The Crossing

by Jason Mott

  When I didn’t wake up, he stood and walked into the living room. Maggie was nowhere to be seen. In the kitchen he found a small note on the table that said, “Take what you need.” He grabbed some juice from the refrigerator and looked out the window. Maggie’s home was in the middle of a beautiful nowhere. Hills rolled out around it like a green ocean and, in the far distance, there were mountains that blended into the sky.

  There was a large barn out in the middle of a nearby field. He thought he saw someone moving around.

  * * *

  The sunlight came down in buckets. Birds sang in the distant trees and the wind rolled in and felt like pillow. Tommy closed his eyes for a few steps and listened and felt and let it all take over his body because it was a good feeling and he knew that it might never come again.

  When he reached the barn he found Maggie inside, lying on her back beneath a large old tractor. “Hi,” Tommy said as he entered.

  Maggie stuck her head out from beneath the tractor. She wasn’t wearing her gas mask and the sun was in her eyes and she had to squint. For a moment, she didn’t seem to recognize him, but then she said, “Tommy.” It sounded like both a declaration and a question.

  “Yep,” Tommy replied. “That’s me. Where’s your mask?” he asked, caught off guard by how piercing her eyes were in the bright winter’s day.

  “Just decided not to,” Maggie said. “Already gave what I had to give.” Then, “Sleep well?” she asked, turning her attention back to the tractor.

  “Sure did,” Tommy said brightly. “Anything I can help you with?”

  After a moment, Maggie’s head came back out from beneath the tractor. “You know anything about tractors?”

  “Not really,” Tommy replied. “But I’ve got hands. And I’m pretty strong. That’s got to be good for something.”

  “Always is,” Maggie said. “Hand me that wrench.”

  She made a motion to one of the wrenches lying on the ground. Tommy handed it to her and stretched out on the ground beside her. The old tractor was a mixture of rust and oil. Maggie had removed one of the panels. The innards of the machine showed barely like the innards of some alien animal.

  “Where’d you learn to sing like that?” Tommy asked.

  “Can’t hardly remember,” Maggie said. Then, “No, that’s not really true. It was just a long time ago. You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I’ve been around. Grew up here. Then traveled around for a few years, singing. Sang in some fancy places. Then came back home and took over the farm.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Been here ever since.”

  “Well, you’re awesome.” Tommy grinned. “That was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.” He guessed the woman was over sixty, but the more he thought about how beautifully she had sung, when the rise and fall and tremble of her voice came back to him, it was as if he could see the years falling away from her. She seemed to grow younger by the second.

  “Would you sing again?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Would you mind singing again?” Tommy repeated. “I’d really like to hear it.”

  Maggie clucked a laugh. “Thanks for the compliment, but I’ve had enough of it for one lifetime.”

  “But you’re so good at it,” Tommy said. “You’re special.”

  “Not really,” Maggie replied. “Lots of people out there better than me.”

  “More people out there are worse than you, though.”

  Maggie made one final turn on the wrench and, groaning just a little, got out from underneath the tractor. “Help me up,” she said.

  Tommy offered his hand and helped her stand.

  “My knees aren’t what they used to be,” she said. She walked around and tried the ignition. The tractor shuddered and sputtered, but failed to start. “Damn,” Maggie muttered.

  The two of them worked at it for another hour with similar results. Then they walked out into the day and Maggie wiped her brow.

  “Your sister always been like that?” Maggie asked.

  “Yep,” Tommy replied. “Never forgotten anything. Couldn’t if she wanted to.”

  “That’s a hell of a gift.”

  “Sure is,” Tommy answered.

  “What about you? You special like that too?”

  “Not me,” Tommy said. “I’ve got the worst memory on the planet. Stuff comes and goes with me. She’s the smart one.”

  “Just because she can remember stuff doesn’t mean she’s smarter than you.”

  “Of course it does,” Tommy replied. “It’s okay, though. I’m fine.”

