Thomas takes the garbage bag down the road to a green Dumpster and deposits the expendable just-a-pigeon life, and then he comes back and he sits next to me on the ground. We both sit there, arms wrapped around our knees, staring at a roof with one less bird.

“I don’t think God is mean. God just is,” he finally says. “A long time ago I gave up the idea that God was some great puppet master, that one day he decides there needs to be a tornado in Kansas. Things happen, and then there’s God.”

I don’t respond, because what would I say? Real men don’t have feelings over pigeons. I 100 percent don’t know what a “real man” is, but he doesn’t cry over spilled pigeon.

He looks over at me and swats me on the shoulder. “You okay, kiddo?”

“Tired,” I say, rubbing my eyes.

Thomas scoops up a handful of pebbles and shuffles them around in his hand. He sifts a couple of pebbles back onto the ground through the hole between his thumb and his forefinger. “Okay,” he says. “Just checking.” He says it in the way that people talk to damaged goods, and I don’t want to be damaged goods. But obviously I am.

Thomas heads inside, and I’m left sitting on the gravel, pondering bird families. Somewhere out there, a pigeon dad is in mourning for his son. He is wondering what he could have done differently, like tell his kid to stop playing on trailer park roofs. And he wonders: Where do all the bird memories go after death?

And what happens when you die? Do you just stop breathing?

Try to imagine: You are breathing. Then you stop. Breathing.

Forever.

I’M STILL SITTING outside, trying to get a grip, when Laurelei’s old olive Chevy spirals a cloud of dust toward me as it pulls in to the covered spot next to the trailer.

Aisha springs from the passenger seat like a totally different person than she was yesterday. Laurelei waves at me and heads inside, and Aisha jogs over.

“I know, I know. You hate meditation,” she says. “But that was … That was seriously serious. I’m all, like, Zen’d out and shit.”

I recline on the gravel, my elbows scratching against the rocks, which is not at all comfortable. Aisha kneels down the way basketball coaches kneel to check out a hurt player. Elbows on knees. Calves flexed.

“You okay?”

I nod.

“You don’t really look that okay.”

I look up at her and I don’t know what gets communicated, but in about a half a second she’s yanking me to my feet and we’re walking away from the trailer.

We silently stroll the dirt ring of the trailer park, past a trailer that has multicolored toilets in front of it, like some sort of art project gone terribly wrong.

“You wanna talk about it?” she asks.

“It’s stupid. I don’t know what it is,” I say. “It’s just …”

“Yeah,” she says, and I have a feeling she doesn’t have a clue what “it” is. Since I definitely don’t.

I concentrate on kicking up dust as we continue to walk. All the trailers are covered with crazy, tacky stuff that’s hard to categorize. Street signs taken from the side of roads; macramé masks that would make a two-year-old cry; lonely, forlorn lawn ornaments; and other castoffs from the isle of misfit trash. I feel like I belong here.

I keep walking, and finally I begin to think that if I don’t say something, Aisha’s gonna just decide I’m fine, and I’m not fine. Part of me wants that, for her to not know what’s going on in my brain. Another part of me is so fucking tired of people not knowing.

So I just talk. “Do you think, like, pigeons mourn when a family member is shot?”

“You and your birds.” She laughs. I don’t, though, and she stops laughing when she realizes that I’m not.

We stop walking. She looks into my eyes, and I avert them from hers.

“I’m such a loser,” I blurt. “All Thomas did was, like, shoot a pigeon off his roof with a BB gun, and my head got all wacked, and —”

I look down at the dusty road beneath us. I say, “I’m a loser and a freak and an idiot.”

Aisha does the weirdest thing. She puts her hand on my forearm and squeezes. She speaks really softly, which I don’t expect from her. “I feel messed up sometimes too,” she says, looking directly in my eyes.

I can’t quite return the look. “You?” I ask the ground.

“Ugly,” she says. “I feel ugly.”

“You are the least ugly person in the world, and you can trust me on that one.” I am studying a patch of gravel-less dirt. It’s so much easier to talk without eye contact.

“You are the least loser person in the world,” she says, but I just can’t believe those are the same thing. I am definitely more loser than she is ugly.

I know that if I say that, she’ll just tell me again I’m not a loser. And that won’t make even a little bit of difference in my mind, because I know I’m at least something of a loser, or else we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But I don’t say anything. I just continue to feel her hand on my forearm, which now feels good, actually. Not in like a sexual way. Just in the way of something that feels nice.

She lets go, and we stand in the dust, close to each other, like we need to stay close now. I am finally able to look up into her eyes.

“We’re wounded,” she says softly.

A funny idea crosses my mind. Maybe a joke will always cross my mind. I imagine two soldiers in a bunker during a war. There’s a huge explosion and one of them loses his head. It explodes off and lands in his friend’s lap. And the friend looks down at the head, and the head says to him, “We’re wounded.”

But I don’t say that, because it’s the wrong thing and the wrong time.

“I know,” I say.

“I’ll help you, you help me,” she says, and I have to admit I like the way that sounds.

We find a place to sit in the shade, and we just hang for a bit until I feel better. Then we finish our lap of the park and go back to the trailer. Thomas and Laurelei are sitting on the couch where Aisha slept. I pretend I didn’t just have this meltdown about pigeon shooting, and Thomas is cool and acts like I didn’t too. We sit down and shoot the shit for a bit, and then Thomas and Laurelei share this look and she nods to him.

“So we have a little news for you,” Thomas says.

“We were just talking it over and it came back to me,” Laurelei says. “Peter and Lois Clancy in Salt Lake City. Russ went to them after he left us. We knew them way back when from those religious conferences.”

Aisha pulls out her phone like it’s a revolver from a holster. Thomas stops her. “We have all the information you need,” he says. “We just called them. You ready for this? Lois absolutely remembers your grandfather, and she says she’d love to see you.”

“What did she say?” I blurt. “Does she know where he is?”

“She said they lost touch, but she has something of his she wants you to have.”

I look at Aisha, wondering whether she’d even consider a drive to Salt Lake City. “What is it? Can she tell us over the phone?”

“She said it would really mean a lot to her to meet you.”

“But Salt Lake City is like …” And then I stop talking, because it’s embarrassing that I have no real idea of how far away it is. Out West, everything seems super far apart.

Aisha is on her phone. “About eight hours,” she says. “Give or take.”

Thomas nods. “That’s about right.”

I think about our options. We can go back to Billings and be there in a few hours. We won’t solve the mystery of my grandfather, but … Well, that’s it, I guess. Or we can drive to Salt Lake City and meet someone who knew him. Who has something for me. They may have lost touch, but at least it will take us a step closer.