by Andrew Smith
I could hear them talking, laughing about something. I saw Mitch hand the joint over to Simon, watched as Simon smoked from it.
“I’m not feeling good again,” Lilly said. “I need to sit down.”
Lilly moved back toward the open door of the car, then stopped and turned around.
“Can I do anything for you?” I asked.
“I’ll be fine,” she said. “I need some water.”
Then she moved over to a clump of sagebrush and dropped to her knees, lowering her head, coughing and spitting. I let the backpack fall beside her in the weeds, the canteen resting on top.
“Here,” I said.
She drank. “There. I’m better now.” She tried to laugh. “Sometimes it comes and goes so fast.”
I helped her to her feet, holding her hand. I looked over my shoulder at Mitch and Simon, both of them facing the river, sitting with their backs to me, and said, “Let’s take a walk.”
Today. I had to try to get us away. I wasn’t such a dumb kid I didn’t know what Lilly was trying to do, but I could help her out, anyway.
I led her up the river, toward the narrow and deep bend where the old bridge connected the two sides. The sun, straight overhead, made the water look so dark and blue here.
“We’ll need to eat soon,” I said. “The next place we get to where there’s people around, you and me and Simon are getting away from him. Even if I have to force Simon.”
“All right, Jonah.”
(simon)
bridge
Mitch relaxed. He leaned back on his elbows in the dried grass. Simon lit a cigarette and listened to the sound of the water spilling over the rocks.
“Simon,” Mitch said, “it’s hard to really trust a kid like your brother.”
“He’s dirty,” Simon said.
“What do you say we kick him off our ship, and make him find his own way to Arizona? And you can ride along with me and Lilly. And Don,” Mitch laughed.
“That would be fun.”
“We’d get you to your daddy. Or your brother. Wherever.”
“I like you and Lilly, Mitch,” Simon said.
“Maybe you like Lilly too much.” Mitch smiled and pushed Simon’s shoulder playfully.
“Maybe I do,” he said. “I thought she liked me more. It just drives me crazy seeing him all over her like that.”
“Yeah.”
And Mitch turned and looked at Simon.
Then he saw me and Lilly walking out on the bridge in the distance and said, “See what I mean? You can’t take your eyes off Jonah for one minute.”
Simon looked to where Mitch was staring and saw me and Lilly holding hands and walking out across the slumping bridge.
And Mitch said, “Know what I’ll do? I know what to do.”
(jonah)
the fall
“I will go with you, Jonah.”
“I guess neither one of us has a home, anyway.”
“Will you take care of me?”
We sat down just above the center of the river, dangling our legs over the edge of the old gray wood bridge. I stared down at the blue-black water running like smearing trails away from my feet, and Lilly leaned against my shoulder.
“I’ll try,” I said. “I will. For all of us. Me and you and Simon. I have to look out for Simon, before he’s too far gone. I promised him I would. I promised Matthew.”
“I don’t think he really hates you.”
I sighed. “Simon’s confused about things. And he needs to grow up.”
“What a pretty picture,” Mitch said.
Mitch and Simon had quietly stumbled out onto the bridge. Mitch had pulled his gun from his pants and was holding it alongside his leg, where I couldn’t see it. But Simon did. He looked at the pistol, he looked at Mitch, but Mitch was just staring at me.
And I startled and turned my head just as Simon brought his foot up and pushed me from the bridge, into the deep flowing water.
I looked up. It seemed like I was falling forever through that twenty feet of air before I hit the river.
“Jonah!” Lilly cried out, and leaned forward as though to follow me down, but Mitch caught her arm and tugged her away from the edge.
The current sucked me away, the water so cold I couldn’t breathe.
My head went under, the weight of my shoes and clothes, the gun in my waist, pulling me down.
(simon)
rope
“Now that’s what I call gravity, man!” Mitch said, and slapped Simon on the shoulder.
