The Rain (16 page)

            “I don’t know,” I say after another awkward moment. I don’t admit that I know Russell won’t go. It’s a mistake, he’ll say, to keep going west from Utah. We’d be going to high seas, too close to the Pacific. Russell has told me again and again that the oceans are the last place we want to go near. The Pacific is swooping up into the sky, he’s always said. Like a giant vacuum, and it’s carrying anyone stupid enough to go that way up with it. And that’s where the rain’s coming from. We have to go south. Dusty looks at me without saying a word, like my uncertainty isn’t good enough. Let me show you it, he says. He’s got a look of excitement and adventure that doesn’t fit the terrible news he’s just told me. But there it is, like he’s optimistic about the voyage into the sea that will lead away from this beautiful place. A home with fire and hot water and food. A home that’s dry. A home that’s shown me a mirage of the veneer.

            Show me what? I ask. And the question is enough to bring his hand down on top of mine. He pulls me up to my feet, brings me over to the shelf, gives me a plastic suit to slip on, picks up his rifle, and drags me out into the rain.

The night air isn’t too cold, and neither is the rain. It’s like it’s warmer down here in Utah. But I don’t trust it. The rain is still coming down at medium, and it pelts off the hood of my suit loudly. Dusty takes my arm again and tugs me a little bit. Voley is bounding ahead of us as if his leg isn’t bothering him very much, his own gauze wrapped under plastic that covers his injury. We’re going right out into the brown wilderness where the face eaters came from. Are you sure this is safe? I ask. I look around, then back at the comfort of the blue tarp behind us, wondering what the hell he’s thinking. Everything I want is in there. But he’s leading me away into the blank nothing, the muddy slopes that go on into death country.

            We follow a thin trail up the ridge where the face eaters first appeared from. The darkness blends the sea and the land and I realize I don’t even see the tarps behind us anymore. It’s like I’m back in Wyoming on the empty Bighorns. But he leads me on, getting a couple feet ahead. Voley has disappeared in front of both of us, running ahead like he’s been this way a thousand times before.

            I push through rocky mud streams, soaking my feet before long, wondering when the hell the scenery will change, and where the hell we’re going. Where are we going? I ask, but Dusty ignores me and keeps going. He just looks back to make sure I’m following him. And I suddenly feel like something’s not right about this. Panic rises in me and I consider sprinting back to the tarps and waking Russell. Could Dusty be tricking me? My mind wanders to the bank where we landed the canoe and put up our tent. Our supply bag is still down there. I feel the sudden pressure of time, like there’s a small window of it that I have now to get free and escape, and if I don’t act now by running back, everything will be lost. We have to get back to the canoe and push out, start south again, a voice whispers in my head. But I pause and ignore my apprehension at the sight of the summit. I’ve almost caught up to Dusty where he’s standing still, looking forward and then back to me eagerly, like he’s now able to see something important. I forget my plan to escape and race up the last few feet to get next to him and Voley.

The brown flat canvas of water stretches out to infinity in front of me, and I can see everything. The wide expanse of water, the rising ridges of the Utah mountains that surround our island, and there, directly down the hill before us, an opening bay. In it, there is a light colored square extension from the bank. It’s an enormous barge with several small boats tied up together. The barge looks like it’s been put together from random pieces of aluminum and wood, with two high poles stretching into the night sky on either end of it. From the poles are limp coils of canvas, which I guess are makeshift sails. It looks far from sea worthy, but it excites Dusty beyond words.

            “That’s what you’re going to take to the Sierra Nevada mountains?” I say. It’s hard to believe. It looks like it’ll go under with the smallest crashing swells. I want to tell him about the
Sea Queen Marie
, and how well built she was, and how that didn’t matter when a hurricane hit. Its nose broke into the water and it flooded and sank. This thing wouldn’t survive even a small gale. But I don’t say anything, because I’ve already decided I would never set foot on the thing. But he asks me if I think it’s beautiful. And to look at how big it is. I tell him it is big, but I don’t say anything else.

            “We’re going to load her up over the next couple days,” Dusty tells me. His dad’s been funneling him all the information, he says. The final plan has been made, and everyone will pile on that giant raft, and the small boats, and head west. I almost plead with him, What do you think is out there? In the west that close to the Pacific?

