Photo of the Moment
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Fleeing Sanctuary |
2 of 10 |
Okay, the tape says. This was recorded on October fifteenth, nineteen eighty-one. Yesterday, Sandy knows. The first, uh, first thing you have to do is set your watch alarm up thirty minutes so you remember to listen again.
He follows the instructions, steadying the wheel with his elbows as he sets his wristwatch to beep at 5:30 AM.
You have to keep listening because you're outside of Sanctuary. Everything outside of Sanctuary forgets everything inside, forever. You should have some time before it hits you, but who knows how much, so hurry up.
A piano clangs in his ear. It's Fur Elise. Bobby played it for him last night on Sanctuary's only piano, an old upright in the commons. Underneath the music, the piano's levers and hammers creak. No one in Sanctuary knows how to maintain it, least of all Sandy. Kath was the musical one in Sandy's family. She led the choir three nights a week and had a wall full of LP's. Her last birthday gift from him had been an expensive German turntable. She'd been thrilled.
The playing stops. Can I go now? Bobby asks. Hearing his son's voice, Sandy glances at the shiny Polaroid that's taped to the dashboard. It's a pre-Sanctuary shot of Bobby, one that Kath snapped for her sister, for Bobby's overseas auntie. He's posed on the cement steps of their old house. Bobby's grown a lot in the two years since the photo was taken, but his features are exactly the same; he's slender, fair-skinned and ash-blonde, a little-boy version of Kath. Aside from his brown eyes, Bobby got very little from his dad.
Don't worry about Bobby. He's safe, he's with Frank Gibbs. Frank is a good guy...he played pro football until he missed a big field goal and got run out of Philadelphia. Bobby's football almanac has never heard of him, by the way.
Then, a pause.
You have to get Bobby out of Sanctuary and find something on the outside for him. It's not fair when an eight-year-old kid can teach himself the piano and then not have anyone to play for.
Kath would have been so thrilled to hear Bobby play. She would've bought him lessons, gone to recitals, sent him to Juilliard....
You have to check if Witherspoon still remembers you. Then you have to go to Bev's place. His voice cracks up a bit. And—and get Kath's ashes.
The tape matches up exactly with what Sandy remembers of his plan. His brain does not appear to have been addled by the passage over Sanctuary's threshold, which is kind of a pity, because part of him is tempted to just forget about the plan and drive away into whatever fuzzy world Taylor will make for him.
But he knows he can't do that, not if he wants to get Bobby out of Sanctuary. In fact, yesterday he'd asked Taylor to take it easy on him, in a kind of joking-but-serious tone, but Taylor just shook his head. It wasn't that he couldn't do it, Sandy figured; if the grocery trucks that rolled in every week were any indication, Taylor had pretty fine control over what outsiders knew about Sanctuary. But he wouldn't make exceptions for tenants. He had his rules, and he stuck to them. He knew exactly how much effort he'd expend on your behalf, and if you were more trouble than that—if you went back out into the world and made too many wave—then he'd dump you like a crippled baby bird. He said as much when he invited Sandy to Sanctuary. You can leave anytime, but no one gets special treatment. No one. Out here, Sandy's on his own.
By 5:40—just after his second tape-listen finishes—Sandy clears the gravel road and turns onto the highway. His first stop is Sharkey's Seafood, about two hundred and twenty miles away. He locks his cruise control just slightly over the 50 mph speed limit and settles in for the ride.
Once the monotony of the road sets in, Sandy has a yawning attack. He didn't sleep very well last night. His head was too full of scenarios, like what if his station wagon breaks down or what if he gets pulled over for expired tabs and the troopers call in his name and find he's disappeared? What if Witherspoon—a man whose mind was akin to a scrapyard electromagnet—has resisted Taylor's wipe job?
Then this thing will be a whole lot simpler, he answers himself.
The miles roll by.