ANDY: Uh-huh.
KERRI: Now, your word needs to have both letters in it. So if it doesn’t, you must think of a new one. And then you say a third letter. And I think of a word with all three and say a fourth letter.
ANDY: Uh-huh.
KERRI: And that’s it. All you can do is keep adding letters, even if you can’t think of a word anymore. Or you can call my bluff, and if I can’t produce a word, you win. Or you can guess the word I’m thinking, and if I can’t produce a different one, you win. Get it?
ANDY: Okay, so I either bluff, call your bluff, or read your mind.
KERRI: Exactly. Wanna try?
ANDY: Okay.
KERRI: Okay, I think of a word and say a letter. X.
ANDY: Oh, come on! X?
KERRI: It doesn’t mean it begins with X; it just has an X in it.
ANDY: Right. Okay. Uh…E.
KERRI: F.
ANDY: X and F in the same word?
KERRI: Yup. And E.
ANDY: (Thinks lengthily.) Okay, D.
KERRI: T.
ANDY: No way. There’s no such word.
KERRI: (Smiling proudly.) “Exfoliated.”
ANDY: Oh, come on!
KERRI: What? It was easy. I was thinking “exfoliate”; you gave me D; it was easy to adapt.
ANDY: But you’re a biologist and I don’t even know what that means!
KERRI: Who cares? You know “exfoliation” is a word, right? That’s all that matters; you gotta think big. And by the way, it means a tree losing its leaves.
ANDY: Oh. (Confused.) I thought it was something in cosmetics.
KERRI: Yeah, that too, but you don’t use makeup and you like nature, so stick with the bit that concerns you. Try again?
ANDY: Okay. You start.
KERRI: All right. V.
ANDY: V. (Thinks.) Can I say V again?
KERRI: Two Vs?
ANDY: Uh-huh.
KERRI: Okay, we’re playing high stakes. (Thinks, front teeth biting her lower lip in a frozen labiodental fricative.) Oh, right…Gotcha. L.
ANDY: A.
KERRI: You’re thinking “valve”!
ANDY: No. “Vulva.”
KERRI: (Dropping backward onto the grass). Aw, fuck! You sly, sly dog.
Andy repressed a smug grin, making sure to capture the moment for later wallowing.
Kerri sat up again when Tim tried to lick her face. “Well played. See, it wasn’t difficult.”
Andy looked down, hiding her smile.
“I’m glad we’re doing this,” Kerri commented. She waited for visual contact. “What moved you? Why come fetch us now?”
Andy plucked a blade of grass, indulged her fingers to play with it.
“I’ve been thinking about it since Peter died. But I needed to talk to Wickley first. Or maybe I didn’t; he only said what I expected to hear.”
“I wish you’d come for us long ago,” Kerri said. “We had to do this.”
—
Inside the car, Nate slept despite Peter clambering over him, spying through the window.
“Check it out. The girls are just sitting there, having a laugh. What do you think is going on?”
Nate rolled around, burying his face in the fake leather upholstery.
“I’ll tell you what I think is going on,” Peter responded rhetorically. “I’m picking up some strong signals here, Nate. Just look at them. The smiles. The body language. That shared intimacy. It doesn’t take a detective; you just need to have been around, know the female mind, know the game. Now I realize, it’s been going on all week! Even in this car! (Accusing, at the empty front seats.) Haven’t you noticed? The jokes, the chemistry in the air…You can almost breathe the hormones! (Gloating.) I’m telling you, Nate, this smells like something I am pretty familiar with.”
NATE: (Sleepily.) Embalming fluid?
(Pause.)
PETER: That was fucking rude, Nate.
—
On the sixth day, they set off even before Nate was fully awake. They crossed into Oregon some two hours later. After another four hours neglecting the federal speed limit they came into sight of the Cascades. In another forty-five minutes they’d crossed into Pennaquick County.
Time declined any relevance beyond that point.
The route became a hair-thin asphalt line amid black-wooded dunes, slithering uphill and westward with bewildering faith for longer than anyone would try. A wavy ocean of fir trees spread for miles and miles in every direction.
All three people in the car had begun to wonder whether they’d taken the right detour when they suddenly crossed the truss bridge over the Zoinx River—a cobalt-blue, rust-bleeding structure dangling over the busy rapids. All human eyes glimmered with acquiescence.
At the next turn left, a blue wooden sign welcomed them to BLYTON ILLS. Rot had eaten through the letter H.
It had begun to drizzle.
—
Without an introductory long shot, the town just happened on the sides of the road—a few wire fences first, then suddenly a building rising from the growth, and then the elementary school, and then a crossing and houses and stores. Andy had to check her watch to confirm it was a weekday. Most shops on East Street had their shutters down—had for a long time, by the look of it.
The first business of any kind they saw was an old man pushing a cartful of scrap metal in front of a vacant lot that Kerri was sure had once held a sporting goods store.
A few cars turtled by the Main and East junction, unwilling to reach their destinations, quarter-spirited like unpaid extras. In the southwest corner of that junction, the church’s parking lot lay deserted.
Two women and one man and a dog stared out their windows, the taste of copper oxide on their lips.
The sun had forsaken them after all.
—
Kerri turned left on Main, offering the first panorama of town, a composition of blue shingles and crestfallen puffs of smoke out of chimneys. Ben’s Corner Diner was open and serving. So were the pharmacy and Mr. Maxence’s grocery store. The flag on the city hall yard waved on top of the pole, though the image would have hardly inspired a decimated army back into battle.
A pickup truck drove past them and the driver tipped his cap at the girls. It was an irrelevant gesture, but for some reason Andy and Kerri and Nate clung to it.
Andy asked, “Is this the depression you mentioned?”
“Which depression?” Nate counterasked.
“I don’t know,” Kerri said. She pointed at the blue, red, and white frame of the barbershop’s front window. “My uncle used to take me there first day of summer to cut my split ends.”
The barber sat outside his shop, as he often did in the past, though this time there was no one to talk to. That didn’t seem to bother him, though; he was still talking.
The movie theater was closed, but that was to be expected. A video rental store had appeared a few doors farther down the street.
“Do you…I mean, does it look that different to you?” Kerri tried.
Two workmen loading a truck stopped for a breather at that exact second, and sulkily watched the Vega wheel by at 20 mph.
“Yes!” Andy complained. “Fuck, where are the kids?”
“We only used to come during holidays, remember?” Kerri said. “They must be in school.”
“What about young people?”
“Probably around the school,” Nate suggested. “Selling crack to the kids.”