by Eisele, Kimi
“In Vietnam,” he said, “there wasn’t any time for the past. I met so many guys who were tarnished by their losses, haunted by whatever it was they’d left back home. But there wasn’t any room for that over there. You had to pay attention to whatever was right there in front of you. You couldn’t let loss get in the way. You just had to be right there, in the middle of all that horror. That’s what it took to survive.” Felix lifted his head. “That’s what it takes to survive anything.”
Carson let the words sink in. What had he chosen? The safe thing? Until recently, maybe so. But now?
As she walked, Rosie kept her eyes focused on the divots in the mud. Dazed and unsure of herself, she took small steps. Above, clouds blanketed the afternoon in gray gloom. If she let her focus wander, she saw piles of feathers, severed wings, tiny bones—small heaps of birds.
She came to the lone tree on the ridge that Jesús had pointed out when they’d arrived at the Center. “A climbing tree,” he’d said. She grabbed on to a low branch and pressed her cheek into the bark. She remembered the day they’d stood looking down at the Center, how soft her abuela had seemed, how calm. Abuela, she tried to say now, but no sound came out.
She climbed up the tree and looked down into the village—the prayer tent, the kitchen tents, the quarters, the tall white cross, the river snaking its way through the Center. She sat on the limb, holding in a scream.
When everything grew quiet inside her, she climbed down and walked away from the Center, along the dirt road they had driven before arriving. She was grateful for the wool skirt and the down jacket. The midday sun was unobstructed, but the cold stung against her cheeks, and her eyes blurred with tears. Abuela, she tried to say again. But there was nothing. Not even a whisper.
She walked for two or three hours. Passing the fields, she could see bodies that looked like elephants, large and stocky. She walked toward one and realized it was a hay bale. She moved deeper into the field and made herself a cocoon of hay. The night was filled with stars, and one of them glinted red. There it is, Jesús, she tried to say, but still no sound came.
Felix and Carson got an early start. “We’re gonna risk it?” Felix said, pointing to the Sierras ahead of them.
Carson glanced at the containers in the back of the truck. “Are we low on fuel?”
“Good with fuel. I was thinking snow,” Felix said.
Carson looked out at the blue sky. “Not much up there yet, I don’t think,” he said. “And today’s as clear as a bell.”
Felix pushed down on the accelerator, and the truck surged forward. As they ascended into the mountains, everything crisped into high-definition—the jagged edges of the peaks, the needles of the pines. Carson felt more hopeful than he had in months.
They drove through a small mountain town where men and women congregated along the sidewalks and boys zigzagged along the streets on BMX bikes. “Look at that cheery train station,” Felix said, pointing to the left. “Same yellow as Daisy the truck.”
For some reason, the train station made Carson think of June. He felt a warmth in his chest, and he imagined her face, his hand cradling the back of her head.
Within a few miles, however, the warm softness became a cramp in his abdomen. Then came a churning. “Felix, can you pull over?” The cramps intensified, and he darted behind the nearest tree to relieve his bowels.
Maybe the coyote had been a bad idea. He’d never heard of anyone eating coyote meat. Maybe being struck and flattened by a machine on the road somehow harmed the meat, released bad toxins.
Back at the truck, he found the driver’s-side door open, but no Felix.
“Over here,” Felix called out from the trees on the other side of the road. When he emerged, his hand was on his stomach and he wasn’t grinning. “Trick or treat?” he said.
“Trick,” Carson said.
They drove another ten minutes, then Felix stopped the truck again. “Can’t remember when I had it this bad,” he said.
Behind them, the flat desert of Nevada reached out like a memory. A cold wind picked up, and Carson shivered. He pulled out one of his water bottles. “Drink,” he said to Felix, who already looked dehydrated, the shape of his skull suddenly more evident behind his features.
Felix bent over and moaned. He stumbled to the back of the truck. “I need to rest for a few,” he said, crawling in and curling himself into a ball.
Carson felt his own face, the skin cool, slick with sweat. He turned to look back at the road they’d just traveled: not a soul in sight. Ahead, the trees blurred together into a wobbly mass of green. His intestines cramped again.