  “That’s something interesting to live with.”

  “She’s supposed to get treated a little special. Because she is.” Then pride filled his voice. “But when this trip is over, I’m going off on my own. I’m joining the army.”

  “You got drafted?”

  “Yep,” Tommy said. Then, “But I was going to go anyway.”

  Maggie thought for a moment. “You know it’s not going to be like it is on the commercials, don’t you?”

  “I know.” His voice was sharp. “I’ve thought about it. For a long time.”

  “And you still want to go?”

  He nodded. “It’ll be good for me,” he said. “I won’t stay forever. Only a couple of years. And then I’ll come back and Virginia and I will get back to normal and everything will be okay.”

  “You mean running away across country isn’t normal for you two?” She smirked at him and Tommy couldn’t help but return it.

  “It’ll just be different after I get back from the army,” Tommy said, his smirk fading. “It’ll be better. I think I’ll be someone different when I get back. I’ll be smarter. Maybe I won’t need Virginia as much as I do now.”

  Maggie watched him. He could feel her eyes taking him in. He took a deep breath, uncertain of exactly what she was looking for. “Well,” she said, “just be sure to take care of yourself. You seem like a good kid.”

  “I’m not perfect,” Tommy said.

  “Never said you were.”

  “I’m not very smart.”

  “You don’t have to be in this world. Just be a good person. The rest will take care of itself.”

  Tommy’s face tightened. “You think that’s true?” he asked.

  “I know it is,” Maggie replied.

  * * *

  They never did manage to get the tractor started. The both of them tinkering, twisting and turning parts, then switching on the ignition like children awaiting a surprise party. The hard edges and cold that had started the day wore off as the hour crept closer to noon. Tommy could almost believe that everything was going to be okay.

  Then he heard the crunch of car tires on gravel and Tommy’s stomach sank because he knew, without even looking, what was happening.

  He stepped out of the barn and into the bright light of day to see a police car pulling up in front of him. When he saw it, maybe he was happy in some strange way. This would make everything simple. It was hard to say exactly what Tommy felt. He had never been much good with his feelings.

  SEPARATION

  NINE

  “You’re just going to go?” Maggie asked.

  “That’s the only way I’ll get there,” I replied. I had already filled the backpack with all the food I could carry. I cinched the buckle around my waist and adjusted the shoulder straps. I did it just as I had done it every other time before, as if my brother hadn’t been taken away by the police.

  “Do you want me to drive you to the station? Into town or something? I know the man that took your brother. His name’s Hodges. He’s an okay guy when you get right down to it. And you’re a smart girl. Probably smarter than Hodges. You could talk to him. Maybe talk him into letting your brother finish this trip with you.”

  “It’s best if I just keep moving on,” I
said. There was a knot in my stomach that seemed to be swelling with every word, filling me up moment by moment. It would consume me if I thought about it long enough, I knew that. So I closed my eyes and swallowed and, when I opened them again, I could convince myself that the feeling was gone.

  When I opened my eyes I found Maggie’s face as tight as a prune. “So you’re just going to leave him?”

  “He’ll be okay,” I said. “We knew we might get separated. We agreed to meet somewhere if that happened. He’ll be there.”

  “He didn’t get separated,” Maggie said, her hands forming fists. “He was arrested! Hodges said there was an APB out on the both of you. Said an out-of-state cop had called it in. Probably that father of yours.”

  “Foster father,” I corrected her.

  Maggie pulled in a deep breath. When she exhaled, her fists softened again into hands, like ice effervescing into steam. “What the hell is wrong with you, girl?” she said, almost at a whisper. Then, “You should have seen him, that brother of yours. As soon as he saw it was a police car that was coming he turned to me and said, ‘Please don’t tell them about Ginny. Please.’ He was almost crying. He asked me to do it for him like he was asking God Almighty for salvation. And then, when Hodges asked him about where you might be, he said you was already gone down to Florida. That you’d hopped a late bus and was already well on your way. Only reason Hodges believed him was because I said Tommy was the only one that had come.”

