by Andrew Smith
We walked back to the truck and Dalton drove out onto the road.
“Don’t crumple up any more place mats,” the waitress scowled at me and clanked our drinks down on the table in front of us.
Dalton gave me a confused look, but I had no more idea what was going on than he did.
“You cut your hair off,” she said. “So you got a haircut and now you think I don’t remember you?”
How could she know I cut my hair?
“What?”
It was night, and we had stopped for a Coke. Dalton nearly fell asleep on the road, and so we ended up at the same café outside of Farmington where Mitch had told Simon about what it felt like to kill a person.
“Don’t think I don’t remember you,” she warned. “You were here earlier with those other two, smoking your cigarettes and making a mess like you owned the place. You threw the place mat on the floor and got ashes all over the place. You were wearing blue jeans and moccasins.” She looked at Dalton, and then she waved her hand in front of me as though she were painting a picture of me. “So you went home and got a haircut and put on some clean clothes. Well, you better behave this time. And don’t even try smoking in here again, a kid your age.”
I scratched my head and smiled at Dalton.
“That was my little brother.”
The waitress leaned forward and looked closely at my face. I could feel her breath.
“Well. He did have a black eye,” she conceded.
“I know.”
The waitress shrugged, an unapologetic dismissal of her mistake.
“What time were they here?” I asked. “We’re trying to find him.”
The waitress looked around as though scanning the room for customers needing her attention, but the place was abandoned except for Dalton and me.
“A few hours ago.”
I swallowed.
“Did he look all right?”
“What do you mean?” she said. “Except for his hair, he looked exactly like you. Just like you. Is something wrong? Did he run away or something?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Well, I thought so. I thought something was up with all three of them.” The waitress put her notepad down on our table and leaned her weight against the edge.
“Do you want me to call the police?” she whispered.
I thought. I could feel Dalton looking at me, waiting to see what I would do.
“No. He’s done this before,” I lied.
“Well, maybe he’s old enough to let him go, then,” she said. “It’s a different world nowadays.” She looked at Dalton and asked, “Are you going to get anything to eat, honey?”
She stood, straightened, as if to leave.
Dalton shook his head. “If I eat now, I’ll have to take a nap. And we’ve got to drive.”
The waitress looked at me.
“Just the Coke,” I said. “What about the girl? How did she look?”
The waitress looked impatient and bothered, but I could tell she wanted to talk. “She looked like a girl. What do you want me to say? Not one of them looked very happy to be here, if that’s what you want to know. That one guy gave me the creeps. And a dirty look, too. The girl? She spent most of her time in the bathroom, then they left in some old black convertible with a big piece of metal junk sticking up out of the backseat. That’s all I know about that, but you can trust me on it.”
“Okay.”
“Well, I am over thirty, honey, so you might not want to.” She started walking away from us, toward the counter where she had left a cigarette burning, and said, over her shoulder, “But I guess you got no choice.”
“I could drive if you want me to.”
I could see that Dalton was fighting off sleep.
“You ever drive before?”
I thought about being on the road to the Palms, Simon and Mitch stripped naked in the backseat of the Lincoln, how it rained so hard on me and Lilly, standing under the eaves of the motel, when she put her mouth on mine.
“A couple times.”
“I’ll be okay,” Dalton said. “But I was thinking. What, exactly, are you going to do when we find your brother and your girlfriend?”
The road was so dark now.
“I’m going to take them away.”
“And what if Mitch doesn’t want that to happen? You said he has a gun.”
We passed the sign that said ARIZONA STATE LINE.
“So do I.”
“I thought so,” Dalton said, and sighed.
“I’m not going to shoot no one.”
“Okay.”
“I promise.”
“We’ll find them, Jonah.”
“Arizona,” I said. “I never been here before. I think you should pull off the road and park it.”
Dalton turned the truck’s headlights off and parked behind a rock berm along the darkest stretch of roadway, so no one would see us there.
I was afraid we might miss something if we kept driving at night, maybe miss some sign of Simon and Lilly swallowed up by the dark, a sign gone silent now in our search. And I tried to tell myself that it was enough to know that they had come this way, had been on this same stretch of highway just hours before, but that was such a long time and things kept moving no matter what. I knew I had a long and troubled night ahead before the first streaks of light would spill across the rust of the desert and set me into motion again.
“Let’s just sleep for a bit,” I said.
We were both tired.
“That sounds really good,” Dalton said.
I carried my pack and comp book with me and we climbed into the camper in the truck’s bed. It reminded me of being in that trailer the first day Simon and I left home, the day when it rained so hard on us.
Dalton found a flashlight and turned it on. He laid it down on a small table just inside the door. We stood hunched over in the confinement of the camper. At the front end, two narrow bunk beds stretched across the width of the shell, one set back over the cab of the truck. Dalton pulled back a thin white curtain that hung across a fogged and slotted window. He propped the window outward with a broken wooden spoon and dust wafted in, blown on a faint warm breeze.
“It’s gonna be too hot in here tonight,” he said.
And through the window I could see the dark outline of a mesa rising, towering up, between us and the stars that hung so thick, like a cloud, in the night sky.
