Pawn’s Gambit Read online

  “I’m back here,” a voice called faintly.

  I started, and after a second I went outside and made my way to the rear of the cabin. Sleeves rolled up, Heather was standing by the hand pump that brought water from the nearby stream and sent it into the storage tank on the roof. She smiled in the direction of my footsteps, her face glistening with sweat. “Hi,” she said. “I was just taking a break. How was the hunting?”

  “Fair; we’ve got squirrel for supper,” I told her, trying to keep my voice casual—hard to do when you’re feeling like a jerk. “Also brought some corn. Why aren’t you in bed?”

  She shrugged. “I’ve never liked being a professional freeloader. Besides, you forgot to pump any water last night.”

  I hadn’t forgotten—I’d just been too lazy—but I hadn’t expected her to notice. The tank usually held enough water for three or four days, though I tried to keep it full. “Well, thanks very much. I appreciate it.”

  “No charge. You said you had some corn? Where did you get that?”

  I started to point north, remembered in time the gesture would be wasted. “About a mile upstream there’s a hollow right behind a small waterfall. The creek comes from underground at that point and stays pretty cold even in the summer. I use the hollow as my refrigerator. In winter, of course, it’s more like a freezer.”

  “That’s a good idea,” Heather nodded, “although it’s kind of far to go for a midnight snack. I’ll bet it’s fun keeping the animals out, too.”

  “It was, but I’ve pretty well got that problem solved.” I suddenly realized I was still holding the squirrel and corn. “Come on, let’s go inside. You look tired.”

  “Okay.” She seemed to hesitate just a second, then stepped up to me and took my arm, letting me lead her back into the cabin.

  Another surprise awaited me in the living room. Heather had neatly folded my blanket and laid it at one end of the couch; her satchel, some of its contents strewn around it, sat at the other end. In the middle lay a shirt I’d torn just that morning, neatly mended.

  “I’ll be darned,” I exclaimed in delight, unaware of the pun until after I’d said it. “How did you know that shirt needed sewing?”

  She shrugged. “I heard you getting dressed this morning, and right in the middle of it I heard something tear. You muttered under your breath and threw whatever it was onto the couch. When I got up I found the shirt and used a needle and thread from my sewing kit to mend it. I hope the thread doesn’t look too bad there—I had no idea what colors I was working with.”

  I opened my mouth, but closed it again and instead reached for the shirt, my cheerful mood suddenly overshadowed by an uncomfortable feeling creeping up my backbone. Dimly, I remembered the sequence of events Heather had described, but it seemed too incredible that she should have pieced such subtle clues together that easily. Was it possible she wasn’t quite blind?

  There was a way to check. Still holding the shirt, I walked over to the window, loosening my belt with one hand until the big brass army buckle was free. The sun had come out from behind the clouds and light was streaming brightly through the glass. I turned slightly so that I was facing Heather and twisted my buckle, sending a healthy chuck of that sunlight straight at her eyes.

  Nothing. She didn’t flinch or even blink. Feeling a little silly, I let the loosened buckle flop back down against my leg and held up the shirt for a close examination, trying to pretend that that had been my reason for moving into the light in the first place. The seam was strong and reasonably straight, though the material bunched a little in places and the white thread was in sharp contrast with the brown plaid. “It looks fine,” I told Heather. “Its exactly what I needed. Thank you for doing it for me.”

  Her face, which had been looking a little apprehensive, broke into a tentative smile. “I’m glad it’s all right,” she said, and I wondered that I had ever doubted her handicap. Only a blind woman could ever face me and still smile like that. And even though I knew how undeserved that smile was, I rather liked it.

  I cleared my throat. “I guess I’d better go skin the squirrel and start cooking it.”

  “Okay. First, though, come on back and show me how to tell when the water tank’s full. I want to finish that pumping before dinner.”

