by Andrew Smith
And then I saw a wink of light off in the desert to my right.
We drove on for a hundred or more yards before I said, “Hey, Dalton, I saw something back there. I think.”
“What was it?”
Dalton stepped on the brake.
“I don’t know.”
And Dalton turned the truck around in the middle of the highway.
He drove down and back three times until I saw the flash again, and then he saw it, too.
He parked, and we climbed from the truck and boosted ourselves onto the back wheels so we could see above the stands of dark brush between the highway and the source of the light.
And I realized that we were looking out across the desert at the metal statue of Don Quixote.
“What is it?” Dalton asked.
“He’s gotta be there,” I said. “That’s the tin man.”
I squinted, trying to scan with my road-blurred eyes as much of the land as I could, but there was no movement, no people, no sound. Dalton noticed the tracks where the Lincoln had veered off the road, the flattened brush lying broken between the snaking tire lines.
“It’s them,” I said.
And I believed they would all be there, and I knew what I would have to do.
We got back in the truck. I took a drink from the canteen and handed it to Dalton.
He didn’t say anything when I pulled my pistol from the pack and laid it between us on the seat. He just looked at me once and then started the truck.
“I don’t know how far in we can go. I don’t want to get it stuck out there,” he said.
“You don’t have to come.”
“I told you I’d help you,” he said. “I guess I didn’t know it would be like this.”
I felt myself getting mad, but then I thought, maybe I’m scared, too.
“I told you the truth,” I said. “You read everything I wrote there. I wasn’t making it up.”
“Let’s just be careful, okay?”
“Okay.”
So Dalton pulled the truck off the highway in the direction of the fading tracks that had been left behind the day before by the Lincoln. But we had only gone a few feet when he decided we’d be better off walking into the stand of brush where we’d seen the metal man. Dalton parked between thick palo verde trees where we hoped the truck couldn’t be seen from the highway.
I looked at him once. I wanted to see if I could tell whether he really wanted to come with me to get Simon.
Dalton opened his door and stood outside.
“Let’s go get your brother.”
And Lilly, I thought.
I spilled the contents of my pack onto the floor of the truck: all of Simon’s and my wadded and dirty clothes, my money and map, some loose bullets, all of Matthew’s letters. Since I knew we’d be walking in, I put the canteen and pistol into the pack, leaving it yawning open, and slung it over one shoulder. It sagged heavily with the weight of the water and the gun, against the back of my rib cage.
Dalton silently pressed his door shut, and I did the same.
We both knew it was time to be quiet.
We set off through the brush, out across the desert.
Dalton moved like a hunter, noiseless, staying low behind the lines of brush that made uneven screens across the distance between the metal man and us.
In the silent stillness of the desert, hunched down behind a black-brown clump of brush, trying to hide from whatever might be there, I could see Don Quixote standing militarylike, as though the statue was somehow keeping guard. And I could also see just the faintest outline of the trunk of the Lincoln parked behind a stand of hopseed brush.
Dalton stood so close behind me I could feel the heat radiating from his body.
“It looks like they scattered stuff all over the place,” he whispered. “Like they unpacked everything they had.”
I noticed it, too, and I wondered what it meant.
I could see the grainy image of a face taped across those hollow eyes of the statue, the corners of the photograph curled at the bottom in the draining and arid heat. We both just stood there breathing so faintly, listening for sounds that never came.
My hands were shaking.
I tried to swallow, but I didn’t have any spit.
I lowered the pack to the ground and left it at my feet. I clutched the pistol, thumbing the hammer back so it could fire quickly. I didn’t want to look at Dalton now; I was afraid he might be ready to back out. So I swiped a hand across my eyes and stood, holding the gun before me and rounding into the clear.
I felt, somehow, that they were gone, but I didn’t trust the feeling. I looked just once across my shoulder at the metal man, caught a glimpse of the arrangement of objects at his pedestal, as I quietly made my way to the stand of weeds where the Lincoln rested.
Dalton followed behind me.
I heard him gasp.
We both realized the car had been burned.
I wanted to scream out for Simon and Lilly, but I was afraid.
I waited.
Nothing.
“They’re gone,” Dalton said, his voice little more than a breath.
“Yeah. All of them.”
I tried to erase the terrible image I expected to see inside the destroyed car. I imagined Simon and Lilly in there, huddled together, dead. What made it worse were those swiping handprints I saw in the ash and soot all along the Lincoln’s charred body. They reminded me of those mythical stories I’d heard about wrongfully buried victims who clawed away futilely at their casket timbers.
And they looked like the ancient handprints on the stones at the pueblo, the handprints I’d dreamed about the night before.
I remembered how the three of us—Matthew, me, and Simon—would follow the creek bed to get to school; and one morning we came upon a cattle truck that left the highway, lying nearly upside down in the shallow water. Cows had been pinned under the crumpled side of the truck’s bed. Matthew made me and Simon stay back, and he climbed up on the fender and saw the driver. He said he looked like rags knotted around the big steering wheel. I remember Matthew saying, I wonder who he was. And I remember wondering, too, if any of the cows got away.
