American Elsewhere

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE




Through the chamber, through the door, down the dusky hall. She parts the dying memories with the blade of her hand, sends echoes scuttering over dusty stone. The spying eye of the past clapped to cracks in the air, watching, listening, snickering.

What more is there to this dark earth than halls and halls of empty rooms?

Up the ladder (her hands shake on each rung), up up and up, until the screaming red supernova erupts over her, sunlight howling and blistering and blank, pouring down the shaft to swallow her and fill her ears with silence, blissful silence.

The stone so hot her hands should sizzle. A sky shorn of clouds, all moisture scraped away. This land is so empty. And in the distance, the ribbon of black smoke, and the streak of gray where a town once stood.

I have lost her again.

She walks to the edge of the mesa. Gracie sits below, staring into the valley. She asks a question, but Mona cannot hear—she walks down and sits beside her and looks out.

In the shade the stone is cool. The air is redolent with pine sap. The wind blows southward, so each breath is free of smoke. Below her, among the trees, there is the flit of birds’ wings, and the buzzing, aimless twirl of grasshoppers.

Gracie says something. Her words have a dull ring on the shelf of stone.

“What?” Mona whispers.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

Mona sits there, frozen, broken, empty.

Gracie says, “I think you did the right thing.”

She holds a hand out to Mona. Mona bows her head, reaches out, and takes it and squeezes and holds on as hard as she can, just as hard as she possibly can.