by Dave Eggers
“What’s that, Mom?” Ana asked.
Josie said nothing. She expected that one of the truck’s doors would open momentarily, and didn’t want to be caught describing the inhabitants. There was good reason to pack her children up quickly and leave, given the friendliness of the people steering a vehicle like this, which could not possibly be street-legal and hinted at the end of the world, was not guaranteed.
“Paul, come here,” she whispered, and he brought his bow and arrow to her, and she subtly arranged both him and Ana such that she stood between them and this harbinger of doom.
The door opened. “Are we open?” a cheerful voice said. It was a young woman with a brilliant mane of raven-black hair. She emerged from the truck in a two-footed jump, her heavy boots making an assertive sound of arrival in the white gravel. Wearing a loose black T-shirt and denim shorts, she began to stretch, one arm raised high, revealing a lithe and busty torso, while her other hand pushed the passenger seat forward, allowing the release of three children, all athletic and tanned, from the depths of the truck. They each jumped from the truck as she had—that is, as if landing on the moon. All seeming to be within the age range of Josie’s kids, they ran directly to the empty booth, having assumed Paul and Ana had gotten their bows there. The driver’s door opened and a short man emerged, no taller than the woman, and said, “Is it open?” He leaned back, stretching with a loud groan. Broad-shouldered and muscular, he wore a V-neck undershirt and canvas workpants tucked into hiking boots. He made his way around the truck and down the slope toward the archery field.
“I asked her but she didn’t answer,” the woman said, nodding her chin toward Josie. Her tone was familiar.
“Sorry,” Josie said. “I didn’t know you were asking me. I don’t work here. We just got here and have been messing around.”
“So it’s free,” the man said. He had an impish, closed-mouth smile but his eyes were tight and bright and lit with a kind of mischief that could go either way—practical jokes around the house, or handmade bombs in the shed.
“There’s no more bows, Dad,” one of the new children said. This was a girl of about nine. She and her younger brothers had investigated the booth and found it empty.
“You bring those?” the woman asked Josie, indicating the bows and arrows Ana and Paul were holding.
“No, they were just in the field,” Josie said. “Your kids are welcome to use them. We’ve been here for a while.” By this Josie meant that she and her children would be ceding this field to this family, and would be fleeing quickly.
“No, no. We came because we saw you guys out here. We can wait,” the man said, and extended his hand. “I’m Kyle. This is Angie.” Josie shook their hands and introduced Ana and Paul. Kyle and Angie’s kids were soon upon them, and were introducing themselves—Suze, Frank and Ritter—with the utmost civility, making Paul and Ana look skittish and impolite by comparison.
“Do you live there?” Ana asked. She was pointing to the black home sitting in the truckbed.
“Ana,” Josie said, then turned to Kyle and Angie. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. We sleep there at night, yup,” Kyle said to Ana, squatting down in front of her. “You like it?” Ana was noncommittal at first, then gave a slow nod. “Sure you do,” he said, smiling his closed-mouth smile, his bright eyes shining in their devilish or saintly way. His grin grew, and now Josie saw his teeth, oversized incisors, lending his face a wolfish cast. “We built it ourselves,” he said. “You want to look inside?”
“No, no. That’s okay,” Josie said, but found herself and her children being led to the truck by the eager Kyle. Angie stayed with her children, who were now using the bows and arrows dropped in the high grass by Paul and Ana. Kyle jumped onto the truck’s back bumper and opened the back door of the structure, which resembled a chicken coop from the outside and inside, an army barracks, with a series of bunks on either side, the floor covered in a carpet remnant. There were also stacks of towels, and magazines, and baseballs and bats, blankets. At the end of each bed, a flashlight hung from a hook.
“Cool, right?” Kyle said.
Ana readily agreed, then said, “We live in a car, too.”
Kyle laughed. “Well, then it’s good we all met up, right? Fellow travelers. Mom, let me get you a chair.” For a second Josie thought Kyle’s mother was somewhere in the truck, too, perhaps in a compartment underneath, then realized he was referring to her.
