by Andrew Smith
I am at a firebase called Nui Ong. It’s really pretty here and there’s a river down the hill where we can go swimming or take baths in the daytime. The water feels real nice on days like this.
All I can think about is getting out of here. I miss you and Simon so much. Do you think you could send me a picture of you guys? Try to make it one where you maybe aren’t fighting, though, if there is such a thing (ha ha). I would really like that. I will send you some pictures in my next letter, like you asked. I haven’t been taking many lately.
It’s about 18:00, so I have about 4 hours till things start happening again. It’s usually quiet in the day, but at night all hell breaks loose.
Did I tell you I got a .38 police special and I wear it all the time? Tonight I’m going to sleep with my pants and boots on so I’ll be ready for them.
Well, I guess that’s all I have to say for now.
Would you believe I still got 7 months to go? God!
Bye for now.
Love,
Matthew
The sun sat low over the rim of the canyon.
It seemed like all the light had turned yellow.
The air cooled, smelled like sage and rusted leaves.
I helped Dalton unlash the ropes binding all the gear that was tied down on the VW’s roof rack. We were sweating, and sat down to rest on the chairs outside the tent. A breeze whispered out through the canyon’s opening. It felt like the world was breathing on us.
I was so hungry. I felt tired and weak, and I propped my chin up with both hands as I rested my elbows on the top of the table and tried to stay awake.
“What is all that stuff?” I asked, and nodded in the direction of the poles and bundles we unloaded from the VW.
“It’s a tepee,” Dalton said. “Well, it’s going to be after we put it up. Me and you and my dad can do it. You ever put up a real tepee before?”
“No.”
“It’s not hard,” he said. “I bought it from the hippies in Los Alamos.”
“Oh.”
“We’ll have more living space, then. So I don’t have to sleep in the same tent with my sister always. You ever been there? Los Alamos? It’s called the Placitas Commune, or something.”
“I never been nowhere,” I said.
“You been to the bottom of a river,” Dalton said. “Come on, let’s go find them.”
Dalton led me down a trail that followed the shore where the creek twisted away beneath trees and brush. Where the canyon just seemed to tumble open as though spitting out huge red boulders, I saw the rest of the pueblo he’d told me about. It was one of those things you really wouldn’t notice at first, because of the way the brush had grown over, but between the spiny brambles of mesquite and yucca, I saw wall upon wall of tightly stacked rocks, flattened and squared, block-shaped rooms with dark doorways and windows tucked back beneath the canyon, and all so perfectly blended in that it took me a while to realize how big this settlement had been, because everywhere I looked, it seemed like something else that proved people had once survived here would just appear from the rock.
Dalton pointed to a spot where the canyon wall arched outward from the bottom, making a sort of cave in the shadows.
“There’s some great rock paintings over in there,” he said. “That’s probably where my folks are. My dad’s doing one of his own paintings there.”
I suddenly wasn’t so tired and hungry.
“This place is amazing,” I said.
“Yeah.”
I followed Dalton as he led me through the brush along the trail toward the spot he’d pointed out.
“And, Jonah? I forgot to mention something you should know. My dad is kind of peculiar.”
I wondered what he meant by that, but I figured you’d kind of have to be different to want to live out here, the way that they were living.
Dalton went on, “So don’t mind him if he says or does anything weird. He’s just, well, you’ll see.”
The thing that struck me most about his parents was their difference in age. His mother was so pretty and young, she could have passed for being in her twenties, even if Dalton was eighteen. And Dalton’s dad had the stubble of a gray-white beard and the white nubs of a military-style haircut showing where the hat didn’t cover his scalp. He was short and very strong, and had gleaming eyes that looked like they were frozen in constant amusement. Dalton’s sister, who eyed me with unblinking curiosity—maybe because of my hair, I thought—looked to be about ten years old.
We all stood in the cool shade of the cavern, just a shallow mouth, really, beneath a huge overhanging lip of red stone.
It was like being in another world.
At one edge of the cave, the rock face had been splotched with white, splattering around the negative impressions of hands, vacant silhouettes, open palms of the Indians who’d lived there centuries before. Next to the panel of hands, I saw a large set of concentric circles surrounded by black-silhouetted figures: more handprints, and animals that looked like snakes and bulls, a rider on horseback carrying a weapon, and something that looked like a giant man with spines coming from his legs, his arm outstretched, a tree springing up from his hand.
But the strangest thing in that cave was the painting at the opposite end of the back wall, the one that Dalton’s father had been working on. It was a mural, brightly colored, of an open-topped black convertible driving on a crowded street. I recognized the scene. It was a picture of the assassination of President Kennedy.
Dalton’s father held a reddened brush in one hand. He looked at me, and then at his son.
“Who’s this, Dalt?”
“He’s a friend,” Dalton said. “His name’s Jonah.”
And his father said, “Nice to meet you, Jonah.”
He stuck his hand out for me.
I shook his paint-smeared hand as he continued, “Just call me Arno.”
I looked at Dalton, who just shrugged as if to say weird names ran in the family. But then Arno told me his wife’s name was Bev, and their little girl’s was Shelly.
