Because this trail of glass required that they keep their eyes to the ground, Cal stopped walking and looked up. He wouldn’t follow the maze’s implicit rules just because he was afraid of a torn-up heel. These people, they didn’t want him to take stock of location, perspective. Well, he would.
The sky was blue but hazy in the way it got when it was hot, and only one crimped ribbon of cloud interrupted the solid color.
From behind, Frida tapped his shoulder. “Go on,” she whispered. She thought he’d stopped because he was afraid. He kept moving.
Sailor seemed almost giddy as they reached the edge of the maze, and Cal wondered if anyone had ever done what he was about to do: bring outsiders inside. Sailor wore a stupid saggy grin on his face, like he’d just won a first-grade spelling bee. Cal could hear Frida behind him, her breath loud and shaky. She only breathed like that when she was nervous.
Cal trusted Sailor; the kid was obviously guileless, and he didn’t seem cunning enough to do them any harm that Cal wouldn’t see in time to prevent. But maybe Sailor was unknowingly leading them into danger. His compatriots might not agree with his choice to accept two more people. The only person who could have been talking about them was August, and Cal couldn’t imagine what August had said that made Sailor suddenly so welcoming. One second he’d been telling them to get lost, and the next they were the guests of honor. And it was Frida’s name that had been the magic password. Cal didn’t like that. He didn’t like that he didn’t like that. It meant, if he had to be honest with himself, that he didn’t trust his wife.
All at once, sudden as a hiccup, they reached the end of the labyrinth. Sailor had led them around one more Spike, and it was over. They were back on flat ground at the edge of a field. There were no trees in the distance—they must have been razed. Were it not for the Spikes behind them, it might feel like they were standing at the center of any large suburban parking lot, and maybe they were. Cal looked up once again at the wide-open sky and remembered his one and only trip to Cedar Point with his father, before the amusement park had been shut down. At the end of the day, his father had forgotten where they were parked, and they’d ridden the lot tram for forty-five minutes until they finally discovered the truck, tucked into a line of minivans. Now, Cal rubbed a foot along the grass before him. It was dry and striped with brown, the kind that sprouted like tinsel out of asphalt. If left to prosper, it could grow into a field. Cal shuffled at the grass, and sure enough, it gave way to a patch of concrete beneath.
“Don’t move,” Sailor said.
Across the field loomed a wooden platform. It was a lookout tower, the kind prison guards watched from, but rudimentary, as if it had been built in a rush. But it was certainly in use: at the top stood two figures, binoculars in front of their faces.
Sailor stepped forward and waved his arms, the one with the rifle in it a little lower and slower moving than the free arm. Frida laughed. She had probably noticed that the gun was too heavy for the poor kid. Cal winked at her.
Sailor began moving his arms in a choreographed sequence that must have meant something to his compatriots. He looked like a majorette, and Cal felt transported home, to the Midwest, with its flag girls, its chilly autumn evenings, and what felt like the whole world preparing for winter. But it wasn’t the whole world, because Frida didn’t have any of those memories; she’d once told him that they didn’t make those kinds of nights in California. Or those kinds of girls.
Cal watched as the men in the tower above them waved their arms back at Sailor. One of them reached behind his back, and Cal stepped in front of Frida. But the man had pulled out not a weapon, but a whistle, and he blew it three times, each note long and piercing.
“Does that mean ‘intruder’ or something?” Frida asked.
Sailor laughed. “Nah,” he said. “It means I’ve come back, with two strangers. He’s telling the others. But don’t worry, it’s not the panic whistle.”
Frida nodded. “I like you better when you’re forthcoming.”
Was she flirting?
“Just wait till he sees you,” Sailor replied.
The whistle blew again, five quick bursts, and Sailor nodded, flung his arms up once more. “Follow me,” he said. He had turned official once again.
As they crossed the field—A parking lot, Cal told himself—Sailor moved his rifle so that he was holding it diagonally across his chest. This was probably how he was supposed to carry it; he’d get in trouble for letting down his guard, even if it was for Frida. Maybe she was their god.
Two men jumped from the bottom of the tower’s ladder. One was about Sailor’s age, Cal guessed, but broader in the shoulders and bearded. The other looked about forty. They wore ripped-up jeans and old Tshirts. The older guy’s had a picture of the Olympic rings.
All at once they were running at them, like soldiers.
“Hey now,” Cal said, and once more stepped in front of Frida.
“Be cool,” Sailor said. Cal didn’t know if the comment was directed at him or the others.