Simon stood at the edge and watched me being carried away from him in the pull of the current.
“Let’s get in the car,” Mitch said.
Neither Simon nor Lilly said a word as Mitch drove the Lincoln over the road that twisted its way out of the river gorge. Lilly sat with her head down in the backseat, hiding from the occasional glances Mitch tried giving her in the rearview mirror.
Simon stared ahead, stoned, his blurry eyes transfixed by the rush of the scenery smearing past him.
Mitch turned west onto a flat, straight highway that narrowed to a pinpoint in the distance; the endless sprawl of the desert ahead now gone completely red, dotted with black tufts of scrub weed in the stretching light of evening.
He smiled.
“This is the way I wanted it, just us,” he said, brightening when they passed a yellow-and-black hand-painted sign. “Hey, look! ‘Friendly Indians Ahead.’ ”
He pointed at the sign, and Simon smiled and nodded.
“I’m a rat,” Simon said.
“This ship is full of rats,” Mitch answered, and slapped Simon’s arm.
“It serves him right,” Simon said, even if he didn’t believe it.
“If you didn’t do it, I was getting ready to shoot that punk in the back of the head for what he did to our Lilly last night.”
“I know,” Simon said.
That was when Simon started being afraid of Mitch, too.
“I’m not your Lilly,” Lilly called out from the backseat.
“Guess what? You’re not Saint Jonah’s, either, now.” Mitch laughed, and added, coldly, “Whore.”
Mitch pulled the Lincoln into the empty roadside Indian shop and left Lilly alone in the car while he and Simon negotiated with the couple inside, purchasing armfuls of blankets, sandwiches, and a bottle of vodka.
Simon smoked a cigarette while Mitch carried his goods out to the trunk of the car, and Lilly just sat next to the statue and watched them both in the darkening evening. When he was finished loading the trunk, Mitch told Simon to get back in the car and they continued west.
“We’re going to sleep in the desert up here,” Mitch said. “I got some food, and I’m going to get drunk as hell tonight.”
“Yeah,” Simon agreed, forcing a smile.
Mitch smiled back.
A hundred yards from the road, parked in the lightless desert, they ate their sandwiches and smoked cigarettes. Mitch twisted the stamp from the bottle of vodka and began drinking in big gasping gulps. They had spread the blankets on the flat dirt beside the Lincoln and sat there watching the sweep of lights from passing cars that came by so infrequently on the highway.
Mitch, sitting between Simon and the girl, passed the bottle to Lilly, but she gave it back.
“I’ll get sick,” she said.
He handed the bottle to Simon.
Simon took a swig, but coughed and spit most of the vodka out onto his jeans.
“Drink it,” Mitch said sternly. “When I drink, you drink.”
Simon took another swallow.
“This is horrible,” he said.
“Trust me, man. You’ll like it in a couple more swallows.”
In minutes, Simon could no longer sit up straight.
He coughed and laughed, “You were right, Mitch. I like it.”
Simon fell over to his side, eyes fixed open, watching as the fuzzy cloud of drunkenness distorted the night landscape. It looked as if the ground were breathing, consta
ntly rising up and twisting before his eyes, then sinking back down and rising again.
Mitch pulled him up by the collar of his tee shirt and pressed the mouth of the bottle between his lips.
“Drink again,” he said, and tipped the bottle back, spilling its last bits into Simon’s mouth.
Simon gagged and rolled away from Mitch, tried to get to his feet, but collapsed. He raised himself onto his hands and knees and crawled headfirst into a mesquite bush and began vomiting.
“Thatta boy!” Mitch said. He stood, wobbling, and hurled the empty bottle out into the darkness, listening for the shattering crash of glass when it struck the ground.
Simon threw up again.
Mitch opened the trunk of the Lincoln and picked up the yellow rope. He formed a slip noose at one end. He stumbled to where Simon had propped himself in the brush and pulled the boy’s feet back straight. Simon fell face-first into the brambles and tried to lift himself back up again.
