The Returned. Jason Mott

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СКАЧАТЬ Bellamy began, once again trying to speak in a slow and non-Yankee tongue. “It’s just that they tend to sleep very little. They don’t complain of fatigue or exhaustion, but there have been accounts of some of them going for days without sleep, only to rest for a couple of hours and be completely unaffected.” He sat back, appreciating the quality of the wooden chair beneath him in the same way he had appreciated the quality of the desk. “But maybe we’re just grabbing at straws,” he said. “That’s the reason we’re having all these interviews, to try and see what’s an anomaly and what’s nothing at all. We want to know as much as we can about the Returned as we do about the non-Returned.”

      “So is your question about me or Jacob?” Lucille said, looking around the classroom.

      “Eventually, both of you. But, for now, just tell me about you, Mrs. Hargrave. Have you been having any trouble sleeping? Any disturbing dreams? Insomnia?”

      Lucille shifted in her seat. She glanced toward the window. Bright out today. Everything shiny and smelling of springtime, with the scent of a humid summer not far off. She sighed and rubbed her hands together. Then she folded them and placed them in her lap. But they weren’t content there, so she brushed her lap and placed an arm around her son, the type of thing a mother should do, she felt.

      “No,” she said, finally. “For fifty years I’ve been awake. Each and every night I’ve sat up, awake. Each and every day I walked around, awake. It was like I couldn’t do anything else but be awake. I was sick with being awake.” She smiled. “Now I sleep every night. Peacefully. Deeper and more soundly than I hardly imagined or hardly remembered was possible.”

      Lucille placed her hands in her lap again. This time they stayed. “Now I sleep the way a person is supposed to sleep,” she said. “I close my eyes, and then they open again all on their own and the sun is there. Which, I imagine, is the way it should be.”

      “And what about Harold? How is he sleeping?”

      “Just fine. Sleeps like the dead. Always has and probably always will.”

      Bellamy made notes on his notepad. Orange juice. Beef (steak, perhaps). Then he scratched out the bit about the steak and wrote ground beef. He turned to Jacob. “And how are you feeling about all this?”

      “Fine, sir. I’m fine.”

      “This is all pretty weird, isn’t it? All these questions, all these tests, all these people fussing about with you.”

      Jacob shrugged.

      “Anything you want to talk about?”

      Jacob shrugged again, his shoulders coming up almost to his ears, framing his small, soft face. He looked, briefly, like someone’s painting, something created from old oils and technique. His shirt bunched perfectly about his ears. His brown hair seemed to grow down over his eyes. Then, as if anticipating the prod from his mother, he spoke. “I’m okay, sir.”

      “Can I ask you another question, then? A harder question?”

      “Can you or may you? Mama taught me that.” He looked up at his mother; her face was caught somewhere between surprise and approval.

      Bellamy grinned. “Indeed,” he said. “Okay, may I ask you a harder question?”

      “I suppose,” Jacob said. Then: “Do you want to hear a joke?” A sudden focus and clarity came to his eyes. “I know a lot of good jokes,” he said.

      Agent Bellamy folded his arms beneath him and sat forward. “Okay, let’s hear it.”

      Again Lucille prayed silently—Please, Lord, not the one about the beaver.

      “What do you call a chicken crossing the road?”

      Lucille held her breath. Any joke involving a chicken had the potential to turn very vulgar very quickly.

      “Poultry in motion!” Jacob answered before Bellamy had much time to consider the question. Then he slapped his thigh and laughed like an old man.

      “That’s funny,” Bellamy said. “Did your father teach you that one?”

      “You said you had a hard question for me,” Jacob said, looking away. He watched the window as if expecting someone.

      “Okay. I know you’ve been asked this before. I know that you’ve probably been asked this more times than you care to answer. I’ve even asked you myself, but I have to ask again. What’s the first thing you remember?”

      Jacob was silent.

      “Do you remember being in China?”

      Jacob nodded and, somehow, his mother did not reprimand him. She was as interested as everyone else in the memories of the Returned. Out of habit, her hand moved to gently nudge him into talking, but she checked herself. Her hand returned to her lap.

      “I remember waking up,” he began. “By the water. By the river. I knew I’d get in trouble.”

      “Why would you get in trouble?”

      “Because I knew Mama and Daddy didn’t know where I was. When I couldn’t find them, I got scared some more. Not scared of getting in trouble anymore, but just scared because they weren’t there. I thought Daddy was somewhere around. But he wasn’t.”

      “What happened then?”

      “Some people came. Some Chinese people. They spoke Chinese.”

      “And then?”

      “And then these two women came over talking funny, but talking nice. I didn’t know what they were saying, but I could tell they were nice.”

      “Yes,” Bellamy said. “I know exactly what you mean. It’s like when I hear a doctor or nurse telling me something in all that hospital talk. I don’t understand a thing they’re saying most of the time but, from the way they’re saying it, I can tell they mean it in a nice way. You know, Jacob, it’s amazing how much you can tell about a person just by how they say things. Wouldn’t you agree?”

      “Yes, sir.”

      They then talked more about what had happened after Jacob was found by the river in that small fishing village just outside Beijing. The boy was delighted to tell it all. He saw himself as an adventurer, a hero on a heroic journey. Yes, it had been painfully terrifying for him, but only in the beginning. After that, it had actually become rather fun. He was in a strange land with strange people and they fed him strange food, which, thankfully, he quickly acclimated to. Even now, as he sat in the office with the man from the Bureau and his lovely mother, his belly rumbled for authentic Chinese food. He had no idea of the names of anything he had been fed. But he knew the scents, the tastes, the essences of them.

      Jacob talked at great length about the food in China, about how kind they had been to him. Even when the government men came—and the soldiers with them—they still treated him kindly, as if he were one of their own. They fed him until his stomach simply could not hold any more, all the while watching him with a sense of wonder and mystery.

      Then came the long plane ride, which he held no fear of. He’d grown up always wanting to fly somewhere; now he was given almost eighteen hours of it. The flight attendants were nice, but not as СКАЧАТЬ