In the Path of Falling Objects (27 page)

I stood up and dropped the gun and pack down on the ground.

“Simon!”

He snapped his head up and almost tripped when he took a jump to the side of the road. I ran to get my brother.

Simon looked shocked, but then his shoulders relaxed when I got close enough for him to see it was really me.

“You almost gave me a heart attack, Jonah.”

I threw my arms around him, hugging hard, and Simon, dripping with sweat, squeezed me back and knocked his hat backwards off his head.

“What the hell happened to your hair?” He put his hand on my head and rubbed it.

“I cut it off.”

“Yeah. I can tell. Looks like everything’s been changed on you.” And Simon held me back at arm’s length and said, “You’re all right. Oh my God, Jonah. I was so scared you never got out of the river.”

I don’t think Simon ever said anything nice like that about me in his life. And I think we both wanted to say something else to each other, but we didn’t. We knew. And with brothers, I think that’s about the best you can do.

“Who’s that?”

I’d forgotten that Dalton was standing in the road behind me.

“He’s a friend,” I said. “His name’s Dalton.”

I was so happy to see my brother that I almost felt like crying. I turned back and waved Dalton to us.

Then I looked square into Simon’s eyes and asked, “You okay?”

“Yeah.”

Simon fell down to the roadbed and sat in the dirt, bending his knees up. He folded his arms and put his face down and began crying.

“I want to go home, Jonah. I just want to go home.”

I sat down beside him and put my arm around his shoulder, watching Dalton as he cautiously walked up toward us. I knew he could see that Simon was crying, could tell he slowed his pace down a bit to give him time, to see whether or not he should even be there.

“We can’t go home.”

Simon’s shoulders heaved. He pressed his fists into his eyes.

Dalton stayed back, halfway between me and the palo verde trees where I’d dropped my pistol.

“If we go home, they’ll take us away from each other,” I said.

Simon began crying harder.

“It’s up to you, Simon. Do you want to stay together?”

“Yes.”

“Then we will. Now stop crying.”

I stood and brushed the dirt away from the seat of my pants. Then I walked back to Dalton and picked up the pistol and my pack.

“You look like a communist, Jonah,” Simon said, his voice still shaky. “Where the hell did you get those clothes?”

“I gave them to him when I found him by the river,” Dalton said. He held out his hand for Simon and pulled him up to his feet. “My name’s Dalton.”

Simon didn’t say anything. He wiped his eyes with the back of his wrist, leaving a track of mud on his skin.

I held the canteen out for my brother, the pistol in my other hand.

Simon drank.

“I didn’t know you brought that gun.”

“ ’Cause I didn’t tell you.”

“You pointed that thing at me?”

I sighed. For a second I thought it was going to be another fight.

“It’s okay,” Simon said. “Thanks for not killing me.”

He drank again.

“I wasn’t going to let him kill anyone,” Dalton said.

“You from New Mex, too?” Simon asked.

“Yeah.”

Simon looked Dalton up and down.

“What kind of name is that? Are you an Indian?” he asked.

“Yes.”

And I noticed the big cut on Simon’s throat.

“What happened here?” I asked, touching Simon’s neck.

Simon jerked away from my touch.

“Nothing,” he said. “The car blew up.”

“I saw it,” I said. “And what’s this on your arms?”

Simon looked at me. He turned his wrists over and showed the red wounds there.

He didn’t answer me.

So I said, “And where’s Lilly?”

“She’s real sick, Jonah. I was coming to try and find some help. I don’t know where Mitch is now. We ran away from him last night.”

“Did you just leave her out there?”

“She’s at an Indian’s house. He’s a good man.”

“We have a truck.” I looked at Dalton. “Can we drive it there?”

“He lives on this road,” Simon said.

“Okay.”

“Jonah?”

“What?”

“I’m glad you found us.”

Simon picked his hat up and put it on his head, and the three of us started walking back.

When we got to the truck, Simon found a tee shirt lying on the floor among the scattered clothes, the map, Matthew’s letters, and he slipped it on over his sunburned shoulders.

“Where’d you steal this truck from?” Simon asked. He knew I’d never stolen anything in my life, at least not until that money I took from Mitch.

