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When night falls over Prentisstown and the air is thick with the fever frenzy of dreams, Ben remembers the depth of his grandfather's voice the night before they evacuated the reservation. The air is the same. Hot, heavy, swelling with rain that is too stubborn to come but instead makes everyone wait, because that's what people do. They wait. Ben's grandfather was sitting on the porch of their tiny house the night before the evacuation. His old fingers, wrinkled with oil and leather, clutched Ben's shoulder and he rasped in his deep smoker's voice, "Remember this, Benison. Always remember."
"Remember what?" Ben had asked plaintively, seeing how he had to once again soothe his irritable grandfather. His mother was in the kitchen making beans and his father was out wandering the fields alone. Ben used to wonder why his father wanted to be alone so much but when he got older he saw the way the other folk looked at him, the only white man for miles around. Love had been the reason for his parents' marriage, but even love couldn't fix the silence that buzzed from the radio and the tightness of his mother's mouth as she listened to the sound of another bomb falling over Winnipeg.
"It's funny," she used to say, wiping her hands on her chequered dishcloth. "They stuck us here 'cause they don't want anything to do with us, but that's the reason we're survivin'. Nobody thinks to bother us." Then she would laugh, and Ben never knew if he was supposed to join her. He always felt the sadness on her as thick as snow over the pine trees.
In the end, she was wrong. They did come for them. Ben held his grandfather's hands as they sat on the trucks that took them away, and his grandfather very kindly did not mention that sixteen-year-old boys had no business crying; he saved the lectures on bravery and manhood for another day. If there was such a day coming.
But that's what Prentisstown reminds him of. The closed circle of the reservation, the slow death by frustration and despair, the stench of cigarette smoke as he walks down the gravel streets, watching the men set up the general store. They're carrying lumber from the woods and milkweed rope. One fellow is singing where have all the good men gone? in a twangy country lilt that would be halfway humorous if it weren't so dried out morose. The song is just another piece and scrap of what they brought with them. Their legacy to future generations that some men still believe in with the reckless optimism that starts bar fights.
One man is thinking about how long it'll take to get the store done. Another man is thinking about the itch in his crotch. Another is saying a name over and over again: his wife's.
There was a time, when they first got there, that Ben thought Prentiss was a good man and his ideas good ideas. He can't excuse his own culpability in Prentiss' rise to power. He tried in the beginning, using the old arguments of discipline and order, but Cillian always looked at him in disgust and read his real Noise.
The Noise makes it easier to realize hard truths. Nothing unsaid anymore. It's why the men hate it so much.
Ben sometimes wonders that if they had had Noise back on Earth, whether his mother would have realized how much his father loved her. Or maybe she did realize it, but by then it was too late and the soldiers had already fired the bullets. Thinking about his parents' deaths makes Ben feel as heavy as the summer. He tries to never do it when people are around him. He doesn't want it to infect his Noise. Once Prentiss overheard Ben's thoughts about his mother and in a gesture of good will tried to say something comforting about God and heaven, but Ben's skin crawled where Prentiss touched him. He smiled to keep up his cover but his mouth felt tough and immobile like his grandfather's skin.
The stories he grew up with talked about the spirits of the earth, of the water, of the air. But the spirits in the new world are foreign, and Ben does not know how to love them.
Life restarts, though he doesn't know it at first.
He met Cillian Boyd at a dirty underground church that doubled as a bomb shelter. Ben wasn't a Christian, not with what it'd done to his people. The only reason Ben was there was because there was nowhere else to be and the church was offering a free meal. Ben was hungry enough then that he would have walked into a leper colony if they gave out sandwiches. But not only did he get tuna fish sandwiches that tasted slightly sour but delicious, he also got Cillian, who had been standing in the corner arguing with the minister.
Ben didn't know what they were talking about. He caught the words 'salvation doctrine', which was about when he stopped being interested. But he remembers very clearly when Cillian turned around and saw him watching. The first thing Cillian did was narrow his eyes suspiciously, but the only thing Ben could think about was how good-looking this man was with his shaggy red-brown hair and big carpenter's hands, and how long it had been since he'd gotten laid.
