Harry collected the child’s things, and I collected the mother’s and searched her body. Between us, we
gathered everything. By the time we finished, the little boy, perhaps three years old, was crying. That scared me. I left Harry to push the dead woman’s pack along in her baby carriage and Bankole to carry the whimpering child. All I carried was the gun, drawn and ready. Even when we got back to our own camp, I couldn’t relax. The little boy wouldn’t be quiet and Dominic joined him with even louder cries.
Zahra and Jill worked to comfort the new child, but he was surrounded by strangers in the middle of the night, and he wanted his mother!
I saw movement over near the burned out carcass of the truck. The fire was still burning, but it was smaller now, burning itself out. There were still people near it. They had lost their truck. Would they care about a crying child? And if they did care, would they want to help the kid or just shut its mouth.
A lone, dark figure came away from the truck and took several steps toward us. At that moment, Natividad took the new child, and in spite of his age, gave him one breast and Dominic the other.
It worked. Both children were comforted almost at once. They made a few more small sounds, then settled down to nursing.
The shadow figure from the truck stood still, perhaps confused now that it was no longer guided by noise.
After a moment, it turned and went back past the truck and out of sight. Gone. It couldn’t have seen us. We could look out of the darkness under the trees that sheltered our campsite and see by firelight, by starlight. But others could only follow the baby noise to us.
“We ought to move,” Allie whispered. “Even if they can’t see us, they know we’re here.”
“Watch with me,” I said.
“What?”
“Stay awake and watch with me. Let the others get a little more rest. Trying to move in the dark is more dangerous than staying put.”
“…all right. But I don’t have a gun.”
“Do you have a knife?”
“Yeah.”
“That will have to be enough until we get the other guns clean and ready.” We’ve been too tired and in too much of a hurry to do that so far. Also, I don’t want Allie or Jill to have guns yet. Not yet. “Just keep your eyes open.” The only real defense against automatic rifles is concealment and silence.
“A knife is better than a gun now,” Zahra said. “If you have to use it, it will be quiet.”
I nodded. “The rest of you, try to get a little more rest. I’ll wake you at dawn.”
Most of them lay down to sleep, or at least to rest.
Natividad kept both children with her. Tomorrow, though, one of us would have to take charge of the little boy. We didn’t need the burden of such a big child— one who had reached the “run around and grab everything” stage. But we had the little boy, and there was no one to hand him off to. No woman camping alongside a highway with her child would have other relatives handy.
“Olamina,” Bankole said into my ear. His voice was low and soft and only I reacted to it. I turned, and he was so close that I felt his beard brush my face. Soft, thick beard. This morning he combed it more carefully than he combed the hair on his head. He has the only mirror among us. Vain, vain old man. I moved almost by reflex toward him.
I kissed him, wondering what it would feel like to kiss so much beard. I did kiss the beard at first, missing his mouth by a little in the dark. Then I found it and he moved a little and slipped his arms around me and we settled to it for a little while.
It was hard for me to make myself push him away. I didn’t want to. He didn’t want to let me.
“I was going to say thank you for coming after me,”
he said. “That woman was conscious almost until she died. The only thing I could do for her was stay with her.”
“I was afraid you might have been shot out there.”
“I was flat on the ground until I heard the woman groaning.”
I sighed. “Yeah.” And then, “Rest.”
He lay down next to me and rubbed my arm— which tingled wherever he touched it. “We should talk soon,” he said.
“At least,” I agreed.
He grinned— I could see the flash of teeth— and turned over and tried to sleep.
The boy’s name was Justin Rohr. His dead mother had been Sandra Rohr. Justin had been born in Riverside, California just three years ago. His mother had gotten him this far north from Riverside. She had saved his birth certificate, some baby pictures, and a picture of a stocky, freckled, red-haired man who was, according to a notation on the back of the photo, Richard Walter Rohr, born January 9, 2002, and died May 20, 2026. The boy’s father— only twenty-four when he died. I wondered what had killed him. Sandra Rohr had saved her marriage certificate and other papers important to her. All were wrapped in a plastic packet that I had taken from her body. Elsewhere on her, I had found several thousand dollars and a gold ring.
There was nothing about relatives or a specific destination. It seemed that Sandra had simply been heading north with her son in search of a better life.
The little boy tolerated us all well enough today, although he got frustrated when we didn’t understand him at once. When he cried, he demanded that we produce his mother.
“Then he’s more than three hundred miles behind you.”
“…yeah.”
