I was moving like a lead statue, one numb, heavy foot in front of the other. We were close to the expressway and the traffic was thick, but everything seemed remote to me, the cars and trucks, the dead marsh grasses on either side of us, even the dog. Mitch was a phantom, a black wraith I was dumbly following. Cars honked at Mr. Contreras, inching behind us, but even that couldn’t rouse me from my stupor.
All at once, Mitch gave a short bark and plunged from the side of the road into the swamp. I was so startled that I lost my balance and fell heavily into the cold mud. I lay there dizzily, not wanting to make the effort to get back up, but Mitch nipped at me until I struggled back to my feet. I didn’t try to pick up the leash again.
Mr. Contreras was calling down to me from the road, wanting to know what Mitch was doing.
“I don’t know,” I croaked up at him.
Mr. Contreras shouted out something else, but I shrugged in incomprehension. Mitch was tugging at my sleeve; I turned to see what he wanted. He barked at me and started to cut across the swamp, away from the road.
“Try to follow us overland,” I shouted hoarsely, and waved.
After a minute or two, I couldn’t see Mr. Contreras. The dead grasses with their gray beards closed over my head. The city was as remote as if it were only a dream itself; the only thing I could see was the mud, the marsh rats that skittered at our approach, the birds that took off with anxious cries. The leaden sky made it impossible to guess what direction we were going. We might be heading in circles, we might die here, but I was so tired that the thought couldn’t rouse me to a sense of urgency.
The dog was exhausted, too, which was the only reason I could keep up with him. He stayed a dozen paces ahead of me, his nose to the ground, lifting it only to make sure I was still with him before nosing ahead again. He was following the tracks a truck had laid down in the mud, new tracks made so recently that the plants still lay on their sides.
I wasn’t wearing gloves, and my hands were swollen with cold. I studied them as I stumbled along. They were large purple sausages. It would be so nice to have a fried sausage right now, but I couldn’t eat my fingers, that was silly. I jammed them into my coat pockets. My left hand bumped into the metal thermos. I thought dreamily of the bourbon inside it. It belonged to someone else, it belonged to Morrell, but he wouldn’t mind if I had a little, just to keep me warm. There was a reason I shouldn’t drink it, but I couldn’t think what it was. Was the bourbon poisoned? A demon snatched it from Morrell’s kitchen. He was a funny, heavyset demon with thick, twitching eyebrows, and he carried the thermos to Billy’s car, then stood watching while I found it. A cry under my nose made me jump. I had fallen asleep where I stood, but Mitch’s hot breath and anxious whimper brought me back to the present, the marsh, the dull autumn sky, the meaningless quest.
I slapped my chest, my sausage fingers bunched together inside the coat sleeves. Yes, pain was a good stimulant. My fingers throbbed and that was good; they were keeping me awake. I wasn’t sure I could fire a gun again, but who was I going to shoot in the middle of the swamp?
The grasses thinned, and rusty cans began replacing marsh rats. A real rat moved across the track in front of me. It looked at Mitch as though daring him to fight, but the dog ignored it. He was whining constantly now, worried, and he stepped up the pace, urging me forward with his heavy head when he thought I was lagging.
I didn’t notice when we left the marsh, but suddenly we were picking our way through a dump. Cans, plastic bags, the white lips of six-pack holders, raggedy clothes, car seats, things I didn’t want to recognize, all mashed underfoot by the truck whose tracks we were following. I tripped on a tire, but kept slogging forward.
The refuse sort of ended at a barbed-wire fence, but the truck had been driven straight at the fence, and an eight-foot section had come loose. Mitch was sniffing at a fragment of crimson stuck to the barbs, whining and barking at me. I went to inspect it. It was new, new to the area, I mean, because the color was still so fresh. Every other piece of cloth had turned a dirty gray. I tried to feel it, but my swollen fingers were too cracked to tell anything.
“It looks like silk,” I said to Mitch. “Josie doesn’t wear silk, so what is it, boy?”