Part 30 (2/2)

Caleb sat straight up, blinking. His mouth was dry. A Latino guy with a shaved head and strong breath was glaring at him.

”You been here like two hours.”

”She's sleeping,” Caleb whispered, forcing his eyes open. His neck was stiff.

”What room you in?”

He blinked rapidly. What was his story again?

”If you ain't a guest here you got to move on, bro.”

The man walked back inside. Caleb could see him talking to an older man with an earpiece. A cold panic shot through him.

Lily was sound asleep. It was the middle of the night, and red lights blinked in pitch blackness. A black Jeep squealed alongside them. Its doors were thrown open, and Kyle and Juan jumped out. They grabbed his arms, pulled them inside. Mack turned from the driver's seat, screaming.

Caleb almost fell off of the bench, and the shock snapped him out of this hallucination. He blinked, breathing hard.They must be out here looking for him, he realized. Gently he slipped Lily's sleeping body back into the Kelty pack, rolled up a T-s.h.i.+rt and placed it behind her neck for support, lifted the thirty-odd pounds over his shoulders, and clicked the plastic belt shut. Feeling a sour panic, he turned off of the main avenue onto a small street filled with aluminum houses. He read a street sign in the starlight and saw that by an act of karma he was on Yosemite Avenue.

The power nap had worked magic though; he felt recharged and able. If he had stayed in the Yosemite Slam, he would be scaling El Capitan now, he thought. It seemed a comparatively easy thing to run across these gentle dark hills, following the shadow of the distant interstate, beneath the silence of the stars.

But what about Lily? He considered the generations of babies who had survived hard pa.s.sages into America. Who had been packed for months among tubercular emigres on suffocating Irish s.h.i.+ps. Who had been carried across the Sonoran Desert under raging heat. Who had been baked alive on Cuban rafts, laid among blankets crawling with boll weevils. Who had been frozen in open wagons, kept below deck on rancid boats, on their way to America.

These babies survived, grew strong, and all of them had made it without the benefit of a specially designed child backpack. Lily might get uncomfortable, and if so he would stop and help her. But she was would be fine.

As the weight of the pack pressed warmly into his shoulders, he could feel her slowly blending into him. Which was no hallucination, he understood.

Because, in fact, she was.

4.

June sat on a small patch of land by the freeway.

She practiced a sitting meditation. Hearing Mack's voice guide her through each organ and muscle of her body made her feel sick so she replaced it with her own. She began feeling better. The pain in her side was subsiding. After a few hours, she considered the six-lane interstate in front of her.

Caleb would have arrived at the next exit by now. He would have taken care of Lily, found food, and then borrowed someone's cell and called his brother. They were waiting patiently in some Burger King booth for her, she imagined. That Caleb had stumbled, had fallen ill, had broken some limb or punctured some organ, did not occur to her. Lily was in the best arms in this world. June felt an unsustainable urge to get to them, and the more she envisioned Lily, the more insistent this need became.

She stood, tried taking a step toward the speeding cars, and extended her arm for a ride.

A small white truck slowed; she did not appreciate the appearance of its driver and shook him off. She kept walking, afraid to try to run. Her hand, she realized, was pressed against her side in antic.i.p.ation of more pain. Perhaps a kidney was infected; if so, it would not take any more stress. And then an old blue Explorer paused and its pa.s.senger window lowered.

An older woman with long gray hair called to her. ”Hey. You all right?”

The first time June answered her throat was too dry and no sound came out. She gathered herself and tried again. ”Car's broke.”

”Come on in here.”

June drew a long breath and pulled the door open. She noticed a steel coffee mug in her cup holder. Her radio was tuned to slick country music of the sort Todd liked. It felt safe, she thought, in here. As June sat down she watched the woman pull back abruptly. Her smell, June understood.

”Are you hurt, honey?”

”No. Just, you know, really tired.”

The smell of coffee, leather, the bounce of the wheels, she feared she might vomit. A vivid vision of Arizona overcame her, her brothers shooting targets in the desert, surprisingly sharp and defined.

”You sure about that?”

June smiled. ”Our car had trouble. I just need to get to the next exit.”

The woman nodded and drove forward. She signaled at the first offramp. June saw two gas stations, and a small truckers' diner. Some rigs were parked outside. She gazed at its concrete step, as if she recognized something there.

”My family's waiting for me inside,” June told her, pointing to the diner.

The woman's face broke open with relief. ”Oh, great.”

”Thank you for the ride. You're awesome,” June smiled, stepping out slowly.

When the car drove away, June hesitated. She wanted to take a minute to calm down, to appear strong, to get herself together before Lily saw her. But she ran to the door as fast as she could, pulled it open, and burst inside.

Janelle heard the phone from the baby's room. She had been replacing the soft lightbulb in the little blue lamp on the dresser. The noon light dappled the copper mobile above her. She had purchased it in Berkeley on a happy Sat.u.r.day in her first trimester, and it always filled her with the joy of those giddy and expectant months.

”Is Shane there?” a woman asked in a painfully soft voice. ”Shane Oberest?”

”This is his wife,” Janelle stated, her voice rising as if asking a question. Over the phone she could hear murmurs of voices and distant music.

The woman asked urgently, ”How is Lily?”

Janelle frowned. ”June?”

”Yes. How are they?”

Janelle took a long breath, steadying herself against the dresser. She could feel this woman's anxiety across the ether. ”So Shane's on his way to get you guys,” she explained, her hands raising up to calm her.

”They're not with him?”

”June, I'm sorry. With him?”

”Lily and Caleb, aren't they with Shane? Driving?”

”Caleb left a message that you're at the Groveland Hotel?”

”No,” June sobbed. ”No. That was before.”

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