  It was pretty clear that Heather was completely healed from whatever she had caught, but I decided to keep her at the cabin for a few more days anyway. My official reason was that it would be best to keep her under observation for a bit longer, but this was at least eighty percent rationalization, if not outright lie: the simple fact was that I found her very nice to have around. I had never before had the chance to find out how much easier primitive life could be with an extra pair of hands to help with the work. Despite her blindness, Heather pitched in with skill and determination, and if I somehow failed to give her enough to do she would seek out work on her own. One morning, for example, as I was weeding the garden, she came to me with a pile of dirty clothes and insisted that I lead her down to the stream and find a place where she could wash them.

  But most of all, I enjoyed just being able to relax in the company of another human being. That sounds almost trite, I suppose, but it was something I hadn’t been able to do for five years. And, while I’d buried my need for companionship as deeply as I could, I hadn’t killed it, a fact my infrequent trips to Hemlock usually only emphasized. The people of that tiny community were helpful enough—their assistance and willingness to teach me the necessary backwoods survival skills had probably saved my life the first year after the war—but I couldn’t relax in their presence, any more than they could in mine. My face was a barrier as strong as the Berlin Wall.

  But with Heather the problem didn’t exist. We talked a great deal together, usually as we worked, our conversation ranging from trivia to philosophy to the practical details of postwar life. Heather’s knowledge of music, literature, and household tasks was far superior to mine, while I held an edge in politics, hunting, and trapping. Her sense of humor, while a little dry, meshed well with mine, and a lot of our moral values were similar. Under different circumstances I would have been happy to keep her here just as long as I possibly could. But I knew that wouldn’t be fair to her.

  My conscience finally caught up with me late one evening after dinner as we sat together on the couch. Heather was continuing her assault on the pile of mending I’d accumulated over the years; I was trying to carve a new ax handle. My heart wasn’t really in it, though, and my thoughts and gaze kept drifting to Heather. Her sewing skill had increased since that first shirt she’d mended for me; her fingers moved swiftly, surely, and the seam was straight and clean. Bathed in the soft light of a nearby candle, the warmth of which she enjoyed, she was a pleasure to watch. I wondered how I was going to broach the subject.

  She gave me the opening herself. “You’re very quiet tonight, Neil,” she said after a particularly long lull in the conversation. “What are you thinking about?”

  I gritted my teeth and plunged in. “I’ve been thinking it’s about time to take you to Hemlock, introduce you around, and see if we can get you a job or something with one of the families there.”

  The nimble fingers faltered for a moment. “I see,” she said at last. “Are you sure I’m not contagious anymore? I wouldn’t want to get anyone sick.”

  “No, I’m certain you’re completely recovered. I’m not even sure you had a deadly bug, anyway.”

  “Okay. But I wonder if it might be better if I stick around for another week or two, until the garden’s going a little better and you don’t have to spend so much time on it.”

  I frowned. This was going all wrong—she was supposed to be jumping at the chance to get back to humanity again, not making excuses to stay here. “Thanks for the offer, but I can manage. You’ve been a lot of help, though, and I wish I could repay you more ­than . . .” I let the sentence trail off. Heather’s face
and body had gone rigid, and she was no longer sewing. “What’s the matter? Would you rather go somewhere else instead of Hemlock? I’ll help you get to anywhere you want.”

  Heather shook her head and sighed. “No, its not that. I just … don’t want to leave you.”

  I stared at her, feeling sandbagged. “Why?”

  “I like being here. I like working with you. You don’t—you don’t care that I’m blind. You accept me as a person.”

  There was a whole truckload of irony in there somewhere but I couldn’t be bothered with it at the moment. “Listen, Heather, don’t get the idea I’m all noble or anything, because I’m not. If you knew more about me you’d realize that.”

  “Perhaps.” Her tone said she didn’t believe it.

  There was no way out of it. Up till now I’d been pretty successful at keeping my appearance a secret from her, but I couldn’t hide the truth any longer. I would have to tell her about my face. “If you weren’t blind, Heather, you wouldn’t have wanted to stay here ten minutes. I’m … my face is pretty badly disfigured.”

