In the Path of Falling Objects

by Andrew Smith

  I looked at Dalton, but I couldn’t tell from his expression whether or not I was supposed to say anything that even came close to the truth.

  I took another bite of food and chewed it a while so I could think.

  “I fell in the river. When I got out, Dalton was there and he offered to help me.”

  “And how’d you get all the way from Los Rogues to the river, just so you could fall into it?” Arno asked. He was smiling, but his eyes were intent and I knew he was curious about what I’d left out of my explanation.

  “It’s a long story,” I said.

  “Good.” He took a bite of snake meat. “Tell it.”

  “Dad,” Dalton said, and swallowed. “His brother might be in trouble. He’s heading to Arizona by himself. Jonah asked me if I’d help him, if I’d take him to Arizona, but I told him I had to come home first.”

  Arno looked at his son, then me, and then turned to his wife.

  “Where are your parents?” Bev asked.

  I looked right at her, so she’d know I was telling the truth, and said, “We’re all alone. They left us. It’s just me and Simon, and I promised I’d take care of him.”

  “Everyone’s got parents,” Shelly protested.

  “Not me. Not Simon,” I said.

  “It’s not far, Dad,” Dalton said. “Heck, we could get there and back by the day after tomorrow.”

  I could see Arno thinking about it, and then he said, “You can take the camper truck. I don’t like that windshield missing on the Bug if you boys run into rainstorms. You’re old enough, and I trust you’ll be careful, Dalt.”

  I felt so relieved when he said that. I think he must have heard me let out the big breath of air I was holding.

  “Thanks, Dad,” Dalton said. “We’ll leave in the morning.”

  “Are you and your brother going to come back here?” Arno asked.

  I thought about Matthew. About our father.

  I thought about how stupid I had been, dragging Simon away from home, away from that dead horse.

  And I needed to see her again, too.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re both welcome to, I want you to know it. If you’re Dalton’s friend, that’s good enough for us. We have space, we could use some extra hands sometimes, especially building that cabin.”

  “I don’t know if we can come back,” I said.

  “One thing,” Arno said. “If you do, you have to tell me the whole story.”

  “Okay. I promise.”

  And he left it at that.

  Dalton burned a candle upon the rocks inside the tepee. We had just stretched out on the floor to sleep, and it felt so good to be there; but not only because my belly was full. The canvas skin of the tepee glowed in pulsing amber from the fire outside. I pulled my boots off and stretched my legs across the blankets.

  I began pulling the contents from the pack and laying them out on the mats that covered the floor. I made a small pile of the clothes I had, Simon’s and mine, wadded and wrinkled. The gun was there, I could feel it at the bottom of the pack. But I didn’t want to tell Dalton it was there.

  I opened my comp book.

  I began to draw, thinking as I traced a line onto a clean page how nobody had fallen from the edge of the world yet, at least not really. I drew the Lincoln, Lilly, Simon, and Mitch, going off in one direction, the line fading away from where the sagging bridge was placed.

  I scraped tiny bits of wood away from the pencil’s point with my thumbnail and began to draw. I sketched in the winding creek we’d followed to Chavez Canyon, the ruins of the pueblo, Dalton’s camp, and his family. Finally, I drew a small image of myself, standing beside the bathtub pool, and I drew an arrow toward my head and labeled it “haircut.”

  Dalton glanced down at what I was doing.

  “Cool,” he said.

  On the same page, I had drawn a VW, an unmarked road stretching before it, a boy wearing goggles and a cap with a tail hanging from it, the name “Dalton” written beneath.

  “Is that how you spell your name?” I asked.

  “Yeah. Nice. What is that?”

  “It’s a map,” I said. “I guess it’s more like a diary. So I won’t forget what happened to us. Even if it’s not going to matter to anyone.”

  “Can I look at it?”

  “Sure.”

  I sat up, cross-legged beside the candle, as Dalton turned around in his blankets so his head was near my knee.

  He propped himself up on his elbows and looked down at the pages.

  I spun the book around so it would be right side up for him, and he turned back through the pages of map and writing.

