In the Path of Falling Objects

by Andrew Smith

But my hand hurts from printing.

  Good night.

  Love,

  Matt

  Mitch kicked the door.

  It stuck, swollen wet, when he turned the key.

  The cabin smelled of cigarette smoke and Lysol.

  Simon, shirtless and soaked, stood shivering when Lilly turned on the lamp sitting on the scratched table between the two beds. His arms were folded tightly across his sunburned chest.

  I glanced at him and looked away.

  I felt so sorry for what I’d done; what was happening to us.

  The walls in the room came together unevenly, their yellowed paper coverings bubbling and peeling away in spots like dead skin, and the green carpet was frayed and stained with dog urine. Maybe it was dog’s. The beds were covered with corded orange spreads, the same dirty-pumpkin color as the fob on the room key, and there was a crooked-hanging painting of a palm tree on the wall by the bathroom; and atop the low, pressed-wood dresser sat a television set with a bent rabbit-ear antenna.

  “Can I get into the shower?” Simon asked, slipping the soggy moccasins from his feet. “I’m freezing.”

  Mitch looked at Lilly.

  “I don’t mind,” she said.

  “Can I get our clothes out of the car, Mitch?” I asked.

  “Sure.” Mitch handed me the Lincoln’s keys. “And bring in that black suitcase I had out today, too.”

  As I took the keys into my hand, he made certain I could see him glance over at Simon. And I knew this was how it was going to be; all of us asking Mitch’s permission for everything from now on.

  I went for the door. When I passed by Lilly, trying my hardest not to look at her, my knees almost gave out, and I thought Mitch could see it.

  Gravity.

  “Don’t get lost,” Mitch warned.

  The rain continued to pour down. The dirt lot of the motel was now a windblown sea, and I had to wade out in the muddy water that came over the tops of my ragged shoes. And I didn’t know if Mitch had done it purposely, but somehow the cabin he rented was the one farthest from the office. I strained to see if there was anyone inside the office, but it was too far away. And I almost felt that somehow that metal man in the backseat was keeping watch on me for Mitch.

  I knew I wouldn’t have much time, probably not enough time to make it to the office and back before Mitch came out looking for me, so I had to take the surest choice.

  I went right for the Lincoln’s trunk and opened it.

  It was too dark to see anything. I felt around in the blackness of the trunk for the familiar canvas pack I’d been carrying all that way from Los Rogues. I tugged at its ties and pushed my whole arm down into it, feeling past the balls of clothing, the aligned edges of Matthew’s letters, the map—the stupid map—I’d been making, until my fingers wrapped around the cool metal of a pistol barrel.

  And I was so scared and nervous, I could feel my heart pounding so hard and with each thump came a dizzying pressure in my head. It was like none of this was real, but I felt the rain, could smell the rotting-leaves odor of the old car’s trunk. My hand shook, and I pulled the gun from the pack and quickly stuffed its barrel down the front of my jeans, tugging and stretching at Simon’s tee shirt to try to make it hide the pistol’s bulge.

  Trembling and panting, rain streaming from my hair, down my face, I tried to blow the water away from my nose by spouting air up from my mouth. My eyes began to adjust, could discern the shapes of the contents of the trunk. I knocked over Mitch’s shoe box, tipping back the lid and the dried masking tape that had once sealed its contents. The shoe box was stuffed with paper money, in bundles separated by paper clips and rubber bands. So I pulled some of the bills out of one of the bundles—I could not tell how many—and stuffed them down the front of my soaked pants, wadding them beside the pistol.

  My hands shook. I grabbed the black suitcase Mitch had asked for and slammed the trunk shut. I ran back to the cabin, head down, trying to breathe, as I sloshed through the deepening water and mud.

  “That was quick,” Mitch said when I slogged into the cabin, leaving dark wet footprints on the carpet. I felt like I had been out there for hours.

  “It’s coming down so hard,” I said, handing Mitch the car keys. “I did it as fast as I could.”

  The door to the bathroom was shut. I could see the light beneath the crack at the bottom, could hear the sound of the shower running. Lilly had undressed, and was wrapped from her armpits down in a white towel that said “Palms” in blue writing along its border, her blond hair resting in wet strands on her shoulders.

