The hard part was supposed to be the journey. The unforgiving temperatures, the cruel landscape, the scarcity of food and water. But it is the mental assault that has been unendurable. Maybe this mission means nothing. On the one side, Burr is a false prophet. On the other side, Lewis strives for irrelevance. There is no human endeavor. No matter how much people clung to family, breeding more children, and to community, building more houses and businesses and roads to bind them, everyone dies alone. Whether from sickness or injury or old age, you die alone, and there is nothing bad or good about death, just as there is nothing redemptive or admirable about being human. It doesn’t matter how powerful you are or how far you travel or how many books you read or where you live—that’s all one big distraction from the open grave waiting to swallow you in the end. There is no escape for humankind, and there is no escape for her, and none for Lewis either.
But despite all these feelings thrashing inside her, she has continued to put one foot in front of the other, leading them toward Oregon. Trees don’t love and they don’t mourn, but they strive for sun and for water. They live. That is the one true impulse, she supposes, that everything wants to live. Something waits for her in Oregon that is the equivalent of sun and water. A promise. Burr promised her.
Lewis trusts her. He handed over his life to her. He follows her still, as if they are corded together. He follows her through pillaged and burned communities and the best answer she can give him when he asks what happened is “I don’t know.” Though she does. The same thing that happened to these villages happened to hers. How can she ignore that? She is betraying herself as much as betraying Lewis. But she guides him and he follows her and she follows the river, and in Three Forks, the river finally dies, a gray wash of seep that they give wide berth, not wanting to get stuck in the slush. They follow the remains of the freeway for three days, before the mountains rise severely before them.
Slabs of stone, like altars and pillars, peek out of the snow with lichen stitched across them like the cipher of some dead race. They pass through Butte and the mountains become a toothy maw that surrounds them. The elevation steepens and the cold makes the air feel thinner than it already is.
In a narrow pass, the road has washed away entirely, replaced by trees and boulders that create a labyrinth of ice. The ground is angled steeply. Its snow-swept corridors cut this way and that way, and it is soon difficult to tell which direction she faces. At one point she looks down, at a slick floor of pure ice that mutters and cracks beneath her weight, and feels certain she is standing hundreds of feet in the air and might plummet through at any second and maybe that would be for the best.
Night comes. When they finally step out of the labyrinth and into the open pass again, a frigid wind roils over her and knocks her back a step before she presses on with her head down and her eyes watering and her tears freezing to her lashes. The road begins again, a white ribbon curling around the mountain, and here she finds a jackknifed semi.
They climb inside and the three of them fall asleep with their arms wrapped around each other, shuddering like old lovers. Her teeth won’t stop chattering, a skeleton’s song, so she draws closer to Lewis, so close that her mouth is nearly at his ear, and she whispers, “I’m sorry,” but he is sleeping and does not hear.
They wake at dawn. The men are weak and sick. They are cold one minute, feverish the next. Every small movement brings a painful pulse to their foreheads. They limp along. They wear snowshoes that sink into the powder, snow collapsing onto them, burdening every footstep. Sometimes they pause for a minute or more to gather their strength before continuing on, making slow progress.
They fall now and then. It takes longer and longer for them to get up each time. And then they don’t get up. She does not go to them. She stands over them, wavering in the wind. It would be so easy to leave them there. Then she wouldn’t have to see their faces when they realize her betrayal.
Chapter 45
ELLA LIES IN BED all day with the curtains drawn, nothing but shadows to keep her company. She tries to empty her mind, but her tongue always finds the swollen cavity at the back of her mouth. Probing it reminds her of Slade, his oniony smell, his pitted cheeks and slitted eyes, when he leaned in to her, smashed her down, ripped out the tooth and held it aloft like a prize.
Lewis once called her belligerently confident. But now she feels so weak and small she wants to crawl in her own pocket and wither into lint.
Not even Simon can help. This morning, when she wouldn’t get out of bed, he nudged her and she said, “Leave me alone.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“Yes, leave me alone.”
He did, though she isn’t sure she wanted him to.
So many hours later, her stomach feels flattened with hunger and her mind warped with loneliness. She ought to feel excited by the knock at her bedroom door, but it’s an anxious excitement, wanting and not wanting to be bothered.
In response to the first knock, and the second, she says nothing. Simon cracks the door and light falls across her face and makes her flinch. He is carrying something toward her, setting it on the night table, food maybe. An offering. Without even knowing what it is, she feels both flattered and compelled to reject it.
Then he yanks the curtains and lets in the painful sunlight. She props herself up on an elbow and squints at him. He remains a bit breathless from his climb up the stairs. His thin chest flutters beneath his shirt. He is smiling idiotically. “I brought you something.”
“You mean you stole me something.”
“Same difference.”
She looks at the thing—a dented metal box with a handle and clasp—and says, “What is it?”
“Oh, right.” He fumbles with the clasp and swings open the top to reveal a dial and a turntable and an arm with a needle on it. “A portable record player!”
She plops her head back on her pillow and Simon’s smile falls with her. “I thought it might cheer you up.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because it’s a record player.” His mouth gapes and quivers a moment before he finds more words to fill it. “For your record.”
She puzzles up her forehead.
“The one you showed me. From your treasure box.”