He pulled a short stack of folding chairs from the chicken coop—the structure was yacht-like, a paragon of space and economy—and set them out, three in a row, with a commanding view of the field. In moments Josie had been given a bottle of hard cider, was sitting beside Angie and Kyle, the three of them watching the five kids taking turns, complimenting each other, acting with stunning civility.
Kyle tapped Josie’s bottle, then Angie’s, in a kind of toast without a toast. “So where you headed?”
Josie told them she had no fixed itinerary.
Angie’s eyebrows leaped, and she gave a conspiratorial look to Kyle. “I told you,” she said. “Single mom with two kids, using an abandoned archery field. Our kind of people, I said.”
Josie and Kyle and Angie compared notes about Homer and Seward and Anchorage and the rest stops and attractions in between. Kyle and Angie had been to the tragic zoo outside Anchorage, too, and had noticed the unmistakable pathos of that one certain antelope. He’d been looking to the mountains for salvation when they’d seen him, too. Angie was a beautiful woman, Josie realized, and she and Kyle were younger than she had first thought. There wasn’t a wrinkle on either one of them, though it was clear they didn’t stay out of the sun. They looked like coeds from the seventies, the silken-haired and well-tanned types once featured in cigarette ads.
“You gone for good?” Angie asked.
“How do you mean?” Josie asked, though she understood implicitly. She meant: Are you ever rejoining mainstream society? Josie had not, until then, thought much beyond August and September.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Kyle and Angie smiled. They were gone for good, they said. She’d been an accountant for an oil company, and he’d been a teacher, high-school earth science. In a flurry they outlined their plan to get to the northernmost point of Alaska then make their way around the western coast, and back down, then on to Canada. Their complaints about their previous life included living in a neighborhood of fenced and barking dogs, commuter traffic, but seemed most centered on taxes—income tax, property tax, sales tax, capital gains. They were finished paying any of that. “He’s the evader,” Angie explained. “I’m the crusader.” They both let that sink in. It was apparently wordplay they were acutely proud of.
“No income, no property, no taxes,” Kyle said, and Angie, the accountant, added, “We’ve considered renouncing our citizenship, but I think we’d have to become Canadian to do that. We’re looking into staying stateless.”
Josie’s mind, which normally would have registered their near-madness and would be planning escape, was instead occupied with Angie’s perfect face. Her cheekbones were high, her eyes smiling—she seemed to have some Native American blood, but could Josie ask? She couldn’t ask. She realized she was staring at Angie—her teeth were magnificent, too, fantastically white—so she looked away, and to the field, where she saw Ritter, their younger boy, about to release an arrow. Ana was standing next to him, her hand gently holding the tail of his shirt, as always finding a way to touch the bearer of violence. But where was Paul? Now she caught sight of him. He was bent down, retrieving arrows that had landed beyond the targets.
“Ritter!” Angie yelled.
He was about to let go while Paul, at the sound of Angie’s voice, stood up. Ritter, startled, released the arrow, but it fell feebly a few feet from his bow.
“Sorry,” Angie said, and rushed to her son. She leaned over him, her arm around his shoulder, her raven-black hair all over him, scolding, pointing to Paul, who was loping
back to the group, his hand full of arrows. The danger had not been great, given Ritter was only six and Paul was fifty yards away, but still.
“Keep your head up,” Josie yelled to him, trying to sound calm. In the days ahead she would wonder why it was so important to her to seem calm, or to stay at that archery field, to stay in that folding chair drinking her hard cider, trying somehow to impress those two beautiful young people.
“My kids are usually more responsible,” Kyle said.
“Stay aware,” Josie said to Paul. And by this, she meant that it was normal enough to be retrieving arrows in an active archery field. That it was normal enough to be doing so with three children you had just met, who lived in a wooden shed atop a pickup truck. That it was her son’s responsibility to look out, in case a child-stranger might be shooting a life-ending arrow in his direction.
“You hunt?” Kyle asked.
Josie admitted she did not.
“Angie!” Kyle shouted. “You think I can shoot just one?”