  She nodded casual acceptance of the information. Maybe she didn’t believe it, either. “How did it happen?”

  “I was a captain in the army during the Iranian segment of the Last War; you know, the Soviet drive toward the oil fields. They were using lots of elaborate nerve gases on us, and one of them found its way into the left side of my gas mask.” I kept my voice even; I was just reciting facts. “None of it got into the nosepiece or respirator, so it didn’t kill me, but it left one side of my face paralyzed. I won’t trouble you with any details, but the net effect is pretty hideous.”

  “I thought something must have happened to you in the war,” she murmured. “You never speak of your life during that time. … Is that why you were here when the missiles came?”

  “Yes. I was in a hospital in Atlanta, undergoing tests to see if my condition could be reversed. They hadn’t made any progress when I saw the handwriting on the wall and decided it was time to pull out. A friend of mine had told me about his cabin in the Appalachians, so I loaded some supplies in a Jeep and came here. I beat the missiles by about three hours.”

  “Oh, so this place wasn’t originally yours. And I’d been thinking all along how terribly clever and foresighted you’d been to have built a cabin out here in case the world blew itself up.”

  “Sorry. Major Frank Matheson was the one with all the foresight. He was also one of the best friends I ever had.” That sounded too much like an epitaph for my taste; I was still hoping he’d show up here someday. But he and his wife had been in Washington when the missiles started falling. … I shook my head to clear it. “Anyway, we’re getting off the subject. The point is that I’m taking advantage of you by keeping you here. I think you’d be better off living in a community with other people.”

  “Yes, I suppose you would think that.” Heather’s lip curled, and for the first time since I’d met her I heard bitterness in her voice. “You probably think it’s been beer and skittles for me. Well, it hasn’t.” She glowered at some unknown memory; but even as I groped for something to say, her anger turned to sadness, and when she spoke again her voice was quiet. “I went blind almost a year before the war; two weeks after my eighteenth birthday. I had a small brain tumor in the back of my head and was taking an experimental interferon derivative. Somehow, something went wrong with the batch they were giving me, and at about the same time I caught some kind of viral infection. The combination nearly killed me—they told me afterwards that I had delirium, high fever, and an absolutely crazy EEG trace for nearly forty hours. When I recovered, the tumor was shrinking and I was blind. That first morning, when I woke up … I thought I was either dead or insane.” Her eyes closed, and she shivered violently. After a moment she continued. “People hate me, Neil. Either hate me or are afraid of me, especially now that civilization’s becoming a thing of the past.”

  “Why would people hate you?” I asked. “I mean, that’s a pretty drastic reaction.”

  She hesitated, and a series of unreadable expressions flashed across her face. The moment passed, and she shrugged. “I guess its because I’m blind. It makes me an oddball and—well, something of a parasite.”

  I snorted. “You’re no parasite.”

  “You’re very kind, Neil. But I know better.”

  I shook my head, thinking of all the work she did around here. To me it was perfectly obvious that she was pulling her own weight, if not a little more. I wondered why she couldn’t see that; and, in response, a fragment from a half-forgotten poem swam up from my subconscious. “‘O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us / To see oursels as others see us . . .’” I murmured, trailing off as the rest of the piece drifted from my grasp.

  Surprisingly, Heather picked up where I’d left off: “‘It wad frae mony a blunder free us.

  “‘And foolish notion:

  “‘What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us,

  “‘And ev’n devotion!’”

  She paused for a moment, as if listening to the last echoes from her words. “I’ve always liked Robert Burns,” she said quietly.

  “That’s the only thing of his I know,” I confessed. “My father used to quote it at us whenever our views of life were at odds with his. Despite your own estimation, Heather, the fact is that you’re a very talented and hardworking woman and no one in his right mind is going to care whether you’re blind or not. People won’t think any less of you because of that.”

