Simon fumbled with that meteorite in his lap.
It was just like a horse falling dead beneath them.
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t know if the car’s dying was a good or bad thing.
The Lincoln jerked and seized as Mitch guided it off the road and onto the moonlike surface of the desert. When the Lincoln finally expired, wheels half-buried in the dry soil, smoke billowing out from both sides of the undercarriage, it ended up wedged inside a small stand of hopseed brush that swallowed them up, making the car nearly invisible from the road.
Mitch hammered his fist into the steering wheel again, and just sat there as white steaming clouds coughed skyward from the Lincoln’s engine. Simon looked back at Lilly. He wanted to tell her this was it, but he said nothing, and he followed the white puffs upward with his eyes into the dimming sky. It looked like they were sending smoke signals into the quiet evening.
Simon lit a cigarette.
“Looks like we’re spending the night in the desert again,” Mitch said.
“It’s cool,” Simon said, swinging his door open. “But, Mitch . . .”
“You don’t have to ask me, Simon. I won’t do it. I promised.”
The Lincoln’s engine began ticking and cracking.
“Let’s unload,” Mitch said. “This thing smells like it might burn.”
Lilly was sick again. She sat down, away from the smoking car, as Mitch and Simon began unpacking it. Simon put his black rock in his pocket and helped Mitch lift Don Quixote from the backseat. They stood him beside Lilly, Mitch’s bags of groceries at his feet, turned so that he was almost watching them.
The sun had vanished behind the western mountains; there were no sounds from the highway. Simon knew they were completely alone. The Lincoln began sighing, then belching blackening smoke up into the dimming sky from its engine compartment. Mitch pulled the trunk open and grabbed the black suitcase, slinging it away. Simon peered into the trunk, his neck craning so that he could see everything that was there.
“The pack!” he said. “I think we left my pack back at the bridge.”
Mitch froze at the edge of the bumper, his head swallowed in the awful-smelling cloud. And Mitch found the shoe box; the tape torn away from its seal. The rope was still coiled at the bottom of the trunk.
Mitch pulled the box out and took two steps away from the burning car.
“That stinking punk!” Mitch said, growling at Simon. “Your brother stole money from me!”
Simon swallowed. He could hear Lilly vomiting behind them.
Simon reached into the trunk and pulled out their loosely piled wad of blankets and threw them onto the suitcase, hoping his helping would satisfy Mitch. He left the yellow rope in the trunk. He wanted it to burn. Mitch stood away, his back turned, staring down into his opened shoe box. Simon knew what he was doing.
Counting.
Adding.
All those numbers always in Mitch’s head.
Orange flames began snaking upward from beneath the front wheel wells, the smoke thickening above Simon’s head against a darkening sky. Nobody would see it. The Lincoln popped and hissed a futile protest, but the flames were going to win out.
Simon quickly slammed the trunk lid down. He dragged the blankets and suitcase away through the dirt toward Lilly. Mitch followed, walking backwards and watching the expanding fire, cradling his box in his arms.
Standing thirty feet off from the Lincoln, the three of them had to back farther away, the heat from the fire becoming so intense, blazing away so brightly in the middle of that dark and empty land.
They left all of their belongings at the feet of Don Quixote, encircling the metal man like offerings at a shrine.
“Maybe it’s a good thing,” Mitch said, watching the flames as they swallowed the old Lincoln, shooting up into the sky. “I needed to get rid of that thing, anyway.”
Lilly sat down behind them, leaning over her knees.
“We’re in the middle of the desert,” Simon said.
“Everything’ll work out,” Mitch said. “Don’t you trust me?”
“I trust you, Mitch,” Simon answered, carefully.
A small explosion flared from beneath the pyre of the Lincoln, sending bits of metal and glass spraying out into the night. Simon jerked and twisted just as a piece of glass caught him on the right side of his neck. He slapped his palm across the wound to cover it. The glass had cut him, a deep gash as long as his finger.
“Ow!” Simon blurted, looking at the blood on his hand and then turning away from the fire and running back out into the darkness.
