More minutes went by. Palmer stared out over the desert sand. Vic had emptied her canteen into his mouth one cap at a time. His stomach was in knots. Springston and hope felt so very far away. And where could they go once they got there? People wanted him dead. He remembered the way Hap’s body had been twisted out of shape. What the hell had he gotten himself involved in? And for what? Some coin?
A crow swooped down and lighted on the sarfer. The mainsail flapped, and the bird flapped back. It pecked the aluminum with its beak, the reaper rapping to be let in. Palmer waved his arm and begged it to go. He wondered what he would do if Vic didn’t come back. How long before the sun slid overhead and his shade dwindled to nothing? How long before another diver or a brigand found the sarfer with its flapping sail? How long?
The crow startled, and with a beat of its black wings, labored into the sky. Palmer heard a deep gasp. He turned to see Vic sliding up out of the ground, sand cascading off her and catching in the breeze. She took deep breaths. Rested on the sand for a moment. And then she flipped up her visor and startled Palmer with the barest of smiles.
36 ? A Note from Father
Rob
“We’re gonna put a tear in Father’s tent,” Rob warned. He could see at once what his older brother had planned, could tell by the way he was knotting the ropes. It wasn’t going to be good for the tent.
“This is our tent,” Conner said, correcting him. “Yours and mine. Not Father’s. And we can’t very well carry her all the way to town.”
Conner went back to his knots, and Rob watched his brother work in the pale light of the starry sky. The horizon was beginning to lighten beyond No Man’s Land, out where the sporadic bootfalls of stomping giants could be heard. The sun would be up within an hour, by his estimate.
He turned back to the girl and watched her sleep. They had moved their bedding and the girl out onto the sand in order to collapse the tent. She lay flat on her back with her head to the east and her feet to the west. Sand gathered in her hair. She might appear to be dead were it not for the imperceptible rise and fall of her chest, which lay partly exposed by the rip in her shirt. Rob reached over and pulled the fabric shut, covering her pale flesh. He had watched as Conner had cleaned her wounds. His brother had two extra canteens of water and all kinds of bandages and supplies in his pack. Rob didn’t ask about these things. He knew what they were for. He didn’t ask why Conner had been out of the tent in the middle of the night. He knew where Conner was going. It scared him to think of being alone, but that’s what Conner had planned. Rob kept all this to himself. He often saw how things worked, how they fit together, and had long given up on explaining these things to those older than him. Adults just looked at him with strange expressions when he spoke his insights, like they didn’t believe him. Or were frightened of him. Or both.
“If you’re done fondling her breasts, you can grab my pack and stop this damn tent from flapping.”
Rob grabbed Conner’s pack. No point telling him he wasn’t fondling her breasts. It would just sound like he had been. Silence would sound the same way, too. Didn’t matter either way, so he saved his breath. He carried Conner’s pack and set it on the folded tent opposite where his brother was knotting the lines. The fabric stopped flopping around in that pre-dawn breeze.
“Make a pillow for her. Up here where her head will go.” His brother sounded annoyed. No, something worse than that. Conner wasn’t being himself. He sounded scared and unsure. Rob didn’t like that.
“We should put her head back here and drag her feet-first,” Rob told his older brother. “To keep the wind and sand out of her face.”
Conner studied him a moment. That look. “Whatever,” he said. It’s what adults said instead of: You’re right.
The girl was moved onto the sand for a moment. The bedding went onto the tent, and then the girl went back onto the bedding. All their gear was arranged on the flat canvas, which was now like a sarfer with no skids and no sail. Just two sets of lines to shoulder. It was a long way back into town, but neither Rob nor his brother complained as they adjusted their kers, draped the ropes over their shoulders, and leaned into the task.
“What if she dies before we get there?” Rob asked.
“She won’t.”
“But how do you know?”
“I just do, okay? Now shut up and do your share or we’ll go in circles.”
Rob pulled. He counted his steps. Whenever he could, he counted anything that could be counted. A few years back, he and Conner’s camping trip had come on a windless night, and when the fire had died down to coals and the stars had burst bright, he had counted five thousand two hundred and fifty-eight stars before he couldn’t be sure if he was counting the same ones over again. Numbers calmed him in a way that words couldn’t. If he thought with words, they went around in circles and crashed into each other and grew more dire and terrifying, just like they were right then as he forgot to count steps and remembered that camping trip and worried they were dragging a dead girl across the sand.