"What do you think?" Cillian had asked irritably. Ben shook the lustful thoughts out of his head, reminded himself that he was in a church, and tried to smile politely and admit that he was a bad eavesdropper. Cillian had looked contemptuous, which Ben only found even more attractive. Ben tried to think of something else to say, something witty and provocative, but all he came up with was, "Nice sandwiches, huh?" Which was hardly brilliant even by Ben's standards.
Oh well. It was a shame. But Ben was used to it. He'd always been the awkward guy. Too short, too stocky, too many freckles over his sunburnt skin. Half white, half Iroquois, queer, never really belonging. He took his rejection affably and went back for another sandwich. But to his surprise, Cillian cornered him and looked at him like a scientist examining insufficient data.
"I haven't seen you around before," he said.
"I'm just here for the food," Ben said easily. "Thanks for fronting it, by the way."
"I'm not the one responsible for the refreshment table," Cillian said. "Are you one of Allison's folk?"
"She invited me, yeah."
"What do you do?"
It really did feel like an interrogation. But Ben just shrugged and said, "A bit of this, a bit of that. Some electrical wiring for anybody who pays me decently."
"You're an electrician?" Cillian said.
"Had a few lessons."
"Where?"
"Camp program," Ben said, and smiled at the way Cillian was suddenly uncomfortable. There weren't a lot of people who made it out of the camps. "They were trying to make useful citizens out of the young people," Ben added. "I would have suggested they lay off on the shootings and the torture, but hey. What do I know? I'm just a dumb 'ol Injun."
"Right," said Cillian with a weird look in his eye. "Somehow I doubt that."
Cillian was a scientist. Or had been a scientist. Or almost. It was complicated. He'd been an undergrad student studying biotechnology in one of the last safe universities, but like Ben he had been displaced by the war. Instead of going to the camps, he was sent to the capital where a special fund for education paid for him to finish his schooling. He was the youngest scientist ever to work for the national labs, but he quit with his middle finger in the air when he saw what they were doing. He joined a church and went underground.
"If they ever catch me, I'm dead," he said one day when he invited Ben over to the apartment he shared with a couple of other church guys.
"Are you worried about it?" Ben asked, accepting the beer Cillian gave him. One did not refuse beer when it was in short supply.
"As if," Cillian said. "I've worked with the government's tracking agency. They've got the savvy of a drunken pirate about to pee his pants. The fucking morals of one too."
"Ha," said Ben. He clinked his beer against Cillian's and listened to Cillian go on a rant about power-hungry governments and unethical science. He bore it patiently because he rather liked how Cillian managed to be passionate in a time when it was a lot easier to be apathetic. Cillian had ideas, Cillian had opinions, Cillian was working with an inter-group church council to get the hell out of dodge and find a new planet. The idea of it stunned Ben. He never would have thought of in a thousand years, but Cillian could. Cillian was always thinking. They'd struck up an uneasy friendship, mostly built on Ben going back to free sandwiches and Cillian being grateful for someone who would listen to him without complaint. Ben was his sounding board, his one-man audience.
Cillian also introduced Ben to Kathleen and Peter, two of the sweetest people Ben had ever met. They were young and married, and so in love with each other that it made Ben smile and roll his eyes every time he saw them. When he found out that Kathleen had grown up in the town only a half hour's drive from Ben's reservation, he knew he had to know her better. Kathleen had a job as a grave digger not far from Ben's shithole apartment. Sometimes she would come over after she got off work and smoke a cigarette with him before she braved the subway home. They would lean against the mildew tile walls of his bathroom, the only place they could get away from his roommates, angling the cigs so they wouldn't set off what remained of the smoke alarm. They'd talk too, mostly about their old towns in the fierce, cagey way people do when they want to remember the things they most forget.
When Cillian and Kathleen and Peter asked if he wanted to go to the new world with them and their church, his answer was yes. It wasn't God that put the yes in his mouth though.