“I like the painting,” I said.
“Well, only this part’s my work.” Arno waved his hand across the Dallas scene. “This happened seven years ago. These others probably happened seven hundred years ago. Heck! I just thought of that. I gotta paint a seven up there somewhere. Balance it out.”
He scooped up a cup of blue paint and stirred his brush around in it.
“See what I mean?” Dalton whispered, shrugging. “He gets weird when he paints.”
I felt better because it sounded so normal to me, the way his dad’s voice echoed in that cave, the way he smiled at the little girl, Shelly, and they all had such pleasant-looking faces, even if they were all dressed in the same kind of clothes that Dalton wore—that I was now wearing—which made us look like some kind of desert cult or something.
I tilted my cap back on my head so they could see my face, and I thought about what Lilly had said about me being handsome, hoped I looked nice enough to Dalton’s family. I tried to smile, but I knew I looked nervous.
While we walked back to the camp, Dalton’s father told stories about the Kennedy assassination: how he’d been there on the street when it happened, and then went home and took Dalton and the rest of the family to Mexico the next day. And he pointed out another wall he’d painted, called 1968, and he said, “That was the year I thought the world was going to come to an end.”
“Why would you paint out here if nobody will ever see it?” I asked.
“Maybe they will,” he said. “In seven hundred years or so.”
And Arno smiled at me, turned to his son, and said, “I’m glad you brought a friend home, Dalton. I hope you know you can stay as long as you like, Jonah.”
I bit my lip and looked at Dalton.
My stomach growled as we pushed our way through the brush.
“Sounds like the boy needs to eat,” his mother said.
I helped Dalton and his father build their tepee whil
e Bev and Shelly cooked.
I was tired, but also kind of rejuvenated from spending time with Dalton and his family. I especially liked Dalton’s mom, and I envied him, wondering what it must be like to live with parents who obviously cared about you, loved you, even if they did live like Indians.
We had to take off our shirts. It was so hot, working in the late afternoon, and I was soaked in sweat.
I apologized to Dalton about the shirt.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “You can keep it, anyway. We have tons of clothes from the surplus. Didn’t you see it all in the car?”
“It was kind of buried,” I said.
His father carefully placed round stones from the riverbank in a circle at one side of the tepee.
“Dalton’s never been exactly organized,” he said.
I pulled my wet hair back behind my neck and held it away from my skin.
“He said I could give him a haircut.” Dalton looked at me, like he was testing me.
“I did?”
“I was wondering if you were a hippie or something,” Arno said.
I felt cornered. I didn’t really want my hair cut. I felt like somehow it would make me that much farther away from Simon. But I gave up.
“I just . . .” I began. “I haven’t gotten it cut in too long, I guess.”
“After, you can wash up in the pool before dinner if you want,” Dalton said. “Sorry there’s not much privacy living like this.”
“I wouldn’t know what privacy is, anyway,” I said.
Dalton tied the last strap from the outer covering onto one of the posts. “Me and Jonah will sleep out here tonight, Dad.”
Arno brushed his hands on his legs and looked up at where the twelve poles lashed together at the apex of the structure, staring out at the sky through the circular opening of the tepee.
“Looks like a pretty good job,” he said. “I think we’re about finished here.”
The tepee was much bigger than I’d imagined those things to be, from only seeing them in old Western movies. There was even a place where you could make a fire inside it, and once we’d gotten all the rocks for the fireplace positioned, we spread canvas tarps and blankets out to cover the dirt floor.
The little girl just sat and watched us, unblinking, staring at me while Dalton cut my hair. I sat as still as I possibly could, shirtless and scared, trying not to think about the long straight razor Dalton flashed in his hand. That and a comb were the only things he used. And he moved so quickly, but the razor made no sound as it swiped across the teeth of the comb, sending soft clumps of my hair down, tickling my shoulders, tumbling down my bare chest into the dirt.
Shelly picked up strands of my hair and she held them up in front of me and lined them up with one of her eyes as though she were animating some before-and-after cartoon of me.
She laughed.
She teased me in a singsong voice, “Jonah, Jonah . . .” And when I’d move my eyes to look at her, she’d drop a strand of hair to the ground and smile at me.
Bev stood cooking by the fire they’d started. It smelled so good, and I didn’t know if my eyes were watering from the smoke, the thought of finally eating, or because I was holding back tears because it felt like Dalton was cutting off all my hair.
“Put your chin down,” he said.
I felt the razor scraping my neck.
Arno sat back on the bench, resting his elbows on the tabletop, one leg crossed over at the knee, watching us as the sun dipped beneath the canyon’s edge, dimming the light.
“The boy is real good with that razor,” he said.
I realized my lower lip was sticking out, like I was pouting. I guess I looked like I was acting like a little kid about that haircut, but I knew it wasn’t really about that at all. I couldn’t stop thinking about Lilly and Simon, and I felt almost guilty because I had landed in such a good place with Dalton’s family. I tried to forget about it and let it go.
