In the Path of Falling Objects (31 page)

Dalton was just staring up at the battered ceiling.

“We need to get that guy. There’s four of us and one of him. We need to get him,” he said.

“I couldn’t see him,” Simon said.

I looked at Simon. I let my eyes drift across the floor to where my gun had been dropped, saw Walker bracing himself against the wall, propping himself up onto his feet. And I looked again at the small bed, and Lilly, stretched out there beneath that dark blanket.

I looked at Simon.

“Jonah?” Simon said, but I didn’t answer. “Jonah?”

“What do you have in mind, Dalton?” I said.

“We need to make a plan,” he said. “Just like we’re playing a game. We need to make a plan so we can win.”

At the bottom of the mesa, Mitch wedges a foot down between two rocks and stumbles forward. The ankle pops and he curses. He catches himself, scuffing his palms, tumbling forward.

“Damn! Piss!”

He pulls his foot in toward his body and tries to stand. Pain fires upward through his knee and he nearly falls again, rights himself by hopping forward.

“He’s a liar.”

“White-Simon-Piss-kid is lying to me. The whore isn’t dead.”

He limps. Like that stupid man coming out of the dark last night. He carries the box under his arm. It is beginning to break apart at the corners. He counts the corners.

“Scared pigs.”

Nothing moves in the trailer. He sees the truck, decides it will be his way out of here. His and Piss-kid’s. He opens the door and drops the box there.

No keys.

Piss.

He waits behind a wall of brush, not twenty feet from the trailer.

“Why did I listen to her? If I just kept on driving and left them
there, none of this would have happened. Those boys have ruined everything. They took her away from me.”

He flicks the cap on the lighter.

The lighter is silver, looks like the trailer.

He listens to the bell-ring of the cap and counts.

Back and forth; five, six, seven.

“We could take him,” Dalton said. “We just need to stand up to him. Let’s just go out there and get the truck.”

I stooped beneath the gap in the ceiling and grabbed my gun. I tucked it into the waist at the back of my pants. I looked at Lilly’s feet.

“What caliber is that gun?” Walker asked.

“We need to cover her.”

“Jonah?” Simon said.

I curled the blanket beneath Lilly’s head, lifting it up; she seemed so wooden, heavy.

“We need to cover her up,” I said.

“It’s okay, boy,” Walker said. “Here.”

He passed another wadded blanket across to me.

I tucked the blanket around Lilly’s feet. I knew I wouldn’t see her again. And as I looked down at those rumpled covers on the bed, I thought,
You can’t even tell there’s someone under there.

I was so tired. I was tired of being so stupid, so wrong about everything.

I sat down on the edge of the bed and propped my elbows on my knees. I put my fists in my eyes.

Simon put his hand on my shoulder, tried pulling me up from the bed, and I jerked away from him.

“Come on, Jonah,” Simon said. “Don’t sit there.”

I didn’t move.

I could feel everyone watching me. I felt so stupid, and naked, just like Mitch waking me up that morning at the Palms.

“Don’t just sit there now,” Dalton pleaded. “We need to do something.”

Simon cupped his hand beneath my arm and began lifting me up, saying in a whisper, “Come on.”

I swatted at Simon’s arm and made a fist with my opposite hand, aiming it. And I don’t know if I was honestly trying to punch Simon or not, but I knew I wanted to hit something.

“Hey!” Walker shouted.

And Simon tackled me just as my fist sailed past him. He pushed me backwards and drove me down to the floor, grabbing my arms and pinning me, sitting square on my chest and locking my wrists beneath his knees.

“Get off!” I said.

“You can’t just sit there,” Simon said. “You need to do something.”

I struggled, pushing with both feet against the floor, arching my back, trying to wrestle my arms free from Simon’s weight, but my brother was too strong.

Dalton looked at Walker, and said, “Get off him, Simon. Things are already bad enough. Let him go.”

I struggled. “Get off! What am I supposed to do?”

“Give up,” Simon said.

“Okay. You beat me. Now get off!” I felt tears running sideways down my face.

Simon breathed and relaxed, still sitting on my chest.

“That’s not what I mean,” Simon said.

