Part 4 (1/2)

”What time's he showing up?”

Sweat poured from Caleb's chin. ”I don't know. This morning.”

Mack was grinning, fingers playing with his black beard. ”We gotta make tonight good for him. I'm throwing a s.h.i.+ndig.”

Caleb squinted uncomfortably. ”I think he just wants to spend some time with me.”

Mack went on as if he had not heard him. ”I'm getting two kegs of Fat Tire, two one-point-seven-fivers of Beam. I'm inviting some people from the Horse.”

”Okay,” Caleb gave in, ”that'll be great.”

”So, Shane,” Mack asked jauntily, ”friend or foe?”

Caleb hesitated. The truth was, he wasn't certain. Whatever att.i.tude Shane was bringing was beyond him. As he stood breathing hard under the pines, a memory surged from the recesses of his brain. He had been fifteen, listening to The Wall in his room. Caleb had overheard a girl he admired talking about it before cla.s.s, and he had dutifully sought it out at Mills Music. Shane, who must have been ten, had wandered in. The two of them had not spoken but sat listening to this strange, sad music. This had not succeeded in bringing him any closer to talking to the girl at school, but it had brought the brothers together for an afternoon.

”Friend,” he answered. ”He just wants to hang out.”

Mack slapped his shoulder. ”Add seven.”

Without another word, Caleb pushed off into the underbrush.

From behind him he heard Mack shout his Whitman. ”'Allons! The road is before us! It is safe-I have tried it. My own feet have tried it well. Be not detain'd!'”

And so Caleb burst over the earth, spine straight, arms like pistons, landing on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet, in a state of constant forward motion. This was how the body built up its store of its key fuel, what Bergsonists called elan vital, what Mack called kinetic energy. Without forward motion, Caleb knew, the body sinks into stasis, depletes, decomposes daily. It was no coincidence that disease rates had exploded exactly as human culture sank into ergonomic chairs. He thought he might talk to Shane about this. He wanted his brother to understand his life, just a little, before he asked him.

He tried to recall if he and Shane had ever spoken about something this important. The five years between them had been too long a distance. He had been on the Was.h.i.+ngton State distance team while Shane was still in middle school and starting InterFinancial's training program in Manhattan while Shane was negotiating college applications. Caleb was aware of being watched from afar, like a runner cheered from the stands. Still, some bond remained between them, he could feel it, somewhere deep within his cells.

When he emerged into the open field behind the old house, he saw a strange car, rental-company purple, parked in front. Caleb sprinted the hundred yards to the back stairs, took them three at a time, and pushed opened the back door. Sweat dripping from his forehead, he went through the kitchen out into the expansive main room.

It was too much to absorb right away.

The two people he loved most in the world were sitting on the floor, knees up, talking as casually as if they had known each other for years. Behind them, Kevin, Leigh, and Alice bustled around with dustpan and broom. Seventies reggae played from the old plastic boom box on the floor, as the sun streamed through the dusty windows.

June's voice fluttered through the air and landed on him like a kiss.

”Caley, look. Your brother's here.”

Shane looked different.

His round face, his bright eyes, his short black hair were unchanged. But a new thin line stretched across his forehead like the impression left by a Halloween mask. The skin under his eyes seemed to have taken on a slight shadow.

Shane stood up and Caleb hugged him; his body felt thick, like a good tree. But Caleb knew by the way he pulled away and stared that the feel of his own body had proven startling. Suddenly Caleb felt embarra.s.sed, by his letter, his need, his body. He glanced nervously at June, but she did not seem to share his anxiousness; she was gazing at them both from the floor, her pale eyes wide and happy.

”How was your trip?” Caleb asked quietly.

”Easy.”

In truth, Shane was feeling a little shaky. His drive from the Denver airport had taken him along a harrowing mountain road, with a sheer drop just a few yards to his right. Initially, the lack of a guardrail had exhilarated him. But suddenly a sense of consequence washed over him, of leaving his unborn son fatherless, and Janelle a single mother, and he had felt a sharp and vicious fear. He had slowed to a cautious thirty-five miles an hour. By the time Shane arrived at the old wood house, he understood that something had left him on that road that would not be so easy to get back.

When he found the isolated dirt driveway, the door had been opened by a thin woman with pale skin and an explosion of marigold freckles. Shane recognized the face of a hardcore athlete-a complete absence of body fat accentuated every muscle. Even her hair seemed poached, like a horse's mane. Her lips were thin, her mouth small, and her nose had a tiny, turned-up way that made him think of money. But her eyes were enormous and they seemed to live completely apart from the hard face that encircled them. They were the eyes, he thought, of a softer soul.

June had led Shane to the middle of the room and sat now on the wood floor with him. Through the windows he could see the bark of forest firs. People of all ages walked barefoot around them, sweeping the floor, leaving for and returning from runs. They came over and introduced themselves in a friendly manner that struck him as wholly genuine. One would never know, looking at them, what their bodies could accomplish.

And then Caleb had walked in from the back of the house. Of course, Shane thought, he would not come through the door that he expected.

Standing, Shane had to remind himself that this was his brother. Close up, his face was that of a much older man than he had seen in online photos of race winners. There were lines, his teeth had darkened, he seemed whittled down to his basic self. Bones and will.

Suddenly, June announced, ”I see it.”

They both turned to her.

”You guys have the same mouths. That's where you're brothers.”

Shane blinked. Where they were brothers was in their shared fear of their father Fred playing endless Tony Bennett eight-tracks in the station wagon, in being guinea pigs for their mother's sporadic attempts at starting a catering company, in their uncountable shared miles jogging as a family through the winding roads of Issaquah. Where they were brothers was in the fact that each of their molecules shared chemical proteins built from recombinant DNA that was 99.9 percent identical. It was a lot more, he wanted to tell her, than their mouths.

”So”-Shane spread his arms wide-”we're having a baby.”

Caleb glanced at June, and then quickly touched Shane's shoulder. ”That's awesome. Do you guys have a name?”

”Nicholas,” he confided, his voice lowering conspiratorially, as if someone might inform Janelle's friends. ”Nicholas Wei.”

”Way cool.” June clapped her hands.

Shane looked down sheepishly.

”Should we go for a hike?” Caleb asked him suddenly.

”Didn't you just get in? You're all sweaty.”

”Let's get you changed.”

Shane followed his brother up a short flight of wood stairs. That he was this close was incredible to him. The days he had dreamed about some moment like this were too many to consider.

The second floor emitted a thick scent of wood and skin. They pa.s.sed a series of closed doors, which looked to have been made recently. Rooms, he guessed, had been divided. Caleb led him to the room that he shared with Kevin Yu. It was not dissimilar to a college dorm: two futon mattresses lay on the floor, separated by only a few feet. Next to Caleb's was a small closet, open and full of folded T-s.h.i.+rts and a neat row of beaten sneakers, each the multiple colors of running shoes. Who had established this design sensibility, Shane wondered, and why? Swirls and lines of different colors, what had they to do with moving through nature?

Under a window sat a boombox and a couple of blank CDs with handwritten labels. Shane squinted to read them; they appeared to be recordings of meditations. A stack of running magazines had been piled next to Kevin's futon; each had clearly been read repeatedly. A small metal fan was plugged into a floor socket and spun uselessly.

”We can share this tonight,” Caleb offered, pointing to the mattress.

”Sure, cool.”

”We're having a party. But we could go hear some music in town after?”

”Don't you guys go to bed pretty early?”

”Usually around twelve. We get up at four.”

”In the morning?”