Ariel's Crossing - Bradford Morrow [119]
“Home is where the heart is.” Bonnie recommenced their game, hoping maybe to fill Ariel’s role here.
“Keep the home fires burning,” without a pause.
“Land of the free, home of the brave.”
Not bad. “Charity begins at home.”
Bonnie Jean’s smile broadened, an unusual sight. Made her face kind of hurt, a thought that broadened it more. Wasn’t this a bit ridiculous, playing games while the universe whirled out of control? Not for a moment. Getting her mother to smile, that was the finest thing. Maybe she should try a little harder to get along with her brother, cut Brice some slack. Couldn’t hurt more than that smile did. “When Johnny comes marching—”
“What good’s a home if you’re never in it?”
“Never heard that one before.”
“Bonnie, this breeze’s a little brisk. Let’s go back in.”
“Can’t stay put, can we, Saint McCarthy?” Bonnie teased.
Her mother responded with a tangled grin. It was touching of Bonnie Jean to engage in a bit of word-gaming to help an old lady pass the time. All would be perfect if her granddaughter were here and this notion about Kip Calder could be disavowed for the rubbish it surely was. Her life and the lives of her family had always been solid, unquestionable. Yet she felt less certain, now, that things were quite as stable as she’d always believed.
Doubt was a monster she had little experience wrestling. So instead, after Bonnie took her leave, she lay a blanket of faith over herself, over her memories, and wrapped Ariel within its folds as well. After all, tomorrow was Sunday. Day of rest.
Aided by the scant shade of a high thin temporary cirrus cloud, Kip rested his eyes. But the cloud passed, and again the sun dazzled and blinded him from its billet in the sky. He pretty nearly couldn’t see anything anyhow. His vision had, along with everything else, only gotten worse as the long slow day progressed from Lonnie Moon Peak, or thereabouts, past the wildly misnamed Garden Spring streambed. Garden of rocks and stones and pebbles and sand and dust.
Palms down, he lowered himself onto a dry sedimentary shelf. He unshouldered the beige canvas pack, now soaked brown with sweat. His canteen was light and its water more than warm on his tongue. Knees against his forehead, he sat in a heap. When he looked up he saw that the angel was out there, just as she had been since early afternoon. He looked down at his powdery boots. Didn’t remember his feet being quite that small. But there they were, two of them, inarguably measly. Somebody else’s feet. Couple of dead marmots.
He spat into his dustbowl palm. Looked like grasshopper spit. Only several streaks of sepia in an otherwise milky froth. Saliva that was mostly air.
He blinked hard and glanced over toward the east again. Yeah, still there. She kept her distance from him, having paralleled his course across the badland. Sunstroke dementia?
Leave me alone, he said, or thought he said.
She made no movement that would indicate whether she heard him or not. She stood, floated maybe, was little more than a white detail on the white horizon. Kip had been trying to shake her all through his second day out here. He sensed he knew that face with its pitiable haunted eyes, but he couldn’t place where he’d encountered it before. Had to think harder, think better, more clearly. No friendlies out here, random headings, copy? He said, or thought to say, Keep going, plenty of fuel left. Sure, he was getting some heavy surges. Incoming, affirmative, and yes the air was scrawled with tracers. But he’d blown down souvenirs along the way, pilotese for hits. It was give and take all the way. Kip was no rookie, no newcomer to the blasted heath. He looked for her again, but she wasn’t there. Good.
He unfolded the map and spread it out before him. Judging from where those radio towers were located on the topo and as he sighted them ahead on the peaks to his right, he’d come in a pretty fair distance, all things considered. He spat again and saw, this time, that