The Tin Network

“Give me the cash, man.” 

He looks like my brother. 

Golden-blond greasy hair. Pubescent scruff along his jawline. Scared brown eyes and an overbite, raising his hands down the barrel of my handgun. 

I have to focus on the main difference to prevent grief; the kid has a smooth forehead, where Chris had a deep scar. Found a bike, but didn’t have a helmet. 

He showed me where our mother hid this handgun, held in unsure hands. 

I hate this bullshit. 

Pulling over cars is easier, because sometimes they crash and they’re already dead. 

They can’t look at me with my brother’s eyes and not fucking listen. 

Just like a crashed car, my life has been easier since my siblings have been gone. 

I know this isn’t him, and there’s nothing left to care about. 

Even the cooling corpses wrapped into their vehicles like the ribbons of sugar in a cinnamon roll don’t strike me like they should. Dry and flat and hollow. Blood and a last breath I sit in my driver’s seat to wait out. I never want to hear them scream. 

Not because it will make me feel guilty. I hate the look in their eyes when I don’t. The shrill breaking of their voices overwhelms me.

Dead, dead, dead. I don’t even know them. There’s no one left I know.

The cashier is very much alive, swallowing his dry tongue behind the counter. Just his face is enough for me connecting, and begging on the inside that he doesn’t make me shoot him.

He hesitates. 

“Do it!” I snap, “They don’t pay you enough to get shot.”

I’m trying not to sound anxious and inexperienced, both of which I am. 

If I get cash here, I can spend it at the next open shop I come to, outside of the city. I need food, gas, and water. 

I’ve been circling Chicago like a Vulture, trashpicking dead cars and empty houses. Anything, anything, anything to keep it all out of my head.

Is it even grief? I knew this was coming years off. Saw it like a mile sign out in the empty prairie. They died, and they died, and he followed. If there was a way to spare him, I failed that.

It’s been a shock, leaving quiet, self-sustained Leland to come west. Miles of dead land, abandoned as funding dried up. 

Now the economy is senseless. Cash thrown around by the hundreds for things that used to be double digits until anywhere without rail died out. 

For this store in particular, that means half empty shelves of candy, locked behind a pane of plexiglass. Twenty five dollars for a bar of chocolate, and ten more than that for a pint of engine oil.

Most of my supplies I’ve taken off the roads, out of the dead husks of other people’s lives, but you can’t get everything that way.

There’s someone else in the store with us, a realization that comes with a pounding heart. He approaches behind me, but I don’t lower my weapon from the cashier.

It’s a man in nice clothes, salt and pepper hair combed sleek atop his head. He has a soda from the back of the store in his hands, and he freezes with a jump when he sees us.

I don’t get the chance to say anything to him, the moment too embossed with panic and light. 

The old man looks over the scene: gun, my face, then the cashier’s. 

He crosses between us, right in front of my weapon, to grab a dusty bag of ten-dollar potato chips from a display beside the register.

The cashier’s hands stay in the air, trembling. Mine are shaking by now, too. 

Someone else being here wasn’t part of the plan, as far outside the city as we are. 

This late at night?

He turns blue eyes to me, a spark of amusement and gall pointed my way.

I don’t have time to flinch. He reaches for my weapon, but he doesn’t take it. 

Instead he shifts the angle of my hands, pulling the second one farther over the steel. He pats them once, ducks below my arms, and grabs a six-pack of sodas off a display as he leaves without paying. 

Damn.

That looks a lot easier than what I’ve been doing.

I meet eyes with the boy behind the counter just once more, still paralyzed by my threats. 

Then, I follow the old man, hoisting myself waist-deep over the counter for a pint of 5w-40, and whatever snacks fit under my arm on my way out the door.

“Hey!” 

He stops but doesn’t startle, approaching the driver’s side door of a beautiful antique car in butter yellow. When he reaches into the pocket of his suit pants, I catch the flash of a firearm of his own, holstered under the belt in his slacks.

I glance at my rusty old Blueberry, parked haphazard at the corner of the store. 

It was a rush, trying to convince myself to do it. It’s not my first time sticking someone up, but it’s close enough I’m still buzzing with adrenaline. 

What are you out here for, Jo? What do you want to say to him?

“Come with me.” I nod at the road, tossing my things through my half-open back window.

I jangle my keys purposefully in his direction as I open the driver’s side and hop in. 