“It belongs to my dad,” Dalton said.

“We’re gonna bring it back, too,” I said. “As soon as this is all over. You’ll like his family, Simon. They live in just about the neatest place I’ve ever seen.”

My brother straightened out his shirt and looked at Dalton.

“Neither one of us has never seen no place,” Simon said. “Until now.”

Simon began picking up the things I spilled out onto the floor and piling them up on the seat.

“Jonah,” he said. “Mitch had a gun in his hand. He was going to shoot you.”

I froze. I guess I never really realized why Simon had knocked me into the river.

“That’s why you did it?”

Simon didn’t say anything.

“That’s why?”

He looked at me and grinned weakly.

“Only partly. ’Cause I was pretty mad at you, too. But, I promise, Jonah, I am not doing anything bad anymore. Brothers’ Rule Number Four. I promise.”

Dalton climbed out from the camper and handed a tan tee shirt to me.

“You should cover up,” he said.

“Thanks.”

I tucked the shirt down inside my pants. Simon watched me.

“You look different,” he said. “I never seen you in any clothes that weren’t Matthew’s first. And I never seen you without hair.”

“Dalton cut my hair. Do you want him to do yours, too?”

Simon looked at Dalton and said, “Hell no.”

And I was suddenly so relieved at seeing my brother, at hearing him talk like Simon always did; and I knew I never wanted to do bad things ever again, too.

I pictured the scratched images on the side of the Lincoln.

“Mitch told me he was going to kill you, Simon.”

“When did he say that?”

“Right after we got in that fight at that rest stop.”

I took off one of my boots and shook the dirt out of it. “I didn’t want to get back in the car, and he said he would kill you if I didn’t go along.”

It suddenly seemed so quiet.

Dalton slid in behind the wheel and started the truck.

I brushed off the bottoms of my socks and slipped my feet back into the boots Dalton gave me.

“He killed a guy at that bar we stopped at that next day, when he got me drunk,” Simon said. “When you and her were making out in the car. He shot a guy.”

“He killed a guy right in front of you?” Dalton said.

“No. I didn’t know it till later. I was outside taking a piss when he did it.”

“You were drunk, anyway,” I said.

“Dang,” Dalton said. “You guys get drunk?”

“No,” Simon answered. “It’s not like that. I’m not going to do anything like that anymore, Jonah.”

Simon slid into the middle of the seat and I climbed up beside him and shut the door.

“You’re both lucky you got away from him,” Dalton said.

“We’re not away yet, I think,” Simon said. He shifted in his seat and looked at me. “When all this is over, do you think I’m going to go to jail?”

“No. I won’t let that happen. We’ll just have to be careful about what we say.”

“Okay, Jonah.”

I balled up the clothes Simon and I left home with and put them into the bottom of the pack. As Dalton drove through the brush, trying to get the truck over to the gravel road where we’d found Simon, I looked out across the flat of the desert to where I could see the glint of the tin statue just poking up above the brush and cactus. I grabbed Matthew’s letters and my comp book and placed them in the open pack, and, finally, lay the gun on top and closed the flap.

“Why are you carrying those things around with you everywhere, Jonah?” Simon asked. “He’s not coming back.”

“He promised he would.”

The truck bumped and rolled over the brush.

“You haven’t heard from him in six months.”

“I have to try.”

“You don’t have to hide it all from me,” Simon said. “It’s not like you’re protecting me from anything. I’m not stupid. I know what’s going on.”

I felt my shoulders slump.

“At last,” Dalton said, as the truck leveled off onto the gravel road. “I go left, Simon, right?”

“Yeah. Left.”

I sighed, “Okay, Simon.”

“Are we good?”

“Good,” I said. “And thank you for saving my life.”

“I’m sure you would have kicked me off that bridge if you had the chance, too.”

“There’ve been plenty of times when I would have loved to.”

Simon smiled. Then he put his arm across my shoulders.

Dalton swerved the truck to avoid running over a rattlesnake. He glanced at me. He probably wondered if I thought he was crazy or something.

“How bad is she?” I asked.

Simon said, “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about that stuff, Jonah. It might just be nothing.”

“Why’d she decide to run away with you? Did Mitch do something crazy?”