  “Why did you do that?” I asked. “Why did you lie for me?”

  Maggie shook her head. “Can’t say I really lied for you so much as I lied for your brother. Never met anybody that carried so much on his shoulders.”

  I barked a sharp, awkward laugh that made the knot in my stomach swell even more. The laugh lasted no longer than a flash of lightning behind a distant mountain. “Tommy’s not carrying anything on his shoulders,” I said. “That’s what makes him so lucky.” I straightened my back and prepared to head off. But before I started, I turned and looked back at Maggie one last time.

  “Tommy’s going to be fine,” I said. “I know it doesn’t seem like it, but he will. He’ll be upset with me when he does, upset because of something I did that he doesn’t know about. But...well...it’s too late to fix any of that, I suppose. Maybe he’ll forgive me. It’s hard to say.”

  “Forgive you for what?” Maggie asked.

  I didn’t wait to answer. I lowered my head and started forward.

  “Wait!” Maggie shouted. The old woman came chugging up beside me. Her face was red and stricken with fear. Her breaths came quick and shallow, as if she were standing on the thin bridge that had been thrown over an abyss. She reached into her pocket and, reluctantly, pulled out Gannon’s pistol.

  “Here,” Maggie said. “Tommy also gave me this. Said you would need it since he wasn’t with you anymore. He also said to tell you he was sorry.”

  I picked up the pistol and stuffed it into my pocket. “Bye, Maggie,” I said, then I started forward again, and this time I promised myself that I wouldn’t stop for anything else.

  “You’re some piece of work,” Maggie said, almost throwing the words at my back as the distance between us opened. “If you ask me, your brother got the raw end of the deal when he landed you as a sister. Give you long enough and you’re going to be worse to him than the war ever could be.”

  * * *

  I walked out into the day with Maggie’s words ringing in my ears. I made my way down to the highway, nervous that Gannon might be there waiting for me. According to Maggie, Tommy had only just been taken. And maybe Hodges, the man Maggie said took Tommy away, hadn’t yet had time to call Gannon—which would mean that Gannon could come driving up at any time, even by accident. But, alternatively, maybe Hodges had called Gannon already. Maybe he had been there, waiting and watching from a distance as Tommy was taken. And maybe now he was sitting around somewhere watching here too.

  “You’re being paranoid,” I told myself.

  I felt my heart thumping in my chest like a hammer on the head of an anvil. My palms were sweaty and I felt light-headed. If I’d been thinking about it, I would have called it a panic attack. But why should I have a panic attack just because Tommy wasn’t with me anymore? I still had a job to do. A place to be.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I said to myself. But I wasn’t sure whether or not I believed it.

  * * *

  When I reached the main road I looked around, reaffirming my sense of the cardinal directions. For a while I waited at the edge, looking back down the road just in case there was a car coming. Then I turned and started east. I walked for nearly two hours before the truck came along. I stood with my thumb in the air, watching the old truck rumble its way up the road. It was dark blue, almost black, and rusted here and there and, because of how the sun was positioned in the sky, there was a glare that reflected on the windshield and bounced into my eyes and made it so that, as the truck passed, I couldn’t see the face of the driver.

  When it had passed me the brake lights lit up and the truck pulled off to the side of the road and idled, with the exhaust pipe rattling like thunder. The dented license plate was from Arizona and didn’t quite seem to belong. Either logic or raw instinct made a chill run through my body.

  I stood motionless and watched the idling truck. I could see a man sitting at the wheel. His brake lights were aglow as he looked back at me in the rearview mirror, waiting.

  “Instinct is the calling card of animals,” I whispered to myself. “It’s just a truck and you’ve got a lot of miles to make.”

  I made no move toward the truck.

  Still the truck waited.