Dalton took off his cap and shirt, then kicked his feet out of his boots and sat down on the lower bunk.
“Man, I am so tired,” he said.
I sat down on a wooden bench beside the table. I didn’t say anything, and I guess I must have looked bothered or something, because Dalton said, “Don’t worry, Jonah, we’ll find them tomorrow. I have a feeling it’s all going to be okay.”
“I like your family, Dalton,” I said. “Do you ever get tired of living like that?”
“As opposed to living like what?”
I thought about it. I thought how lucky he was.
“I wouldn’t know,” I said.
“I bet you’re pretty mad at your mom and dad, huh?”
“I gave up being mad at them a long time ago. Simon’s the one who’s still mad. That’s why he fights me all the time. There’s no one else for him to blame, I guess.”
“You and your brother can come back and stay with us. You can help me and my dad build our cabin.”
“Okay.”
“You really think you’re going to find your dad when he gets out of jail?”
“No.”
“You think you’re going to find your brother?”
“Which one?”
“At that soldier’s house? In Flagstaff?”
“No.”
“It’ll be okay, Jonah.”
“Okay.”
“Jonah?”
“What?”
“I always wished I had a brother.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Turn the light off when
you get in bed,” he said, and he stretched out on the bunk and threw his pants down onto the floor.
“I’m just going to write down some things,” I said. “I’ll turn it out in a few minutes.”
“Stay up as long as you want. I’m going to sleep. Good night.”
“ ’Night, Dalton. And thanks again.”
“Yeah.”
“We should have eaten something back there.”
“Yeah.”
Dalton rolled over and covered his head with the bedsheet.
I put my pack down on the floor, took off my boots and shirt, and stepped over Dalton to climb up onto the upper bunk. I sat up, resting my bare back against the wood-paneled wall of the camper, and stretched my legs across the bed, my bare feet pushing down into the sheets.
It felt good. I swung my arm over the side and pulled the pack up onto my lap and opened it. I snaked a hand down through the tangles of dirty clothes to feel for the pistol, knowing it would still be there, but wanting to touch it anyway, if nothing else to convince myself that all the things that had happened since Simon and I left Los Rogues really did happen.
I spun the cylinder with my thumb, checking that each bullet was still in its proper place, then I popped the wheel open and telescoped an eye down the barrel and blew a short blast of breath through the opening when I saw some lint in there.
“I can hear what you’re doing,” Dalton said. “I know what that sound is.”
“Sorry.”
“Just be careful.”
“I will.”
And even though I forgot to bring enough of my own clothes when we left Los Rogues, I did remember to bring some extra bullets—a small handful that were loosely scattered at the bottom of the pack. I put the gun back inside, and left Simon’s and my clothes scattered out on my bed with the pack lying open so I could get the gun quickly if I needed to.
I knew Mitch was out there somewhere. I could feel it.
I stretched across and pivoted the flashlight so its beam was aimed at my bunk. I opened my comp book and bit away small splinters at the pencil tip and spit them into my hand.
What was the name of that town back there? I wrote beside the small block-image of the café, They were here just a couple hours before me. I will have to find out the name of that town. I should pay better attention, which is why I’m not going to drive at night. Here’s where me and Dalton sleep.
I drew the truck, hidden behind the hill of rock and dirt, beneath the shadow of a monstrous black mesa.
I traced my fingers back along the line of our journey, feeling the grooves I’d made in drawing my map, some of them deep when I was excited or angry, some just the faintest indentations when I was tired or sad. I rubbed a finger over the pueblo-image of the Palms motel.
Was it only two nights ago when I was with Lilly?
Sometimes I’d think about how time was like standing in a room and I could see everything so clearly as long as I faced back. And why couldn’t I just turn the other way and see what would happen tomorrow?
I ached to see her again, to touch her again, and completely disregard the rest of the world, the ones who slept beside us, brothers, the obligations I carried with me that were heavier than anything dragged along on that insane journey in the black convertible. I wished, if there ever were such things, willing to put up with the hatred and jealousy Simon spewed at me, and the lunatic ravings of Mitch proclaiming this is why the people can’t trust Jonah.
That’s what set him off, I knew. Mitch realized that Lilly was not his and would not be his.
I rubbed my fingers over the Palms and followed the line to where I had drawn the roadhouse where we’d stopped. I closed my eyes, trying to relive the feeling of Lilly’s hand in mine, sweating, her fingers unfastening the buttons on my shirt and her smooth hand sliding in to stroke my chest, covering my heart, her hand curved back like the spine on that sagging bridge.
I opened my eyes and stretched my legs. It felt good, wearing those clothes Dalton gave me. Spending that day at the pueblo with his family made me feel like I could almost forget everything, like I had washed away something that stubbornly clung to me for so long when I bathed in the stream in the evening.
I knew I would go back there.
After.
I kicked my legs out of my pants and dropped my clothes down onto the floor. I reached over and switched off the flashlight and put my head down onto the pillow.
I had a dream about my mother.
