by Deb Caletti
He doesn’t look it. Forget she thought that.
“Well, your sweatshirt must weigh two pounds. And . . . cargo shorts? All those pockets. Pound and a half. Boots! Hiking boots. Might as well wear two toddlers on your feet.”
“So, sleek as a seal, like . . .” He nods toward her own clothes.
“These are not my fault.”
“Mine either. I’m not exactly the silky-basketball-shorts type. They were a Christmas present from my father, who played forward for his college team.”
“If he also gave you a jersey with his old number on it, I can see why you’re out here with your grandma.”
“That was for my birthday,” he laughs. He doesn’t say more, and she respects that. She’s glad of it, too. She doesn’t want to hear the whole history of him. Wanting to hear the whole history of a person, wanting to know their story, lured by the mystery of what you don’t yet know—it’s gotten her into plenty of trouble.
Stop!
Why’d you guys move from Burlington? It sounds so nice, she asked The Taker.
My dad got a research job here, at the university. I was glad we moved. I hated my old school.
Why?
Private school. Lots of rich kids who lived on the lake. Acted like they were hot shit. My mom wanted us to get out of there. She thought I was friends with a bad crowd ’cause this kid I know robbed an old guy.
“Are you okay?” Luke Messenger asks.
“Sure.”
“Mim suggested I come and check on you. I don’t know. She was worried you’d run off or something. Hey, I wouldn’t have wanted to be out in that storm today.”
“It was crazy. Um, I don’t want to be rude, but I’ve got to run back. You know, the whole way.”
“No problem.”
“You can walk, maybe?”
“Hell no. I got my second wind.”
He jogs backward.
She can’t help herself. She laughs. He looks so funny, with his wild hair bouncing. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going the whole way like this.”
“You’re going backward the whole way. Why?”
“I’m standing by.”
• • •
Annabelle paces outside, along the edge of the reservoir. At least, she thinks the reservoir is out there. In the dark, the lake is black plus black. She hears the ripple of water, a gentle shush against the shore.
“Relax,” Grandpa Ed says. “It’s not like I stuck you with the Manson family.”
“They’re in there.” She eyes the camper.
“Of course they’re in there. Relax. You’re cutting out.” Annabelle swears he makes the fake crackling of bad phone service. Then he’s gone.
“Cutting out, my cu. Agnelli Curse,” she says to the dead air of the phone.
When her phone buzzes right in her hand, she thinks she misjudged him and he’s calling her back. But, no, it’s Malcolm. She’s so happy. The connection has been so bad since Idaho that she’s only been able to have two-second conversations, if that, with Malc, Mom, and her “team.” But, hey, she’ll take two seconds. Malc on the phone now—it’s like seeing her fellow astronaut when she was sure she was lost in space.
“Butthead!”
“We heard about the tire. Bummer,” he says. At least, that’s what she pieces together. It sounds like: eard tire ummer.
“Malc, it sucks. Get me outta here.”
“He’ll be back tomorrow. You’ll be running down Highway Twelve, and Grandpa will be parked at Martinsdale Colony.”
“Martinsdale Colony? I’m picturing sci-fi pods of extraterrestrials.”
“It’s a sect of Hutterites. Super awesome. Similar to the Amish, but they embrace technology,” Malcolm says. Or something like that. His voice cuts out at every third word. “They were happy for you to park there. No problem. And they run the state’s biggest wind farm, which is über-cool.”
Gina is shouting something in the background.
“What’d she just say, Malc? I swore I heard ‘YouTube sensation.’ ”
“Um, she said you two are sensational ! You and Grandpa Ed.”
“Tell her I love her, too. I really miss—”
“Gotta go. You’re cutting out.”
Maybe she’s losing her mind, but she swears he makes a fake crackle, same as Grandpa Ed. All of these long, lonely runs are making her paranoid.
• • •
It’d be bad enough to be stuck with strangers in a large house, let alone in this ten-by-thirty-foot box. They will ask her questions. The tragedy will sit all around. It will lie heavy in the air. They will wonder how it felt, and what’s it’s like to have Seth Greggory in her future.