We stayed there and watched, with the other kids from Los Rogues. What else would you do there, anyway? We watched as they pulled the truck back up onto its wheels and cows spilled out, rolling onto their backs, their heads flopping on broken necks. They hung a blanket over the windows to stop us from seeing what Matthew had found inside the cab.
But this was different.
The smell was awful; things that should never burn were rendered putrid in the hot summer air above the carcass of that car.
Dalton stepped in front of me. He knew I was afraid to look.
I forced myself to take the last few dreadful steps toward the car.
The seats had been cooked away. The leather was gone, revealing a tangled and blackened mash of twisted coils and ash, the skeleton of what carried my little brother and me so far away from what we had called home. I exhaled in relief at finding no charred and mummified leavings, dead relics of the people I had come to take away.
And I could sense Dalton was relieved, too.
Then we both saw Mitch’s petroglyphic drawings, etched and burned into the skin of the Lincoln. The coyote that I had drawn there was now followed by three other symbols: the first was supposed to be me, a long-haired boy carrying a map; then there was a small and stout man I didn’t recognize, and a scratched image of a child that was curled as though awaiting birth, a rope or cord wound around its hands and feet.
I felt like I couldn’t breathe, like the ground was rushing up around me.
“What’s that supposed to be?” Dalton asked.
“The things Mitch kills,” I said. “That one’s me. Mitch must think I drowned.”
I began to panic. Was that last image supposed to be Lilly’s baby?
I spun around to look behind me.
It felt as though someone had been wat
ching.
Nothing.
“This car hasn’t been here long,” Dalton said. “They must be close.”
“If they’re alive,” I said.
My throat had gone dry. I breathed, trying to force myself calm, to think, to calculate and add up the meaning of what I saw there scattered like dry and pocked bones in the desert.
Dalton followed me with his eyes as I walked a circle around the Lincoln. I didn’t touch the car, but I could feel it had gone cool. I noticed where the broken side mirror had been wiped clean, the ash there had been turned to dried mud by something wet; spit, sweat, maybe blood, I thought. I looked down at the ground.
“All these footprints are the same,” I said. “Mitch’s. Simon was wearing moccasins.”
He’s okay, he has to be okay. I promised I would take care of him.
There’s no prison worse than “I promise.”
Dalton walked to the edge of the brush and kneeled down to look over the scattered objects that had been tossed to the ground.
I sat in the dirt beside the empty hub of a wheel, cradling the pistol in my lap.
I needed to think. It felt like anything I’d do now would be stupid and wrong.
“There’s three blankets laid out next to each other over here in the shade,” Dalton said. “Beds. They all rested here after the fire. And someone took a piss over here, too. Not too long ago.”
I stood and walked across the open dirt to the scattered beds. I kneeled at the first blanket and put my face onto it. It smelled like Simon.
Over to one side we found a cross that had been formed from scissors and a razor, with three bullets left standing in a fragmented line. There was dried blood on the razor.
I saw Lilly’s blouse hanging in the brush, the suitcase lying open beside some paper bags and empty beer cans.
Dalton pushed his hand through the contents of one of the bags and pulled out an unopened can of peanuts.
“Hey! We got something to eat, Jonah.”
I laid the gun down and sat in the dirt beside Dalton. We were both so hungry. We each filled our hands with the nuts and slapped them into our mouths, and then once again before emptying the can.
Then I picked up my gun and tucked it down into the waist of my pants.
We drank cans of warm Coke and I filled the pack with some white bread and peanut butter that had been left behind in Mitch’s bags and slung it over my shoulder.
“That’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.” Dalton was staring at the paper mask taped onto the statue of Don Quixote. “You drove all the way across New Mexico sitting in the backseat next to that?”
I didn’t answer him.
I placed the lid from the can of peanuts in line with Mitch’s bullets. Then I put the empty Coke can at the apex of the cross and straightened up. I walked through the brush to where Dalton stood beside the statue and I peeled the picture-mask away from Don Quixote’s face.
“Moving things around like this would drive Mitch crazy,” I said. “If he comes back here.”
“He already sounds pretty crazy to me.”
I wadded the magazine picture into a ball and threw it.
“Which way do you suppose they went?” I said.
“If they left all together, they would have taken some of this stuff with them, don’t you think?”
“I think Simon and Lilly ran away,” I said. “Mitch went after them.”
And we left the metal man and burned-out car behind, and began walking out deeper into the desert.
(simon)
meteor
Dear Jonah,
Sorry I called you Jonah, but my hand just wrote that without me even thinking about it. Seems like everything I do now is somebody else doing it and the person that I was has just shrunken away to nothing. I don’t think about anything anymore, I just do it, and things just happen. Whether I like it or not, there’s nothing I can do anymore that isn’t automatic, just trying to stay alive, just trying to keep out of the way of everything that’s coming down on me.