He waits for the rain in Prentisstown. They all do. Their crops are drying and even though he and Cillian have been trying to rig up a watering machine, they just don't have the tools. They may be men of progress but here on this new planet they have been set to reboot, farming and toiling like their ancestors thousands of years ago on a world so far away that Ben can't even see it as a star. The vast distance unnerves him. Cillian once tried to explain to him how time worked in space, but Ben would have nothing of it because if time changes, then so does his past, and his past makes him who he is, damn it. He doesn't want to think of his parents and grandfather as millions of years away, ancient and meaningless like dinosaurs. He wants to think of them in the now, in the wet pulse of his blood, in the awful truth of his Noise.
The first time he encountered Noise, he felt it before he heard it. It was heat, like a microwave turning on in his stomach, slowly revolving. He felt sick with it. His fingers buzzed with Noise; his mouth choked with Noise. The only thing he could to to orient himself was to latch on to Cillian, who stared at the fertile soil and the clear sky unblinkingly, though his skin was froggy cold. And he was thinking, thinking, thinking, which wasn't unusual. Except this time Ben could hear him.
But he made do. Ben has the versatility of a man who survived the camps. It wasn't nearly so bad on the new planet. Sure, there was the Noise and the challenge of setting up a new society, but there was no one here burning his forearm with a pow-pow or shooting his grandfather with a semi-automatic and a racial slur. It could be worse, all in all. Unfortunately Ben was one of the few men who felt that way. Most of the others walked around like bomb victims in the first few years, flinching and wincing when they were in a good mood, brawling and shouting when they were in a bad one. Even Cillian, who bullied the operator on Earth into letting their ship get clearance because he refused to give up, sunk into long bouts of depression where he snapped at Ben and insulted him.
So Ben waited. He worked. And after a while some of the men got used to the Noise. Cillian came around and apologized. Kathleen found out she was pregnant. Peter sank into a daze that had nothing to do with depression but with joy. Ben thought, yes, we can do this, we can actually be at peace here.
Ben regrets many things in his life but he doesn't regret the hope he once felt. It's been dampened since but some of it still burns. That's the thing about hope. It lives in the small places. Hope is the corn fields after the rain, the clumsy way Todd pours the milk for dinner, the smile on Cillian's face when he forgets that he's supposed to be grouchy and just appreciates what he does have as opposed to what he doesn't.
Hope nearly died in the Spackle War, in the butchery of the natives. Ben doesn't know, can't think clearly about it. Hope sputtered out again the night they killed the women. Ben had heard the rumours but he honestly hadn't thought Prentiss would go through with it. They had long split ways when Ben finally saw how much of a fucking maniac Prentiss really was, but Ben had thought that Prentiss was a logical maniac at least. He would put the good of the community, in some twisted way, at the front of his thoughts. Nothing prepared Ben for the night when he realized he was wrong, and Kathleen was banging at their door with Todd in her arms, sobbing about how they came for her and how they killed Peter when he tried to stop them.
Cillian moved quickly and grimly, as if he had expected this to happen. His barked orders stirred Ben into action and together they hid Kathleen and Todd in the hollow behind the staircase. Ben stacked the entrance with planks and created as much of a mess as he could. Todd cried out and Kathleen tried to hush him. Ben felt dizzy.
When Prentiss and his men came knocking, Cillian let them in. He spoke to them normally, politely, and his Noise was even and flat, but Ben could see the dark hatred that moved as a shadow behind his eyes. He prayed that Cillian wouldn't do anything rash. He tried to help. He put his arm around Cillian's shoulders and ignored the men's sniggers about faggots. He felt Cillian tense and then loosen as they both stood there listening to Prentiss' madness. Prentiss was bragging about leaving his wife on their kitchen floor with a crushed skull - like an animal, he said - and how his son Davy hadn't cried at all. A good boy, Prentiss said. Knows what's what. Ben closed his eyes and did not think about Kathleen, lest it show.
Kathleen shook her head.