  “You’re shaking,” she said to me.

  “I guess I got cold out there,” I said. “I’ll feel better after a shower.”

  Mitch twisted at the television’s antennas, trying to tune in a station and getting nothing but sandpaper for a picture.

  “You need to get out of those clothes,” Lilly said.

  “I can wait,” I said. “It’s okay.”

  The water stopped in the bathroom.

  I pushed the door open, and Simon said, “What?”

  “Hey. I have our clothes.”

  Simon pulled the door open and took the pack, then shut the door on me without saying anything. When he came out of the shower, in the light of the room, it was the first time that I had really looked at my brother’s face since our fight that morning.

  Even though Simon’s wet hair hung down in front of him, I could see the lump on his left cheekbone, and the black-green of bruising beneath the eye, the upper lid red and swollen. And there was a cut beneath his mouth, the lip puffed out above a mark where Simon’s tooth had come all the way through.

  I felt terrible, sick to my stomach, after seeing what I had done to my brother.

  And I told myself that it couldn’t be helped, that Simon had it coming to him for hitching the ride in the first place, for helping Mitch steal those license plates. And that stealing them only ended up helping Mitch, especially if what he really wanted to do was kill us both.

  Lilly went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. Simon sat on the edge of the bed and pulled on some dry socks, dropping our pack open on the floor. I sat on the bed across the strip of worn carpet, watching him, uncomfortable with that gun pushing into my belly, uncomfortable with Mitch sitting there watching us, not really knowing what I would have to do to get Simon out of there. And I wanted to tell Simon I was so sorry, I wanted to hug him and tell him I was scared, but I didn’t say anything to him, and Simon never looked at me one time as we sat across from one another.

  “Hey, wet dog,” Mitch said to me.

  It made me jump.

  “You two have to share that bed,” and he pointed to the one farthest from the only door in the cabin, the one by the bathroom.

  “Oh. Sorry.” I stood up and tossed the pack onto the bed where Simon was sitting.

  Mitch changed into some dry clothes as I took what I would be wearing from the pack: my worn red flannel shirt, my only other pair of jeans, and some underwear, and then I had to ask Simon if he minded that I was going to take the only dry pair of socks in there, because they were his.

  Simon lay his head down on the pillow, stretching his legs out and shrugging, staring straight above him at the ceiling. “I don’t care, Jonah. Do whatever you want.”

  Mitch gave up trying to tune the television and lay on his bed, silently watching us. I faced the rear wall, quietly filling in details on my map; the stretch of road where I wrote, “I was driving here,” a cloud with rain and lightning bolts coming down, and a tepee and palm tree where the line ended.

  Outside, the rain continued to pound down, making a constant static-roar, like the rush of asphalt beneath tires.

  Lilly came out from the bathroom, still wrapped in a towel. I thought she looked pale and tired. Simon’s eyes followed her as she crossed the room.

  “We should be in Arizona tomorrow,” Mitch said. “Where in Arizona are you boys headed?”

  And I thoug
ht, Why does that even matter to you, Mitch?

  “Flagstaff,” Simon said.

  Lilly slid into clothes she pulled from the black suitcase. She looked at me, loosening the towel beneath her arms, then turned her back as she let it drop away to the stained carpet at her feet and lowered a tie-dyed sweatshirt over her head, shaking her wet hair back as she tugged it down over her body.

  I nodded toward the open bathroom door, trying to be casual, and said, “It’s your turn, Mitch.”

  I wanted him to get away from the three of us, but I was afraid Mitch suspected what I was thinking. And I knew then that if he was not going to leave me and Simon alone together, our situation was almost hopeless.

  Mitch sat up on the bed, pulling his legs in and crossing them, and said, “I’m good. I had my shower in the backseat, man. You go ahead.”

  I slumped my shoulders and turned the map book facedown on the bedspread next to Simon, and I covered it and the bundle of Matthew’s letters with the clothes I had scattered out of the backpack, laying out the canteen and the rumpled ten-dollar bill that had been carried with us since we left Los Rogues riding that horse that was going to fall down and die on us.

