Marston pulled a crate of rocks from the back of one wagon and arranged them into a circle for the fire pit. He dug a shallow hole, spitting and cursing as he did. He was thin and not well suited to the work.
“My name is Irene,” said Wendell’s sister. She offered Brooke a sip of water from a thin aluminum saucer.
Brooke accepted, but took only enough to show he appreciated the offering.
“John,” said Brooke.
“Right,” said Irene. “How long have you and your wife been on foot?”
Brooke shrugged. “The only honest answer is that I lost count.”
“Where are you headed?”
“My wife and I,” said Brooke, “we lost a child not too long ago.”
“I know,” said Irene. “She’s said as much.”
“She has been wandering ever since, and I have been following her. At first, I tried to stop her, but she would not be stopped.”
Irene nodded.
“Dorothy lost hers,” she said. She gestured to the woman who spoke at a slant. “Some six years ago, maybe? It was born dead.”
Brooke nodded.
“She is lucky to have survived,” said Brooke. “I’ve seen a stillborn do much more damage.”
“We are lucky,” said Irene. “I’m not sure what she is.”
“We won’t be any trouble to you all,” said Brooke.
“I know,” said Irene.
“We appreciate your help. We’ll uncouple ourselves from you at the first town we come to, if you like. I think my wife needs a bed and a good meal. Maybe we’ll find a small place to call our own. We had a ranch once, but we cannot go back there.”
Irene nodded.
“Haints stay where and as they please,” she said.
Because of the snow, the creek was enormous now and moving quickly. There was less food to be found, but there was still food to be found. When they slept, they tied the horses together and blocked the wagon’s wheels. Many of them chose to sleep outside, beneath the stars. Wendell and his sister took to one of the wagons. Brooke slept in the third wagon, beside the woman he met in the snow. She spoke throughout the night, every so often. Some bit of nonsense or another. She took no notice of him. He listened to her for some time before he began to respond.
“I was told to do as I did,” she said.
“By the earth,” he said.
“I could feel I’d done wrong as soon as I did it.”
“I know that feeling,” said Brooke. “I have felt it often.”
“It would not stop screaming,” she said.
“It goes away,” said Brooke.
“Until I put it down, it would not stop.”
“But then it stopped,” said Brooke.
She began to cry then.
“Then it stopped,” she said.
The bodies were water-logged and delicate. Bird lifted the arm of a young man and the skin shifted, the body cracked as if Bird could tear loose the limb without much more than a tug. He dropped the arm and retreated to Mary where she stood on the porch, her hands over her eyes, still speaking out in protest.
“You must stop,” she said.
“We cannot move them,” he said.
“You should not,” she said.
“It would be impossible,” said Bird. “They are too full of water and too far gone. We cannot move them.”
“We have to leave,” said Mary.
Finally, Bird agreed.
Mary spent the evening preparing food for the journey: baking loaves of bread and gathering butter, salt, and cured meat into manageable sacks to be carried on their backs. Bird checked the houses again and found more bullets, another pistol, rotten meal, and some more jerky. The houses groaned as he moved through them. They were each tilted on their foundation, sagging and heavy with water. The roofs of several had already collapsed. He moved through them, navigating the rubble. They were lit cleanly by the blue sky above. He found two more bodies. Two children huddled in a basement. He covered them with blankets from a nearby dresser. He did not mention them to Mary.
They set out for the woods. Mary walked in front and Bird took up the rear. He carried several sacks on his shoulder, but dropped them again and again, claiming to have heard some sound or another. Birds launched from bushes and startled him into withdrawing his pistol. And every time, in order to do so, he had to drop the sacks.
“You’ll mush the bread,” said Mary. “You mustn’t drop them.”
“Carry a pistol then,” said Bird.
She took one, but did not like it and kept it unloaded.
“It is no good that way,” said Bird.
“I will not shoot off my foot,” said Mary, “carrying a loaded pistol in my belt and with several sacks in each arm. I’ll do things my way.”
They had to stop often. The sacks were too much for them. They kept the sun behind them. Mary insisted there were several towns founded at the far edge of the forest, directly opposite the desert towns. She had never traveled from one to the other, but John had, and had told her as much. At the far end of the woods would be either mountains or a town where they could eat proper food and find some safety. They walked for hours and hours, until the sun began to set. Mary did not like it one bit. Each step was painful and unpleasant and the bags kept slipping and swinging and making her gait unsteady. Bird was silent. He seemed neither comfortable nor struggling. She made the decision not to complain, though there was plenty to complain about.
“We’ve probably walked fifteen miles,” said Mary. “Maybe even twenty.”
“I don’t think so,” said Bird.
“How many do you think?”
“Five,” he said. “Or six. Hardly any. These bags are slowing everything down, and you keep stopping. So we’re crawling.”
On the far side of the woods, she would consider the possibility of leaving his side. She had thought about it long and hard and she did not want to marry him. She wanted to marry someone nicer and smarter. Bird was a violent nuisance. There was nothing to him that made her want to stay.
Bird insisted that they cover themselves when they slept. What the blankets could not reach, a sack would cover. The more they seemed to be a pile, the better. He slept with a bag of bread on his face. Mary found it funny and refused to do so. The treetops seemed miles above them. They tilted and groaned in the wind. She wanted to consider them as she prepared herself for sleep.
“If you are spotted,” said Bird, “we will have trouble.”
“I have a pistol,” she said.
“You will get us both tortured, eaten, or killed,” said Bird.
“That is silly,” she said.
She knew it wasn’t silly. She was carrying twice the sacks he was able to because the woods had shown him precisely what there was to be afraid of. Still, she had her pistol, and was intelligent and strong, and she would not be told over and over again by him what to do and how to feel. They were not a family and they were not in love. The moon was out, and it was full.
The next day went much as the previous. They walked and stopped and walked and stopped. They found a small stream and drank from it. They filled their canteens and a cup to carry each. Mary spotted a bird’s nest with a mother bird on its edge. She did not mention it to Bird.
“I like it out here,” said Mary. “It is pretty and I like the air.”
“You’re a fool to fall in love with it,” said Bird.
She did not answer. The mother bird lifted and sought food for the hidden young.
“You would do better to speak less,” said Mary.
“The same could be said of you,” said Bird.
“Perhaps,” she said. “But you are predictable and your position is clear. If you said nothing, I would nonetheless know how you felt about anything we might experience.”