He held the shirt up and smelled Sergeant Presley in a draft coming off the fire.
He took off his vest and put on the shirt.
It was comfortable. Soft. The softest thing he’d ever felt. And warm.
He sat by the fire.
When he took up the map, he stared at it. He had seen the map many times, but always when it was laid out, Sergeant Presley was making a note or muttering to himself.
The Boy unfolded it, laying it on the ground. It was large. It was both hard and smooth. In the light it reflected a dull shine.
He stared at the markings.
Above Reno he read:
CHINESE PARATROOPERS. DUG IN. BATTALION STRENGTH.
Over Salt Lake City, in the state of Utah, he read:
GONE
Over Pocatello, in the state of Idaho, he read:
REFUGEE CAMP FIVE YEARS AFTER. OVERRUN BY SLAVERS.
Above this, across the whole of the northwestern states, was a red circle with the words “WHITE SUPREMACISTS” written in the center.
Across Omaha in big letters was the word “PLAGUE,” and then a small red face with X’s for eyes. There were red-faced “X eyes” listed over place names all the way to Louisville, in the state of Kentucky.
At Washington, D.C., he found an arrow that led into the middle of the ocean. Words were written in Sergeant Presley’s precise hand.
MADE IT TO D.C. IT’S ALL GONE. BUNKER PROBABLY HIT EARLY IN THE WAR. NO REMNANTS OF GOV’T AT THIS LOCATION. TOOK ME TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS TO MAKE IT HERE.
On the back of the map the Boy found names.
CPT DANFORTH, KIA CHINESE SNIPER IN SACRAMENTO
SFC HAN, KIA CHINESE SNIPER IN SACRAMENTO
CPL MALICK, KIA RENO
SPC TWOOMEY, KIA RENO
PFC UNGER, MIA RENO
PFC CHO, MIA RENO
PV2 WILLIAMS, KIA RENO
And…
LOLA
THERE WAS NO mention of Escondido’s “Auburn” on the map. The Boy traced the highway marked 80 as it crossed the mountain range and then fell into Sacramento in the State of California. After that, the road ran straight to Oakland. Written over Oakland, the Boy found I CORPS. Across the bay in San Francisco, circled in red, he saw the word CHINESE.
He stared at the broken feather and experienced the fleeting sensation of a memory. Which one, he could not tell.
Chapter 19
Horse had not died.
Winter broke and the Boy could hear ice crack in the river below. It was still cold.
The Boy led Horse to the bottom of the small mountain, down its icy ledges, watching Horse to make sure he didn’t slip. There was only one close call, near the bottom. In the silence that followed the recovery, Horse seemed angry at his own inability and cantered off into the forest, snorting and thrashing his tail.
The Boy let him go, knowing Horse needed to forget the incident as much as the animal wanted the Boy to never remember it.
He was embarrassed, thought the Boy, keeping even the look of such a thought to himself.
For the rest of the morning they rode the snowy forest carefully. In the early afternoon, they crossed the river and came upon the great curve of the highway that climbed upward toward the pass. For a while the Boy left Horse to himself, letting him crop what little there was to find.
This is good. We need to be back on this road again. Even if just for a few moments of sunshine. It feels good to have the road under my feet and Horse’s hooves. We have been too long away from the road.
He wandered back to their old camp.
Against the cliff wall, the Boy found the drawing of Sergeant Presley near the snow-covered remains of Escondido’s charred lodge.
That evening back at the cave, as both he and Horse drowsily watched the fire, he took a piece of charcoal and shaved it lightly with his knife.
He considered the wall of the cave and saw no face or image in the flickering light. And yet he wanted to draw something.
He thought of the bear and quickly dismissed the thought. There were nights when he awakened in the dark and the bear was chasing him across the forest floor, and no matter how hard he urged his withered leg to move, it would not. Usually he awoke just before the bear caught him, but there were nights when he didn’t, and in those nightmare moments, he could feel the bear’s hot embrace, and the terror seemed a thing that would swallow him whole.
So he did not need a reminder of the bear.
He drew the mane first. The mane of the Big Lion. The male. That was what he remembered most in the times when he thought back to the night the lions surrounded him.
Next he added the eyes, the eyes that had seemed so cool and yet communicative, and then the teeth and the body, and the shadows that were his females. He drew the female who had watched the big male. She had been at his side, still watching him. They were together.
When the Boy was finished he lay on his back, watching the portrait of the lions, remembering them this way and forgetting the skins and the blood of that hot day.
ON THE COLD morning when they finally left the cave the Boy was wearing the skin of the bear over his back and down his left side. The withered side.
This way others won’t be able to see where I am weak.
They rode out past the bubbling river and up the slope, onto the rising highway.
It was a cold day, and the wind came straight down the old highway, but the skies above were blue. Soon they left the familiar, and each new curve in the road was a strange and almost alien world of chopped granite, high forests, and cold, deep mountain lakes.
‘Winter can only last so long, and life in the cave would have made me weak,’ the Boy thought.
Horse can no longer survive on what little grass I can dig out from underneath the snow. For me, the bear meat is long gone and even the fish from the stream seem harder to catch because there are so few now.
For most of that day they rode high into the mountains, and in the evening they camped under the remains of a broken bridge.
The fire was weak and the air was cold enough to make him think maybe they’d left the cave too soon, but Horse seemed stronger in the evening than when they first began the day’s journey.
It was good for him to work so hard today.
The Boy slept, waking throughout the night at each new sound beyond the firelight.
IN THE MORNING they came upon a pole covered in the skulls of animals and garlands of acorns, a marker set in the dirt by the broken road.