  I wadded the dry clothes into a ball and pressed them against my belly, against the gun that was gouging into my cold wet skin, and, keeping my head down and my back to the others, feeling them watching me, closed the bathroom door behind me and looked for a way to lock it.

  There was no lock on the doorknob, just one of those rusted hook-and-eye things that hung weakly from the frame on the doorway. I squeezed it closed and pulled the gun from my pants, placing it down on the chipped porcelain of the sink. I examined the marks the pistol had made in my skin, nearly cutting into the flesh below my belly, a reddened and distorted impression of the hammer and cylinder.

  I counted the damp bills I stole from Mitch. There was $360 in wadded twenties, more than enough to get Simon and me to Arizona if we could just get away from Mitch. I put the money into the pocket of the dry jeans and dropped all my wet clothes in a heap at the bottom of the door.

  I turned the water on and climbed into the calming heat of the shower.

  Somebody in the room tried to open the door, and then there came the pounding against it.

  I slapped my hands against the yellowed tiles in the shower stall and dropped my head under the flow of the water, thinking, What else can possibly go wrong?

  “Jonah! Open the door. I need to pee.”

  It was Simon.

  I stepped out onto the wet linoleum and grabbed the gun. I dropped it down behind the raised edge on the floor of the shower stall. I unlatched the hook on the lock and got back into the shower, shutting the dingy frosted glass door behind me.

  “What’d you lock the door for?” Simon growled, standing over the toilet.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Habit, I guess.”

  I knew it was a stupid thing to say. It just came out.

  “What habit?” Simon said, “We don’t have no locks at home.”

  The toilet flushed and I said, “Simon, I need to talk to you. Alone. It’s important. We need . . .”

  Then the door swung open as Simon buttoned his pants. With my foot, I pushed the gun up against the yellow edge of the shower floor. I didn’t think anyone would notice it. Through the blurry haze of the shower door, I could see Mitch standing in the doorway.

  “I think Jonah better leave this door open till he’s through.”

  “Why?” Simon asked.

  “The people don’t trust Jonah,” Mitch laughed, then added, seriously, “we have a pregnant girl here. When she needs the toilet, it better be available.”

  Simon just shrugged and brushed past Mitch and made his way into the room, out of my view.

  I kept my palms against the tiles, letting the water hammer down against the back of my neck, and I could see Mitch standing there, unmoving for the longest time. I knew Mitch was just messing with me, too, and he was probably getting a kick out of it. And I saw the blur of motion as he finally receded back into the room, leaving the bathroom door standing wide open, and Lilly, beyond the doorway, there in the room, just watching me.

  We never knew what privacy was in the shack where we grew up, anyway. There was no such thing. And in winter, the only way we’d ever have hot water for a shower was to take one at school with every other boy in our class. That’s what we had to do.

  But Lilly, that was something different. And I could tell she was looking straight at me, so I kept my face turned to where she was standing and I thought about the rain falling, about us being out there in the dark while Mitch and Simon arranged for the room. And my head nearly howled at me that she was trying to get something, trying to use me, because nothing would ever make me believe any girl, much less one that looked like Lilly, would ever look twice at me.

  But I didn’t want to listen to that, either.

  When I finally came out, dried and dressed, angry, worrying about the gun I left in the bottom of the shower stall, Mitch was sitting on the bed with Simon. The comp book with my map in it was uncovered, turned upward, opened, and Mitch was reading one of Matthew’s letters.

  I spread my wet clothes out on the dresser table, and hung my pants over the screen of the useless television.

  “How many letters in that stack, Mitch?” I asked. I struggled to stay calm, but I wanted to tear Matthew’s letter from his dirty hands, and I was so mad at myself for leaving them out, for trusting Mitch.

  “Twenty-three,” Mitch said.

  “Yeah. And they’re all addressed to me.”

  Mitch fired a look at me. I knew he felt challenged by the tone of my words.

  I really hated him at that moment, but I was still afraid, too.

  Two beer cans sat open on the nightstand next to Simon, and Lilly was already beneath the covers on the other bed.