            He looks at me and thinks about his answer but never gives it. He just tells me he’s asked his dad if I can come. His dad said yes. He doesn’t even mention Russell. I ask him why he’d want me to come. He says I’ve proved my worth. I shoot well enough. I know he’s lying. His face is dark under the night sky and the lip of his hood. Rain rolls down his plastic and hits a tiny stream that snakes down toward the bay. The alarm that he hasn’t mentioned Russell creeps into my mind. I tell him I could never leave Russell, and he tells me Russell is coming too. You don’t know Russell, I say.

We stand for a moment in silence. He’s clearly in awe at the sight of the barge, like it’s been a long process for him, for them, the tarpers here, and it is the culmination of some long effort. It’s some sort of twisted salvation for them, despite that it looks to me like suicide. I can’t get past how sloppy the thing looks, and I think of the much bigger carrier, and how sturdy that looked in comparison. I have to wait until Russell is better to decide, I tell him. But it’s a lie. I don’t want to go. I’ll stay back with Russell on this island. We can hole up, defend against the hordes of face eaters. Keep close to the fire. Found our own Leadville. But I don’t say any of this. I can help you convince him, Dusty tells me. And he comes closer to me. I look at Marvolo so I don’t have to see his beautiful face. Voley runs down the hill some, splashing up muddy water. Hey, says Dusty. I feel his eyes watching me. I want to ask him a million questions, tell him my fears about our situation, even Russell’s fears that this place isn’t what it appears to be—Dusty, his dad, all the tarpers. I want to tell him places like this don’t exist anymore. And it’s all a con, too good to be true, and somewhere along the way, we’re going to be used up for something evil, some broken version of the veneer. But I don’t tell him any of my thoughts or ask him any more questions. I can’t because he wraps me in his arms. At first it’s strange, because the rain is running off his suit and hood and some of it is splashing in my face. I feel like I’m betraying Russell for some strange reason, just by being here alone and talking about all this. But Dusty reaches under my chin and points my head up so I have to look at him now.

            “When I first saw you…” Dusty starts. I look at him, taking in all of him, and I feel my attraction for him flare. I wonder about what love really is. Or if it is the same thing as emotions. And what I feel burning in my body all of a sudden, and how does one really know if they love a person. “I’ve never seen anyone like you,” he finishes. I don’t even know what he means, but there’s something about how he says it that makes me want to tell him that’s how I’ve felt about him. That I can’t understand why but my body is telling me it wants him to stay this close.

            “Don’t you think it’s all pointless?” I ask him, the gnawing idea that the veneer is dead erupting in the back of my mind. That whatever this feeling is, it’s useless and pointless because it doesn’t help keep us alive, keep us moving, keep us heading to a place where it isn’t raining. But Dusty doesn’t know what I’m referring to, I can see by the confusion that lights up in his eyes. I tell him I mean love. I admit the word. And it falls out of my mouth like a forbidden artifact from Philadelphia and Pittsburg, something that’s been long ago laid to rest and been made a forever taboo.

            “I don’t know what love feels like,” he says. He says he’s seen it in other people, and he’s seen it in his father and Linda. But it’s never been in his life before. And I can’t tell if he means the emotions in his body or the feeling I feel. They start to blur together in my mind too, like a mirror of his words. I tell him I don’t know what it feels like either. I’ve thought I might have it someday, if we ever got to Leadville. Where we’re going is as good as Leadville, he says. He just watches me, for a long time, and the rain keeps hitting us. He pulls my body so close that it’s pressing into his, my stomach against his. Do you feel this? he asks me. I want to tell him I think he’s beautiful, but I remember Russell, and the thought works to stop my words. I can’t say anything, I feel like he’s captured me against my will. But I know I feel it too. So I nod. Come on, he says. And he races back, away from the bay with the barge and the boats. Marvolo flies to us again at the sound of Dusty sprinting. I run after him, desperate for the feeling to come back, mad that I didn’t speak up more than I did so it didn’t go away. I think that maybe it would be worth it to take the risk, despite that it’s useless, and that it’s unimportant, and that it won’t help us get to Leadville. And I can’t stop chasing after him because I still feel whatever it was that lit me up inside. It’s on him and it’s pulling me after him. I go as fast as I can, afraid I might lose them both and get lost in the mountains with the face eaters. But before I know it the blue tarps are in sight again, and we’re back inside Dusty’s house.

