I wondered where Mom and Dad were right then. Were they lying awake and thinking of us? Did some part of them think we would appear at any moment as they turned a corner or walked down an unfamiliar street? Or had they moved on, forcing themselves to accept the fact that their only sons were never coming back?
A cold weight settled in my stomach. James and I had been gone for more than six years without a word. Was it possible that Mom and Dad thought we were dead?
And worse, did they blame themselves, sure that if only they hadn’t sent us west, it never would have happened? I sat there on the shore, trying to imagine the torture of believing that day after day, but it was too big, too awful.
I let the rest of the stones in my hand spill out by my side. When I looked across the lake again, its waters seemed flat and gray. The distant shores nothing but black swells in the land. It was like a painting of another time, perfectly made and impossible to touch. I hadn’t come all this way for these things. James was right; the path I was on stretched far beyond this place.
I stepped into my shoes and walked away from the shore, striding into the dark without another look back.
28
“Careful. You’re going to cut my arm off.”
“Not if you stop squirming.”
My arm was laid out on the kitchen table. James jockeyed for position until he found the best angle and then slipped the teeth of the garden shears beneath the dirty plaster of the cast.
“You sure about this? Maybe the hacksaw would be better.”
“Do it.”
James put all his weight into it and the plaster cracked. He made it past my wrist and then across my palm, backtracking to cut through the thumbhole. When he was done he dug his fingers into the seam and pulled. The plaster crunched and then snapped in two.
I lifted my arm out of the debris. It was pale as milk, and the skin felt damp and puckered. I flexed my fingers and turned my wrist in a circle. There was a deep ache still, but the relief to have it free again was so great it was almost unbearable. James tossed the shears onto the table.
“There you go,” he said. “Free at last.”
James went out into the living room and pulled one of Dad’s old flannels on over his T-shirt. I was amazed it fit as well as it did. A month’s worth of rest and food had done him good. He had put on weight and when he walked, his hand no longer went instinctively to the scar at his side. He picked up his backpack and stuffed a pair of jeans inside.
“Sure you don’t want to wait another day? They say the fighting is dying down a bit,” I said. “Maybe—”
“Border’s gonna get tighter,” he said, filling a water bottle at the kitchen sink. “War’s not even over and the Path is already building a wall. If I want to get across, I have to move now.”
“Okay, but you should take the car.”
“Nah, you keep it.”
“What? You’re going to walk the whole way? You’re really pushing this whole biblical prophet thing.”
James set the bottle by his pack. “I never learned how to drive, Cal.”
“Oh. Right.”
I pulled a small box from my pocket. It was wrapped in the comics section of an old newspaper with twine ribbon. “I got you this.”
“What is it?”
“A going-away present.” James hesitated. “It’s not a bug, I promise.”
James took the box and unwrapped it. When he saw what was inside, he sat back against the edge of the sink.
“Got it before we left the base,” I said. “Good thing about those Feds is that they’re pretty easy to bribe.”
James reached into the box and pulled out a white asthma inhaler with a pale-blue stopper.
“Got a couple replacement cartridges too but they wouldn’t fit in the box.” I waited for him to say something but he was stuck, staring at the inhaler. “James?”
“I haven’t had an attack since that night in the desert.”
“And you won’t,” I said quickly. “Just think of it as a — Look, I don’t know what you should think of it as; just put it in your pocket and forget it’s there, okay? For me? Your big brother?”
James looked up and smiled. “Thanks, Cal.”
He pocketed the inhaler, then went over everything he had in his pack and zipped it closed. I expected him to head for the door, but he stood looking out the window at the back garden. With little else to do over the last month, James and I had cleaned it up the best we could. The grass was cut and the weeds had been pushed back so the flowers had a little room to breathe. We even managed to get the hammocks repaired and rehung, which naturally led to a discussion about sleeping in them instead of our cramped bedroom. In the end, we decided that nostalgia was a thing you could take way too far.
“You don’t have to do this,” I said.
“I know.” James settled the pack onto his shoulders. “When you find them…”
“I’ll explain,” I said. “It’ll be all the ammo I need to finally be declared the good son.”
I followed James through the house and out into the front yard. He stood at the gate, looking across the street at sidewalks and trees and empty houses before pushing it open and stepping through. He looked back at me, his brown hair light in the morning sun as it rose. He waved one last time, then he turned to go.
Even though I had been preparing myself for weeks, standing there in the moment of James’s leaving was overwhelming. Every part of me wanted to follow him, but I held myself steady, eyes shut, and listened as he climbed the hill to the main road. His footsteps slowly faded away. After he was gone, there was a long silence. The emptiness around me seemed impossibly vast. I told myself that he’d always be out there, like a jewel in a box, or a heart beating in the darkness. No matter what happened I’d be able to turn south and for a moment feel like we were together again.
I drifted back through the empty house, my lone footsteps echoing off the bare walls. I moved from room to room, gathering up anything I thought I could use — matches, food, a half-dull kitchen knife — then pulled a crumpled road map out of my pocket.
Wellesley Island was circled in red ink, a speck of land on the Canadian border. I ran a finger along the route, feeling the lonely grind of the miles there and then all the ones that would come after. I had no way of knowing how long it would take me to find Mom and Dad, or even if I could. The only thing to do was start, but there was something that held me in place. It was this feeling like I was standing in a half-finished room, or the way a song, shut off before the end, stays inside of you, anxious until it can resolve.
I folded the map and stuffed it in my pocket. There was no sense dwelling on it. I reached for my pack, then remembered that I had traded the clothes the Feds had given me for some of Dad’s shortly after we arrived. I figured I could use the old ones as spares.
I found them in a pile in our room. The shirt was sweated through and full of holes, but the rest was worth taking. I stuffed the jacket into the backpack and then reached across the floor for my old jeans. There was a soft jangle of metal as I pulled them to me.
My heart lost a beat when I heard it. I reached inside and pulled out a thick pink band with a black buckle and a silver tag. I didn’t breathe as I drew the collar across my shaking hands. The collar felt impossibly heavy, as if all of those months and all the hundreds of miles had been compressed into its fibers. Bear. I traced the letters of his name with my fingertip and then held the tag in my hand until the metal grew warm. I could feel the heat of his fur and remembered his summery smell.
I imagined him in a cabin, safe and well fed, and wondered if it was home to him now or if he still thought of me. Did he wonder why I left him even now? And did he lie among the woman and her family, awaiting the day I’d come back for him?