Ben talked about smuggling routes.
Kathleen pushed Todd into his arms and said please, for the love of God, please.
Ben never forgets. He doesn't dare write it down. He doesn't dare think about it in front of anyone except Cillian. But he remembers every bit of it: the tears that salted Kathleen's face, the jerky way she ran when Aaron saw her, the clean stab of the knife into her back. Ben watched it and hated himself. Then he had to smile at Aaron. He hadn't thought he could do it, but the human body is a traitorous wonder.
He was quiet for a long time after. He divided his days in between working the fields and taking care of Todd. What had first been duty became love, and he made a baby strap that allowed him to carry Todd with him everywhere, even when he was out milking the cows. Todd's Noise was simple and comforting, everything reduced to hunger and piss and adoration. For a long time Todd was the only person Ben wanted to talk to.
He avoided Cillian. Cillian was terrible with babies. Todd cried and cried whenever Cillian tried to hold him, and the frustration would make Cillian lash out, which would make Ben angry because sometimes he felt Cillian had the same potential for violence that made men like Prentiss - it was sheer luck that he channeled it into a different belief. But then Ben felt ashamed because Cillian was nothing like Prentiss. Cillian was principled and good, the sort of man who would never stand by and let Kathleen be stabbed in the middle of the street. If Cillian had been there, he would have struggled to yank the knife from Aaron's grip. Cillian worries a lot about God and judgment, but Ben wants to tell him that when Cillian dies and goes to the heaven that he still believes in, his god will look at him and say, you are my avenging angel, my stalwart warrior on earth. It's Ben who needs to worry. Ben who just stands and watches the horror pass him by.
He avoided Cillian for a long time. But then one day he stopped. He couldn't say why that particular day and not any other. But one day when he and Todd were out in the fields he saw Cillian coming, approaching so tentatively and shyly that he looked like a different man. Cillian was prickly with others but he was always tender with Ben, tender when it mattered, holding him at night when Ben dreamed and shivered and cried out. So when he approached and said "hey" in a quiet, scratchy voice, Ben wrapped his hand around the back of Cillian's neck and pulled him in for a kiss.
They went back into the house. Ben tucked Todd into crib, and then he and Cillian went to their bedroom where Cillian pinned him to the mattress and slaved kisses and bites over his bare chest. Ben arched and gasped and swore. When Cillian laughed it was menacing, but Ben realized that he was not afraid. He turned Cillian over, thumbed his nipples, and slid down on him in one hot slide, resting his thighs against Cillian's while he listened to the beauty of Cillian's broken breathing and the stuttering of his Noise.
Sex has always been easy with Cillian. It seems a bit unfair that they can move together so smoothly and unrepentantly when around them the world is falling to pieces, but Ben thinks that this is one injustice he doesn't mind. Cillian's eyes are the sharpest shade of green when he comes, and his Noise burst into Ben like a second orgasm, a rush of helpless want.
"I hate how I'm a big, tough guy except when I'm with you," Cillian said one day when they were trying to feed a fussy Todd.
"Hate? Really?" Ben replied, amused.
"Well," Cillian amended, sliding closer so that their thighs touched. "Maybe you can make it up to me."
"Oh I'll try," Ben laughed. "Big, tough guy."
The rain doesn't come. The town is as dry as the Spackle skin that hangs on Prentiss' living room wall. Ben sits out on the porch while Todd runs around with Manchee, and wonders when Cillian is going to be home. They've decided to teach Todd how to read. Ben wants to give him Kathleen's old diaries. Let him remember me, Kathleen had said, and Ben sees so much of her in Todd, in those curious dark eyes and that sudden surprised laughter. He sees Peter's straight posture and subtle intelligence. But he also sees Cillian. Todd and Cillian may not get along but they are so alike with their quick tempers and abrupt conversations. They are Ben's boys and the source of all his hope.