“Relax,” Dalton said, and I felt him push the top of my head down firmly, so I was looking straight at my lap, and all that hair piled on it. “I never cut anyone yet. At least, not by accident.”
“I think he looks a lot better,” Shelly said. “You did a good job, Dalt. Now he doesn’t look like a girl anymore.”
“They call you Dalt?” I said, trying to get my mind off my situation, my teeth clenched together.
Dalton made one final, upward scrape against the back of my neck.
“Yep.”
I felt naked. I couldn’t feel any hair at all around my ears or neck. I felt like a dog whose ears had been clothespinned behind his skull.
Dalton stood back.
“There,” he said.
He was finished. Finally.
“Now remember, Jonah,” Dalton said. “Don’t be mad. You told me I could do it. We’re friends, right?”
I swallowed, and fought the urge to bring both my hands up and feel if anything was left there.
“Right.”
Bev turned away from their camp stove. I could see her in the orange light of the fire.
“Let me see,” she said.
Dalton folded the razor and slid it into his back pocket. Bev came over and stood next to me, turning her head so she could see Dalton’s work. Then she brushed the hair away from my shoulder. And her hand felt so nice on me, the hand of a mother.
“You are very handsome, Jonah,” she said. “You look five years younger. You’re just a little boy. And good God! You’re so skinny, you look like you haven’t eaten in days.”
She brushed her hand down my cheek.
“I don’t think I have,” I said.
“Well, go wash this hair off. We have more food than we can eat, and it’s waiting for you,” Bev said.
“Thank you,” I said. I didn’t want to move.
“Well, hurry up, boys,” Arno said. “I’m starving.”
I washed all that itchy hair off in the wide part of the creek Dalton called their bathtub. As I sat there in the cool water, rubbing my hands over my scalp, feeling the bristles of my hair that was now so short I couldn’t even pull it, I worried about getting out of there, and at the same time it felt so good to be with Dalton and his family, like I almost belonged, even if I couldn’t get Simon and Lilly—and Mitch—out of my mind.
The sun had gone down. The sky faintly glowed in the west, and in the darkness above me the first fiery stars in the evening showed themselves.
My head was strangely light. I rubbed the smoothness of the razor-bared skin at the nape of my neck. I felt smaller.
Dalton had already gotten out of the water and was drying himself off on the shore.
“I never had hair this short,” I said.
“It’ll grow back,” Dalton said. “Come on, get out and dry off. Time to eat.”
I cupped another handful of water over my head, pushed myself up, and waded over to where Dalton stood on the shore.
He held out a towel.
I wiped it over my head and dressed quickly. “What are we going to tell your dad, Dalton?”
“Tell him about what?”
“I need to leave. I have to.” I sighed. “I think I’m a bad person, that I messed up things, and being here isn’t right. I just can’t forget about how bad I hurt my own brother. And I can’t stop thinking about the girl. Lilly. Even out here, being where everything seems so normal and comfortable with your family. It should be easy enough for me to just relax, but I can’t stop thinking about it all.”
I dropped onto a knee so I could lace up the boots he’d given me.
“Do you love her?” Dalton asked.
“Yes. I know I’m just being stupid, but I do.”
He looked out across the water.
“We’ll leave in the morning, okay? I can make it work with my dad. Trust me.”
I guess I’d heard that enough in the last couple days. Trust me. But I did trust Dalton. I stood up and brushed the dirt from my knee.
“And thanks again for t
he clothes. I like them.”
“Let’s go eat.”
I draped my towel on the limb of the willow tree, tucked in my tee shirt, and followed Dalton toward the light of the campfire.
And somewhere at that moment, out in the abandoned desert, my brother was being bound up like an animal.
We all sat at the long table—boards of redwood nailed together—Dalton, his dad, and I, wearing the same clothing, crowded together with his mother and sister, touching each other, unable to avoid it on the short splintering benches. As soon as we seated ourselves, Bev put a plate down on the table in front of me: something that looked like cooked spinach, beans, tortillas she’d made by hand, and some strips of pale meat that looked like chicken. And they all looked at me when she put that plate down, and I looked at it, then back at their faces, but I didn’t know what I was supposed to do or say and felt myself reddening, unable to hide behind the drape of my hair, so I just swallowed and whispered, “Thank you.”
And I think it was the best food I’d ever eaten. I must have told her that five times before I finished the first plateful.
“You like it?” Arno said. “That’s snake meat.”
It didn’t matter to me. He could have told me it was anything at that moment and I’d still have eaten it.
“Tell us about yourself, Jonah,” Bev said. She smiled at me and I could see the little orange reflections of the fire in her eyes.
“What about?”
“Where are you from? How old are you?” she asked.
Suddenly, I dreaded talking about myself.
“We came from a place called Los Rogues. It’s by the Texas border. And I’ll be seventeen next March.”
“We?”
“My little brother and me. Simon’s fourteen.”
“Where’s Simon now?” she asked. I thought she was being cautious, like she was afraid something terrible may have happened to him, to us. But maybe it was just my imagination.
“We split up. Made a mistake. It was an accident.”
“How’d you get here?” Arno asked.