“What’re you doin’?” Simon slurred.
Mitch wound the cord around Simon’s feet, binding them tightly together and knotting the line snug. Simon was too drunk to resist, and too sick.
“Stop it, Mitch!” Lilly snapped.
Mitch ignored her and dragged Simon from the brush by his feet, Simon’s hands grabbing at the dirt and trying to claw away. But Mitch was too strong. He pulled Simon’s legs up behind him and stretched the rope up painfully past Simon’s crotch.
Simon groaned.
Then Mitch used the line to lace Simon’s hands as if he were bound in prayer, his wrists jammed tightly down between his legs, and already numbing from the constriction of the knots.
“What’re you doin’?” Simon pleaded, not able to really understand what was happening, because everything seemed like a sick dream, unreal in the vomit stench that burned in his nose; that clung to his face.
“Stop!” Lilly screamed.
“Oh, be quiet, Lilly.” Mitch spoke calmly. “Trust me. It’s all going to be okay.”
Mitch rolled Simon over onto his side and covered him with a blanket.
“That’s for your own good. I’ll let you loose in the morning. Trust me. You know I’m doing the right thing. I just don’t want you getting any ideas like your brother did with the whore tonight. I don’t want her getting any ideas about being a slut on you. When you know I’m right, I won’t have to do this again. You’ll see. I want you to be a good boy, so I got to teach you this lesson. You can trust me, man. You gotta trust someone.”
Lilly began crying.
Mitch played with his lighter.
Flick.
Simon closed his eyes.
Mitch took out the scissors he’d bought and began scratching some figures in the paint on the side of the Lincoln next to the image of that tailless dog: a tall and thin boy with long hair, a very short man, a boy curled up and tied with cord.
“Watch this, Simon.”
Simon kept his eyes shut. He tried to.
Mitch stood over Lilly, the scissors held pointing down.
“Take your clothes off.”
“No!” she said.
“Take them off! You did it for him!”
He swiped a hand to grab her, but Lilly rolled away and ran out into the darkness of the brush.
“Lilly!”
He lay down on the blanket beside Simon.
Simon pretended to sleep. He felt the cool of the scissor blades pressed against the side of his throat. Mitch stroked his hair and whispered, “Simon. Simon.”
They didn’t wake up until late the next afternoon.
Simon’s hands and feet were purple and numb, his wrists and ankles crisscrossed with angry red welts. Mitch fumbled with shaking hands at the unmanageable knots he’d tied. Lilly sat emotionless, propped against a tire in the shade of the car.
“I’m sorry, Simon,” Mitch said, his voice choked, nearly crying. “I don’t know why I did that. I was mad at your brother. I’m sorry, buddy. I won’t do it again, I promise. But you know why I did it, okay?”
Simon shook his head. The images from the day before replayed in his head.
“It’s okay, Mitch,” he said. “Only please hurry up or I’m going to pee in my pants.”
“I’m sorry.”
And Mitch began crying.
“I like you, Simon. Please don’t be mad at me.”
“It’s okay, Mitch. Come on!”
Mitch freed Simon’s feet and, dizzy, Simon stumbled away into the brush.
He could hear Mitch sobbing behind him while he peed.
Miles of empty desert separated us.
Mitch had killed a man in that roadhouse, but Simon wouldn’t know it until later the next day.
But, he told me, he did know then he’d have to get away from Mitch.
And he would take her with him, too.
(jonah)
dalton
My brother,
I’m going to have to write small and on both sides of the paper here because this isn’t my paper, and pretty soon I have to ride shotgun out to a position.
Yesterday was some holiday here, I don’t know what, and so last night the VC just poured mortars down on us, and a few explosions sounded like rockets.