  “You think he made it out of there and is coming to Arizona, like he said?” Mitch asked.

  “No,” Simon said.

  “Yes,” I countered. “Can I please have my letters back?”

  Simon swigged at his beer and sank lower into the bed.

  Mitch just looked at me, bundling up Matthew’s letters and placing them on top of my map, handing them over like something exotic on a serving tray.

  “And, nice map,” Mitch said.

  I sighed.

  Simon rolled away from Mitch and me and fell to sleep.

  Mitch popped open another beer and drank the entire can without stopping. Then he opened another and said, “You want a beer, Prude-boy?”

  “No.”

  Then Mitch stretched his legs out on the bed, kicking our clothes and pack down onto the floor.

  I sat down on the bed next to Lilly.

  Mitch began snoring beside Simon.

  I remember her pressing her lips to my ear, saying, “Jonah, turn out the light.”

  I did.

  And I knew I should have gotten myself up and gone in there and grabbed my pistol right then; should have. And Simon and I could get out of that trap. But I was so tired, and I was shaking.

  I listened to the rain, so constant, so loud against the roof.

  And, in the dark, she whispered, so faintly, barely a breath, “Jonah. We have to be quiet.”

  The first gray-yellow light of the morning, the color of Mitch’s teeth, fogged its way through the uneven blinds covering the window of the room where we slept at the Palms.

  And I don’t know if I woke up first, but I know my eyes opened when Mitch was standing over me, bellowing, “Well, isn’t this romantic?”

  Simon shot up in his bed and looked across at me.

  I’d been sleeping, completely naked and uncovered, with my face down in the pillow, and Lilly was lying across me, her bare breasts pressed into my back, her fingers coiled into my hair, the tangled bedsheet wrapped around her hips. Our clothes were scattered everywhere, the orange bedspread thrown down to the floor at the foot of the bed.

  I cra
cked my eyes open at Mitch’s hollering, and, realizing where I was, seeing Mitch standing over us, feeling the burn of Simon’s stare, reached down, digging between the sheets to the bottom of the bed, and hurriedly, crookedly, pulled my briefs up to cover my nakedness. Lilly sat up and wrapped herself in the dingy sheet, yawning.

  She smiled at Mitch.

  “Good morning,” she said, stretching.

  Simon glared at me as Lilly stroked my back so softly with her trailing fingers, drawing slow, small circles between my shoulder blades. I thought about gathering up my cast-off clothes, but I was too afraid to speak or move, afraid to even look at Lilly. And I was terrified of Mitch.

  “This is why the people can’t trust Jonah,” Mitch announced, pacing a tight back-and-forth pathway between the beds. “This is why!”

  Simon leaned forward on his bed, the swelling on his face reduced, the flesh around his eye smudged into a darkened purple.

  “Now who’s acting like a hippie communist, Jonah?” Simon blurted.

  “Well, at least you don’t have to worry about dying a virgin now,” Mitch said flatly, and Simon just shook his head in obvious agreement and disgust.

  Then Mitch turned to Lilly and said, “And how did you sleep?”

  But there was an edge in his voice. He sounded like someone else. I knew he was mad, and I wasn’t sure just how mad he was.

  Lilly laughed softly and stood, holding the sheet pocked with holes and cigarette burns, letting her other hand brush softly across my bare shoulder. I wondered what Mitch was feeling, watching her touch me like that. But I wouldn’t tell her to stop it, even though it terrified me.

  “I dug it, Mitch,” she said.

  I was so scared and sick I just stared at my feet, certain that Mitch was going to kill us all on the spot. I was so stupid. How could I be so stupid? What was I thinking?

  I wasn’t thinking.

  I couldn’t stop it.

  And I knew that Mitch had a thing for the girl, that he must have been seething inside at the thought of us all tangled up there in that dirty bed just inches away from him while he slept off his booze and pot.

  I thought I was going to throw up.

  And I wished, hopelessly, that Simon would say something to let me know he was still my brother and that we weren’t going to break any more rules and let each other down, but I could see how he’d been looking at Lilly ever since we got into that car, too.