I stared straight ahead as Dalton sped the truck noisily down the gravel road. Simon turned his wrists over in his lap. I know he was trying to hide the marks that Mitch made on him.

“Yeah.”

“To Lilly?”

“No.”

I looked at my brother.

“Are you okay?”

“I told you I was,” Simon said. “That’s the place right up there.”

Simon pointed at the trailer and the huts through the windshield and dust that came floating in through the windows on the sweltering air.

Mitch sits in the brush, black in the shade, ten yards back from the road.

He hums and smiles as he watches the boys in the truck roll past him.

So close.

A barking dog ran out to the truck as Dalton skidded it to a stop beside the mud hut where Walker had slept the night before.

“Watch out,” Simon said as I stepped down from the truck. “That dog likes to pee on you.”

The door on the trailer was already propped open in the heat. Walker came out of the darkness of the trailer’s interior and stood on the wooden porch, looking out at the three of us.

“That’s Walker,” Simon said. “Hey, Walker! I found my brother, Jonah, and a friend.”

I climbed the stairs with Dalton and Simon following, and shook the Indian’s hand.

“This is Dalton,” I said. “And I’m Jonah.”

“You the one who beat him up?” Walker asked as he shook my hand.

I felt myself go pale, scared that he was angry or something.

“Yes,” I said plainly.

“Well, he’s a good boy.”

“I know.”

Dalton removed his cap and shook Walker’s hand. He wiped the sweat back through his short black hair and Walker eyed him.

“You’re an Indian,” he said.

“I know,” Dalton said.

“I thought you looked like an Indian when I saw you get out of the truck just now,” Walker said.

“Come on.” Simon pushed his way past us and into the darkness inside the trailer.

I saw Lilly lying on the bed, pale and sweating, her eyes fixed to the white frame of light at the doorway, watching us as we entered. The dog sat, motionless, on the stoop behind us.

“Mitch?” she said.

And I don’t know if it was my short hair or the fact that Dalton was standing there behind me that made her say that. I went to the bed and dropped to her side.

“Hey,” I said, feeling for her hand.

Her skin was damp and cool.

She held on to my hand.

“Jonah,” she said. She opened her eyes wider. “Look at you. Look at your hair. You look like a little boy.”

“I’m not a little boy.”

“Yes you are.” She tried to smile.

“I came back from my swim.” I scratched the nubs of my hair and glanced back at the others. Then I kissed her mouth, but it didn’t feel like Lilly.

“It doesn’t hurt anymore.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper. “But I don’t think I can move.”

I swept my hand across her clammy forehead.

“I’m going to take you away. We have a truck outside. We’ll get you some help.”

I held her and pressed my face down beside hers.

“I’m sorry for what I did, Jonah,” she whispered. “I love you, though.”

“I know.” I closed my eyes and said, “Everything is my fault.”

I just watched her. Mitch had hurt Simon, and that was my fault. And I was sure that Lilly’s sickness was my doing, convinced that I broke something inside her that night at the Palms.

I wiped a dirty hand across my eyes. But I wasn’t going to cry.

“It was me,” she said. “I knew what I was doing all along, making Mitch crazy. But I needed him to get me away from Texas. I’m sorry for what I did to you and your brother.”

I looked back at Simon. He lowered his eyes and shook his head.

“Don’t say that.”

“But I did,” she said, so softly. “You should know better. But you’re just a little boy. Even if you are a sweetheart.”

“Don’t say that, Lilly. It’s going to be okay. I promise.”

The dog in the doorway jerked, growling. Its ears shot upward and it launched itself down the stairway, barking.

“What is it?” Simon asked.

The dog’s barks receded farther from the trailer.

“I don’t know,” Walker said.

Lilly closed her eyes and I kissed her, whispering, “I love you, Lilly.”

In the darkness of the trailer, we heard two gunshots.

They sounded far away.

And outside, the dog fell silent.

The numbers swirl, combine, and collapse.

He knows the exact amount of steps taken from the car to the mesa.

The ash and dried blood, the lines he’s cut, the tattoo of a cartoon skeleton on his flesh.

“Stupid dog,” he says. He spits on the twisted and dead animal.