In the Path of Falling Objects

by Andrew Smith

  Here’s a joke for you—Knock Knock. You say, who’s there? Matt. Matt who? Matthew whose dad is a junkie and whose mom is a tramp for any guy who buys her a meal, that’s who. Matthew who killed a little kid yesterday. I know it’s not funny, but that’s who I am.

  You and Simon stick it out together. Do that for me, especially if I don’t make it home. I told you all this before, and I’ll keep saying it so you hear my voice when you go to sleep at night. The things that pull the three of us apart, the things you can’t do anything about, like Dad and Mother and this war, there’s no sense getting mad at each other about because we didn’t do anything to deserve it. The things we do to each other, we have to be careful to not let them mess up our heads about our own brothers. OK? I know you hear me, Joneser, but I know you and Simon get mad over the things you can’t do nothing about, so remember what I’m asking.

  I bet I worry about you guys as much as you worry about me. I miss you both so much it feels like I’m the one who got shot in the gut.

  I’m going to get a car and take you both for a ride. We’ll go get drunk or something. Do something brothers are supposed to do.

  Don’t worry.

  Bye for now.

  Love,

  Matthew

  Sweat rolled down my neck.

  It trickled between my shoulder blades.

  I didn’t know where I was leading my friend.

  So I stopped when the path I was following came to an end upon a white gravel road stretching off toward the northeast. I looked both ways down along the road.

  “Which way do you think?” I said.

  “I’d go left,” Dalton said.

  “You want a drink?”

  “Yeah.”

  We each took a drink of the tea-warm water from my canteen. We had been walking for nearly an hour and had seen nothing, no track, no mark, that showed Simon or Lilly might have come this way.

  We followed the gravel road.

  And we looked nearly identical, shirtless, dressed in the same tan pants tucked into our matching boots. But I was hatless, and Dalton wore his constant cap, the one with the flaps that hung down from the back to shade his neck.

  I felt lost. I knew we could find our way back to the truck, but it just felt like we were looking in the wrong place. But Dalton and I kept walking forward, anyway.

  And I knew he was thinking the same thing when he said, “Let’s just give it a little more time before we rethink our plan, Jonah. Maybe we’ll see a sign or something. ’Cause we sure don’t want to get stuck out here.”

  “I know.”

  I found myself thinking about the socks I wore. They were Simon’s, dingy and mud-stained from that river.

  And as we followed the dirt road along at its edge, I scooted my feet and listened to the sound of the path they cut, just for a moment mimicking the way I remembered Simon walking in the loose shoes he always wore, before we met up with Mitch.

  In the early part of the morning is when you can see the things that move in the desert.

  A white-tan rattlesnake drifted from a cholla clump out onto the road beside me, sweeping in sideways-pulsing arcs as it scooted diagonally away and vanished soundlessly across the other side.

  “Do you still have that razor in your pocket?” I asked.

  “I always do,” Dalton said. “Why?”

  “Don’t know.”

  I looked at the perfect S-shaped tracks the snake left behind, my eyes scanning down the length of the road.

  I froze.

  I saw something dark, faint, moving through the brush ahead of us.

  Dalton stopped, too, right beside me.

  Someone was out there.

  We left the road and dropped to our knees behind a thicket of palo verde. I took the pistol from my pack and held it with both hands, bracing my elbow on a knee, aiming the barrel down the road.

  “What do you see?” Dalton whispered.

  “I can’t see him anymore.”

  Dalton put his hand on my back. Then we both saw the top of a black hat floating above the brush tops, like it was carried on a vacant breeze in the windless desert heat.

  I cocked the pistol and held my breath.

  “Please don’t kill anyone, Jonah.”

  My finger pressed tight against the spring of the trigger, ready to shoot.

  I gasped. I relaxed my grip and uncocked the hammer. I let the weight of the pistol drag my arm down to my side as I stood. Dalton didn’t know what was happening. He couldn’t tell. He grabbed me by the waist of my pants and tried to pull me back down when he saw the person who was walking in the road toward us.

  I stood up and dropped the gun and pack down on the ground.

  “Simon!”

  He snapped his head up and almost tripped when he took a jump to the side of the road. I ran to get my brother.

  Simon looked shocked, but then his shoulders relaxed when I got close enough for him to see it was really me.

  “You almost gave me a heart attack, Jonah.”

  I threw my arms around him, hugging hard, and Simon, dripping with sweat, squeezed me back and knocked his hat backwards off his head.

  “What the hell happened to your hair?” He put his hand on my head and rubbed it.

  “I cut it off.”

  “Yeah. I can tell. Looks like everything’s been changed on you.” And Simon held me back at arm’s length and said, “You’re all right. Oh my God, Jonah. I was so scared you never got out of the river.”

  I don’t think Simon ever said anything nice like that about me in his life. And I think we both wanted to say something else to each other, but we didn’t. We knew. And with brothers, I think that’s about the best you can do.

  “Who’s that?”

  I’d forgotten that Dalton was standing in the road behind me.

  “He’s a friend,” I said. “His name’s Dalton.”

