All the same, he said. He squat-walked one step forward and from there reached and pressed two fingers into the flesh of the boy’s throat.

His heart’s going like crazy, he said. After his hand was back out of view it occurred to her that he wore a gold ring. He’s just traumatized, said the married man. Help me get him into the truck.

No, she blurted, don’t touch him.

Okay, he said, okay.

His neck could be injured. She turned to him. Do you have a blanket or something?

A blanket?

Something we can cover him with? In case of shock?

Shock? It seemed a new word to him. He didn’t move. Th en he said: I’ll go look.

When he was gone she tightened her grip on the boy’s shoulder and pressed her free thumb to the keypad again. Come on, God damn you. She shook the thing. She held it at arm’s length in every direction. She raised it high over her head.

Go, said the boy.

What? Sean, what did you say?

A door slammed and the man’s boots came gritting back toward her. How had she not heard that, his boots in the dirt, earlier? He carried a thick square of cloth, military in color, and when he snapped it from its folds it released a rich kind of animal smell. He floated it down and got into his monkey-squat again to help her tuck it around the boy.

Wait. She peeled back the blanket and reached into the pack again and found the boy’s phone and brought it out and pressed it into his palm. Th e fingers closed slowly around it like a dying spider. Sean? she said. Nothing. His eyelids were shut but not at rest, the delicate skin busy with minute twitchings. As if he were a small boy again and she were watching him, waiting for him to talk in his sleep (so she could tell them at breakfast, them trying not to laugh and the boy burning red).

Th e man stood behind her, a little to the left, and after a moment Caitlin pushed up from the dirt and began to brush fine pebbles and grit from her knees. She continued brushing after there was nothing but the red impressions in

her skin.

Okay, said the man. We best get going.

She turned to him. She was a tall girl, five eight, most of it legs, and in his boots he stood no taller.

I’ll drive you on down to where your phone works, he said. Drive you to your folks, if you want. Or the sheriff. Whatever you want.

And what? she said. Leave him?

He’ll be all right here. Nothing will touch him. Th e man hung his hands on his belt by the thumbs and gave her a kind of smile. Don’t be afraid, he said, and until that moment she hadn’t been.

I’m not afraid, she said. It just doesn’t make sense. You can drive down until you get reception. Call 911, tell them where we are.

He stood looking at her with the yellow lenses. Maybe you misunderstood me, he said. I’m offering to take you down where you can make a phone call. Heck, I’ll drop you in front of the sheriff’s office if that’s what you want. But if you send me down there alone, well. Th at’s likely to be the end of it, far as I’m concerned.

Her face, she believed, was a perfect blank. She stopped herself from lifting her phone again. When she spoke, her words sounded to her like stones dropped into sand.

What’s that supposed to mean?

It’s supposed to mean that I hit this kid with my vehicle and I may not feel like getting sued by his daddy.

She crossed her arms and uncrossed them.

You’d really be in trouble then. If you left, she said.

No, he said. I’d just be more careful.

I’ve seen you. I’ve seen your car.

Miss, do you have any idea where you are?

She stared into the yellow lenses. What kind of a woman was waiting for this man? Slept in his bed?

Fine, go. Go down the mountain and go to hell you white piece of shit, we don’t need you.

Please, she said aloud. Please.

Th e man sighed. Look, he said. Here’s the situation. Stay here with little brother and roll the dice on me making a phone call, and maybe he goes into shock and dies in front of your eyes, okay? Or, after I’m gone, try and run down to where you can make a call yourself. You could ride that bike, but I doubt it, from the looks of it. Or come with me and be down within range in ten minutes. I’ll let you out the second you have a signal, that’s what you want, and the sheriff or daddy can grab you on the way up. Now that’s the deal on the table, miss, you can take it or leave it but you need to decide quicklike. He began patting his

pockets—jeans, khaki shirt—looking for cigarettes or keys or some other misplaced thing. Have yourself a minute to think while I get this vehicle straightened out.

He walked away and she looked up the road and then down the road. Treetops swooning in a high wind. Sunlight spilling bough to bough to reach a random spot on the forest floor. Or not random at all, she thought, but the same boughs, the same spots of floor, day after day, the sun on its fixed course and every bough fixed in its place and nothing random about it but the eyes seeing it from this particular vantage at this particular hour of the day. She saw the face of the Virgin, and the memory of that place—the white aspens, the hard chill of the bench, the smell of chocolate and the sound of his desperate chewing—took hold of her like a memory of girlhood and left her heartsick.

She knelt and touched his shoulder again.

Sean, I have to go. I have to go down where I can get a signal, and then I’ll be right back, with Mom and Dad. With an ambulance. Th en we’ll all go back down together. Okay? All you have to do is lie here and I’ll be right back, I promise.

She began to rise, and stopped. He’d said something.

What? she said. Sean?

Don’t, he said.

Don’t what?

Don’t go.

You want me to stay?

No.

What do you want me to do?

His slack, red face. Nothing in his eyelids but the tremblings of dream.

He said something else, hoarsely, weakly, and she leaned closer. What? she said, nearly as weakly, and held her breath, watching his lips.

13

The old Chevy that his son had left him still had good kick in the mountains, but Grant was content not to pass the logging trucks and other rigs laboring up the steep switchbacks. He lit a cigarette and watched the range rear up around him, the patterned thick walls of pine and more pine and now and then a copse of yellowing aspen like a blight on the green. At the top of the pass was a paved lot, a scenic overlook, a refuge from the harrowing turns—irresistible to a family from the plains who had never seen such country before.

Why do they call it the Continental Divide if it’s not the exact middle of the continent? his son wanted to know. Standing with their backs to the view while a stranger aimed the camera, found the button. Because, said his daughter, this is where the water changes direction. On the eastern side the streams and rivers all flow to the Atlantic. On the western side everything flows to the Pacific.

Looking out, each of them, as if they might see these streams and rivers running obligingly toward their endings.

Grant drove to the far end of town, to the Black Bear, and parked, and made his way to the counter. I am starving, said Sean. How shocking, said Caitlin. A few faces looked up—looked again, then bent to their sandwiches, their soups. Waylon Reese appeared from the kitchen, raising his hand in an automatic wave, but then came forward with his hand held out. He asked Grant how he was and Grant said he couldn’t complain, and Grant asked after Waylon’s family and Waylon looked away at something and said they were fine, they were all just fine.