“I don’t have asthma.”
“Then what was that last night?”
James kicked the sand at his feet and then looked up at me. His eyes were gray in the moonlight. “A lack of faith.”
“James…”
“I should go.”
Bear trotted out of the dark, tail wagging. He ran to James, who dropped down beside him and gave him a scratch under his chin.
“Take care of him,” he said.
James slipped his backpack on and started away. Bear followed for a few steps and then stopped to look back at me, confused. He barked toward James, but my brother had already begun to melt into the darkness.
I wanted to call out to him, stop him, but I knew it was useless. Even if I found the right thing to say, even if he walked by my side for the next thousand miles, the truth was I lost my brother years ago. I stood there until the dark overtook him, and the whisper of his footsteps faded away to nothing.
“Come on, Bear,” I said, and then I put my back to all of it and headed north.
Bear and I walked until we fell from exhaustion.
We were at the edge of a cliff. The moonlit desert spread out below us, huge and blank. Bear went to work on his paws, licking at the pads and digging out small stones and grit. I put an MRE down in front of him, then tore open one of my own. It tasted as bland as sawdust, but I forced down every bite. As I reached for our canteen, something rustled behind me. I whipped around, thinking I’d see James coming out of the dark, but there was nothing but desert brush blowing in the wind.
I imagined him back at Cormorant, safe in his bunk, but then all the things that could have gone wrong struck me. He could have gotten lost, or hurt or—
I slammed the door on the thought. James got what he wanted. There was no reason to dwell on it. I poured Bear some water, then dug through my pack, searching for something to fight the chill that numbed my fingers and toes. I found two sweaters and slipped one on over my T-shirt and tucked the other tight around Bear. I thrust my bare hand into my pocket and lay out alongside Bear to share warmth.
I closed my eyes, desperate for sleep, but nothing inside of me would go still. James haunted me no matter how hard I tried to push him away.
I remembered one Sunday night when Dad set up our “bunk beds” — what he called two hammocks hung in the backyard garden, one above and one below. That night it was a reward for me and James behaving when we took Grandma Betty to church. Or James behaving, really. I was simply half asleep, observing the homily through half-closed eyes. James sat up tall in the pew, listening with his whole body. Even then I thought he was simply playing an expert-level game of “Good Son.”
That night I lay in the top bunk mashing buttons on my PlayStation, with James below me. Mom and Dad and Grandma Betty were inside the house, just visible through the living room window. Dad was playing a new song for them. His voice mixed effortlessly with the jangle of his guitar and the tinkling of Mom’s and Grandma’s wineglasses.
Eventually they went to bed and shut out the lights, leaving me and James alone in the dark. The creaking sway of the hammocks’ ropes against the maple tree made me think of the rigging of a sailing ship. I closed my eyes and imagined us as sailors at sea, crashing through the waves.
I had thought James was asleep until his voice rose up from the bottom bunk.
There was a long pause and I leaned over the bunk. James seemed to be staring past me and the tree branches and the wisps of clouds to the stars.
I sat up in the desert, clamping my arms around my middle and leaning over my knees. It felt like there was an immense weight pressing down on me from all sides. Something touched my jacket, and I turned with a start.
Bear had his front paws perched on my shoulder. He was very still, examining me closely, his tan-dotted brows drawn together. He let out a breathy woof and I pulled him to my chest, inhaling the warm smell of him. My breath quaked in my throat as it went down. I let Bear go and he fell into my lap, drawing his legs beneath him. I tucked the sweater back over him and sat there with my palm on his side.
I looked up at the stars. Among them, the moon was full and white. A ghostly snatch of music swirled around me.
“Moonlight road,” I sang, hearing the chords in my head. “Why don’t you lead me on home?”
Bear twitched and shuffled. I ran my hand over the gloss of his coat and pulled him in tight. I looked over my shoulder again, out at the miles of darkness stretching to the south.
PART TWO
9
I woke at dawn to find a mile-long line of vehicles parked beneath the cliff we had camped on.
Turned out that our hill overlooked a northbound highway that was now filled with a mix of Path and conscripted civilian trucks. The convoy was bookended by heavily armed Humvees and led by a minesweeper that had come to a stop and was surrounded by a small company of soldiers.
All along the line, drivers had left their cabs to lean over their engines or pace impatiently along the highway shoulder. Bear stretched out beside me, watching the trucks with his ears at attention.
“Supply convoy,” I said. “If we’re lucky, it’ll run right along the western front to the Utah border. Maybe farther.”
Bear looked at me quizzically.
“You feeling lucky?”
Bear huffed impatiently and thumped the ground with his paws.
“Yeah, me neither. Come on.”
Bear followed as I crept down a narrow trail. Rocks and slick patches of dusty sand slipped underneath my feet. A night of rest had blunted the knifelike throb of my injuries, but just barely. Bear seemed better off, though, navigating each obstacle like he was born on a mountain. I had to keep a hold on his collar the whole way down, afraid that if either of us hurried, we’d be seen and it would be game over.
We crouched behind a low outcropping of rock at the foot of the cliff. A silver-and-red eighteen-wheeler sat