  I was so happy to see my brother that I almost felt like crying. I turned back and waved Dalton to us.

  Then I looked square into Simon’s eyes and asked, “You okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  Simon fell down to the roadbed and sat in the dirt, bending his knees up. He folded his arms and put his face down and began crying.

  “I want to go home, Jonah. I just want to go home.”

  I sat down beside him and put my arm around his shoulder, watching Dalton as he cautiously walked up toward us. I knew he could see that Simon was crying, could tell he slowed his pace down a bit to give him time, to see whether or not he should even be there.

  “We can’t go home.”

  Simon’s shoulders heaved. He pressed his fists into his eyes.

  Dalton stayed back, halfway between me and the palo verde trees where I’d dropped my pistol.

  “If we go home, they’ll take us away from each other,” I said.

  Simon began crying harder.

  “It’s up to you, Simon. Do you want to stay together?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then we will. Now stop crying.”

  I stood and brushed the dirt away from the seat of my pants. Then I walked back to Dalton and picked up the pistol and my pack.

  “You look like a communist, Jonah,” Simon said, his voice still shaky. “Where the hell did you get those clothes?”

  “I gave them to him when I found him by the river,” Dalton said. He held out his hand for Simon and pulled him up to his feet. “My name’s Dalton.”

  Simon didn’t say anything. He wiped his eyes with the back of his wrist, leaving a track of mud on his skin.

  I held the canteen out for my brother, the pistol in my other hand.

  Simon drank.

  “I didn’t know you brought that gun.”

  “ ’Cause I didn’t tell you.”

  “You pointed that thing at me?”

  I sighed. For a second I thought it was going to be another fight.

  “It’s okay,” Simon said. “Thanks for not killing me.”

  He dran
k again.

  “I wasn’t going to let him kill anyone,” Dalton said.

  “You from New Mex, too?” Simon asked.

  “Yeah.”

  Simon looked Dalton up and down.

  “What kind of name is that? Are you an Indian?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  And I noticed the big cut on Simon’s throat.

  “What happened here?” I asked, touching Simon’s neck.

  Simon jerked away from my touch.

  “Nothing,” he said. “The car blew up.”

  “I saw it,” I said. “And what’s this on your arms?”

  Simon looked at me. He turned his wrists over and showed the red wounds there.

  He didn’t answer me.

  So I said, “And where’s Lilly?”

  “She’s real sick, Jonah. I was coming to try and find some help. I don’t know where Mitch is now. We ran away from him last night.”

  “Did you just leave her out there?”

  “She’s at an Indian’s house. He’s a good man.”

  “We have a truck.” I looked at Dalton. “Can we drive it there?”

  “He lives on this road,” Simon said.

  “Okay.”

  “Jonah?”

  “What?”

  “I’m glad you found us.”

  Simon picked his hat up and put it on his head, and the three of us started walking back.

  When we got to the truck, Simon found a tee shirt lying on the floor among the scattered clothes, the map, Matthew’s letters, and he slipped it on over his sunburned shoulders.

  “Where’d you steal this truck from?” Simon asked. He knew I’d never stolen anything in my life, at least not until that money I took from Mitch.

  “It belongs to my dad,” Dalton said.

  “We’re gonna bring it back, too,” I said. “As soon as this is all over. You’ll like his family, Simon. They live in just about the neatest place I’ve ever seen.”

  My brother straightened out his shirt and looked at Dalton.

  “Neither one of us has never seen no place,” Simon said. “Until now.”

  Simon began picking up the things I spilled out onto the floor and piling them up on the seat.

  “Jonah,” he said. “Mitch had a gun in his hand. He was going to shoot you.”

  I froze. I guess I never really realized why Simon had knocked me into the river.

  “That’s why you did it?”

  Simon didn’t say anything.

  “That’s why?”

  He looked at me and grinned weakly.

  “Only partly. ’Cause I was pretty mad at you, too. But, I promise, Jonah, I am not doing anything bad anymore. Brothers’ Rule Number Four. I promise.”

  Dalton climbed out from the camper and handed a tan tee shirt to me.

  “You should cover up,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  I tucked the shirt down inside my pants. Simon watched me.

  “You look different,” he said. “I never seen you in any clothes that weren’t Matthew’s first. And I never seen you without hair.”

  “Dalton cut my hair. Do you want him to do yours, too?”

  Simon looked at Dalton and said, “Hell no.”

  And I was suddenly so relieved at seeing my brother, at hearing him talk like Simon always did; and I knew I never wanted to do bad things ever again, too.

  I pictured the scratched images on the side of the Lincoln.

  “Mitch told me he was going to kill you, Simon.”

  “When did he say that?”

  “Right after we got in that fight at that rest stop.”

  I took off one of my boots and shook the dirt out of it. “I didn’t want to get back in the car, and he said he would kill you if I didn’t go along.”

  It suddenly seemed so quiet.

  Dalton slid in behind the wheel and started the truck.

  I brushed off the bottoms of my socks and slipped my feet back into the boots Dalton gave me.

  “He killed a guy at that bar we stopped at that next day, when he got me drunk,” Simon said. “When you and her were making out in the car. He shot a guy.”

