years old. With bright eyes and a warm smile. She was in a white hospital gown. She held a baby in her arms. The little