But they never do get around to teaching Todd how to read. They get sidetracked by famine, by plans for Todd's birthday, by hard work and strenuous labour. Ben looks down at his hands and startles when he sees that they are his grandfather's hands, worn and leathery. He is proud. When no one is looking to criticize him for being a pagan, he speaks to the spirits of his ancestors. He's not sure that they reply but he likes to think that they do, that even on another planet they know where he is and what he works towards.
What are you looking so cheerful for? Cillian thinks grumpily when he comes back from a local meeting where he argued with half the men. But never too much, Ben always warns him. They have to be careful to never be too much of a threat.
"I don't know. I just am," Ben says. "Todd, that soup is for dinner. You don't get to eat any of it right now."
"Aw," says Todd.
FOOD! barks Manchee.
The plan is for Todd to leave before his thirteenth birthday so that Prentiss can't get his hands on him. Ben makes most of the arrangements. He draws the map from one of Peter's old sketches, and he hides it with mixed feelings. Todd is the one who deserves to get away and have a chance at a better life, but Ben will miss him. His son. He will never entirely recover. He will always be expecting to set out dinner for three, not two, and when the weather is hot and humid, he will always be surprised when he doesn't see Todd and Manchee playing in the fields, or Todd riling Cillian into a stupid fight.
But Ben doesn't even have the luxury of a languorous goodbye. That's what angers him the most. He might have been able to accept it, if he had had time to prepare, but he doesn't. Todd is not yet thirteen and already talking about silences in the wood. Then Prentiss comes knocking like he did the night they killed the women. Ben is pale with fear. Don't let them take Todd, don't let them take Todd, he thinks over and over again. But then he hears the explosion and he thinks, Cillian Cillian Cillian.
Cillian used to be a scientist. He knows how to make a bomb with the simplest supplies. He also knows how to fight and keep on fighting. He takes down three of Prentiss' men before he dies, and Ben is numb when he escapes, leaving Cillian's body behind. This is wrong. He wants to turn right back and ram a knife through Prentiss' eye, but there is still Todd to think about. He must find Todd. Todd is all he has left. Todd Todd Todd. Don't let them take Todd. Don't let Todd forget.
Ben fell in love with Cillian Boyd the day before they boarded the ship. It overtook him slowly and without fanfare. He was sitting on Cillian's threadbare couch helping him with the last minute packing when he realized that he wanted nothing more than to lick Cillian's gorgeous mouth. The attraction had always been there. He remembered how hot Cillian had been when they first met. But the attraction had taken a backseat as they became friends, as Ben got to know who Cillian really was. Now it was back, and Ben didn't so much want to jump this anonymous hot guy with the amazing mouth as much as he wanted to jump Cillian Boyd, who was irascible and annoying and way too opinionated.
So Ben gathered his courage. When Cillian bent down to tape a box shut, Ben grabbed him and pressed their mouths together. He felt Cillian's huff of surprise, and then Cillian's eyelashes lowered and he was kissing Ben back, pushing him deeper into the couch with a brief remark about what had taken him so fucking long, didn't he know Cillian had been going crazy trying to reading his mixed signals?
"You're already crazy," Ben had said, and then he got to work unzipping Cillian out of his jeans.
It was the day before they were to leave. Ben felt a twinge of regret that they would only have this one day before they had to board the ship and sleep for countless years. But the loss of time made him all the more eager. Cillian too, judging by his reaction. They had sex once, and then they did it again, knocking over Cillian's carefully stacked boxes until Ben was laughing and Cillian was only pretending to scowl as he pumped in and out of Ben's body, moist with sweat.
When they got on the ship, they chose pods beside each other. As Ben waited for the injection that would make him sleep, he looked over at Cillian, who had a bite right on his neck, and said, "You'll be around when I wake up, right?"
"Obviously," said Cillian. "Where would I go?"
"Lots of places," Ben said. "But don't, okay?"
Cillian rolled his eyes. "Yes, darling, I will wait for you on the other side," he said sarcastically.
"Great," said Ben and beamed.
The rain breaks over the heat. The clouds gather and the temperature falls. The ground and the crops darken with the weight of the water.
No more waiting.