In the Path of Falling Objects

by Andrew Smith

  In the middle of the bed lay a wadded pile of clothes. The colonel guessed they were the older boy’s. The clothes sat as though they were ready to be packed, but had been forgotten there.

  “Looks like the boys lived in here,” Stevens said.

  The colonel lifted one of the tee shirts from the pile of clothes. He looked at the tag in the collar, turning the shirt over in his hands, smelling it.

  “It’s clean,” he said. “I bet the boys ran off. Maybe she doesn’t even know it. That’s what I think happened.”

  The colonel placed the shirt back on the pile and pushed the clothes aside to make a place to sit. Then he saw the yellow sheets of paper left there on the bed.

  “Here we go,” he said, looking at the pencil scrawl of a boy’s writing. He stuttered along, squinting to decipher some of the smeared words, as he read the letter to Stevens.

  Dear Matthew,

  Something is happening here, but I don’t know what it is. Ha ha, I thought you would like that.

  Simon and me are leaving today. I didn’t tell him yet, but I am going to after I finish this letter. We are taking the horse and going to Arizona, to Scotty’s mother’s house, where you said you’d be. Maybe we will run into Dad, I don’t know. We ran out of food and we are pretty hungry. Also, the electricity was shut off two days ago. Mother’s been gone for a long time now, and I really don’t care anymore. I just know we have to get out of here. It will be better for everyone if we just leave.

  I’ve been trying to listen to what you keep telling me about Simon. So I stopped talking to him. It doesn’t help, really, because I still get so mad at him I feel like I could kill him. But what can I do, Matt? I promise I will try my hardest. And I promise I will take good care of him. And when you come back and we see each other again, we will all do something crazy like brothers are supposed to, like you said. So if you get a car, maybe you could drive us to the ocean. I’d like to see that.

  I have ten dollars. We can eat for a few days on that, I guess. I am bringing the gun, too, but I’m not going to tell Simon because it will scare him. And, like you said, I need to take care of him so I will do what you ask.

  Matt, I am sorry for all the bad things that happened to you over there, especially for what happened with Scotty. And I am sorry for what our life is like here, too. It makes me feel so scared and alone sometimes, like I’m a little baby crying out for mommy or daddy, but that’s really not what I want. They can keep ours, you know, because we’re better off without them but it still hurts to say it.

  So I know all we got is each other, but there’s too many things that want to keep us apart, like you said. If I could wish you back and make it real, I wouldn’t be writing this letter right now. And me and Simon are another thing. I know we look for ways to convince ourselves that we are not as close as we are, and that both of us like fighting with each other, even if it always makes us both feel sorry. I’m pretty tired of that.

  At night, when it’s quiet, I hear your voice, like you said I would. I close my eyes and try to rub them so hard so I will forget what Mother and Father look like. I am carrying your letters. They are stained and smell like the place you are at.

  I hope we make it.

  I am going to keep track of where we go. We are going to head north to Tucumcari, because I figure that’s the easiest way to maybe get a ride west to Flagstaff.

  Maybe someone will feel sorry for two boys in torn hand-me-downs and offer to help us out, but I doubt it ’cause we look too much like hippies. Neither one of us has had a haircut since before winter.

  We will see each other again.

  Simon knows you love him.

  Love,

  J. (Mister Jones)

  The colonel put the letter back on the bed where he’d found it. He looked at Stevens.

  “Are we done?” Stevens asked.

  “Looks like we got off easy,” the colonel said.

  “It’s a long way to Arizona.”

  “Those boys are crazy,” the colonel said. “They’ll make it. Someone’ll find them.”

  “Yeah.”

  The colonel lit another cigarette, and said, “I’m tired. We did our job. Let’s get out of here.”

  “What about the box of Vickers’ personals?”

  “Leave it on the floor.”

  (jonah)

  hell

  Drum drum.

  I opened my eyes and sat up.

  I covered Lilly’s face.

  (mitch)

  piggies

  The first rocks he throws down at the trailer are fist-size knots, porous and scab-red. They smash into the roof and it sounds pleasing, like explosions.

  Mitch digs his fingers into a sliver of a crevice. He pries at a boulder, loses his footing, arms flail as he slides twelve feet down the wall of the mesa. The rocks that slow his descent scrape flesh from his back and shoulders. He spider-crawls back to his place, hurls the boulder outward, throws himself back against the cliff wall to save himself from following it.

  He laughs, watching the boulder sink down into the trailer’s roof. It looks like a fly caught in a bowl of pudding.

  He sweats and grunts. Whatever he can lift, he sends down onto the shuddering little trailer.

  “Come out, Piss-kid.”

  “Come outside, Jonah.”

  On the face of the cliff, he counts as he launches the stones skyward.

  “Thirty-three. Thirty-four.”

  (jonah)

  sounds

  Dalton stood right beneath where the first boulders slammed into the trailer, and he tumbled backwards and fell against the door.

  Walker ran from the back of the trailer, pointing the pistol up as though warning whatever thing was above us to go away. He stumbled and dropped the pistol onto the matted floor, just as the largest boulder struck, splintering the thin paneling across the ceiling and opening up a toothy, jagged slash of skylight above us.