Mitch and Lilly backed away, too, afraid that the car might explode a second time. They stood in the dark and watched the fire grow high. They watched the Lincoln wither away to nothing more than smoldering, steaming, stinking debris.
Simon stood at the edge of the dark.
“Are you okay?” Lilly put her hand on Simon’s shoulder. He pressed his fingers against the cut on his neck. The blood had dried between them, and ran in thick black lines down the back of his hand, all the way to his forearm.
“I don’t know,” he said. Simon moved his hand down and tilted his chin so Lilly could see the cut. It opened again. The blood snaked down toward his collarbone.
“Is it very big?”
Lilly leaned close to Simon. She was so close he felt her breath cooling the blood.
“Oh. It’s deep. I don’t think it’s too bad,” she said. “Let me wipe it off with something.”
Mitch watched them. He was mumbling again. Talking to himself.
“There’s a bottle of whiskey in one of those bags,” Mitch said.
Lilly opened the bottle and Simon pulled off his tee shirt, bloodstained for the second time in those past few, blurry days. Lilly dampened a clean corner of the shirt with whiskey and wiped the blood away from Simon’s neck and shoulder. Then she pressed the cloth against the wound and held it there tight.
Simon grimaced from the stinging. But it felt so nice the way Lilly’s hands pressed against his skin.
Mitch came over and took the bottle of whiskey from Lilly. It sloshed when Mitch tipped it back, and Simon could hear the gasping breath after his swallow.
“That got you pretty good,” Lilly said, lifting the other hand to touch the hair behind his neck, like she was hugging him, or like they were getting ready to kiss.
“I’m a mess,” Simon said, opening his eyes. “Whatever that was that hit me could’ve killed me. If it was bigger, it would’ve.”
Mitch stumbled away, carrying the tattered shoe box off into the darkness of the desert.
“It probably could have,” Lilly agreed. “Do you want me to find you a shirt?”
“No.”
Without the pack, any shirt she found would have been one of Mitch’s.
Simon put his hand over Lilly’s and looked straight at her and whispered, “Lilly, we got to get away from Mitch.”
“I know,” she said.
“Jonah’s going to come.”
“He will?”
“I know it,” Simon said. “We’ve never been apart. Not one day in my entire life until just now. I know he’s coming. He promised.”
Lilly wiped the bloodstain away from Simon’s skin. They heard Mitch rustling around in the brush.
“Do you love him?” Simon asked. “Jonah?”
Lilly sighed, “Yeah.”
Simon looked down at his moccasins. Lilly dropped her hands away from him.
“He’s your brother,” she said, her voice so hushed. “Why do you hate him so much?”
“I don’t,” Simon admitted. “I don’t.”
Mitch came back, dangling the bottle of whiskey at his side, his eyes already glazed over.
“Well, it looks like we’re going to all sleep here tonight,” he said. Then he looked at Simon and Lilly, how they were standing so closely. “And you two just better not get any ideas, Lilly. Simon. I mean it.”
“He got cut pretty bad, Mitch. And he’s just a
boy.”
“You think I don’t see how he looks at you?” Mitch said. “He’s not looking at you like he wants to play hopscotch.”
“I guess you just didn’t notice how his brother looked at me, then.”
Simon started to say something, but thought better of it.
“It’s a good thing for all of us that the other one is gone,” Mitch said.
Lilly looked at Simon. And Simon put his hands down into both pockets and emptied them, pulling out his meteorite and the crumpled wad of money he had taken from Chief’s bar. He held the money out to Mitch.
“Here. I’m not going to do anything bad anymore. I’m not going to smoke or steal or nothing, so just take this money.”
Mitch grabbed the money, looking at it, looking at Simon.
Simon’s hand trembled and Mitch stared at him, unblinking. He felt like that scrawny coyote in the road, and he knew Mitch wasn’t going to stop.
“Yes, you are,” Mitch said. “You’re going to do whatever I tell you to do, Simon.”
