Chapter 7
Sixty miles to go. The sky looked like it was on fire.
Two in the morning, and it was an odd sort of bright: almost like a full moon, but more powerful.
Shadows danced along the roadway, the trees black shapes rising on either side of them, along with pebbles and pinecones, all hovering a few inches above the ground.
Slow going. Not only was it early (late?), but the ever-winding road continued to rise in elevation. Sometimes there were guardrails. Other times, none, with a sheer drop off that would certainly mean their deaths if the Nissan slipped over.
Rodney’s hands gripped the steering wheel as he leaned forward, squinting at the road ahead. Don was on map duty once more, guiding him through as best he could using the screenshots he’d taken. So far, so good.
Ball lightning chased after them through the trees, bouncing up and down, leaving scorch marks against tree trunks and grass.
Other lights, too, lights Don couldn’t place.
Little flashes of light bursting out of the ground in the tree line, then disappearing.
Don wondered if it was the Earth crying out.
He said, “We’re going to make it.”
Rodney didn’t say anything.
Don said, “We have time. We’re on the right road. It’s only a couple of hours more.”
Rodney squeezed the steering wheel.
Don said, “Hopefully, the watchtower isn’t—”
“I loved him,” Rodney said. “With everything I had. More than I’ve loved anything. But, toward the end, I think I hated him too.”
Don froze. He waited.
It did not take long. “I hated him,” Rodney repeated, rigid in his seat.
“For what he did. I didn’t want to, but I did.
It came out of nowhere. It was like a switch had flipped.
I was sad and then it was like my insides had been replaced by molten steel.
Like I was burning from the inside out. I felt it in my stomach.
My heart. My lungs. I could barely breathe around it.
I hated him, Don. For not trying. For not listening to us, even though it was so hard for him.
Didn’t he see that we wanted what was best for him?
Didn’t he see that we gave him every part of ourselves?
” He slapped the steering wheel. “And for what? Where did it get us? What am I that I can even think something like that?”
Don looked away, throat bobbing up and down.
He thought about the people they’d met on their journey west: the beauty, the ugliness.
For every Becca and Amy and Jerri, there was an Amelia.
There was a family wearing masks. He said, “You’re human.
Painfully, wonderfully human. I can’t, and won’t, blame you for feeling that way.
” He rubbed his sweat-slick palms against his thighs. “Especially when I felt the same way.”
Rodney looked relieved. “I … I didn’t want to.
I tried everything I could to stop it. But it just kept growing and growing until I couldn’t control it anymore.
It’d been festering, I think. Festering for a long time.
And then it just broke open, and all the poison spilled out into me.
I couldn’t stop it. Couldn’t do anything but let it wash over me.
And I remember thinking, no, no, this isn’t how it should be.
This isn’t fair. Why do other people get to be happy but I don’t?
Why do others get to live normal lives but I don’t?
Why did this happen to me? Selfish. So selfish.
I didn’t think about him. I didn’t think about you.
I was thinking about me. How it made me feel. How sad. How furious.”
“You never said anything like this before.”
“How could I?” Rodney asked. “How could I look you in the eyes and tell you that as much as I loved and hated him in equal measure, I hated myself even more? I couldn’t stand to see the hurt on you, especially knowing I’d been the cause.”
“So you chose to protect me from yourself.”
“I suppose I did. I guess that—”
“As if you had the right.”
Rodney’s jaw tensed.
But Don didn’t care. “As if you had the goddamn right,” he snapped, anger bubbling in his chest. “As if I wasn’t feeling the same way.
As if I wasn’t capable of handling whatever you had to throw at me.
You weren’t alone, Rodney. You weren’t then, you aren’t now.
I love you. God knows I do. But sometimes, oh sometimes, you act like you’re the only person in the world capable of dealing with pain.
You act like if you take it all in on yourself, no one else will have to deal with it.
Guess what? We do. I do. It leaked from you, your poison.
I could smell it. Taste it, bitter and cold.
How do you think that made me feel? But you weren’t thinking of me. You said so yourself.”
“It wasn’t about you.”
Wrong thing to say. “Bullshit. It was about both of us. Not just you. Not just me. Together. We were still here. We were and are still alive.”