  “He killed a guy right in front of you?” Dalton said.

  “No. I didn’t know it till later. I was outside taking a piss when he did it.”

  “You were drunk, anyway,” I said.

  “Dang,” Dalton said. “You guys get drunk?”

  “No,” Simon answered. “It’s not like that. I’m not going to do anything like that anymore, Jonah.”

  Simon slid into the middle of the seat and I climbed up beside him and shut the door.

  “You’re both lucky you got away from him,” Dalton said.

  “We’re not away yet, I think,” Simon said. He shifted in his seat and looked at me. “When all this is over, do you think I’m going to go to jail?”

  “No. I won’t let that happen. We’ll just have to be careful about what we say.”

  “Okay, Jonah.”

  I balled up the clothes Simon and I left home with and put them into the bottom of the pack. As Dalton drove through the brush, trying to get the truck over to the gravel road where we’d found Simon, I looked out across the flat of the desert to where I could see the glint of the tin statue just poking up above the brush and cactus. I grabbed Matthew’s letters and my comp book and placed them in the open pack, and, finally, lay the gun on top and closed the flap.

  “Why are you carrying those things around with you everywhere, Jonah?” Simon asked. “He’s not coming back.”

  “He promised he would.”

  The truck bumped and rolled over the brush.

  “You haven’t heard from him in six months.”

  “I have to try.”

  “You don’t have to hide it all from me,” Simon said. “It’s not like you’re protecting me from anything. I’m not stupid. I know what’s going on.”

  I felt my shoulders slump.

  “At last,” Dalton said, as the truck leveled off onto the gravel road. “I go left, Simon, right?”

  “Yeah. Left.”

  I sighed, “Okay, Simon.”

  “Are we good?”

  “Good,” I said. “And thank you for saving my life.”

  “I’m sure you would have kicked me off that bridge if you had the chance, too.”

  “There’ve been plenty of times when I would have loved to.”

  Simon smiled. Then he put his arm across my shoulders.

  Dalton swerved the truck to avoid running over a rattlesnake. He glanced at me. He probably wondered if I thought he was crazy or something.

  “How bad is she?” I asked.

  Simon said, “I don’t know. I don’t know anything about that stuff, Jonah. It might just be nothing.”

  “Why’d she decide to run away with you? Did Mitch do something crazy?”

  I stared straight ahead as Dalton sped the truck noisily down the gravel road. Simon turned his wrists over in his lap. I know he was trying to hide the marks that Mitch made on him.

  “Yeah.”

  “To Lilly?”

  “No.”

  I looked at my brother.

  “Are you okay?”

  “I told you I was,” Simon said. “That’s the place right up there.”

  Simon pointed at the trailer and the huts through the windshield and dust that came floating in through the windows on the sweltering air.

  (mitch)

  the watch

  Mitch sits in the brush, black in the shade, ten yards back from the road.

  He hums and smiles as he watches the boys in the truck roll past him.

  So close.

  (jonah)

  lilly

  A barking dog ran out to the truck as Dalton skidded it to a stop beside the mud hut where Walker had slept the night before.

  “Watch out,” Simon said as I stepped down from the truck. “That dog likes to pee on you.”

  The door on the trailer was already propped
open in the heat. Walker came out of the darkness of the trailer’s interior and stood on the wooden porch, looking out at the three of us.

  “That’s Walker,” Simon said. “Hey, Walker! I found my brother, Jonah, and a friend.”

  I climbed the stairs with Dalton and Simon following, and shook the Indian’s hand.

  “This is Dalton,” I said. “And I’m Jonah.”

  “You the one who beat him up?” Walker asked as he shook my hand.

  I felt myself go pale, scared that he was angry or something.

  “Yes,” I said plainly.

  “Well, he’s a good boy.”

  “I know.”

  Dalton removed his cap and shook Walker’s hand. He wiped the sweat back through his short black hair and Walker eyed him.

  “You’re an Indian,” he said.

  “I know,” Dalton said.

  “I thought you looked like an Indian when I saw you get out of the truck just now,” Walker said.

  “Come on.” Simon pushed his way past us and into the darkness inside the trailer.

  I saw Lilly lying on the bed, pale and sweating, her eyes fixed to the white frame of light at the doorway, watching us as we entered. The dog sat, motionless, on the stoop behind us.

  “Mitch?” she said.

  And I don’t know if it was my short hair or the fact that Dalton was standing there behind me that made her say that. I went to the bed and dropped to her side.

  “Hey,” I said, feeling for her hand.

  Her skin was damp and cool.

  She held on to my hand.

  “Jonah,” she said. She opened her eyes wider. “Look at you. Look at your hair. You look like a little boy.”

  “I’m not a little boy.”

  “Yes you are.” She tried to smile.

  “I came back from my swim.” I scratched the nubs of my hair and glanced back at the others. Then I kissed her mouth, but it didn’t feel like Lilly.

  “It doesn’t hurt anymore.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper. “But I don’t think I can move.”

  I swept my hand across her clammy forehead.