He flung it epically against an arch, and the outline is still there today.
* * *
—
While Clay and Michael Dunbar stood, in the field by Achilles and the river, he watched and spoke across to him.
“Dad?”
The insects were mostly silent.
There were always these bloodied sunsets here, and this was the first for Achilles. The mule, of course, ignored it, though, and went on with what he was born for; this field was made for the eating.
But Michael stepped closer and waited.
He wasn’t sure how to approach Clay just yet, for the boy had seen so much—and then came something strange:
“Remember you asked if I knew it? The legend of Pont du Gard?”
Michael was caught, midanswer.
“Of course, but—”
“Well, I wouldn’t.”
“You wouldn’t—what?”
Achilles was listening, too, now; he’d looked up from the grass.
“I wouldn’t make a deal—for the bridge to be built in a night.”
It was dark by then, well dark, and Clay kept talking on.
“But I would make a trade for them.” He gritted his lips, then opened them. “I’d go to hell just to make them live again—and we could both go, you could go with me—one of us for one of them. I know they’re not in hell, I know, I know, but—” He stopped and bent, then called again. “Dad, you have to help me.” The darkness had cut him in half. He would die to bring them back again. Penelope, he thought, and Carey. At the very least, he owed them this.
“We have to make it perfect,” he said. “We have to make it great.”
He’d turned and faced the riverbed.
A miracle and nothing less.
Somehow she stitched the days together.
She made them into weeks.
At times we could only wonder:
Had she made a deal with death?
If so, it was the con of the century—it was death that wouldn’t stick.
The best was when a year was gone.
The months hit lucky thirteen.
* * *
—