In the Path of Falling Objects (17 page)

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 the 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.

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.”