Godsend: A Novel by John Wray

Author:John Wray [Wray, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Fiction, Literary, Coming of Age
ISBN: 9780374716097
Google: WDlIDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2018-10-08T21:00:00+00:00

—They killed him, Sawyer. They took him out and shot him in the head.

A tapping carried to them through the wall behind the cot. The admissions office was on the other side and she heard the clatter of the old electric Remington and the mournful droning of the air conditioner. The floor beneath her was bisected by a dark and ancient stain. She touched a palm to the wall and it came away wet.

—Who’s they? she said finally.

He seemed not to hear. —I was ten feet away when they did it. Maybe not even that. They didn’t even have the decency to take him off somewhere.

—Would that have been better?

—What do you mean?

—Would it have been better if they’d done it somewhere else?

—Fuck you, Sawyer, he said, turning his face to the wall. —You didn’t have to see it. You weren’t there.

—That’s true, she said. —I wasn’t. You left me behind.

He made a small choked noise that could have had any meaning she chose to assign it and curled up again and lay still. —I want to go home, he whispered.

It took her a moment to answer. —You should go home, Decker. You should go home as soon as you can.

—They’ve got my passport and everything. They’ve got all my money.

—We’ll figure it out, she said. —I’ll talk to them.

She sat beside him on the cot and ran her fingers through his hair. The tapping of the Remington continued without pause and she asked herself what manner of report or decree or manifesto was being drafted on the far side of the wall. It dawned on her that she had no way of knowing, no way even to guess, and the thought brought tears of panic to her eyes. She stared at the thin cold thread of light beneath the door, willing herself to see the truth for which the rituals of the camp were merely symbols. God was in that place, or the submission to God’s will, or perhaps only the desire to submit, which was the highest form of love that she could give. Not the submission itself but the desire. She listened to the pull and sigh of Decker’s breathing. It didn’t matter what was happening on the far side of the wall. Her duty was clear to her at last, or clear enough. She had no other family, no other love, no other calling. He was the only person in the world who knew her. Her duty was to keep him safe from harm.

* * *

All that week she devoted herself to her training with a fervor that caused even Abu Imam to sing her praises. She learned to set land mines and to lay trip wires for IEDs and to dismantle them in such a way that they could be wrapped in squares of thick gray felt and used again. Her fingers were smaller than the others’, more nimble and precise, and she was given the task of checking the shearing pin and resetting the safety on the plastic antitank mines that had proven so effective in the fight against the Russians.

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