“For now,” Rodney muttered as they rounded a corner. Ahead, the road stretched out before them. No other cars, just the headlights on the blacktop. Above, the cracked moon in a kaleidoscope sky.
“Don’t give me that,” Don retorted. “Who the hell do you think you are?”
“I’m your husband.”
“Then maybe it’s time you start acting like a partner.”
Stricken, Rodney said, “You don’t think I have been?”
“I think you got lost. To be fair, we both did. I wandered the house for days and weeks, sure that at any moment, he was going to burst in through the door. Maybe he’d be seven years old.
Maybe he’d be an adult. But he’d come home and we would help him.
” A tear slipped down his cheek. “And he’d want our help.
Unlike any other time before, he’d want it.
But that didn’t happen. So like you, I got lost. Without a map, without a guide.
We were in the middle of a jungle and didn’t know which way was out.
Hell, maybe there wasn’t a way out. Maybe we’re still trapped there, and this is all just an illusion. ”
“You’re real,” Rodney said fiercely. “I am too. Somehow, we’re still here.”
They went quiet for a time, Don lost in memory, Rodney undoubtedly the same. Don had words lodged in his throat, words he needed to get out, but they were stuck. He swallowed once, twice. Then, in a quiet voice, he said, “I miss him.”
Rodney sniffled. “I do too. Every day.”
“Where do you think he is?”
“I don’t know,” Rodney said. “Nowhere. Everywhere. Maybe he’s sitting in the truck with us. Maybe he’s been with us the whole time. In Maine. On the road. Seeing all the things we’ve seen. The people. The places.”
“He’d have loved it,” Don said, looking out the window. “All of it. Even the scary parts.”
“Especially the scary parts.”
Don chuckled. Then laughed louder and louder. Before long, Rodney joined in and under a dying sky, they laughed until they could barely breathe.
The ranger station was just as they’d remembered: a small, squat building in chocolate brown.
A similar brown sign with yellow lettering let them know they were at the Copper Ridge trailhead.
The lights were off in the building, no other cars in the parking lot, aside from an abandoned snowplow leaking salt out of its rear container.
Rodney pulled the truck into the parking lot, stopping parallel with the ranger station. Dawn was breaking, the sky taking on an orange-reddish hue, angry and bright. Shadows stretched long from the surrounding trees.
They didn’t get out right away. Because all around them, things were floating. Pinecones. Rocks. Clumps of dirt. Leaves. Above the branches reaching toward the sky, a flock of birds. Some of them looked like they were flying upside down.
Don moved first, opening his door and stepping outside.
It took a noticeable extra second or two for his feet to reach the ground.
That feeling of lightness, of near weightlessness was stronger than it’d been at Jerri’s cabin.
Don wondered—just for a moment—what would happen if he jumped.
Would he rise into the sky? Would he keep on going until he could see the curve of the Earth?
It didn’t scare him as much as he expected.
Don heard the driver’s door open, and Rodney’s grunt of surprise when he stepped out of the truck. Don looked over the hood at his husband. Rodney was staring down at his feet, forehead bunched up.
“I know,” Don said.
Rodney lifted his head. “It’s not supposed to be like this.
I’m not supposed to feel good.” He lifted his arms above his head.
Even from the other side of the truck, Don could hear Rodney’s back crack, a quick pop pop pop.
There was a smoothness to his face that hadn’t been there the day before, as if the wrinkles around his eyes, his mouth, his forehead were all receding.
It wasn’t like Rodney suddenly appeared decades younger, but it wasn’t not that, either.
Perhaps not decades, but a good ten years younger?
Sure. That wasn’t outside the realm of possibility.
And that was to say nothing about Don himself.
He could still feel his body. His arms, his legs.
His chest and hips, his head upon his shoulders.
But the crushing weight of living seemed to be lifting from his shoulders, as if the albatross around his neck had gotten tired of waiting in deepening misery.
He didn’t feel better, not exactly. And yet, watching a pinecone spin in midair off the side of the road was a sight he never expected to see, filling him with wonder.
Rodney rounded the front of the truck, their backpacks in hand. “He’s in your bag. Safe.”
Don nodded and took the bag from Rodney, gently, carefully, as if he held the most precious thing in the world. Which, of course, he did. He slung it over his shoulders. They were here. They had kept their promise.