  “Can I read the part about the girl, too? Do you mind?” he asked.

  “I don’t care.”

  I watched him while he read my journal. He didn’t say anything, but sometimes he’d stop and turn a page or two so he could look at the map before going back to reading. When he finished, he opened the book to the map of the pueblo and turned the book toward me.

  “What are you going to write about me?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  Dalton put his head down and rolled over onto his back and closed his eyes.

  “Say it was a good haircut.”

  “Okay.”

  He fell asleep almost as soon as I began writing.

  I took Matthew’s letters out of the pack and thumbed through them. I wondered what Dalton thought when he read my journal. I told the truth about Lilly, and I wasn’t embarrassed for him to know it, either. And I wondered if he thought I was crazy for ever starting off with Simon on such a pointless journey. I knew we’d never find Matthew. I knew we’d never see our father.

  Simon knew it, too, and we still left Los Rogues on that horse.

  But it was too late now.

  Brother Jones,

  Well, as of today I am officially no longer a teenager. Now that I think about it, 20 seems like being real old, but still not old enough. It seems like I’m older than most of the guys at my base here. It’s funny to me ’cause this war was started by a bunch of old guys but there’s not one old guy anywhere around here who’s fighting it.

  There’s one old guy who I saw just show up at our firebase named Hungry Jack. He’s a GI who went AWOL and he just roams around and picks up with whatever crew he can find. He’s only staying here because of how cheap heroin is, and nobody cares about it at all. They should have sent Dad to fight the war, he would like it here, ha ha ha, don’t tell anyone I said that. But, you know.

  A couple nights ago we killed a lot of people. There were 4 sampans on the river that were full of VC and we fired direct fire right into them. I guess some other VC carried all the bodies away so we wouldn’t get the credit, but there was blood and stuff all over the place.

  To tell you the truth, I don’t envy anyone for being on the receiving end of our 40mm’s. We can put 300 rounds into a group of them in less than a minute. We’re right on the Laos border, and it’s really getting to be a mess around here. The NVA are using heavy tanks and heavy artillery against us and a lot of GIs are getting zapped.

  Last night I got drunk. Don’t tell Simon or Mother, though. We celebrated because one of my crew has less than 90 days to do over here, and ’cause of my birthday.

  You might have heard about firebase Mary Ann getting wiped out. Don’t worry, they were 30 clicks from here. But there are a lot of VC villages around us, only we can’t do anything to them until we catch them at it. One of my buddies from NCO school got messed up the other day. He lost a leg and an eye, but he gets to go home. When I get back, I’m going to come see him. I’m going to see my other buddy in Leavenworth, too.

  I wrote Scotty’s address in Arizona on the inside of the envelope. Save it. I am going there.

  Take care of yourself and Simon.

  Love,

  Matthew

  I held the dry, stained paper of Matthew’s letter between my fingers, feeling the small dents on the pages where
my brother’s hand had pressed a point to form the words I saw there. The clothes I piled from the pack were all dry now, and I bundled the letters up inside them and pulled one of Simon’s tee shirts out and held it to my face and smelled it before folding it up and placing it around the letters. Then I tucked the map away with the rest of our clothes and blew out the candle flame and lay down.

  I bundled myself in blankets on the floor of the tepee, the smoke from the candle and campfire hanging like gauze in the apex of the shelter. In my dream, I was floating above the earth, and I looked down upon a ceaseless and unnamed void of desert, could see Simon standing shirtless beside the girl, Don Quixote watching over them, his face, uncovered, showing a toothy yellow smile. And the tin man was a burning rocket fired in a decaying arc toward them, his body blackening and crumpling in upon itself, calcifying, turning to stone, screaming with speed through the lightless sky, tumbling and plummeting downward as Simon and Lilly looked up to watch the falling, while Mitch’s disembodied voice shouted wildly above it all, over and over again, “This is why the people can’t trust Jonah. This is why the people can’t trust Jonah.”

