Shadowbahn(29)

“Don’t know,” Parker answers.

“Bullshit!” Ray explodes. “This is highly frustrating!”

“I feel,” Parker offers as calmly and reassuringly as he can manage, but the other boys circle him and close in. “You know what?” he tries to explain. “We’re just going to Michigan to see our mom.”

? ? ?

“Hey, Ray?” says the other boy, and for a moment the sheriff standing twenty feet away is confused, thinking the boy has called her name.

The boys turn to look at the woman in her midfifties with the gray hair tied back in a short ponytail. A moment of quiet later she says evenly, “Everyone go home now.”





time is right


Ray gazes around at the others, smiling. “Who are you?” he asks the woman. He sees the badge on the sheriff’s lapel and says, “Is that real?” and she answers, “No more or less than this,” pulling the coat back to reveal the occupied holster around her waist. She’s been driving from the Badlands since fleeing the South Tower, when she ran out onto the buttes in the dark; with the multitude waiting, she turned and fled past the other Tower to the north.

? ? ?

She headed for the other side of the bend that Aaron rounded in his truck before the Towers appeared, and hasn’t stopped since. Hasn’t had the radio on, so doesn’t know about Parker or Zema or Supersonik; all she hears is the whistled song in her head that accompanied a beckoning memory. Far enough from the Tower, she figured the song would fade, but the song hasn’t faded. She can’t outdrive the whistle, heading south as though she has no idea where she’s going. But she does know where she’s going, really—the only place there is for her to go; and she knows that she knows.





jurisdiction (two)


Pulling into Valentine, spotting the young black girl in the distance at the top of the church steps, the sheriff is not only out of her jurisdiction, out of her state—she’s out of her country. She’s out of her life. She’s not worrying about jurisdictions anymore. She is her own jurisdiction, the same way Jesse has become his own map. She tells Ray now, “Everybody wants to know what’s real. Everybody asks is this real or that. Are they real or not.”

Ray says, “What do you mean, ‘they’?”

“You know what I mean.”

? ? ?

Ray finally sputters, “Aw, just go away, old woman.” But she hears his voice break and knows she has him, that he knows what’s real enough. Eyes level with the other Ray’s, voice as steady as the other’s has grown shaky, she says, “I’m going to tell all of you one . . . more . . . time.”

The boys surrounding the car slowly disperse. Flashing at the sheriff what is futilely meant to be a defiant look, Ray gives the side of the Camry a last kick, leaving a small dent before he wanders off. Parker starts to yell something at him but stops himself.





the song in hiding


Regarding the sheriff, he thinks, I take back half of everything I’ve said about cops. He walks toward his sister waiting on the church steps, calling to her, “Let’s go.” Watching what’s left of the crowd, Zema calls back, “Who’s that?” meaning the woman in the distance.

“Let’s just get out of here.”

Checking out the church over her shoulder, Zema answers, “I’m going in. You go find some food, come back in twenty minutes.”

Parker says in disbelief, “You’re going to church?”

“Come back,” Zema says, “when everyone’s gone.”

? ? ?

A few remaining boys watch Parker pull away in the Camry. In silence he drives till he finds a Frosty’s, where he gets burgers: I’m sick of burgers, he thinks. If we were back in New Mexico, I could get a taco. Zema is waiting on the church steps when he returns; checking the empty street, she moves quickly to the car. “Drive,” she says in the passenger’s seat.

“Food.” Her brother indicates the takeout bag on the floor.

“Drive.”

“I counted four churches between . . .” and trails off, listening.

The music is back. Parker hits the gas as the volume rises, hurtling them down the first road taking them out of earshot.





Radio Ethiopia


When Zema first came to the canyon as a small girl, the family called her Radio Ethiopia. At first no one noticed the music, and then everyone thought what they heard came from somewhere else, or that it was only the girl constantly trilling to herself. At dinner Zema would be admonished for singing at the table. Finally her mother realized it was the girl’s body humming, that Zema was a transmitter picking up, sometimes miles away, their father’s radio broadcasts. It made Parker crazy. “Make her stop!” the ten-year-old insisted.

? ? ?

Over time, Zema’s music did stop. Whatever frequency she broadcast from the beginning of time, knocked off by family drama and personal trauma, occasionally returned in an uncommon moment of terrestrial reconciliation as mysterious to the girl as to anyone else. Now back out on the open road in the middle of the night, in the last desolate miles before the last state line before the Badlands, Parker has finished his burger when he says, “It’s you, isn’t it?”