  In my pocket, my right hand curled around Gannon’s gun and I realized, for the first time, that I didn’t know whether or not it was loaded. I had simply taken it and stuffed it into my pocket. But since then, I had been rushing, like I was running away from both Maggie and Gannon. So the gun had become simply a weight in my pocket that made me feel safe and dangerous at the same time.

  But if the man in the truck were to step out and walk toward me, threatening to do all the things that were done to seventeen-year-old girls hitchhiking alone, I didn’t know what would happen if I pulled the gun from my pocket and squeezed the trigger.

  “That’s okay,” I said finally. A moment later I realized that I had only whispered it, so I yelled, “That’s okay! I don’t need a ride!”

  But still the truck waited. The man looked back at me in the mirror, then looked down at something in the truck, then looked back at me again. I watched him and tried to decide what to do. There was a part of me that wanted to get into the truck. He was the first person who had stopped and, from what I could see of him, he wasn’t much of an imposing figure. He was thin-shouldered and didn’t look very much like the type of man that would overpower someone.

  But weren’t those exactly the people who did such things?

  The small pickup truck continued to wait. “I’m okay,” I yelled. And I made a shooing motion with my arms and hands, like trying to convince a garden snake that had slithered through the front door to go back the way it came.

  Somehow, it worked.

  The man in the truck took one final look at me. Then the brake lights went out and, after looking for traffic, the man started again down the road. I thought I saw him shrug his shoulders just before he got back onto the highway, leaving me behind. And that one gesture made me uncertain I had done the right thing.

  I was alone again. I walked for another hour and still there was no one. Only open fields and mountains in the distance and trees and memories of the truck and the man who sat inside it waiting for me and thoughts of what might have happened.

  “Okay,” I said to myself suddenly, stepping away from the road and marching through a field toward a large dead tree.

  When I was about thirty yards away I stop
ped and turned and, without hesitation, aimed the gun at the tree and fired. It almost leaped from my hand. My heart beat in my ears, but I tightened my grip and pulled the trigger two more times. Each time the gun roared and jumped like an angry god of old. The gun was, after all, something built solely for the purpose of taking away someone’s life. When there were only three bullets left I dropped the gun and fell to my knees and started crying and I didn’t know why.

  * * *

  Rain had begun to fall when a small Honda rumbled down the road toward me. I stuck out my thumb. The car skidded to a stop just past me and the passenger door flew open.

  A man with one arm sat behind the wheel shouting, “If-you-want-out-of-the-damn-monsoon-we’re-heading-to-the-hospital-Get-your-ass-in-if-you’re-going-to-Well-don’t-just-stand-there-looking-like-a-damn-statue-Having-one-fucking-arm-ain’t-contagious-Jesus-fucking-Christ!”

  A woman in the back seat—with sweat sprinkled across her brow and a large, round stomach—placed her hand on his shoulder and she whispered something softly in his ear and the bluster went out of the man behind the wheel like a dragon that lost its pilot light.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to me, his words muddled in the chatter of the rain pounding on the car, persistent as a tax collector. Then, slowly, “We’re headed to the hospital. Wife’s having a baby. You’re welcome to ride into town with us if that’s the way you’re headed.” He couldn’t even look at me when he said it. He only finished his sentence and sat with his head hung like a child standing before the church congregation with a fistful of stolen communion wafers.

  I didn’t let him linger in his shame. I jumped in the car as if he’d never yelled at me or apologized to me and I said something about being born lucky.

  “Nolan and Connie,” the pregnant woman in the back seat said between the hee-hee-hoo-hoo of her breathing. She shook my hand while Nolan put his foot on the accelerator and the rear tires spun in the gravel before the car finally lurched back onto the highway. Nolan cursed at himself—something about bad tires—while Connie and I talked all the way to the hospital with Nolan sawing at the steering wheel with his one hand. Connie seemed happy to have someone to talk to.