Mitch pocketed the money and snapped the cap of his lighter.
Flick.
“No,” Simon said. His voice quaked and his eyes welled. “Please, Mitch. I don’t want to do any more bad things. Please.”
Mitch just looked at Simon, his face blank. Simon thought he looked like he did when they sat alone in that cafeteria, when Mitch told him about killing Chief. He opened the bottle of whiskey and took another swallow and then held it out toward the boy, the reflection of the flame from the Lincoln’s tire dancing inside the bottle like some trapped ghost.
“Drink some whiskey, Simon.”
Simon felt a tear run down his face. He grunted, trying to force himself not to cry in front of Mitch.
Mitch held the bottle up in front of Simon’s face.
“Drink some whiskey, Simon, or Mitch is going to do something really, really bad.”
Simon looked at Lilly.
He wondered if Mitch was picturing himself on top of a Ferris wheel.
Simon raised his bloodstained hand, grasped the bottle around its neck, and shuddered as he took it from Mitch.
“Hello there!” a man’s voice called out from beyond the edge of the fire’s light.
Mitch, startled, jerked around.
Simon let the bottle fall into the dirt.
“Is everyone okay here?” the voice from the dark came back again.
walker
My brother,
I know it’s been a while since I’ve written, but I have a hard time thinking what I should say to you. I’m putting some pictures in this letter, and like you can see, you’re right about me losing weight since I got here. I think I’ve lost about 30 pounds and I hardly ever get to eat any hot meals. And I smoke about two packs a day. I think Simon could kick my butt now. You know. Don’t say nothing.
A couple guys in my crew should have been home a month ago, but because of all these firebases getting wiped out, they’re not letting anyone go. They probably think they’ll do the same thing to me when my time is up, but I got news for them if they do.
The real reason I’m not writing is that it’s hard for me to think of anything normal anymore. I sometimes can’t remember what you look like, or what things smell like at home. When I got that picture of you and Simon, I just cried like an old woman or something. I had to keep telling guys that these are my brothers, like I couldn’t even really believe that you are, you both look so much bigger now.
Remember how I told you my buddy Scotty is terrified of rats? Well, the other day a couple guys in my crew caught a rat that was about as big as a small dog and they let it go in Scotty’s hooch while he was asleep. Anyway, the rat woke him up and Scotty pulled out his .45 and started trying to shoot it, but he just ended up shooting up about everything he owns. We thought it was pretty funny, but Scotty is still mad about it.
I listened to the liftoff of Apollo the other day.
I hear it’s hard to find a job back home, and a lot of guys are going to reenlist because of it.
I think I’d rather be a bum than reenlist.
Sometime next month they’re going to send us out to a place called Hill 270. Sounds like a vacation, doesn’t it? The only way to get there is by helicopter, so I don’t really have to worry much about the brass in the rear. They don’t like to get their boots too dusty or their starched jungle fatigues too wrinkly. I don’t hate them or anything, but the way this war is run is pretty ridiculous.
I heard about a guy who went missing after he crossed a river. I heard he fell into the water and just swam away. They found his dog tags along the shore downstream, but no sign of him. Some guys here say he just walked right out of the war, and I believe them.
Scotty said to say hi. He’s still a little bit mad at me, but not as much as the other guys ’cause all I did was laugh about it, and try to stay out of the firing.
Tell Simon happy birthday for me. Now he’s fourteen and I bet he’s a real ladies’ man like his two older brothers . . . ha ha.
I love you guys.
Bye.
Matt
Simon watched as the bottle coughed out its contents, lying sideways in the dirt, exchanging gulps of whiskey for gulps of air in the flickering and tawny light of the fire.
The man who had called out to them was standing in the dark beyond the rim of light spreading away from the dead Lincoln.
“Hello!” Mitch called back. “We’re okay!”
Mitch, Simon, and Lilly all stood with their backs to the fire, straining to see out into the darkness. There. Simon caught the orange reflection of the man’s eyes, and then movement in the brush.