“Could you get ahold of him?” Dawn Celeste asks.
Inside, the windows are hazy with steam, and there is the warm, tomatoey smell of chili. Luke Messenger pulls a pan of corn bread from the oven.
“Yep. He’s still in Helena.”
“Smell,” Luke says. He waves the pan under her nose.
“Yum. Did you make that?”
“Me and Jiffy and a half cup of water.”
After dinner, they play cards. Dawn Celeste claims to be the gin rummy champ of the century. There’s the quiet snap of cards as Luke deals. There are loud groans of losing, the cheer of a win. Luke pounds the table after two victories in a row. No one asks her anything. She doesn’t ask much, either. They’re just . . . having fun.
“The only one who ever beat me three for three was Sammy Jackson,” Dawn Celeste says. “There was gloating.”
“He sounds like a sore winner,” Annabelle says.
“She. Luke’s friend,” Dawn Celeste clarifies. Annabelle is sure she hears the emphasis that means girlfriend. She relaxes even more, even though Luke’s eyes are really blue, and he wears one of those woven leather bracelets she always likes.
“Two out of two, that means you serve dessert,” Dawn Celeste tells Luke.
“She makes up the rules as she goes,” Luke tells Annabelle.
“We’ll have to see where Annabelle stands.” Dawn Celeste sits back and folds her arms over her chest. She’s changed into a caftan but wears a pair of fuzzy socks on her feet.
“It will be the true test of character.” Luke fishes in the cupboard. He plops the packages down on the Formica table. “Red Vines or Twizzlers?”
Annabelle grimaces. “Oh no. I sense this is a dangerous question.”
“Yeah, just whose side you’re on, is all.”
“Red Vines are insubstantial.” Dawn Celeste bites the head off of a Twizzler.
“Twizzlers are the Taco Bell of candy.” Luke smells a Red Vine like it’s a fine cigar.
“I’m Switzerland,” Annabelle says.
• • •
She is aware of their sleep sounds: a rustle of sheets, the sleeping bag Luke prefers, unzipping to let the cool air in. Annabelle is wide-awake. She needs her sleep for the run to Martinsdale Colony tomorrow, and this day has felt like a month of days. But she just lies there with her eyes open, listening to the almost-silence. Strangely, though, her body is still, and her mind is quiet. She can hear the calm lap of the reservoir waves against the shore.
Anxiety is like being in freeway traffic all the time. There’s the constant sense of dodging and darting, seeking your chance to cut in, the irritation of others pulling ahead of you. You hit the accelerator; slam the brakes. You scout and scan for danger. Here, though, there is no traffic and no freeway. There is gentle company and books on shelves. There is quiet. There’s fun. Dawn Celeste has a laugh that sounds like a pot bubbling over. Everyone gets to do as they wish.
How weird, she thinks, that there are people who maybe don’t feel this thing, this endless buzz of nerves and fear and responsibility and control. It is so relaxing without it. It is restful. Maybe she could make any choice and it would be okay. Maybe she could quit her big job of being responsible for everyone else’s feelings. Dr. Mann has suggested this before, but it sounded
like a crazy, unreachable goal.
She closes her eyes now. Just for a second, she imagines it—letting go. Handing the heavy stuff back to the people it belongs to. When she does, she gets the most peaceful feeling, as if there’s a cool and reassuring hand on her forehead. She is safe and okay and the storm is out there somewhere, but not here.
19
1. The human heart shuttles blood through sixty thousand miles of blood vessels.
2. In one day, the blood travels a total of twelve thousand miles.
3. Every day, the heart creates enough energy to drive twenty miles. In a lifetime, that is enough energy to fly to the moon and back.
4. Running 2,700 miles cannot repair hearts that have been destroyed.
“What are you trying to remember?” Luke Messenger asks.