Felix shivered in the back of the truck, and Carson covered him with a sleeping bag. He, too, wanted to lie down, but they were vulnerable there in the middle of the road. He climbed into the driver’s seat, but as he started the truck, a wave of nausea came. He leaned out the window and dry-heaved. He drove slowly for several miles, following the road upward and higher into the mountains, until he came to a dirt road. He turned onto it and drove until the truck was just out of sight of the highway. Then he lay down on the seat, knees under his chin, and slept.
In the backyard on Halcyon, Flash arranged sticks and kindling in the fire circle. As soon as there was a flame, Beatrix held her hands over it to warm them.
“So we just surround them? And then what?” Dragon said. “The T-Rize kids aren’t exactly the best diplomats.”
“And they have weapons,” Frida said.
“We have weapons,” Gary said, patting the gun in his holster. He glanced at Beatrix, then stepped toward the fire and stood across from her.
“They’re kids,” she said.
“Kids are the future,” Dragon said. Beatrix couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not.
“These are scary kids,” Frida said. “They’ve attacked you and other PBB riders. And now they’ve taken over a valuable community resource, which also happens to be my home.”
Beatrix stared at the gun in Gary’s holster. “The T-Rize don’t have guns,” she said. Did they?
“It’s just a matter of time,” Gary said.
“So we’re just going to throw things off-kilter?” Beatrix said.
“Things are already off-kilter,” Frida said.
“It’s true,” Dragon said. “There is no more equal footing.”
Beatrix sat down on the picnic bench, feeling ill. This is what it had come to?
“Look, I’m not going to need to use this,” Gary said, putting his hand on his gun. “We just need to surround them and scare them.”
“Then capture them,” Frida said.
“With what?” Beatrix said. “A big net?”
Flash looked at Gary. “You got a stash of handcuffs or something?”
“Zip ties,” Gary said. “Poor man’s handcuffs!”
“There are, like, five thousand of them in the garden shed,” Flash said. “We can ask Rog and Finn for them.”
“And then what?” Beatrix asked.
“We rehabilitate them,” Flash said.
Beatrix smirked.
“We’ll get the radio parts, Beatrix. Isn’t that what you want?”
“Yes,” Beatrix said. And she also wanted to cry.
Rosie awoke to darkness, shivering with cold and an ache in her legs. As the sun peered over the horizon, she shook off the hay and started back to the road. Hungry, she pulled out the bottle and took one drop of her abuela’s elixir. She wished she’d brought the lip balm, too.
The sound of her sneakers on the pavement offered her a rhythm. She passed two old gas pumps (Gaso and Lina, as Jesús had named them), and inside her head she repeated the corrido they had made up about them, and about the nearby fallow fields the color of her brown eye, and about the cluster of twenty-one mailboxes with no houses nearby.
Rosie walked and walked and gave herself drops of Abuela’s tincture. The corrido inside kept playing as the road coursed through woods and then turned and sloped downward. She navigated hersel
f toward the lowering sun, westward.
Before sunset, she heard voices off the road. Following them, she came upon a group of Pilgrims resting in a patch of sun. She stood in the trees watching them, frozen but for the tears streaming down her face.
Eventually, someone noticed her and pointed. A man wearing a long oilcloth coat came to her. “Are you okay?” he asked her. “Are you alone?”
Rosie could barely move. He wrapped his jacket around her and carried her into the clearing. A woman in a red knit hat handed Rosie a bowl filled with something beige. “Chickpeas,” the woman said.
Rosie ate, her jaws moving convulsively, like a starving animal’s. The woman gave her a round flat disc, like a tortilla, but thicker, along with some kind of dried fruit leather, which was tough but sweet. The man who’d carried her set a jug of water down in front of her.
Rosie drank the water and studied the group. Eight altogether, including two young girls wearing matching sneakers. The girls stared at Rosie expectantly, as if waiting for her to open a book and start reading to them. Rosie watched them turn from little girls into little coyotes, then back into little girls. The adults packed up their belongings, then came to look at Rosie, too.
