In the Path of Falling Objects (26 page)

“Walker. Hey, Walker!” Simon pulled the tattered cloth back from the doorway on the hut. Walker was covered with blankets, sleeping on the straw mats, the dog curled up beside him. The man’s plastic lower leg stood, detached, along the wall like some incomplete effigy. The dog perked its head up, and Simon prepared to get out of the way when it started peeing again, but the man under the blankets did not move.

It was morning. Enough light spilled in from the hut’s wood-posted doorway that Simon could see a crude stove made from a black oil drum sitting in the middle of the flat dirt floor, a rectangular opening cut near the bottom, and a wide pipe leading up through a hole in the hut’s timbered ceiling.

The air inside the hut felt cool and clean.

“Walker!”

Finally the man moved, pulling the blanket down from his face and squinting at the boy, a paper-shadow silhouette in the doorway. Walker sat, bracing himself upright with his arms locked straight.

“Something’s really wrong with Lilly,” Simon said. “She’s really sick.”

Walker took a moment to let it sink in, recalling the events of the long night, the talk he’d had with the boy.

“Give me a minute, okay?” Walker said and grabbed at the leg, knocking it over as he did.

“Okay.”

Simon was embarrassed. He let the blanket fall back across the doorway and looked out at the desert. He didn’t want to watch the man attaching that lifeless thing to himself just so he could stand up. He rubbed the crust of sleep away from his eyes and combed his hair straight with his fingers. He held his open hands before his face, studying the bruised welts across the soft undersides of his wrists where Mitch had bound him with the yellow rope.

The dog came out of the hut and immediately began peeing, scooting itself clockwise in a tight circle at Simon’s feet, and Simon danced backwards to avoid the spray. Walker pushed the blanket aside and limped out into the light.

“Sorry. I don’t usually sleep that late,” he said, looking at the sun behind Simon, pulling the hat down on his head. “But it was four o’clock by the time you fell asleep. What’s the matter?”

“I don’t know,” Simon said. “She’s really hurting. She says she can’t move and she’s sweating. Burning up.”

“I don’t know anything about women, especially pregnant ones,” he said.

“I don’t know anything about anything,” Simon said.

The boy was scared; Walker could see that.

When they got inside the trailer, Walker saw the grayness of Lilly’s skin, how her mouth was drawn back in a tight grimace. It was real, something was very wrong with her.

He asked her if she was bleeding, and she said no, but her side hurt so badly. She lay on her back, her eyes shut tight. Her skin was damp, her hair pasted to her neck.

Simon dropped to his knees at the edge of the bed and held
Lilly’s hand while Walker hovered over the boy and looked down at the girl.

Neither one of them had any idea what they could do to help her.

“You’ll be okay,” Simon said. He touched her white fingers. “Put your hand where it hurts the most.”

Lilly moved her fingers to her belly and placed them just inside her hip.

“I’m going to look, okay?” Simon asked.

Lilly didn’t say anything.

Simon lifted her shirt and pulled the waist of her pants down.

“Does this hurt?” Simon asked. He pressed his fingers into Lilly’s skin, just below her navel.

“Yes,” she said. Her eyes remained shut.

“It feels tight,” Simon said. He placed the flat of his palm across her belly and pressed so lightly against her smooth and perfect skin. Lilly jolted in pain.

“I’m sorry, Lilly,” Simon said. “It feels like a rock in there.”

He lowered her shirt back over her belly and pulled the blanket up around her.

Walker just watched.

“What should we do?” Simon pleaded.

“It could be just a normal thing,” Walker said. “I don’t know. It could be she’s bleeding inside, or losing the child. I don’t know.”

“She’s going to need a doctor, isn’t she?” Simon said.

“I think so.”

Walker turned and went to the door, thinking. Simon squeezed Lilly’s hand again and followed the man out onto the porch.

Walker stared out across the desert.

“I don’t know what to do to help you two, Simon. I’m sorry,” he said.

“Show me the fastest way to the highway and I’m going to run and get help,” Simon said. “I have to try.”

Walker looked at Simon, and then up at the sky.

“You can get to the highway in less than an hour,” he said. “Here. Come over here.”

