and he put it out of his mind. Harris had taken care of it anyway. It was a big fuckup and he’d caused it but Harris had taken care of it.
He heard another car come up the road and then pull into their driveway. One of Mom’s friends. He wondered if he should go check. And waste all your two hours sitting and letting the woods forget you’re here. All the squirrels and birds are feeding again like you don’t even exist. Little Mrs. Whitetail’s guard will be down. Sit like an Indian, wait them out. They’re probably bedded down a hundred yards from here.
Twenty or so minutes later there was movement at the top of the field. He moved his body slowly in that direction but didn’t raise his rifle. Then he saw it was not a deer. A person—Harris—appeared at the top of the hill next to the trailer. Poe could see the sunlight on his bald head. Harris was looking all around the field. Christ he’d get busted for poaching. First he catches me yesterday and now again today. He felt sweat run down his armpits all of a sudden, he could see Harris scanning the field, he could practically watch the man’s mind working; Harris saw where the treeline funneled to the stream and then spotted the small thicket and the brush pile that gave good vantage on the opening. It was the best place to hunt that funnel and Harris began walking down the hill toward it, right toward him. Poe knew he couldn’t see into the thicket, the sun was in Harris’s face but still Harris was coming right for him. It was not for poaching. He would not have come all this way for poaching. He couldn’t have known besides. It was that Isaac had been right—Harris was only biding his time and Christ he didn’t know, he’d barely slept he couldn’t think straight. Harris knew, you were not going to pull the wool over on Harris. Lee she would never talk to him again, getting her brother in trouble like that, the last one who needed trouble was Isaac English, tried to kill himself in the river like his mother did. He felt the weight of the rifle. It was two hundred yards to Harris, maybe one eighty, it was all he could think about, there were plenty of places to brace it was maybe a six- inch holdover at that distance. Only chance you’ll ever have. You or anyone else Harris he was a fucking machine everyone knew it. He looked at Harris and thought that way for a long time. He had a strange feeling in his bowels, it was fear, he thought let this be over quickly. By the time he set down the .30-30, Harris was only seventy paces away. Christ. Christ you’re a fucking lunatic an actual insane lunatic thinking about shooting a law enforcement officer you’ve known since you were a kid. As if that will make your problems go away.
He slid the gun under the brush pile and crawled for a while behind the brush so that when Harris saw him come out, he would not be near the gun.
Harris waited for him to stand up.
“Billy,” said Harris.
“Afternoon, Chief Harris.”
“Go on and fetch your rifle back up to the house so it doesn’t rust.”
Poe looked at him.
“Go on,” said Harris. “We’ve got bigger things to worry about.”
2. Isaac
He picked his way along the creek, the new moon, he thought, the night was very dark. Soon enough the ravine had shrunk to a flat streambed and he was on the grounds of the steelmill just south of town. He made his way north, past the long empty buildings, each a quarter of a mile long and twenty stories tall. He passed the four remaining blast furnaces and their powerhouses, the furnaces were rusted black but still rose high above even the buildings, hundreds of enormous pipes snaking over and around each other, intricate windings. There were dozens of slag cars still on their tracks. He passed under the ore crane and then passed stacks upon stacks of I-beams and T-beams, other structural members. They’d run out of money during the dismantlement. No one wanted to buy an old steelmill. Too much liability.
It was dark and he was comfortable. He followed the train tracks out of the mill, past the town and his old school, past the road to Poe’s. All of it went quickly out of sight. The railbed was dark and narrow and winding, cut into the side of the hill, the woods dense on either side, the sound of his footsteps seemed to carry a long way. The kid begins his journey for real. As alone now as when he came into the world. Deadest time of night—the day creatures still asleep and night creatures bedded down. A kid afoot. Bound for California. Warmth of his own desert.
There were a few hobo camps in the woods along the tracks and he kept his eyes out for fires. The kid will be fine, he thought. King of the snakes and duke of all hoboes. He watched a light move quickly across the sky high above him. A satellite. Comrade to Arab traders and astronauts. All wanderers.
Gradually the sky began to expand with a pale gray light and the few minutes before the sun rose properly he thought:
On the opposite side of the river the sun was hitting brightly and the shadows on his side seemed to get darker. Ahead of him he could make out the tall smokestack and rotting water tower of the traincar plant. He began to feel nervous. No, he thought, the kid relishes any test. Pits his wit against any who tell him
Leaving the tracks, Isaac followed a small stream up the hillside, a canopy of alder, the bark white against the green of everything else, moss dragging in the clear fast water. Flowering plants. White ones bloodroot, purple ones don’t know. Mayflowers, too—nearly extinct— too pretty for their own good. At the top of the hill the stream came out of a hole in the ground and he lay in the damp moss and splashed the cold water into his mouth until his stomach was full. After that he moved slowly through the woods, slipping from tree to tree until he could see the clearing where Harris’s truck had been parked the previous night. The clearing was empty. He stayed in the woods anyway, walking parallel to the fireroad until he reached the meadow and the machine shop. It had taken a long time and the sun was well up now. He looked into the open dark doorway of the shop. Guilt and another feeling. Place of victory. Shouldn’t be proud but I am. Thinking that he had an even stronger guilty feeling and went to look for his backpack in the field.
This calls for further reflection, he decided. How many people do you know who have never struck a person in anger? Only you. Which includes what happened the other night.
Meanwhile here’s your pack, just where you left it… money and notebooks still inside. Though slightly damp. A sandwich bag of raisins and peanuts. A nice breakfast. It occurs to the kid that he has not eaten in two days. No worries—food can be found anywhere. After consolidating the things he needed into the larger army surplus pack, he left his smaller schoolbag in the field and made his way back toward the train tracks, finishing off the raisins and peanuts.
Two hours later a short train passed him in the middle of a long straightaway and all he could do was watch in frustration as the cars sped by, too fast to grab hold. Tired and hungry anyway. Might have gone under the wheels if you even tried. What would it matter? Speeding up the natural process. Beings in time, moving toward our expiration. It’s cowardly, he thought. That’s why it matters. Of all the sperm and eggs that ever existed, here you are, moving under your own power. Odds of you existing—one in ten trillion, no, smaller. One to Avogadro’s number: 6.022 times 1023. Meanwhile people throw it away.
He decided not to think about it—sadness too much for him. He calculated where he was, and his speed. On flat ground he makes 3.5 miles per hour. Slightly slower on this gravel. Tires the ankles. Plus the tracks follow every curve in the river—the roads would be shorter. Except the land here is flat and the river will take him where he wants to go. The kid knows that the roads will just get him lost. He tunes himself to the rhythms of the cosmos. Slow and steady.
Belle Vernon was the next major town downriver. There’d been development there recently, a shopping mall, a Lowe’s home improvement, a Starbucks, places like that. Traveling properly on foot, the kid is now beyond the places he knows anyone. His material comforts falling away, no place will be foreign. The world is his home. He teaches these lessons and sends them through the ether for others to soak through their skins. A child speaks his first words, a mother conceives a daughter. An old man in India and his deathbed realization—that’s the kid.
