Part 32 (1/2)

Light rain slipped from a crimson sun.

Caleb pushed himself across a road. Russet-colored cows speckled the hillsides, but none seemed to notice them. The rain refreshed him, though he worried the road would become slippery. He felt it ascending, felt his quads begin to burn. He noted with great relief that he needed to pee.

He stopped by a tree and pulled aside his begrimed shorts. The pain that came next made him shriek. An explosion of fire in his back and sides. What was this, he cried? He glanced down and saw that his urine was nearly solid. Chunks of matter pushed from him. He fell to his knees, swaying, Lily hovering in the pack above him. His kidneys were not functioning, he understood. If he did not drink water now, then his bladder would become infected. And this time there would not be Mack to heal him.

He opened his mouth desperately to drink in the light rain; in the distance a cl.u.s.ter of gray clouds promised more. But as he moved forward, he saw that these were not clouds at all, but mountains. He stared at the distant range in awe; with a shudder, he understood that he would have to run through them.

”Should we drop?” he whispered to Lily.

In seeming response, she slapped the top of his head.

More cars started to pa.s.s them along the road. A sign informed him that they were approaching a small city called Dublin. There would be motels there, he realized. He could call Shane, bathe them both in a cool tub, lay Lily out on a bed for a proper sleep. But fever awaited him there, he knew; his body would shut down completely, and he might not awaken for days. There was nothing but to keep going.

The light rain kept steady. As he ran, one of Mack's pa.s.sages of Whitman came to him. He had always liked it, and so he recited it, but whether aloud or to himself he did not know.

”'Over the white and brown buckwheat, over the dusky green of the rye. Scaling mountains, pulling myself cautiously up, holding on by low scragged limbs. Carrying the crescent child. Storming, enjoying, planning, loving, cautioning, appearing and disappearing, I tread day and night such roads.'”

He whispered it again, and again, catching on the line about carrying the child, until the words lost meaning and only their sounds were left. He reached the final gas station before the mountains just before sunset. Pulling open its door, every smell was accentuated; the fake bread inside its plastic, the chemical Hefty bags, the detergents and the overripe fruit, overwhelmed him. A heavy-bellied man in a stained pine green golf s.h.i.+rt behind a counter stared over his gla.s.ses at him, his mouth opening.

By the microwave Caleb crouched down and used the sharp edge of a can opener to slice the outer sides of his sneakers. Immediately his swollen feet spilled out, a tremendous release.

He chugged a Powerade in the aisle, but his body responded too rapidly to the salt and corn syrup; his head spun, he went hypoglycemic. He rummaged through his backpack, trying to determine how much money he had left, but it all went blurry in his hands. It was difficult to grip any thought firmly in his mind now, other than his finish line, 122 Bay Street, San Francisco.

The man was watching him as if encountering something unholy.

”What you doing with that baby, man?”

”Please,” Caleb rasped, dropping canned ravioli, milk, doughnuts, a pear, and two brownish bananas onto the counter.

”They's a shelter up on Conway.” The man raised his eyes to Lily. Looking away, he said angrily, ”You ain't need these doughnuts, man.”

Then he swept his forearm over the rest of the goods, pus.h.i.+ng them into a thin black plastic bag, and slid it across the counter to him, along with the money.

Caleb tried to thank him, backing out of his store to a bench. Outside he balanced the Kelty on its metal tripod legs, and sat Lily on his lap. He handed the pear to Lily by its stem, his fingers far too disgusting to touch it, and she held it and nibbled happily. When she was done, he ate its last bites, and turned and vomited it all onto the pavement.

Caleb glanced down at his infected shoulders. They bubbled wiht green pus where the pack's straps pressed into the skin. He saw what was left of his squalid sneakers. A nasty rash, scarlet blotches with white pinp.r.i.c.ks, encircled Lily's upper legs like red ants. It would not be safe, he thought, to venture into any human contact from this point onward. When they had eaten, he changed Lily, deposited their waste into a trash can, and carried her across the street, into the trees. It would be wise to stay here in the shade. As he kissed Lily's cool forehead, his eyes were drawn up to the dusk sky. Soon the stars would come. They saw the whole field of play. They knew if Mack was still in Yosemite, or getting nearer to them, or back in Boulder, if there were police around them, if June was all right, if he was going in the right direction. Standing against an oak, he looked down. Kinetic energy was pouring from his body in long, golden lines. Dripping from his chakras, his forehead, the center of his chest, his groin, all over the ground.

When he looked up again, it was pitch night.

Shane woke to dirty sunlight.

It poured through the smeared windows of the room, filled with grease and dust. He rubbed his pounding temples.

On a single bed across from him, June lay face down. For a moment he thought she might be dead. She had not disturbed a single sheet. He forced himself to watch, and to his relief he saw her back rising and falling.

He went to the bathroom to wash out his mouth and use the shower. He returned feeling not much refreshed and shook June's shoulder. She sat up grimacing and touched her side. Her straw hair had gone crazy.

”Do you want some Advil?”

She shook her head. ”I haven't taken anything toxic in a year.”

”Some toxicity,” he suggested, ”may be necessary for survival in this world.”

At a gas station, Shane stepped away from her and phoned Janelle. She answered on the first ring.

”I've called every shelter, hospital, and motel in between here and Yosemite,” she told him, sounding exhausted. ”They're not there.”

”Caleb will call the house again.”

”I've got the phone in my hand everywhere I go.”

”Jesus,” he yawned. ”I slept for s.h.i.+t.”

”Come home,” she told him. ”You're too tired to drive.”

”I'm not,” he lied.

”You'll get into an accident.”

”I've been stopping to rest. I have to keep looking.”

There was a long pause. ”I know,” Janelle told him.

The day seemed to promise haze. They drove silently near Modesto, its outlying farmland, straining their eyes for anything in the far distance resembling a human being.

”Can I ask you something personal?”

”Sure,” June answered, ”of course.”

”What Caleb's doing, it seems like something you would only do for, you know.”

He left his words dangling, but June did not respond.

”Is she his? Lily?”

June's face slipped gently into a smile, and she looked off wistfully into the distance. ”I wish she was. I really do. He would be a great father. No, her dad is a bartender in Taos. He's not interested in her. But if you asked Lily who her dad is, she'd say Caley. When I came to Happy Trails, she was three weeks old, and he just took care of her from the first second.”

”I've never seen Caleb take care of other people.”

June watched him. She could see how much Caleb had grown to mean in his life, through his absence from it.