Angie looked up from Ritter and shrugged. Then she seemed to change her mind, and shook her head no.
“You see anyone around here?” Kyle asked Josie. She hadn’t. “She’ll let me do one,” Kyle said. “You saw her shrug. She always lets me do one. And the targets—hard to resist, right?”
With a conspiratorial smile in Josie’s direction, he leaped from his chair and jogged over to his truck. He returned with a handgun and a rifle, setting the handgun on the chair and leaning the rifle against it.
“No, please,” Josie said.
“Almost forgot,” Kyle said, and flew back to the truck again. He returned with a plastic bin that rattled loudly. Bullets.
“Paul! Ana!” Josie yelled, and they ran to her, recognizing something new in her voice, something unhinged. “It was my turn,” Ana said, as Josie grabbed her hand and pulled her close.
“Your children are gorgeous,” Angie said. She was sitting next to Josie again, her hand now on Josie’s knee, squeezing it twice, once for each syllable of gorgeous.
Josie thanked her, again getting momentarily lost in Angie’s youth and beauty, thinking, she still looks twenty-four. She must have been fifteen when she had her oldest.
A crack split open the air. Josie wheeled to find Kyle kneeling, his arms outstretched, his handgun pointed toward the target.
“Kyle!” Angie roared. “Give us a heads-up at least.” She turned to Josie. “Sorry. He’s such an idiot.”
“Was that real?” Ana asked, hoping it was.
Kyle jogged to retrieve his target, and Angie confirmed it was real. “You ever see a real gun go off?” she asked Ana, who was paralyzed, frozen somewhere between joy and terror.
Josie wanted to leave, but Angie’s hot hand was still on her knee.
“Damn,” Kyle said, standing at the target.
Why am I here? Josie continued to ask herself, as the afternoon grew pale and darkened, but Kyle set up a barbecue, and Josie and her kids were still there, and soon he was grilling hamburgers, which Josie’s children ate greedily, standing up, and Josie was drinking her second hard cider, still wondering just how she could remain there, amid all this insanity. But Angie continued to touch her, on the arm, on the shoulder, and each time she did Josie felt a stirring, and though she worried about these two, and though every fifth sentence they spoke had something to do with evading or crusading, she wanted to stay near them, and was getting too tipsy to leave.
“One more?” Kyle asked Angie. “Before it’s dark?”
The children were far off in the darkening field, each of them with a flashlight, meandering like giant fireflies, and Josie had convinced herself that these were her people. Beholden to none indeed. Their children were happy and strong and polite. The family did as they pleased. Everyone had perfect teeth.
But then another shot rang out. Josie screamed.
“You didn’t ask!” Angie yelled.
“I did!” Kyle yelled back, laughing, holding his rifle at the end of the field. “Josie heard me,” he said, walking toward the target. Josie remembered that he had said “One more” but she hadn’t registered it.
“That’s the end!” Angie said to him, and he lifted his hand over his head, in a halfhearted wave of acquiescence.
“Well, I think we should take off,” Josie said, vividly conjuring the speedy collection of her kids and swift escape. She had in mind being on the road, and away from these people, in under a minute.
Angie squeezed her arm. “You can’t drive. No way.” Then she yelled to Kyle, “Josie was planning on driving tonight.”
Kyle’s head dropped, and he said nothing until he returned to Josie’s chair, laying his rifle on the grass before her. He looked at Josie like he was still a teacher and she a disappointing pupil. “You can’t drive, Josie. That would be irresponsible.” He looked to Angie, and a moment passed between them, during which they seemed to be weighing whether or not to bring up some unspeakable thing.
“My mom was murdered by a drunk driver,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” Josie said.
“You shouldn’t drive,” Kyle said gravely. “Please. Your keys.”