He’s up early with her. Dawn Celeste’s method for washing and quick-drying clothes—pressing them between two towels, and stomping on them like wine grapes—worked amazingly, and so now Annabelle’s back in her crops and her mesh tank, and Luke is giving the silky basketball shorts a try. He’s trying to run alongside her on the dry, desolate Highway 12. He’ll definitely slow down her progress, and there is no way he’ll make the entire sixteen miles. But in Dawn Celeste’s country, everyone gets do what they want to do, and that means he can run and Annabelle can ditch him when she needs to.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re holding your hand like this.” He demonstrates. He forms his fingers into the number four. “Sometimes I do that if I have to remember what to get at the store.”
Caught. “You do that, too?” She laughs. “I was trying to remember some things I read that I didn’t have time to save or write down.”
“What things?”
“It’s going to sound stupid.”
“No it won’t.”
“Just some facts about the heart.”
“Like the heart-and-soul heart, or the organ in your body?”
“Kind of both? It’s just . . . in there, and we never think about it. But when you do, you realize how important it is. It’s terrifying, you know, how much we count on this fist-size muscle.”
She doesn’t know why she’s blurting out this stuff. Probably, it’s because her runs are usually so lonely. On regular days, the only voices are hers and Loretta’s.
“Yeah,” he says. “That’s cool.” He means it, she can tell. He looks like he might want to say more but can’t. The road is flat, but he’s laboring as if he’s going uphill. He looks funny in those basketball shorts, honestly—the most unlikely point guard ever.
“I don’t know. I’m thinking it might be something I should study, if I get the chance.”
“Urph,” he says.
“Are you okay?”
His face is kind of purple. He clutches his own heart now. He stops. He’s breathing hard. “I’m dying,” he squeaks. “I don’t know how you do this. My chest is burning. I’ve got cramps in every cramp-able place in my body.”
“Your voice sounds like a mini horse if a mini horse could talk.”
“Oh, burn.”
“Come on, race you!”
“Cruel. You’re cruel.” He’s getting farther and farther behind.
“Hey, you went a half mile,” she says over her shoulder.
He’s bent over. He waves his hand, indicating that she should go on without him. His John Muir National Parks T-shirt looks well-meaning but defeated.
Annabelle feels bad, leaving him back there. But she’s still in Dawn Celeste’s country, where everyone gets to do his or her own thing.
What would happen if she set it all down, not just the little guilts and responsibilities, but the biggest one? She thinks of Dr. Mann asking that question. Dr. Mann’s hands are folded in her lap, and she quietly waits for a response, the tranquil painting of the mountains behind her seemingly waiting, too. If you set down the guilt, what else might you feel?
As Annabelle runs Highway 12, alongside miles of ranch fencing, and the occasional cattle barn and farmhouse, she tries to envision it.
She sets down the fact that this has all been her fault. She tells herself this instead: It is The Taker’s fault and only The Taker’s.
It’s like trying to imagine any falsehood: that the sun revolves around the earth; that humans can fly; that the world is nonviolent. Still—go with it. Let it go, and what is there instead?
Sorrow. Enormous, crushing sorrow.
And something else. What is it? Go closer, and look at it, she tells herself.
Oh my God: fury. Uncontrollable, explosive rage.
Jesus.
She doesn’t know if she’s strong enough for all of that. Her guilt and shame are almost a familiar comfort, compared to the depth of that sorrow and the breadth of that anger. The shame is a horrible acid ball in her heart. But that sorrow and that rage might incinerate her, same as that storm yesterday, with its lightning bolts speeding through this flat land, looking for the one thing still standing.
• • •
She can tell she’s getting close, because she sees a row of windmills in the distance, their white arms spinning with quiet industry. Wow, there are a lot of them. She tries to count. Eighteen, twenty? Now, she spots the sign: WHEATLAND COUNTY.
She doesn’t know if she’ll even meet the Hutterites while parked in the far corner of their land. She’d be curious and a little nervous to do so. As she turns down the road to the colony, though, they aren’t who she sees first, and neither is Grandpa Ed. Today, it’s Dawn Celeste with the bottle of water. Her sundress is a fireworks show of color.