  (simon)

  trust

  Simon lit another cigarette as Mitch sped the Lincoln westward along the narrow road toward Farmington. Lilly sat beside Don Quixote in the backseat, her scarf pulled tight against her head, the glasses hiding her eyes. He leaned over the door from time to time so he could see the blackness around his eye in the side mirror, to catch a glimpse of the girl in the backseat, to convince himself, maybe, that everything would be okay.

  He tumbled the meteorite around between his hands, and studied the streaked, red welts from the rope where it had cut into his wrists. Simon had seen the figures Mitch scratched in the side of the car. Simon knew one was supposed to be him. He knew what it meant.

  Simon knew he had to get away.

  Mitch turned on the radio, then turned it off and began humming. He sounded happy.

  Simon finally got up the nerve. He bit his lip and said, “I want to go back for Jonah.”

  Mitch stopped his humming. “You waited all this time to decide that? You were the one who kicked him off the bridge, man.”

  Mitch twisted his hands, the knuckles whitening, around the steering wheel.

  “I was drunk,” Simon said. “And I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “He’s gone,” Mitch said. “Trust me. He’s gone by now.”

  “Mitch,” Lilly said softly.

  “No,” Mitch said. “We’ll be in Arizona while it’s still light. Let’s stop and get some dinner at the next town up here. I’m hungry. The punk can find his own way, if he didn’t drown.”

  “Don’t call him that,” Lilly said.

  Mitch tipped his head so he could see her in the mirror. “What?”

  “Punk,” Lilly said flatly. “Like he’s nothing. He didn’t do anything to you.”

  “Lilly needs to shut up,” Mitch answered. “Lilly can’t have him. Ever.”

  Simon and Lilly sat silent.

  Then Mitch tapped Simon on the shoulder. “Do you want me to drop you off on the side of the road? ’Cause I will.”

  Simon thought. He thought the only things Mitch ever dropped off got hurt first.

  “No.”

  “That’s my man,” Mitch said, smiling. “And anyway, I have no doubt that the punk made it out okay and probably already has a new girlfriend by now. And I bet he’s forgotten all about our sweet Lilly, too. So, relax. It’s going to be a perfect day. It is a perfect day.”

  They stopped for hamburgers at a cafeteria in a small settlement on their way toward Ship Rock. The few other diners stared at them as they walked in, because that old Lincoln and the shining metal man were plainly visible in the bright late afternoon sun, sitting in the lot outside the diner’s front wall of windows.

  “Thirty-six,” Mitch said as they sat down at a table near the door. His voice sounded relaxed, like he was playing a game.

  “Thirty-six what?” Simon asked.

  “Place mats on all the tables,” Mitch replied.

  Simon looked down at the paper mats on their table, yellow and red, with maps of New Mexico on each one.

  A stocky, dark-skinned waitress sighed and scowled as Simon quickly balled the mat at their table’s vacant seat in his hand and dropped it onto the floor between his feet.

  “Wrong,” Simon said. “Thirty-five.”

  Simon smiled across the table at Lilly.

  “You like to push buttons, don’t you, Simon?” Mitch said. “That’s okay. I like that about you. I like to push them, too.”

  Mitch chuckled.

  “I think he’s cute,” Lilly said, and brushed her fingers along Simon’s arm.

  Simon grinned at her.

  Mitch’s smile vanished.

  “Oh, come on, Mitch,” Lilly said. “Why don’t you lighten up? You know I’m just teasing. We’re just having fun.”

  “I guess we all are, then,” Mitch said, forcing a smile again.

  Before she finished eating, Lilly stood up to go to the bathroom, leaving Mitch and Simon, ketchup smeared in a line from both sides of his mouth, alone at the table.

  “You like Lilly, don’t you?” Mitch said, watching her wind her way through the cafeteria, away from them.

  “I don’t know,” Simon said, swallowing, not really paying attention. “Yeah. I guess. Don’t you?”

  Mitch smiled. “Who wouldn’t?”

  “Yeah.” Simon drew a line with a fry through the ketchup on his plate.