They were heading toward the Center. Had she been there? What was the road like ahead? Had she seen anyone along the way? How much farther? Rosie understood what they were saying, but she could not make a sound to answer them.
The two little girls were playing a game now, clapping their hands together and reciting a rhyme. One of the girls was missing her front teeth and her words came out with a lisp.
“Mith Mary Mack, Mack, Mack,
All drethed in black, black, black.”
Rosie tracked their movements, wanting desperately to join their game. She knew the words and the hand motions, though she hadn’t played that game in years.
Rosie closed her eyes and saw only the color blue.
“Tell us,” said the woman in the red hat, resting her hand on Rosie’s shoulder.
Rosie opened her mouth, and a note came. And then another. Attached to the notes were words, which formed slowly on Rosie’s tongue, then unfurled and flew out, one after the other, picking up speed until they became a running rhythm, curling and lifting. She sang of the long unpaved road, the round bales of hay, the climbing tree and the valley below, shining promises, the RiverNorth, God duties, fool’s gold and fool’s chocolate, the white sculptures and the white wingspan, the voice that never wavered, the deep roots and the digging, the birds and the blue sky. Oh, the birds below the blue that were not birds at all, but her abuela and her friend Jesús and all the others, all of them believers who had believed all the way to their toes, but because their toes were not talons and their arms were not wings and the wind was not right and their bones were not light but heavy, they could not rise.
When she finished singing, Rosie closed her mouth, bowed her head, and cried.
The little girls did not blink. The woman in the red hat cried, too. The man who’d given her water knocked his two fists together, his eyes wide and worried.
Rosie slipped her arms into the coat draped around her. It was too big and dragged along the ground, but it was warm and it would protect her from wind and rain. She picked up the water bottle and walked away from the clearing and away from the travelers toward the next verse of the song. The sound of her voice echoed behind her, but she herself did not look back.
Carson’s hand was numb from the cold and from the tight grip he had on the branch. If he let go, surely he would plummet to his death. He could no longer feel his body suspended below him. He tried to swallow, but his throat felt full of knives. Above, branches fanned open, dense with pine needles. Between the limbs, he could see a lacy shroud of stars. He tried to hold on, but he had nothing left. He closed his eyes and let go.
Nothing happened. He looked up again—same tree, same branches, same stars. Inching his hand down, he felt the cold, hard ground against his body. It was not a branch he’d been clinging to but a root. His mind flashed to the coyote, its limp body on the highway, the streaks of blood on its fur.
A voice spoke. “Everything you need is already right here.”
Carson could not see anyone, but he recognized the voice. Jonathan Blue.
“You would like to get up, wouldn’t you?”
Carson squinted into the darkness. “Where are you?”
“I am here to help you. From the darkness. All you have to do is listen. Listen and then you can ascend. Simply lift off the ground. You can muscle it, can’t you? Just stand up. We’ll take care of the rest.”
He was hallucinating. “Felix?” he whispered. “Please. I need water.”
“Everything you need is right here,” Blue said. “You must only get up.”
But Carson could not get up. He opened and closed his mouth, like a fish, gasping. “Felix?” he called out weakly. Then, out of desperation, “Blue?”
Silence.
“Hello?” Carson begged.
Fuck Jonathan Blue. What the hell was he doing here anyway? Hadn’t they ascended by now? Maybe they were floating above him. Carson imagined it, the skirts of all those women hanging in the sky like stiff silent bells.
Some time later, Carson began to crawl. He crawled over the roots and duff and dirt until he came to the road, where he collapsed, panting. “Felix?” he said, staggering to his feet.
In the back of the truck, Felix stirred.
“You okay?” Carson asked.
Felix groaned, and Carson fumbled around in his pack to find another water bottle. The water was so cold he could swallow only a small amount at a time.
“Felix, wake up. You gotta drink.”
“Take cover. Take cover here. They’re coming.”
“Who’s coming?”
“My mother said daisies were appropriate flowers. I picked so many daisies for that woman. See, here they all are.” Felix moved his hands across the sleeping bag, sifting.