You know how when things get bad you can just say I wish someone would kill me? Well, I feel that way all the time, but when someone really starts shooting at me I get so scared and something takes over like I’m terrified of dying, but right now I wish I was dead.
This has been the worst week for me since I got here. I honestly don’t think I can handle it anymore. I can’t even tell you what happened, just know that I’m OK and in a couple weeks I’ll be going to Sydney. Then, you know.
I can’t write anymore. I’ll try to write you before I go. I hope this isn’t my last letter. But no more pictures. I’m not taking them anymore. It’s too hard to get rid of the pictures in my head.
Tell Simon I love him.
Love,
Matthew
Simon just stared at the limping man.
“We weren’t planning on killing ourselves,” he said. “Me and Lilly are trying to get away from that guy you found us with back there.”
“You in some kind of trouble?” Walker said.
“I think he wanted to kill us. I’m pretty sure he was going to,” Simon said. “He was getting ready to shoot you when you came up on us.”
Walker shook his head and wiped a hand across his mouth. He looked at Lilly, not saying anything.
“I think he was going to,” Lilly said. She nodded. “He was.”
“Hell,” Walker said. “I could tell something was off with that guy. With that whole situation.”
Walker leaned closer to Simon, looked at the boy’s cut neck and bruised face.
“He beat up on you?”
“No.”
“Who did that, then?”
“My brother.”
“Your brother?” Walker bit the inside of his lip. “Where’s your brother now?”
“I don’t know.”
“He took off back in New Mexico,” Lilly said. “He got smart. He knew what was going on.”
Simon stood and pulled Lilly to her feet.
“My brother’s looking for me, though,” Simon said. “I know it. We just got lost. He’ll probably never find us now. Or, he won’t before Mitch does.”
“Hell, boy. You two ain’t lost if I could find you. Anyway, what do you want to find your brother for? To beat up on him, I bet,” Walker said.
Simon looked down at his moccasins. “I already got even with him.”
“I guess brothers’ll do that. I should know. I beat the tar out of mine more times than I can count. He did the same for me, too.” Walker looked at Simon, then Lilly, and said, “I don’t have a phone or nothing at my place, but at least it’s a place, and it’s not too far from here, so you can come with me. At least until daylight. Then we’ll see what we can do.”
Lilly began sweating. She was sick again.
Walker’s homestead was less than a mile from where he’d found them. It was built, he explained, at a crack in the bottom of the mesa, the only place around with water, and he promised, too, that he would lead them out of the desert when they were ready to leave.
“What if Mitch comes and finds us here when he wakes up?” Simon asked.
“He’d be crazy if he tried that,” Walker said.
“Well, he is crazy,” Simon answered.
Walker limped along, with Simon following, as Lilly struggled. She had a fever and was beginning to shake.
“My side hurts,” she said. “Can we stop for a minute?”
“We’re almost there,” Walker said. “See that yellow light up there? That’s a candle burning on my front porch. I lit it when my dog started barking, and I came out looking for you.”
“She’s pregnant,” Simon said.
“Oh,” Walker swallowed. “Well, I won’t ask you to tell me nothing else. Please. Every time either one of you opens your mouth, the truth gets worse and worse.”
They made their way across a gutted streambed and up the slight slope to where the light from Walker’s candle flickered in the dark. Lilly suffered
the walk, breathing in sharp and abbreviated gasps.
“Are you okay?” Simon asked.
“Yeah. You know.”
“You look different,” he said. “This is different than those other times you got sick.”
“Yeah.”
As they came trudging up the small rise before Walker’s home, panicked, yelping barks called their warned welcome, and, somewhere ahead in the dark, Simon could hear the clanking of a dog chain sweeping against the rocky ground there at the bottom of the towering mesa.
“Shut up, Lady!” Walker shouted, and the dog immediately stopped barking, whimpering its joy at the man’s return.
In the dark, Walker’s home looked like a sort of spaceship to Simon. The candle burned on a slat-wood porch built out from the door of a gleaming metal trailer that was surrounded by stacked rocks on the bottom. The trailer sat just at the base of the giant towering mesa, a frozen explosion of red boulder. Simon could see a small, windowless mud hut with an open doorway covered only by a fraying blanket, a narrow black stovepipe coming up from the rounded adobe roof. And he could make out the dark form of another hut, built in the same manner, farther down along the dry rocky bed.
Walker bent down and unhooked a stocky and tailless merle-colored dog that yelped with excitement and huddled down at Simon’s feet, shuddering its rump and urinating all over the ground.
“She’s going to pee on me,” Simon said, backing away from the frenzied dog.
“He always gets that way when he sees someone new,” Walker explained.
“He?” Simon asked. “I thought you said his name was Lady.”
“That is his name,” Walker said.
“Oh. Okay.”
Lilly slumped down on the railing along the steps up to the trailer’s porch.
“I don’t feel good,” she said.
She dropped to her knees on the lower step. The dog, still whimpering and dripping piss, sniffed at her feet.