I step in and he’s looking all around, like he’s checking for something. Then I realize what he’s doing—he’s checking to see if anyone else is there. But no one’s home. He pulls off his plastic suit and I do the same thing, because I’m caught up in some strange dream and I’ve stopped caring about the trip over the ocean, and the face eaters, and the exposure that threatens us whichever path we choose, barge or not, canoe or not, and I wait for Dusty to say something. But he doesn’t say anything, he just takes my arm again, and his hand slips down to mine, and he pulls me along the hallway. He pulls me right in front of the shower. I look at him, and all the thousand cries inside my spirit are stifled because I feel still the same as I felt on the mountain. It’s like I’ve felt a hundred times before except Russell was always there to deny me, tell me it’s wrong, and useless, and something that we shouldn’t think about anymore. But I can’t help it. Dusty asks me if I feel the same still, and I just nod, because I can’t make words. It’s like a spell has taken control of me, and he takes off his shirt, and the sight of his chest and stomach melts me. He reaches in past the tarp door of the shower and turns the knob. I hear the hiss of water, and soon feel the steam coming from beneath the flap at my feet. He grabs my sweater and slides it up, then throws it on the floor. A singular feeling wells up in me, and I know that I can’t change the course of this now, so I stop thinking about Russell, and everything we have ahead of us. I collapse into this moment, and I look back now confidently into Dusty’s eyes, ready to go forward. His eyes are dark, but a tiny star of light hangs in them, and he breathes on me close, and then he just closes them and pushes his mouth in toward me. I feel soft warmth press against my lips, and then a stronger warmth, and his arms pull me into him. He sends his hands out wandering over my body, each touch sending electricity and heat through me, and I can’t help it—I move over him too. I move around the curves of his body, his chest, his stomach, his arms, and his butt. He pulls me into the shower, and it’s like the rain is now coming from a fire, and I feel his tongue and lips on my neck. I look at him standing naked in front of me, and it’s like I understand some hidden piece of who I am. I can’t stop to correct myself, and to clean up my irrational thinking, because the singular force driving me has limited all cognition, and I feel like I’m an animal, just mindless, with only my body. All of my questions are gone. All of my fears.

            The warmth rolls down our bodies into the floor, and I feel like an eternity passes. We kiss. He leaves the shower abruptly and I stand in the hot water and feel hungry for him, watching him go with the hope that this isn’t all a dream. He comes back in and turns the knob off and hands me a towel. We dry off. My doubts have been cleaned away, and I feel like he could never be like the people in Rochester. But he won’t let me start to think again, because he starts pulling me into the hallway, and down to a room with a bed. The air is cold until he pulls me close again, his skin warming mine, and together we fall onto a blanket. Do you still? he asks, almost pausing. I look at him and tell him yes, but that I don’t know what it is, but that I feel it. He seems satisfied and presses into me, kissing me hard. The sweet flavor of his mouth fills me and I feel like I might lose consciousness. His hands find every part of me, and I am sure now that I have been my whole life starved of a part of love I have only dreamed about. The rain hits the roof above our heads, and again and again we find each other, in our eyes, mouths, and bodies, and I want nothing ever to happen again but this. But it stops before I find out what happens next because Marvolo barks. It isn’t one of his friendly barks. Dusty jumps up from the bed and pulls on a pair of pants. He runs out into the hall and yells at me to get dressed. In a moment, he throws my clothes down and stands in the hallway with his rifle, watching toward the outside door flap. What is it, I ask? But he doesn’t even answer me. Instead he raises his rifle, pointing down into the hallway where I can’t see.

            The blast of his rifle jolts me coldly back to reality. There’s no time for depression to set in, I just pull on my clothes and panic because I don’t know where my knife is. I don’t have any weapon. Dusty reloads in the hallway and Marvolo barks again. Shit, says Dusty.