Will that work? Are you expecting it to?

If anything, I’m hoping to hear his voice. Rarely does a voice match a face.

Instead he looks down at himself for a long second, even as I start my engine. 

It’s reckless. 

It’s a taunt, if he’s the type.

I swing around him in the parking lot, meeting his gaze through the glass.

Daring him to do more than he already has, correcting my form on the gun mid-robbery. 

Asking to be followed by a stranger. 

But somehow, it’s the surest choice I’ve made since leaving home. He’s got something going behind the eyes that I want a part of. A conversation with.

And, I leave the choice to him. He’s by his driver’s seat when I rev onto the road away from town.

A tense second. A bated breath. 

His headlights come to the edge of the parking lot, and turn to follow me into the dark. 

“Hah!” 

It’s giddy, bubbling carbonated up my throat. 

Who is he? Do I get to know? Am I threatened by his presence, and if so, why doesn’t it feel like it?

To test him, I drive for an hour.

Every chance he gets to turn, I watch the rearview to see if he will. 

And when the road gets congested enough with junk and dead cars that I’d have to get out and clear shit anyway- I pull into a weed-eaten driveway and turn off my ignition. 

Lights out. 

Pure black, and the stars. I take up my heavy-handled flashlight and exit onto the gravel. 

“I’m Harrison,” the man says, holding out a hand. 

He has a flashlight, too, smaller and less threatening than mine. His voice is low. Resonant. It carries without trying, echoing off the shabby walls in front of us and overgrown yard.

Now that I’m face to face with the enigma who I invited, I balk. 

What the fuck are you doing?

“Josie,” I respond. I meet his warm hand in a shake, surprised by how toughened they feel.

His appearance led me to think he’d be soft- but he’s armed and weathered. Hands and face. 

He looks up at the sky and spins in place. No man-made lights for miles. 

God, we’re alone. 

And I have to face the choice the scared Jo in the parking lot made. 

I think she just- didn’t want to be alone. 

“I don’t expect you have camping gear?” I ask.

He laughs. “I have more kit back home.” 

He looks where we came from, hands on his hips in my LED glow.

Why did he come?

I feel like asking would make him change his mind. 

“We can trashpick this place,” I say, “Probably find a bit. I have some food, and cooking pans, but-” I’m not sure I want to share. 

I grab my empty backpack off the passenger side floor and hoist the strap over a shoulder.

He laughs nervously, and it makes me more comfortable. “Are we breaking in?” 

I shrug. “We can ask the owners.” It’s nice to feel more confident than someone so much older than me.

A truck is still parked in the driveway, and I approach to knock on the clouded window. “Hello?”

Without stopping, I duck in under the broken garage door. 

Am I being a little cocky? Is it making up for being corrected?

It’s dusty inside, and I sneeze, an undignified squeak in the silence. 

Harrison’s feet shuffle against the concrete, following. I feel more safe by the minute as he continues to behave. 

We’re both armed, something I know isn’t lost on him either. We stand on either side of a chess board.

I fan my light over the empty interior of the garage, bare besides a stack of old tires and some gardening tools hanging on the walls. 

They were either neat, or had time leaving. 

Or this place has been picked already. 

I won’t mind sharing if I have to, but I’m low on food. The snacks are a sugar rush on an empty stomach- only fuel for these adrenaline-lined minutes we trawl the house.

And now I don’t have the cash to get more. Whatever the half-empty stores would have. It’s a gamble, unless you’re right in the heart of where people are. And I’ve been avoiding all that.

The door into the house is locked. 

I hit it with my shoulder once like a dumbass, but it’s at least part steel.

Harrison, on the other hand, kicks the welcome mat, and a loose key below it goes sliding across the floor, ringing like a bell. 

Hah. 

Maybe I can learn something from someone who lived normal. My mother was far too paranoid to keep our keys anywhere but the lanyard around her neck. 

“So,” I say, entering an untouched house. Their shoes sit below a hall table like they never planned on leaving. “Was I holding it wrong?” 

Harrison laughs between his lips, but it’s far from condescending. “I’m sure you’ve shot it.” 

That’s true. “Yeah.” 

“The kick is easier with more support,” he says, “And not that it mattered in the store, but your aim’s better that way.” 

Huh. “How much shooting do you do?” Who is he?

“None at people,” he says, “I don’t point a gun at someone I don’t want to kill.” 

