Duchess took their bowls over.
“You need to eat,” he said.
“You don’t know what I need.” She dumped her food into the trash, then led her brother from the kitchen and out onto the porch.
Sunset. Burned haze that washed the rolling acres and cannoned from the water. Animals gathered far out, a cluster of elk that faced the falling light.
“Go run around.” She gave him a push.
Robin left her, walked the low hill, found a stick and dragged it in the dirt. In his other hand he clutched Captain America. He had not let it from his sight since he woke that morning at Walk’s house.
She’d already asked him, when it was late and Walk slept, she asked about that night and told him it was alright to tell if he’d heard something. He told her nothing at all, the place where the memory might have been lay in total darkness.
She had yet to process the death of her mother, the funeral, the new grave that stood beside Sissy’s on the Little Brook cliff. She wanted to cry, though knew if she did the grief would settle right there in her chest, not let her breathe when she needed strength most. She would be there for her brother. It was the two of them. The outlaw and her brother.
“I have a ball for him.”
She did not turn and did not acknowledge Hal. To think of him as family, his blood to hers. Not there when he was needed, which was too often. She spit in the dirt.
“I know it’s been difficult.”
“You don’t know shit.” She let it hang long in the dusk air, the dark sprinting at them so fast it was as if she had blinked away the color.
“I don’t like cursing in my house.”
“My house. Walk said it was our home.”
He looked pained then. She was glad.
“Tomorrow will be different in all kinds of ways. Some you might like and some you might not.”
“You don’t know what I like and what I don’t. Same for my brother.”
Hal sat on the swing seat, motioned for her to join him but she would not. The chains pulled on the cedar like they might wrench the soul from the old farmhouse. Her mother had told her about souls, vegetative to rational. She wondered what could be rational about the most base form of life.
He smoked a cigar and it carried to her, she wanted to move but wouldn’t, her sandals rooted. Her instinct was to ask him, about her mother, about her aunt and Vincent King. About where the fuck they were in the world, the land so different and the sky too vast. She got he would enjoy that, to talk to his granddaughter like a bond would form. She spit in the dirt again.
At an hour far from bedtime Hal sent them up. Duchess struggled with their case. She would not let him help.
She changed Robin into his pajamas and then brushed his teeth in the small bathroom that led from their sparse bedroom.
“I want to go home,” Robin said.
“I know.”
“I’m scared.”
“You’re a prince.”
Duchess dragged the nightstand across the scarred wood floor then heaved and pushed until the beds were joined.
“You’ll say your prayers now,” he said from the door.
“The fuck we will,” she fired back. She watched him take it, hoped to see him flinch but he did not. He stood there, mouth perfectly straight. She traced his face for a sign of herself, her brother, her mother. Maybe she saw a little of all of them or maybe he was just an old stranger.
A few minutes till Robin moved fully into her bed. He pulled her arm around himself till he slept.
In a breath a steady buzz made its way into her dreams. She reached over and slammed the alarm clock, then sat up quickly and for a few, cruel moments she thought of calling out to her mother.
Robin slept on beside her, she reached across and covered him and then heard Hal below, the whistle of the kettle and the heavy step of boots.
She lay back, tried to sleep but saw the light of the hallway tip into the room as Hal climbed the stairs and opened the door.
“Robin.” Her brother stirred to the old man’s voice. “The animals need their breakfast, would you like to come help?”
Duchess watched her brother, the thought pattern easy to place. She had seen how curiously he eyed the barns and the chickens, the big cows and the horses. He climbed from the bed, turned to her till she went and fetched his toothbrush.
Below were bowls of porridge. Duchess emptied hers into the trash. She found sugar and spooned some into Robin’s bowl. He ate quietly.
Hal appeared at the door, behind him light mist steamed like a fire burned beneath the land.
“Ready to work.” Not a question.
Robin finished his juice and hopped down from the chair. Hal reached out a hand and Robin took it. Duchess watched from the window as they walked toward the barn, the old man speaking words that did not carry, Robin staring up like the last six years no longer counted.
She pulled on her coat, laced her sneakers and headed out into dawn air.
Behind, mountain sun crept, the promise of something new lay heavy on her chest.
* * *
Walk had driven through the night, the states and the scenes all much of the same in the darkness, just signs counting miles, telling him to take a break, tiredness kills. When he got home he’d unplugged the telephone, pulled his drapes and lay, not sleeping, just thinking of Star and Duchess and Robin.
Breakfast was two Advil and a glass of water. A shower but no shave.
At eight he arrived to a reporter standing in the lot, Kip Daniels from the Sutler County Tribune. Beside Kip were a couple of vacationers and locals. Walk had heard it on the short ride in, that the state of California was preparing to