  We could hear rocks crashing in through the opened window at the back of the trailer. Walker hadn’t replaced the glass, and it would have broken, anyway.

  We all rolled to the edge of the floor, looking up at the sag in the ceiling, and Walker, sensing what we were doing, slid against an outer wall as well, alternating his darting, panicked eyes from the quaking ceiling to look at each of our faces.

  I felt numb.

  “Stop it, Mitch.” Simon spoke barely above a whisper, angry, his fingers twisting into the rug, as the rocks continued to hammer, without rhythm, into the trailer.

  Drum drum.

  Walker stared up at the ceiling. I was certain it was going to give way under the barrage.

  “What did I do? This is my home. What did I ever do?” Walker said.

  Simon pushed himself to his feet and put his arm over his head as he made for the door. The roof vent had given way and collapsed, its plastic door dangling and swinging like a spider on a hair of web. Three more loud bangs, and Simon ducked as he twisted at the knob.

  “Simon!” I gasped.

  “Don’t go out there,” Dalton said.

  Simon pulled the door inward and stood outside, fully exposed in the light of the sun, shading his eyes with his flattened hand, framed there by the darkness of the trailer’s interior, looking like he was some kind of ghost.

  “Stop it, Mitch! You stupid bastard!” Simon screamed up at the mesa.

  Another rock arced downward, thudding into the dirt between Simon and the truck.

  “Simon! Get back in here!” I looked over at Walker, who was struggling to get to his feet.

  “Mitch!” Simon yelled. “Leave us alone! Lilly’s dead! It’s your fault! She’s dead because of you! Just leave us alone and let us go!”

  The rocks stopped falling.

  Walker sat motionless, resting a hand on his lifeless leg, his eyes wide and frantic.

  I listened to my own breathing.

  It was suddenly so still, so quiet.

  “Simon!” I whispered.

  He di
dn’t move.

  Dalton started to get up. I knew he was going to get my brother, so I held him down with a hand on his shoulder. I launched myself up and ran to the doorway. I reached an arm out the door and grabbed Simon’s shirt, and pulled him back inside the trailer.

  (mitch)

  down

  Black, filthy, rusted with his own blood, Mitch raises himself up and looks down. Piss-kid, standing outside the door, yelling something. He doesn’t care. It’s a lie. A trick. The kid is looking right at him, but he can’t see Mitch; he fades into the hematitic colors of the mesa.

  His hand shakes. Not enough water, tired and sore from this climb, heaving the rocks. His hand shakes when he raises the pistol and points it at the kid.

  Mitch pulls back on the trigger.

  “Whore! Piss!”

  Simon disappears inside.

  “Next time,” he says. He smiles. “Time to go down.”

  He tucks the pistol away and scoots down the same path he took climbing up.

  (jonah)

  plan

  I kicked the door shut as I pulled Simon inside.

  “What were you trying to do?”

  And I remembered, in my distraction, how Simon and I had been trapped in that trailer the first night after leaving home. It seemed like such a long time had passed, but it wasn’t even a week before.

  Dalton was just staring up at the battered ceiling.

  “We need to get that guy. There’s four of us and one of him. We need to get him,” he said.

  “I couldn’t see him,” Simon said.

  I looked at Simon. I let my eyes drift across the floor to where my gun had been dropped, saw Walker bracing himself against the wall, propping himself up onto his feet. And I looked again at the small bed, and Lilly, stretched out there beneath that dark blanket.

  I looked at Simon.

  “Jonah?” Simon said, but I didn’t answer. “Jonah?”

  “What do you have in mind, Dalton?” I said.

  “We need to make a plan,” he said. “Just like we’re playing a game. We need to make a plan so we can win.”

  (mitch)

  white simon

  At the bottom of the mesa, Mitch wedges a foot down between two rocks and stumbles forward. The ankle pops and he curses. He catches himself, scuffing his palms, tumbling forward.

  “Damn! Piss!”

  He pulls his foot in toward his body and tries to stand. Pain fires upward through his knee and he nearly falls again, rights himself by hopping forward.

  “He’s a liar.”

  “White-Simon-Piss-kid is lying to me. The whore isn’t dead.”

  He limps. Like that stupid man coming out of the dark last night. He carries the box under his arm. It is beginning to break apart at the corners. He counts the corners.

  “Scared pigs.”

  Nothing moves in the trailer. He sees the truck, decides it will be his way out of here. His and Piss-kid’s. He opens the door and drops the box there.

  No keys.

  Piss.

  He waits behind a wall of brush, not twenty feet from the trailer.

  “Why did I listen to her? If I just kept on driving and left them there, none of this would have happened. Those boys have ruined everything. They took her away from me.”

  He flicks the cap on the lighter.

  The lighter is silver, looks like the trailer.

  He listens to the bell-ring of the cap and counts.

  Back and forth; five, six, seven.

  (jonah)

  evening

  “We could take him,” Dalton said. “We just need to stand up to him. Let’s just go out there and get the truck.”

  I stooped beneath the gap in the ceiling and grabbed my gun. I tucked it into the waist at the back of my pants. I looked at Lilly’s feet.