Simon let my arms free and rolled away. He sat beside me on the floor, with his back turned to the little bed where Lilly lay beneath those blankets.

“The farther we go, the worse things get,” Simon said.

I stretched out on the floor, staring up at the splintering ceiling, expecting it to collapse and crumple in on all of us.

“We’re here. In Arizona. Look what it got us, Jonah,” Simon said. “Let’s go home, Jonah. You need to give up on Matthew. On everything. Let’s go home.”

“I can’t.”

Simon pulled at a blue bead on his moccasin. He exhaled a sigh, staring at the door.

“You’re always saying I’m the stubborn one. You’re more stubborn than me, Jonah.”

We waited. The trailer darkened as the afternoon sun stretched the shadows of mesa and mountain across the desert floor. Walker pulled the flag back across the open window at the back, carefully trying to manage his way between the rocks that had scattered there over the floor. My mouth was dry. I ached for a drink, but I didn’t want to say anything. It was so quiet. I kept the gun on the floor between my legs, staring across at that gray cot, the metronome of belief and doubt swaying in my mind, back and forth, ticking the time that seemed motionless in the silence, the heat of that battered home.

“When it’s dark enough, we go,” Dalton said.

Simon sat beside me, just watching me, tumbling his black meteorite from hand to hand. I could tell he wanted to say something. I always know when he does, but I just didn’t want to talk anymore.

At the sink, Walker pumped water into a smudged glass pitcher.

The Indian drank from the rim; lukewarm water cutting two dark lines down the front of his chest where it spilled down from the edges of his mouth. He refilled the pitcher and limped to where Dalton sat, and watched as my friend drank.

“Here.” He held the water out for Simon.

Simon took the pitcher with both hands and drank in gulping swallows that sounded comically loud.

“Here, Jonah.”

I drank, draining the last of the water.

“You should have said something,” Walker said. “You could have told me you were thirsty.”

“I’m okay,” I said.

“You hungry?”

“Yes,” Simon answered.

The three of us sat on the floor while Walker rested in the chair, watching us eat unheated food with white plastic spoons from cans: corned beef hash and beans.

“It’s been quiet for a while now,” Dalton said.

“Do you think he’s gone?” Simon asked.

“Maybe.”

“He’s not,” I said, straightening myself. “He’s out there.”

“It’ll be dark enough pretty soon,” Dalton said. “I have a plan.”

Simon wiped his mouth on the back of his arm. I looked at Dalton.

“When it gets dark, we’ll make a run for the truck. I’ll drive and Jonah sits up front with the gun in case he starts shooting at us. Simon and Walker, you two will have to jump in the camper.”

“I can’t move too quick,” Walker said.

“Move as quick as you can,” Dalton said.

Simon turned to Walker and said, “I’ll help you. But what are we going to do about Lilly?”

“What do you think, Simon?” I said, agitated.

After a moment, Walker looked at me and said, “We’ll come back. We’ll make it right.”

The sun disappears.

The air finally begins to cool.

He stands there and watches.

He is dizzy, tired, his mind swirls in numbers, thoughts of Lilly, those boys, Lilly and
that
boy. Whore.

Piss-kid lied. He is trying to make me mad. Push my buttons again.

He rubs a hand on his chest. The sandy grit of dried blood and ash flake under his touch. He feels the wound on his neck, licks his fingers, touch, lick, his tongue dry as a cat’s.

“Know what I’ll do? I know what to do.”

Nothing comes from the trailer, no sound or movement. He waits. Mitch lowers to a crouch and crawls from the stand of bushes toward the trailer. His ankle is now stiff and swollen, so he drops to his knees, scoots along the ground like a limping dog.

“Like a dog,” he whispers, smiling. “Stupid dog.”

He crawls right to the skirt of the trailer. He stops and listens. He can hear faint voices inside, can’t tell which punk is talking.

There is a gap in the rocks beside the trailer’s wheel. He puts an
arm in first, moves his hand around to gauge the area, then he squeezes his body in and disappears into the black pit beneath the floor of the trailer.

Something with fur runs across his hand. Mitch almost shrieks and flails his arm dumbly in the dark. The thing brushes against his leg and escapes out the same opening he crawled through.