Carson handed him the bottle. “Here, Felix. Please drink.” But Felix waved the bottle away.
“I quit drinking twenty years ago, you fool.”
“Water, my friend, water.” He closed the bottle and set it next to Felix. Then, using all the energy he had left, he pulled out his own sleeping bag and slept in the cab of the truck.
Carson woke damp with sweat. The bottle he’d left for Felix was empty. He searched for another bottle and found it also empty. “Shit,” he said. Now they were out of water, and he had no energy to walk or to start the truck and drive. All he could do right then was lie there in the sun. There was nothing left to think or say. He would simply lie there until he rose up into the sky with all the others. Goodbye, Felix. Goodbye, Carson.
After a while, he heard something—a twig snapping, leaves rustling.
“Who’s there?” If Jonathan Blue had returned, Carson planned to slug him for not helping them. Fucking savior, my ass. He propped himself onto his pack. “Hello?”
A coyote stepped into the light.
“Fuck you,” Carson said.
The coyote stood still, staring at him.
“Fuck you,” Carson said again. “You’re bad news. Felix, our poisoner is here. Thought he’d pay us a visit, see how we were faring.”
The animal’s fur caught the light, a honey-brown glow. It yawned, then turned away and began to walk. Carson watched it through the front window, prancing along. After about fifty paces, it stopped and looked back at the truck, waiting.
“Well, Jesus Christ, already,” Carson mumbled. “I’m coming.”
Carson staggered after the coyote, which stopped every few paces as if to wait. Carson moved slowly, focusing on the bushy tail in front of him. Even in his delirium, he knew this was ridiculous. Following a coyote? The coyote turned off the road, hopping over a fallen log. Carson lumbered after it.
It took him a few moments to adjust to the darkness of the dense woods. He reached for the trunk of a ponderosa pine and leaned into it, catchin
g his breath. The familiar bark, patterned like puzzle pieces, was an auburn red, the same as Beatrix’s hair. He inhaled. Butterscotch. When he looked up again, the coyote had vanished, but there, just one hundred yards in front of him, was a cabin.
“Sweet Jesus,” Carson said, hobbling his way toward the structure. An old forest-ranger station, it had a woodstove, a small table, two wooden chairs, and a cot. The cabinets held two unlabeled cans. There was a two-burner stove and a propane tank, which Carson lifted and guessed to be three-quarters full. An aluminum bucket and a five-gallon plastic container for water sat empty on the floor.
He stepped back outside and mustered a whistle. Where was that coyote? The trees made a curtain of green and brown, making it hard to see anything. He leaned against the porch post and closed his eyes for a moment.
The sound came soft and steady, like wind—a swish, with splashes and gurgles. Water. Carson followed a narrow path behind the cabin. As he descended, the sound grew louder, the air cooler.
The creek was copious and unleashed. It came and came, not stopping for rocks or roots. Carson fell to his knees, gathered it in his hands and drank. He was risking it—there could there be giardia. But his water filter had stopped working miles and miles ago. What did he have to lose? He fetched the bucket from the cabin, filled it, and carried it to the truck.
The day had warmed with the sun, but Felix was still inside his sleeping bag.
“Felix,” Carson said, crawling into the back of the truck. “I have water. There’s water. There’s a cabin. We’re gonna be okay, Felix.”
Felix did not stir.
“Felix.” Carson placed his hand on Felix’s shoulder. “Felix?” No response. He pulled, and Felix flopped awkwardly to his back, the patch intact and his good eye closed. His mouth was open, and Carson reached out to feel for his breath. “Oh dear God.” He lay his hand on Felix’s neck.
Carson’s throat tightened, and his saliva turned thin. He’d been gone too long. He’d failed his friend. He leaned over the edge of the truck and vomited up all the water.
CHAPTER 18
For days, the landscape spread out in dry hills of tan, pink, and yellow on either side of the road, and few trees or structures to provide respite from the sun. She had passed through here before on the way to the Center, but everything looked different to Rosie now, bleaker and more blinding. She wished for the sunglasses.