Simon thought he was going to see Mitch kill someone now, for sure. He looked out to where the man’s voice sounded, trying to figure out if they were surrounded. And he wondered what anyone would be doing out here, anyway.
Then the gray figure pushed its way into the light.
He wore an old cowboy hat and walked very stiffly in beaten and dusty boots, his right leg straight, unbending, as though it were something dead propped under him to hold him up. And Simon thought he looked like he belonged in the desert, his skin was so tight and brown, like leather, eyes fixed in a permanent squint against the sun, wearing a long-sleeved green shirt tucked into tattered jeans held up by suspenders. A long sheath knife was strapped across his left suspender, hanging diagonally across his chest, and Simon guessed from the man’s long black hair and faintest, stubborn stubble of beard that he was probably an Indian.
“I could see the fire from my house,” the man said, “so I took off when I seen it. That was maybe an hour ago. I walk slow, you know. I thought it was a plane crash, there was so much black smoke coming up. I thought it might be something real bad.”
He studied the three of them, one by one, almost as though just looking at the silent refugees from the burning car would tell him enough of a story about what was happening there.
“Everyone’s okay,” Mitch said again.
“How the hell’d you get so far off the road?” The man eyed the burning car in wonder and then, lifting his hat and pushing his long hair back, looked at Mitch again.
Mitch smiled that grin of his and gave his most reassuring look. “I’m not going to lie. I’ve been drinking.”
“Hell!” the man said, and chuckled, but he watched Simon and Lilly all the while to see if they gave any indication of the truth.
“Can you help us?” Lilly asked. “Do you have a car?”
Mitch jerked his face toward Lilly. Simon could see by the way Mitch clenched his jaw that he didn’t want them talking to the man.
“Aw hell,” the man said. “I don’t drive nowhere. I’m Walker. That’s my honest-to-God name, and I walk everywhere. Even to town. That’s twelve miles from here. Most people think they call me Walker ’cause I only walk everywhere, but it’s my real name.”
“Twelve miles,” Mitch said. “Then I guess we should start walking in the morning.”
“If I was going to walk to town,” Walker said, “which I’ve done enough to know, I wouldn’t wait until daytime, unless you want to die of heat.”
“That’s probably a good idea, Walker,” Mitch said. “We should just start walking now, then. Let’s pack up. We could probably thumb a ride if we’re lucky. Thanks, man.”
Mitch’s tone implied he was giving Walker permission to leave.
“I thought there were four of you,” Walker said. “It looked like four of you in the firelight. Then when I got close I seen that one there is just a statue. And I thought, what the hell? At first it scared the bejesus out of me, and I’m not fooling, I thought I was seeing a spaceman. Like you all came from outer space or somewheres. That’s about the strangest thing I’ve ever seen just standing out in the desert at night. Well, that, and this old car. What kind of car is that? I never seen a car like that. Or a metal man like that, neither one.”
“It was a Lincoln,” Simon said. He glanced at Mitch.
“Hell,” Walker said. He turned his head, lizardlike, eyeing Simon up and down. He looked from Lilly to Simon, Mitch, then back at Simon again. “You two are just kids. What are you doing out here? Are you hippies or something?”
“Yeah,” Simon said. “Hippies, man.” And he looked over at Lilly and tried to wink at her, his eyes reflecting shrunken images of the fire that continued to burn.
“Well, I don’t mind hippies so much, I guess,” Walker said. “I’ve never really talked to any before today, though. You seem okay, though. Sure you don’t need any help or nothing?”
Mitch faked a grin with clenched teeth. “We’re okay. Really. But thanks anyway.”
Simon was afraid that Mitch was going to kill the man if he didn’t leave soon.
“Well, okay then,” Walker decided, and began to limp away from the light of the fire. Before he had faded away entirely, he stopped and looked back at the three lost travelers and said, “You know which way you’re going, then?”
Mitch made a move toward the blankets and their other belongings, pretending to pack up, trying to ignore the strange man.
And Simon called out, “We’re going to town. West.”
“Okay, then.”