I guess the war has caught up to me in a big way. One day last week an enemy rocket blew up within spitting distance of me. Then, when I was riding shotgun out to one of our positions in the sticks, and there were a couple trucks in front of me, and the lead truck blew up from a mine. If I would have got to that road five minutes earlier I would have beat the other trucks. I’m not complaining, though, that was the same spot where the sniper killed my buddy.
Tomorrow I’m going to see the medic or doctor because a couple of days ago I hooked up a water trailer to a Chinook helicopter while it was hovering over me and the wind a Chinook makes is two or three hundred MPH and it shot something into my eye. It doesn’t hurt but I can feel it in there and last night all kinds of pus came out of my eye.
Two days before that one of our positions lost three guys because their gun blew up on them while they were firing. It just shows that they were a crummy crew that never took care of their guns.
So I guess I’ve been either getting pretty lucky, or my number’s about to come up. I don’t know, but either way this place is making me nuts and every day when I wake up, that is, if I actually got to sleep, I wonder if I’m going to ever make it out in one piece.
I know I shouldn’t have told you everything that has happened because you’ll probably worry more than you should but I want to tell you what’s happening with me over here and how sick I am of all of it.
Look for me in August. I’ll send you Scotty’s address in Arizona to find me.
I know you said not to do it, but I made up my mind.
And remember what I said, you guys are brothers. Don’t push Simon around too much, you know he’ll go crazy.
Bye.
Love,
Matt
I caught a glimpse of Lilly.
Mitch took her from the bridge.
The water turned me.
I struggled to raise my head above the surface and coughed. Looking downriver, I could see the blurry colors of both banks sweeping past on either side as though I were running on some kind of treadmill, a cartoon character, going nowhere while the world spun beneath me, past me, repetitive and meaningless. And I thought, Why did Simon do that to me? And then I cursed myself and thought, I know why, I know why.
The river carried me half a mile before I could get any footing near the bank opposite the roadway. I was tired, weak from not eating, and I fell against a rock covered with reeds as I climbed away from the river.
I slipped my shoes off and shook out the rocks and mud before putting them back on my feet. The gun had fallen all the way down into my pants leg, I had to pull them half down to get it, but I was relieved I had not lost the pistol in the water.
That river was moving much faster than it looked from the outside.
“Thank God we weren’t sailors,” I said.
I stood and wrung out the flannel shirt. I slung the pistol inside it and tied it around my waist by its sleeves.
The road we took here stretched along the other side of the river, and I wasn’t about to cross it by putting myself back into the current. I knew that if I followed the river north it would take me back to the bridge where my brother had pushed me; Simon’s getting even for my taking him away from our shack in Los Rogues, getting even for the beating I gave him, getting even for the girl.
The bank was too steep to walk close to the river, so I had to climb up farther and try to get to the hilltop before I could head back toward the wooden bridge. I made my way through the loose and crumbling dirt and thick brush of the hillside. When I had gotten high enough that there seemed to be some level path along the spine of the hill, I began walking in the direction from which the river had carried me.
Above the river on that hilltop, I could see across to the road and to the dirt turnout with the bent-over sign where Mitch had parked the Lincoln. The car was gone, and I felt so abandoned and alone, afraid for Simon, and angry at him, too, for what he had done on the bridge, for what Simon had been letting Mitch do to him for three days now.
Because I knew there was something in Simon that made him want to be like Mitch, and I was afraid of that.
I’d heard Lilly scream my name when the river swallowed me, but nothing after that beyond the roar of the water, the awkward thrashing of my arms and legs covered in the weight of my wet clothes, my own struggled breathing. I wondered where she was at that moment and wished that she could be with me, too, away from this place, away from Mitch.
Soaked and sore, I finally made it back to the sagging bridge and crossed to the other side of the river where the car had been. My backpack lay in the twisted shrubs where I had dropped it, the canteen still resting upon it in the spot where Lilly had placed it after I offered her a drink. I was relieved in finding my things, in knowing that Matthew’s letters—and my map—were still there.