"Your parents weren’t on the train?"
I shook my head, chewing.
The woman’s face twitched. I couldn’t tell if she was smiling or frowning. She scooted closer, wrapping an arm across my shoulders, hugging me against her.
"It happened so fast," she said, nodding at the toppled passenger cars. "We’re two of the lucky ones, thank God. We’re very, very lucky.”
But I didn’t feel lucky; I was starving. And eating the orange, I continued looking for Dickens in the crowd, scanning the grim newcomers to the pasture. I kept imagining what it would be like to see him again, to find that he was all right.
Hello, Captain. You killed the shark. I love you.
All at once my eyes found a woman who, like the elderly man, seemed to he standing in a stupor. She was wearing a blue bathrobe, and her hair was covered with a clear-plastic shower cap. When she turned -- glancing about frantically -- I saw her face in the dusty evening light, and fear seized me.
"Dell," I mumbled, thoughtlessly biting into the orange.
She was shouting for Dickens, searching the crowd. And she was frightened, I could tell. Her fingers gripped the bathrobe, her fuzzy slippers trampled bluebonnets. She was so close that if I ran she’d surely spot me.
You’ll stay far, I thought. You’ll mess elsewhere.
And if my mouth wasn’t full, I would’ve turned my head and spit.
But in the brief instant that I considered fleeing, Dell hurried off, moving toward the tracks, pushing through the throng of people. Then she vanished, disappearing somewhere among the wreckage.
"It’s all right,” the woman was saying. "We’re safe now. We'll take care of each other, how’s that? I’ll make sure you get where you’re going.”
I wanted to say that there was nowhere else for me to go. I would’ve told her too, except the fireflies arrived. Dozens of tiny flashes materialized at once, swimming overhead -here, then gone, then there, gone -- flashing in the thick dust, blink blink blinking in the pasture.
"They’re so beautiful,” I said. "They’re my friends, you know. They have names.”
And for a moment I forgot why I’d come to the pasture. I’d almost forgotten everything. I brought my head to the woman’s breast, snuggling myself into her, and finished the orange -- licking my lips after the last bite, aware of the lingering sweetness on my tongue and the stickiness on my chin -- content as the fireflies welcomed the night.
Mitch Cullin Page 18