“Ed will be here in a couple hours. He decided to get some filters changed while he was there. Luke’s inside, and so is lunch. We’ve already had a tour of the place. I’m sure Luke would love to show you around. It’s amazing, the communal sharing. But the sexist religious stuff . . . Not a fan, Annabelle, not a fan. Male managed. The women walk behind the men. ‘Working for each other is the highest command of love.’ Working for each other, or for him, Mr. King Big Man walking ahead? Equality and respect are the highest command of love. But it is a work of art out there.”
Dawn Celeste is right, Annabelle realizes. Now that she really looks, now that the land is not simply her day’s chore to cross, the fields roll and stretch below the large sky. It’s the most unimaginably beautiful painting. Far off, she can see the Hutterites’ long barns, and rows of apartments that look like portables.
“I get a little heated,” Dawn Celeste says. “I was a proud bra burner and equal rights marcher back in the day, and I still am. I can’t believe we’re even talking about stuff like this in this day and age. But, you! You must be exhausted! You don’t even look it. You look like you jogged down a driveway.”
Annabelle chugs from the water bottle gratefully. “I feel good. Some days are better than others. I think my bladder may be leaking, though. The one for my water supply? Everything’s damp in my pack, and I ran out before I was halfway.”
“Hey, I know all about a leaking bladder,” Dawn Celeste says. “Especially when I laugh hard.”
Annabelle laughs now, too.
“No worries. We’ve got some duct tape that’ll fix it right up.”
Inside the camper, Luke is stretched out on his bunk, reading. He holds up his book. “You killed me. I can’t move. Mim made you some lunch. It’s in the fridge.”
“What’re you reading?”
“Endurance, by Alfred Lansing. It’s about Ernest Shackleton, the explorer. He’s kind of doing what you’re doing, but in Antarctica. And with a team of lost crew members and sled dogs. Don’t ask about the sled dogs.” He pretend-shudders.
“Oh no. Sled dog burgers?”
“Exactly. I’m almost done. Last pages.”
“I shouldn’t interrupt, then.”
“Hey! You know rule number one. You must be a reader.”
“I thought rule number one is ‘Don’t tell the ending.’ ”
“Wait. Rule number one: Hate th
e movie version.”
“Probably, all our rules are rule number one. We can get a little hard-core.”
“Always judge a person by their shelves. To fold or not to fold the pages.”
She laughs. “Definitely.”
“I have this friend, Skylar, and he’s always all, ‘Who reads, dude?’ And I’m like, ‘I feel sad for you, man.’ ”
“Oh, I know.”
“Hey, you’ve got to see this place. Martinsdale Colony is its own universe. I met Ken, one of the preachers. He said to come over when you were ready and he’d give another tour.”
“Great.”
He waves his book. “I’ve got to see if they survive.”
• • •
“I have never seen so many turkeys in my life,” Annabelle says.
“Well, there are three thousand of them. We sell them to the whole valley. Ray’s our turkey man, and his son, Charles, is our turkey boy. Chicken eggs, they go to three Walmarts in Billings and Laurel.”
The colonists speak German with each other, and Preacher Ken has a German accent—well and we sound like vell and ve ; the and they are ze and zey. The turkeys—well, they sound like three thousand Grandpa Eds gargling Listerine. God, they’re ugly, with their plump white bodies and red heads and drooping wattles, which resemble inflamed scrotums, if she’s being honest. Not that she’s ever seen an inflamed scrotum, but still.
Preacher Ken shows them the chicken house, egg sorters, milking machines, grain silos, and communal kitchen. It’s basically a huge working farm. The women wear boxy blue dresses and polka-dot kerchiefs covering their hair, and the men wear jeans and plaid shirts and cowboy hats. She spots the blue of the women’s dresses and kerchiefs in the crop rows of the eleven-acre vegetable garden.
What appeals to Annabelle most is the calm order of the place, the sense that the crazy world is out there, but it isn’t coming in. The colony is hidden. It’s away. “If it wasn’t for the ‘church every day and twice on Sundays’ thing . . . ,” Annabelle says to Luke as they walk back down the gravel road where Dawn Celeste’s camper is.
“Yeah. It’s cool out here, but that’d be a bummer.”