That feels like looking down on me. “What of it?” 

Turning right, and opening a hall door to a bathroom, he shrugs. 

“Nothing, really,” he says, “But that kid just wanted to live.” 

Sure enough. “So do I.” 

He looks over his shoulder into the glare of my light. “So take the food.” 

What is this, some kind of lesson?

I push past him and crouch to check the cabinet below the sink. Three rolls of toilet paper, wet wipes that aren’t wet anymore. Cleaning fluids with a crust at their feet, corroding through their bottles. On the counter there’s bar soap and a washcloth, dried into shape and stiff.

I only take the toilet paper.

Harrison has moved on to the kitchen. 

He picks canned goods off the floor. 

A whole cabinet has peeled off the wall, taking the wallpaper with it in a long torn strip. Underneath, there’s water damage, a blooming set of organic rings, peppered with black and gray mold.

Everything inside the cabinet now lives all over the floor.

“Leave the dented ones,” I say, tossing one aside myself. 

I learned that lesson the hard way, having to abandon camp one night for the smell of spoiled raviolis. 

What a relief, though. 

‘Take the food.’

I watch him while he’s busy. Focused eyes and messier hair than before. He looks over cans for their dates and reaches up to stack them on the counter. 

He looks up, cocking a brow when he catches me watching him. 

Is this a weekend trip? 

Seeing what it’s like to run off trash and dust and a billion stars. 

Fixing my gun like I need some kind of authority- and then not acting like one once he gets the chance.

How were three words enough to get him to leave whatever he’s dressed so nice for? 

When I look away, he keeps watching me, piling food in the bottom of my bag. 

Some might very well have gone bad. Certain things I don’t trust by default, dents and puffing up.

There’s absolutely mice in here. Below the mold, I can smell it. 

The stuffing from the couch is pulled out in tufts. The front window to the living room was boarded up by someone, broken glass cleared away but not replaced. 

An odd state for a house to be in. More questions than we’ll be able to answer.

The bedrooms are cleared. 

My best guess is they stuck around post-ascension as long as they could, then loaded up and left. 

Maybe they were lucky and had multiple vehicles, that they could leave the pickup in the driveway. 

They have a good taste in curtains, thick and luscious with a thinner white one underneath. It probably looked like a gas station magazine back in the day, the free ones with local interviews. ‘Here’s how I style my living room, my husband is a firefighter, my kids are top of their class.’ 

Now where are they? 

Not here, with all their things. 

Clothes are gone. Some bedding. Picture frames and walls emptied of anything personal, like a cicada leaves its skin. 

One room is untouched, looking like a nice motel. 

“I bet,” Harrison says, startling me. I’m so used to nothing and no one having opinions on what I’m finding. “They were in a hurry.” 

Likely. 

Yesterday, I drove through a town wiped clean by weather. Houses were toothpicks sticking out of the ground, timber ribbons threading the road for miles. 

Annoying now. Devastating at one point. 

That and the fires finished off everyone who was still sticking around. 

“Not too much of one,” I say, “They emptied this room.” 

Just one room, cleared of furniture and items. Shadows on the wall where pictures used to hang, long enough the paint aged around them. 

“Mm,” says Harrison, “I know what happened.” 

So sure. 

He’s got some other insight that likely should be natural for me. 

I may have been raised in a house, in a town, but I was never part of them. The world spun on the axis of me, colors and age and learning things around me, while I’m tucked unseen, doomed to watch. 

So much I miss. Right over my head. 

The feeling is nothing new.

I step into the empty room, echoes of my feet and the house creaking around me. Wood floor settling with every step. “Tell me.”

“Whoever this was,” he points at the cleared floor, “Lost everyone else first.” 

Oh. 

Shit. 

I think he’s right. 

And beyond that, it hurts.

It’s the softness in his voice that sells it. Brings me back sharing a ground where people care.

Back in Leland, my house is gone. Toothpicks like the ones yesterday, but blackened charcoal and melting plastic. No one can walk through my family’s empty bedrooms and wonder why only my things were removed. 

I clear my throat in the empty. “I’m hungry. Are you?” 

He nods. “Sure.” 

He steps out of the doorway to let me pass. 

I don’t spend much time talking to people, and even before leaving that wasn’t my strength. It’s odd how much the mind hungers for it, like it was water. 