  Mitch pushed a plate forward on the table until it clinked against his sweating glass of ice water and Simon looked up at him. He flicked the cap of his lighter, under the table.

  Flick.

  “You know that little guy back there at Chief’s? Where we had those beers yesterday?”

  Simon thought about the money in his pocket, about the cigarettes he stored in the glove box in the Lincoln.

  “Yeah.”

  Mitch stared intently at Simon, watching him finish his burger.

  “I killed him when you went to pee.”

  Flick.

  He said it just as plainly as if he were ordering dessert.

  “Remember how you asked where he was when you came back from your piss? He was about a foot away from your feet, on the floor behind the bar, lying in his own brains.”

  Simon swallowed the last bite and looked at Mitch, his eyes wide, trying to figure out if Mitch was playing a trick or not. Simon pulled the ashtray across the table and slid another cigarette from his pack and lit it.

  “I shot him. Right through his head.”

  Simon reached for his Coke and drank until the straw sucked empty.

  “You did?”

  “Yeah.” Mitch wiped his mouth with his napkin.

  Simon rubbed his palms on his pants, the cigarette dangling from his lips.

  “What’s it feel like?”

  “What? To kill someone?” Mitch spoke quietly, leaning toward Simon.

  The waitress plodded back and placed their bill down on the table, then promptly ignored them.

  “It feels like being stuck at the top of a Ferris wheel.”

  Flick.

  Simon had only been on a Ferris wheel one time in his life. But he remembered that feeling, being up there and swinging in that seat, squeamish and tense, everything so silent and vivid. And he liked the way that felt, so Simon was confused about what Mitch was trying to say to him.

  “Why are you telling me now, Mitch?”

  “ ’Cause you helped me rob the place. ’Cause you stole those plates for me. ’Cause I was mean to you last night and I want you to be my friend. My best friend. I guess that makes us partners. All three of us now.” Mitch put his hands out on the table in front of Simon. “What do you think about that?”

  Simon bit the inside of his lip. He held his breath.

  “All four of us, if you count Don,” Simon said, squinting and grinning with his mouth closed,
hoping it was what Mitch would want him to say.

  It was.

  Mitch laughed and said, “That’s the second time today you caught me being off by one, Simon.”

  “I like to push buttons, Mitch. You said.”

  They watched Lilly walk back, making her way through the maze of tables, moving so gracefully and light. She radiated a cautious smile to both of them from across the room.

  “Are you going to finish that, Lilly?” Mitch asked, pointing to her half-eaten food. She squeezed down on the seat beside Simon.

  “Do you want the rest, Simon?” she asked.

  “No, thanks.”

  “Well, you’ve got the money, Simon,” Mitch said. “Why don’t you take this up and pay it?”

  And he pushed the check across the table in the direction of Simon.

  Simon thought about the money in his pocket he’d taken from Chief’s. He felt sick.

  Before they left the township, Mitch filled the Lincoln’s gas tank and bought some food and drinks from a liquor store. He asked Simon and Lilly to come inside with him, and Simon dreaded that he might have to watch Mitch kill someone just because Mitch thought it felt like a carnival ride. Simon was relieved that the only thing he had to put up with was Mitch tearing a page from a magazine and asking Simon to hide it under his shirt. The page turned out to be a black-and-white photograph of a soldier’s face, and large enough that when Mitch, Lilly, and Simon returned to the Lincoln, Mitch fixed the picture with black electrical tape right over the face of Don Quixote, saying, “Now that looks good. He looks real mean.”

  Mitch drove into Arizona, through a forgotten area east of Kayenta, where the road cut straight through a desert unmarked by any signs of men. The highway stretched like an asphalt streambed following an upward-sloping ridge of huge and seamless mountains that turned from gold to red in the light of the evening, the stone gapping unevenly, like Mitch’s teeth. The Lincoln began to wheeze and sputter.

  The car was dying.

  “Damn!” Mitch slapped the steering wheel.

  “What’s wrong?” Lilly said.

  “I don’t know,” Mitch answered. “I don’t know anything about cars.”