Burn(21)

“Yes, ‘Malcolm McCormack’”—saying the name in a way that clearly didn’t quite believe it—“I have a truck.”

Nelson nodded past his tent and, sure enough, a truck sat parked, not in the campground’s lot but in some trees on the other side, as if he had hidden it.

Here was a tantalizing possibility. Rides were a last resort, but it was day three and he was behind. There were only fourteen days to go. What if the snow slowed him down more? What if the men who shot him had colleagues who were still searching? What if—?

“You a Believer?” Nelson asked, nodding at Malcolm’s exposed wrist.

Malcolm pulled down the sleeve to cover the tattoos.

“It’s okay,” Nelson said. “Everyone says you people are crazy, but I’m not prejudiced.” He exhaled smoke through his nose. “As long as no one gets hurt, what people do is their own business.” He looked into Malcolm’s eyes again. “You get me?”

“Maybe I do,” Malcolm, who didn’t, said.

Nelson flicked the end of his cigarette into the campfire and got up for a stretch. “Were you thrown out?” he asked, not looking at him. “By your parents, I mean.”

“I never knew my parents,” Malcolm said. “The Believers took me in as an orphan.”

“Someone there must have been your parent. Canada doesn’t let churches adopt whole people.” Nelson sat back down next to him, a little closer this time. Malcolm didn’t mind. It increased the warmth. “Kind of stops slavery, I think.”

Malcolm thought of the Mitera Thea. “There was a woman who took me in.”

“So she’s your parent. Even if the ones you’re related to are dead, you still got a mother.”

“Yes.”

Nelson was silent. It took Malcolm a second to realize what he was supposed to say next. “Were you thrown out?”

Nelson nodded. “By my own mother, too. The one who gave birth to me.”

“Why?”

Nelson stayed silent but met Malcolm’s eyes again. Nelson’s were brown, but light and striking. His skin was darker than Malcolm’s and a lock of black hair stuck out from beneath the woolly cap. Malcolm had a strange moment of wanting to brush it back under the wool, had his hand halfway up, in fact, before stopping himself, mainly because Nelson hadn’t moved.

In an instant, Malcolm grasped it, all of it: He’d been told about this, that it might happen to a young man traveling alone.

He’d been instructed what to do.

To his surprise, Malcolm found himself wondering if those instructions might be put off another moment or two.

“It’s snowing harder.”

“I can see that, Agent Woolf.”

“He’ll be looking for shelter.”

“He wasn’t looking for shelter at the last three places.”

“My point is that he may have been driven into one of the next two by the weather.”

It was starting to annoy him how often she was right. “So do you still believe?” he asked her, as they drove through the thickening snow.

“I’m no longer a Believer, Agent Dernovich,” she said, and for the first time, he heard a little annoyance in her voice. At last, he thought.

“Yes,” he said, “but that’s different than whether you still believe or not. People leave churches. Doesn’t mean they leave their faith behind.”

In an incredible happening, Agent Woolf laughed. “I think,” she said, a rich, surprising humor in her voice, “you may not really know what Believers believe.”

He bridled. “I’m one of the leading Believer experts in North America, Agent—”

“Yes, but the real truth of it? How much do they believe is literally real versus how much is symbolic?”

He sighed, just to annoy her. “It’s understood that key elements of the faith are allegorical—”

“But you want to know if I literally believe dragons are angelic representatives of an afterlife on earth? If the purpose of a man or a woman is to serve that divine representative and not push them onto reservations? If we were vomited from the stomach of a great dragon Goddess—”

“I just want to know who you pray to,” he said, a little too hard. “If we meet a dragon, do I need to watch my back?”

“You always need to watch your back when you meet a dragon, Agent Dernovich,” she said. “Surely whoever you pray to would agree with that.” She nodded out at the road. “It’s the next turn.”

“That looks messy,” Nelson said, as Malcolm took off his hat. The bandage on his ear was on the point of falling off, and it was time for a new one.

“It’s not so bad,” Malcolm said.

“You want me to do that?” Nelson asked as Malcolm fumbled with the new bandage.

He felt bashful, but said, “Would you? It’s hard when you can’t see.”

Nelson positioned himself in front of Malcolm. He took off a last bit of bandage stuck to Malcolm’s ear, and Malcolm could smell the tobacco on his fingers.

Nelson whistled in admiration at the wound. “What the hell happened to you, Malcolm McCormack?”

Malcolm tried to remember what he’d told the pharmacist, but the closeness of Nelson had made his mind go quite blank. “I fell,” he said, weakly, noticing the faint stubble across Nelson’s chin.