  “What caliber is that gun?” Walker asked.

  “We need to cover her.”

  “Jonah?” Simon said.

  I curled the blanket beneath Lilly’s head, lifting it up; she seemed so wooden, heavy.

  “We need to cover her up,” I said.

  “It’s okay, boy,” Walker said. “Here.”

  He passed another wadded blanket across to me.

  I tucked the blanket around Lilly’s feet. I knew I wouldn’t see her again. And as I looked down at those rumpled covers on the bed, I thought, You can’t even tell there’s someone under there.

  I was so tired. I was tired of being so stupid, so wrong about everything.

  I sat down on the edge of the bed and propped my elbows on my knees. I put my fists in my eyes.

  Simon put his hand on my shoulder, tried pulling me up from the bed, and I jerked away from him.

  “Come on, Jonah,” Simon said. “Don’t sit there.”

  I didn’t move.

  I could feel everyone watching me. I felt so stupid, and naked, just like Mitch waking me up that morning at the Palms.

  “Don’t just sit there now,” Dalton pleaded. “We need to do something.”

  Simon cupped his hand beneath my arm and began lifting me up, saying in a whisper, “Come on.”

  I swatted at Simon’s arm and made a fist with my opposite hand, aiming it. And I don’t know if I was honestly trying to punch Simon or not, but I knew I wanted to hit something.

  “Hey!” Walker shouted.

  And Simon tackled me just as my fist sailed past him. He pushed me backwards and drove me down to the floor, grabbing my arms and pinning me, sitting square on my chest and locking my wrists beneath his knees.

  “Get off!” I said.

  “You can’t just sit there,” Simon said. “You need to do something.”

  I struggled, pushing with both feet against the floor, arching my back, trying to wrestle my arms free from Simon’s weight, but my brother was too strong.

  Dalton looked at Walker, and said, “Get off him, Simon. Things are already bad enough. Let him go.”

  I struggled. “Get off! What am I supposed to do?”

  “Give up,” Simon said.

  “Okay. You beat me. Now get off!” I felt tears running sideways down my face.

  Simon breathed and relaxed, still sitting on my chest.

  “That’s not what I mean,” Simon said.

  Simon let my arms free and rolled away. He sat beside me on the floor, with his back turned to the little bed where Lilly lay beneath those blankets.

  “The farther we go, the worse things get,” Simon said.

  I stretched out on the floor, staring up at the splintering ceiling, expecting it to collapse and crumple in on all of us.

  “We’re here. In Arizona. Look what it got us, Jonah,” Simon said. “Let’s go home, Jonah. You need to give up on Matthew. On everything. Let’s go home.”

  “I can’t.”

  Simon pulled at a blue bead on his moccasin. He exhaled a sigh, staring at the door.

  “You’re always saying I’m the stubborn one. You’re more stubborn than me, Jonah.”

  We waited. The trailer darkened as the afternoon sun stretched the shadows of mesa and mountain across the desert floor. Walker pulled the flag back across the open window at the back, carefully trying to manage his way between the rocks that had scattered there over the floor. My mouth was dry. I ached for a drink, but I didn’t want to say anything. It was so quiet. I kept the gun on the floor between my legs, staring across at that gray cot, the metronome of belief and doubt swaying in my mind, back and forth, ticking the time that seemed motionless in the silence, the heat of that battered home.

  “When it’s dark enough, we go,” Dalton said.

  Simon sat beside me, just watching me, tumbling his black meteorite from hand to hand. I could tell he wanted to say something. I always know when he does, but I just didn’t want to talk anymore.

  At the sink, Walker pumped water into a smudged glass pitcher.

  The Indian drank from the rim; lukewarm water cutting two dark lines down the front of his chest where it spilled down from t
he edges of his mouth. He refilled the pitcher and limped to where Dalton sat, and watched as my friend drank.

  “Here.” He held the water out for Simon.

  Simon took the pitcher with both hands and drank in gulping swallows that sounded comically loud.

  “Here, Jonah.”

  I drank, draining the last of the water.

  “You should have said something,” Walker said. “You could have told me you were thirsty.”

  “I’m okay,” I said.

  “You hungry?”

  “Yes,” Simon answered.

  The three of us sat on the floor while Walker rested in the chair, watching us eat unheated food with white plastic spoons from cans: corned beef hash and beans.

  “It’s been quiet for a while now,” Dalton said.

  “Do you think he’s gone?” Simon asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “He’s not,” I said, straightening myself. “He’s out there.”

  “It’ll be dark enough pretty soon,” Dalton said. “I have a plan.”

  Simon wiped his mouth on the back of his arm. I looked at Dalton.

  “When it gets dark, we’ll make a run for the truck. I’ll drive and Jonah sits up front with the gun in case he starts shooting at us. Simon and Walker, you two will have to jump in the camper.”

  “I can’t move too quick,” Walker said.

  “Move as quick as you can,” Dalton said.

  Simon turned to Walker and said, “I’ll help you. But what are we going to do about Lilly?”

  “What do you think, Simon?” I said, agitated.

  After a moment, Walker looked at me and said, “We’ll come back. We’ll make it right.”