  A wry smile touched her lips. “You’re not being consistent, Neil dear. That’s exactly what you seem to think people are doing to you. If they can judge you by your face, why can’t they judge me by my blindness?”

  She had me there. I wanted to tell her that was different, but it was obvious she wouldn’t buy any explanation like that—her blindness made it impossible for her to realize just how strongly my appearance affected everyone who saw it. I tried to think up some other reasoning I could use … and suddenly it dawned on me what I was doing. Here I was, sitting next to a lovely woman who was very possibly the last person on Earth who could endure my company—and I was trying to send her away from me!

  Insanity has never run in my family, unless you count our military traditions. I’d tried being noble and honest, and my conscience was clear. If she wanted to think I was doing her a favor, that was up to her. “All right, Heather. If you’re really sure you want to stay, I’ll be more than happy to have you here. I have to admit that the thought of you leaving was pretty hard. But I had to—you know.”

  She reached over and touched my arm. “Yes. Thank you for being honest. And for letting me stay.”

  “Sure. Look, it’s getting late, and we’ve got to get up by dawn. Let’s get some rest.”

  “Okay.” She paused. “Neil, were you ever married?”

  I blinked at the abrupt change of subject. “Once, for a couple of years, when I was twenty-one. It ended in divorce. Why?”

  She turned her head half away from me as if she didn’t want me to see her face. “I was just wondering why you were still … sleeping on the couch instead of … with me.”

  The evening was rapidly taking on a feeling of unreality for me. I hadn’t felt this strangely nervous since my first date in high school, and I opened my mouth twice before I got any words to come out. “I didn’t want to impose on you.” Damn, that sounded stupid! I tried again. “I mean, it wouldn’t be fair for me to take advantage of you like that. You might just do it because you felt you owed it to me. I don’t want it that way. I figured that if you ever wanted me like that you’d let me know somehow.”

  She nodded, her face still averted, and swallowed. “Neil … will you come to bed with me?”

  I looked at her, my eyes sweeping her body, and for the first time I noticed that her hands were trembling. And suddenly I realized that she was not just offering an altruistic favor t
o a lonely hermit. In many ways Heather was an outcast, too, and she needed this as much as I did.

  Never having been the romantic type, I didn’t know the right words to say. So, instead, I blew out the candles, took Heather by the arm, and led her to the bedroom.

  Afterwards she fell asleep next to me, one arm across my chest with her hand resting against my good right cheek. I watched the moonlight throwing shadows on the bedroom wall for a few minutes longer before drifting off myself, and I slept more restfully that night than I had in months.

  The weeks went by, spring turning into summer with astonishing speed. Heather continued to take on a good deal of the day-to-day work of running our cabin, leaving me free to hunt, trap, and carry out repairs and maintenance that I’d been putting off for lack of time. We had our share of disagreements and misunderstandings, but as we got to know each other’s moods and thoughts we began to mesh together, to the point where it sometimes seemed to me that we were becoming two parts of a single, well-oiled machine. Within the first four months I felt I knew this woman better than I’d known anyone else in my entire life. And, although I refused to use the word even to myself, I was quickly learning to love her.

  And yet, there was something about Heather that bothered me, something so subtle that it was a long time before I could even put my finger on it. It wasn’t anything big, and it didn’t happen with any regularity, but sometimes Heather just seemed to know too much about what was going on around her.

  I brooded about it off and on for several weeks, trying to remember everything Heather had ever said about her blindness. From her explanation I assumed her eyes and optic nerves were still healthy, that only the sight center of her brain had been affected, and for a while I wondered if her blindness was either incomplete or possibly intermittent. But neither explanation was satisfactory: if she was blind enough that she couldn’t make out my face, she was too blind for any practical purpose; and if she occasionally regained her vision, her first reaction to my appearance would have been impossible for me to miss. Besides, there was no reason why she would keep such a thing secret, especially since she was so open about every other aspect of her life.