She sat on the porch of the shack in Los Rogues in autumn. The dirt of the ground, the dark-dry grasses were covered in splotches, the yellow scales of cottonwood leaves cast down on the gray wind. I could see the black pane of the window behind her, taped over with cardboard in the corner where Simon had thrown a rock and received a beating. She held a narrow whip of a stick and made me come to her and kneel and she thrashed me for my failure to keep an eye on “the younger one.” And when I turned away so she wouldn’t see me crying, so my tears wouldn’t make her angrier, so she wouldn’t win, watching the blurry scattering of the yellow against the dull dust color of the sky, I felt the other mother’s hand brushing the hair from my skin, and Bev said:
“Mapmaker, what do you imagine is on the other side of the black mesa?”
And then I was looking at the map I’d drawn: Dalton’s truck, the mesa beyond it, and suddenly I was outside in the desert in the night, seeing where the stars came down and vanished behind the cloak of the table rock, a shroud of earth the blackest of blacks.
I imagine a great pueblo-city of people that we have never seen. They float above the ground, unchained by gravity, released from the earth, but not departed from it.
I saw Dalton standing there, laughing beside a stone house, and his hands were white with paint; the house all dotted over with the outlines of Dalton’s open palms, like ancient cave paintings, the fingers splayed like those drawings of turkeys we’d do in grade school; and I was sitting in the cooling water, ladling handfuls over my head, rubbing at my short hair, watching my friend on the shore, seeing the handprints he’d left all over the walls as the city of stone expanded behind him.
And, now in the light, the city became a cluster of buildings towered over by swaying palms and I could hear the insectlike rustle of their leaves in the wind, warm against my naked skin. I looked up, feeling the water, drowning in the rain, to see the one palm tree—a buzzing green neon sign—as I squinted against the rain and turned my eyes so I wouldn’t catch myself looking at how the gauze of her clothing became transparent under the storm.
“Have you ever kissed a girl, Jonah?”
And I could see myself driving the Lincoln; driving so fast, unable to stop or slow, the road turning and coiling before me. And I knew they were all there, could see them in the mirrors: Mitch, Lilly, Simon, the metal man, his paper face a monochrome blur, a picture of a dead horse abandoned beside a streambed. And I was saying, I can’t stop, I can’t stop; and I felt her breath against me, her lips just touching my ear as she whispered we have to be quiet we have to be quiet, her chanted line becoming a sound like drumming in the hot nowhere of the desert, drumming and drumming, the sound echoing through my skull with each strike of Simon’s hand, rising and lowering, clutching the bloodied meteorite, bashing it into my skull, drum, drum, and Simon saying I can’t trust you, Jonah. Drum drum.
Drum drum.
I opened my eyes.
It was light.
Drum drum.
I turned my stiff neck and looked over at the slot of the window. A crow was perched crookedly on the bed rail of the truck, tapping its beak against the glass of the window, just inches away from my head.
Drum drum.
I just watched for a few minutes, lying there in that half-awake state where everything that had happened just crawled slowly back to me in bits.
The black bird continued hammering at its own reflection. Blood had been spraying out from the crow’s nib in a mist of fine red droplets against the glass,
but the bird would not stop. I tried to shoo it away by flailing my hand at the glass, but the bird could not see beyond his own reflection, continuing its futile ritual, pecking and bleeding.
“What’s that?”
Dalton woke up.
“A stupid crow at the window.”
I heard Dalton sit up. I climbed down from my bed and pushed open the door to the camper. Dalton followed me out. As I came around the side of the truck, I began waving my arms over my head, yelling, “Get out of here!”
The big crow kangaroo-hopped a few feet from the truck, like he was just waiting for us to leave, still watching the window, lured by the reflection. I pulled at the waist of my underwear where the elastic had sagged past my hip and hobbled, barefoot in the rocks and gravel of the desert, and bent down to grab a rock. I raised my arm to throw, and the crow just cocked its head and watched me.
It was already so hot, so late.
“Hey,” Dalton said. “It doesn’t matter, Jonah.”
I dropped the rock and climbed back inside the camper to get the rest of my clothes.
Ahead, out there in the desert, Mitch was cutting himself with a razor blade.
“I should’ve let you kill that crow,” Dalton said. “We could eat it.”
“I’m really hungry, too.”
We had eaten all the food his mother packed for us the day before. Dalton drove, and we listened to the drone of the highway, both of us shirtless in the dry heat, the wind rushing in through the lowered windows, my fingers curled around the top of the door and my elbow out so I could feel the hot air blowing through the hair of my armpit. And sometimes, out of habit, I’d bring a hand up to brush my hair back, only to realize I was practically bald.
The highway was empty except for us two boys in that truck.
The road was without shoulders on either side, nothing more than grainy gray asphalt rolled flat across the rusted gravel of the Arizona desert, fading white lines at its borders, broken yellow dashes along the center. To the left, I saw the desert spread out, flat and endless, tufted with green-gray brush, and to the right of us, the jagged mesas rose from soft pillows of sandstone, streaked across, red near their bottoms and ash-white near the tops, all painted across evenly as though they had been stenciled hastily like that. I imagined the vast sea that once ran over them, the eyeless creatures that must have floated and swam and died, without a mark, in the lightless and cold depths just at the same place where we were driving.