She didn’t drive. She gave this man her keys. All went sideways. She sat with Kyle and Angie as the night went black and the bugs became ravenous. The sirens continued their sporadic wailings, and she sat with Kyle and Angie, who laughed full-throated laughs, who seemed to be enjoying Josie, and this night, immeasurably. Periodically one of the kids would rush back to them, and ask if they could do some new thing, chicken fights or climbing a nearby dirt heap, and each time Kyle and Angie considered it with Solomonic seriousness. The children squealed and cackled in the gloaming, but finally Ana came back, resting her head on Josie’s lap, and it was time to retire. Josie and Kyle and Angie said good night with swaying hugs, and they gathered their children, and Josie felt sure that it was over, that whatever had happened was over, but then Paul asked if one of the boys, the older boy, Frank, could sleep over. Angie and Kyle thought it was the most wonderful idea, not really worth debating, and soon he had his sleeping bag and a pillow and was installed in the bed over the cab, squeezed in with Paul and Ana, all of them giddy.
Josie made the lower bed for herself, doing the math, realizing these strangers had her keys and she had their son, and just as she was settled under the covers, there was a loud tap on the window. She jumped. “Just one more!” Angie said.
Josie said nothing, being somehow still unclear on what was about to happen. A hollow pop split the night, meaning Kyle had fired another gun, or maybe it was the rifle this time.
“That’s the end!” Angie yelled, now farther away. “Night!”
Josie returned the sentiment, and the kids did, too, but no one slept. Her children were vibrating with the newness of the night, with the gunfire, with the presence of the strange tanned boy next to them, and Josie was thinking seriously that she had lost her mind. How could she stay here? Her keys were in the hands of the crusader. Or was he the evader? Up in the overhead bed, she heard Ana asking Frank about the guns. There was some affirming discussion about how Kyle would shoot any robbers, and Ana giggled to hear it.
And there were the sirens. Something had happened nearby, some kind of accident. Or the fires were getting closer. The sirens were louder now. Sleep was impossible. Her mind raced through dark woods. Had she really stayed the afternoon with these people, with the father shooting guns fifty yards away? What did she know about them? Nothing. Somehow she had to trust that they would use their bullets on targets, not on her family, that nonsensical trust seeming to be the core of life in America. She thought of her own stupidity. She laughed at her own surprise at finding people like this here, in rural Alaska. What was she expecting? She had fled the polite, muted violence of her life in Ohio, only to drive her family into the country’s barbarian heart. We are not civilized people, she realized. All questions about national character and motivations and aggression could be answered when we acknowledged t
his elemental truth. And why was this other child in her RV? And what about that bastard Mario, who told Paul about Jeremy? He had no right. And Paul had no right to know. Another siren, this one wild and lonely, followed by the howl of a coyote, eerily similar, as if the animal had mistaken the siren for kin.
XII.
JOSIE STARTLED AWAKE. It was still dark. The kids were asleep, and the night was quiet, but she knew everything was wrong. She sat up on one elbow, listening, and for minutes heard nothing. Then a thunderous rapping of knuckles on the Chateau door. The kids leaped up, Paul hitting his head on the ceiling. Josie dropped to the floor to answer the door. She heard movement outside. A car started. A voice in the distance yelled “Frank!”
Josie opened the door and saw Kyle, in a robe. “Gotta move,” he said. “Evacuation. We’re moving out in the next five minutes.”
“Wait. What?” she said, and looked down the road, and saw, far beyond, through the trees, the red, blue and white flashes of a pair of police cars. Kyle ran back to their truck, and Angie appeared, poking her head in the Chateau door.
“Frank,” she said. “Wake up.” As Frank climbed down, she explained a change in the winds had sent a wildfire south and it had accelerated far quicker than anyone had anticipated, that it could arrive within the hour. “We’re going north,” Angie said, leaving with Frank wrapped around her. “Follow us.”
Josie closed the door and inside found Paul and Ana standing just behind her, eyes wide. “Get buckled,” she said.
She didn’t have her keys. She leapt from the Chateau and ran after them. “Wait!” she yelled. Kyle and Angie’s taillights cast Josie in red.
“You have my keys!” she screamed.
“Sorry,” Kyle said. “We would have noticed eventually, though. We wouldn’t have left you here to burn.”
He handed the keys to her. “Better hurry.”
She ran back to the Chateau.