A rat.

Walker moved the infantry flag just an inch at the corner, then let it fall back into place.

“It’s not dark enough yet,” he said. “Fifteen more minutes.”

Dalton inhaled deeply. “Ten.”

“Okay,” I said.

I looked at Simon. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

The cans we had eaten from were arranged in a line across the top of the small stove, their upturned tops peeled back like rising metallic moons, edges jagged, toothlike.

I stood and stretched, tucking my shirt behind the grip of the pistol in the back of my pants so I could draw it quickly if I needed to. I slung my backpack over my arm. Simon watched me, sitting with his back against the door, legs straightened out in front of him. As if saying he was ready to leave, too, Simon pushed the black meteorite into his pocket, and rolled slightly onto one side so he could slide his hand all the way down behind him and pull out the keys to the truck. He handed them to Dalton, who looked around the inside of the trailer like he was trying to see if there was something else that needed to be done.

I paused over the cot where Lilly lay beneath the blankets.

Simon looked like he was going to say something, but he was silent. I held an open hand over the bedding, feeling nothing there in the space between my palm and the covered girl.

I turned and looked at Simon and Dalton, then Walker.

“Door or window?” I asked.

“What?” Simon said.

“Which way are we going out?”

“It’s gotta be the door,” Dalton said. “It’s closer to the truck.”

Simon pushed himself up to his feet. He looked tired; his eyes watered as he yawned.

“Do you want to pray or something before we go?” Walker asked.

“Why?” I said.

“I don’t know,” the man said, “I just thought you might.”

“I do,” Simon said.

And Dalton said, “Okay.”

Mitch hears them moving just above him. Their feet shuffle, there is a soft hum of indistinguishable voices muted through the floor in conversation. He rolls onto his back.

The black is so complete as he turns upward, he imagines he is at the edge of a starless universe. He reaches out, fingers pressing through sticky webs and soft balls of spider eggs.

He feels the underside of the floor. He pulls the gun from his pants and points it up, wondering if he would be able to hear the telltale sound of one of them directly above. He presses the barrel against the peeling laminate of the floorboard. It makes the faintest scraping hiss before he recoils his hand and rests in silence.

“I heard something,” Simon whispered, looking down. He unclasped Dalton’s and my hands, the creases of his palms shining with sweat.

We sat, circled, on the floor beside Lilly.

My eyes widened. I held my breath, trying to hear what Simon had, hoping it was nothing, even if I had a feeling it was something terrible.

We were completely frozen.

“I felt something under me.” Simon’s voice was just the faintest breath, mouthed more than heard.

I didn’t move. My eyes turned to Walker.

“I have rats,” Walker whispered. “Probably just a rat.”

“He’s under the house,” Simon panted.

Walker let Dalton’s hand go. “Couldn’t be.”

And I’d never seen Simon look so scared and so sure of himself at the same time.

Flick.

No sounds come through the floor above him.

Mitch opens the lighter and drops it onto his chest. The metal case feels smooth and cool. Like that falling rock Piss-kid picked up that night in the desert.

His thumb finds the wheel, a spark explodes in the black, staining his eyes with purple smears, and a flame leaps up, fanning waves of yellow light beneath the trailer.

Near one end of the trailer, a corroding pipe elbow drips rusted water onto the dirt. A desiccated orange hose, cracked and striped with electrical tape, snakes out from between the rocks and up into the floor.

A gas line.

He worms his way on his back. The gun lies flat on his chest. He holds the lighter like a torch before him, as he makes his way toward the end of the trailer. Serpentine black coils of smoke writhe upward from the lighter and flatten out against the underside of the floor.

“Maybe we can use this.”

The hose gives off the faintest smell of propane.

Mitch smiles.

He waves the lighter around to look for the way out. He watches the soot from the lighter spread a circle of black on the blistering hose. It begins to smoke and stink.

Nothing.

He burns his fingers, drops the lighter.

They’re dead.

The floor creaks above him. Someone is moving up there. He looks at the blackened hose, the lighter, still burning in the dirt and spiderwebs.