He led Simon to the side of the trailer and opened a spigot, splashing water down over the red rocks at the bottom, raining across the sand of the desert, up onto the boy’s moccasins.

“Drink some water first.”

Simon bent forward and began gulping the cool water. He held his head under the flow and let the water run through his hair, down his body.

“What if he’s out there?” Walker said.

“He is,” Simon answered.

“Well, I have that gun,” Walker said. “But no bullets. Stupid. I meant to get some, but I never did. That was stupid. You should take it anyway.”

Simon had always been afraid of guns.

“No. I’ll keep away from him. I can handle that guy,” he said.

He thought he could figure out what Mitch wanted to hear, if it came to that.

“Don’t you have no shirt?” Walker asked.

“No.”

“I’ll get one.”

“No.”

“Then take this,” the man said, and put his wide hat down onto the boy’s head.

“Okay.”

Simon drank again. “I had enough.”

Walker turned the spigot shut.

“I need to go now,” Simon said.

“You left that rock in there.”

“I’ll come back.”

“Okay.”

“Just give me a minute before I go.”

Simon launched himself up the steps to the door and looked in at Lilly, her body motionless beneath the cover of blankets. He held Walker’s hat in his hand and kneeled at the side of the bed and stroked her hair.

“I’m going to go get help, Lilly,” he said. “You’ll be okay.”

Then Simon swallowed hard, his throat constricting. “I love you, Lilly, and I love Jonah, too. I do. I’m sorry for everything I did. I’m going to stop being bad. I’m going to stop doing bad things. I promise.”

“You’re a good person, Simon.” Lilly’s voice surprised him. “I’ll be fine.”

And Simon picked up his meteorite from the floor where he’d slept and placed it on the bed beside her.

Then Simon kissed her cheek and whirled around and ran down the stairs.

Walker led Simon from the shade of the trailer and into the blaring sun.

“See that notch right out there?” he said.

Walker extended his arm straight out, pointing at a gap between two rounded boulders of naked hills.

“Yeah.”

“Keep going straight that way. It’s the fastest way, you’ll cut the bend out of the road. When you come out across the dirt road that circles around to my place, follow it to the right and it will take you to the highway.”

Simon studied the line.

“Okay.”

“Watch out, Simon.”

“Okay.”

Simon pulled the old hat down tight on his head and began running straight out across the desert toward the gap between the hills in the distance.

Blood and ashes sprinkled on the bodies of unclean people make their bodies holy and pure. He remembers the verse from Hebrews. Something like that.

He’s caked and cracking all over with the paste of his own blood.

Black Simon.

His armpits reek. His sweat softens the cardboard and tape on the tattered shoe box he carries. His shins are raked raw with cholla spines that rip through his pants.

Mitch stops and watches. He keeps perfectly still. Counts, can’t help it.

There is a shining metal trailer sitting out there in the piss-middle of hell. It sits atop a spreading mound of red lava rocks beside two Navajo mud huts.

He knows this is where they came.

“Bitchin’,” he says.

He smiles.

Brother Jones
,

It’s now about 2 or 3 in the morning. I’m not on guard, I just can’t get to sleep. In case you were wondering, my arms are getting better. In case you were wondering, my head is getting worse (ha ha). I’ve seriously thought about doing drugs. Seriously, but I don’t want to end up like our old man.

You know all those stories you hear about marijuana over here? Well, they’re true. About 8 of 10 enlisted men I’ve met here smoke or use cocaine, or do both. Marijuana, I don’t care about, but if I catch my men using coke, I’ll bust their butts for it. The only reason I don’t care if they smoke marijuana is because if something happens, they straighten up right away.

This letter is for you and me only, Joneser. I don’t want you letting Simon or Mother read it or tell them anything about it, OK? Just tell them I’m OK.

I killed someone yesterday. It was a kid, about 16 years old. He threw something at me, which I thought was a grenade, and I shot him in the belly. It turned out it was just a bottle. He fell down in the mud and rolled around for a minute. It looked like it hurt so bad I thought
about shooting him again. I didn’t know what to do. And then he just died. Then some old lady came out of a hut and started screaming at me and one of the guys in my crew was going to shoot her too but I told him not to. I didn’t care about the kid, but I keep seeing him whenever I close my eyes. I don’t care. He deserved it. He had a little brother with him, but the kid didn’t even cry or nothing. He just took stuff out of the other kid’s pocket after he was dead. That’s a future VC for sure. I’m sick of this place.

Here’s a joke for you—Knock Knock. You say, who’s there? Matt. Matt who? Matthew whose dad is a junkie and whose mom is a tramp for any guy who buys her a meal, that’s who. Matthew who killed a little kid yesterday. I know it’s not funny, but that’s who I am.

You and Simon stick it out together. Do that for me, especially if I don’t make it home. I told you all this before, and I’ll keep saying it so you hear my voice when you go to sleep at night. The things that pull the three of us apart, the things you can’t do anything about, like Dad and Mother and this war, there’s no sense getting mad at each other about because we didn’t do anything to deserve it. The things we do to each other, we have to be careful to not let them mess up our heads about our own brothers. OK? I know you hear me, Joneser, but I know you and Simon get mad over the things you can’t do nothing about, so remember what I’m asking.

I bet I worry about you guys as much as you worry about me. I miss you both so much it feels like I’m the one who got shot in the gut.

I’m going to get a car and take you both for a ride. We’ll go get drunk or something. Do something brothers are supposed to do.

Don’t worry.

Bye for now.

Love
,

Matthew

Sweat rolled down my neck.

It trickled between my shoulder blades.

I didn’t know where I was leading my friend.

So I stopped when the path I was following came to an end upon a white gravel road stretching off toward the northeast. I looked both ways down along the road.

“Which way do you think?” I said.

“I’d go left,” Dalton said.

“You want a drink?”

“Yeah.”

We each took a drink of the tea-warm water from my canteen. We had been walking for nearly an hour and had seen nothing, no track, no mark, that showed Simon or Lilly might have come this way.

We followed the gravel road.

And we looked nearly identical, shirtless, dressed in the same tan pants tucked into our matching boots. But I was hatless, and Dalton wore his constant cap, the one with the flaps that hung down from the back to shade his neck.

I felt lost. I knew we could find our way back to the truck, but it just felt like we were looking in the wrong place. But Dalton and I kept walking forward, anyway.

And I knew he was thinking the same thing when he said, “Let’s just give it a little more time before we rethink our plan, Jonah. Maybe we’ll see a sign or something. ’Cause we sure don’t want to get stuck out here.”

“I know.”

I found myself thinking about the socks I wore. They were Simon’s, dingy and mud-stained from that river.

And as we followed the dirt road along at its edge, I scooted my feet and listened to the sound of the path they cut, just for a moment
mimicking the way I remembered Simon walking in the loose shoes he always wore, before we met up with Mitch.

In the early part of the morning is when you can see the things that move in the desert.

A white-tan rattlesnake drifted from a cholla clump out onto the road beside me, sweeping in sideways-pulsing arcs as it scooted diagonally away and vanished soundlessly across the other side.

“Do you still have that razor in your pocket?” I asked.

“I always do,” Dalton said. “Why?”

“Don’t know.”

I looked at the perfect S-shaped tracks the snake left behind, my eyes scanning down the length of the road.

I froze.

I saw something dark, faint, moving through the brush ahead of us.

Dalton stopped, too, right beside me.

Someone was out there.

We left the road and dropped to our knees behind a thicket of palo verde. I took the pistol from my pack and held it with both hands, bracing my elbow on a knee, aiming the barrel down the road.

“What do you see?” Dalton whispered.

“I can’t see him anymore.”

Dalton put his hand on my back. Then we both saw the top of a black hat floating above the brush tops, like it was carried on a vacant breeze in the windless desert heat.

I cocked the pistol and held my breath.

“Please don’t kill anyone, Jonah.”

My finger pressed tight against the spring of the trigger, ready to shoot.

I gasped. I relaxed my grip and uncocked the hammer. I let the weight of the pistol drag my arm down to my side as I stood. Dalton
didn’t know what was happening. He couldn’t tell. He grabbed me by the waist of my pants and tried to pull me back down when he saw the person who was walking in the road toward us.