Having help building the fire is nice, too. And quiet talk without heavy meaning. 

Don’t have to know each other for this part. Takes the pressure off. 

“Over here,” and “Thank you,” and other regular-people things I don’t think I ever had good example of. 

Even my siblings learned off of me. None of us ever made easy work talking to outsiders.

And the guys I met up with made it very clear what they wanted. No one wanted to know the whore of Leland, Michigan; they wanted drive-through with a good attitude. Fries in the bag and I won’t tell your wife. Thanks for stopping by!

Is that part of why this man is here? What does he want? 

I have no experience with people who don’t already assume my reputation. 

He knows how to build a fire. He drags fuel from the yard, asking only the light of my flashlight. He piles his logs into an organized pile, rather than the haphazard tossing I usually do.

The flames lick dry rot off timbers and Harrison and I sit side by side on cinderblocks. There are still a billion stars, even brighter now our eyes are used to them.

I hoist my cooking pot onto the flames, our new cans in the bag at my side. 

When it’s hot, I slice corned beef against my thumb and drop it in with a rising sizzle.

“What are we having?” he asks. He’s looking through his own goods, until he’s looking at me, waiting for an answer. 

“Not sure,” I say, “Corned beef, until it’s crispy. I’ll pull it out and make vegetables in the drippings.” 

He holds up a can of baked beans. “My contribution.” 

That sounds delicious. Plenty of protein, grease and sugars. Excellent fuel to restock my spent adrenaline.

I flip the meat with a fork.

“You been doing this by yourself?” he asks. 

That’s a frightening question. If I wasn’t already isolated with him, I’d worry he was trying to get me alone.

“Yeah,” I say. 

It’s only after he sits farther back on his brick I realize he probably wanted more from me. 

More of an answer. More talk. 

I feel stupid for this bit, not knowing how to talk to someone specific yet. Like the pan heating in the fire, for a while everything sticks and needs scraping.

“How old are you?” he asks.

I scoff on the inside, but pin it between a few of the layers on its way to my face. “How old are you?” 

He hums, part laugh, planting his hands on his knees. “Fifty-three.” 

Eye for an eye. “Nineteen.” 

His face is hot in the fire, red on his nose, cheeks, and forehead. He’s aged, but not horribly. More smile lines than frown. 

He reaches for the duffel at his side, and I catch the glint of a long muzzle. Some kind of rifle tucked inside the canvas. 

Who the fuck is he? Why did he have guns with him already? 

He catches me staring. 

“I was out shooting,” he says, “My Friday night ritual.” 

Huh. 

His correction of my form was experienced, not that I was doubting that. A dumbass is clearly a dumbass, especially when they’re showing off. 

Harrison was either concerned or disappointed. I’m more likely to assume the negative because I have more experience with it, but I want to give him the benefit of his demeanor so far.

He clears his throat. “If we get up early, we can hunt.” 

Sometimes, on the edge of where I’m driving, I catch sight of massive herds of deer in the wilds and people’s backyards. I thought about- and tried- to shoot them more than once, but always just managed to chase them all off.

So quick to group us together. Using ‘we,’ like ‘we’ aren’t strangers. 

He finds what he’s looking for, in a side pocket. A small opaque bag that can really only be one thing.

Now I do scoff. So much for knowing what type of person he is. “Don’t use in front of me, man.” 

He’s taken aback, I think. The look on his face is- sadder? More serious?

“Is weed ok?” he asks. 

Oh. 

Lucky for him, I don’t have much experience with stoners, good or bad. 

“Sure,” I say, “But if it smells like tobacco, blow it away from me.” 

“Alright.” 

He pulls out a joint and leans forward to light it directly in the flame of our dinner fire. The smell is so unlike tobacco, I feel stupid for saying anything. 

“That’s not so bad,” I say. 

“No?” he says. 

“Nah,” I say, “Cigs cling. That smells greener.” 

He laughs. “Well, it is green, I’ll give you that.” 

I like his laugh. From the chest, rich and genuine. Smoke comes out in puffs off his tongue. 

He’s got a square brow, and pierced ears. His jaw is heavy, and his forehead is strong. His blue eyes are sharp and knowing, looking up at me between jabbing the fire with a stick. He moves deliberately, paying attention to how he affects the fire.

What scares me in men? 

First, the careless. When you can tell they’re reckless with your life and theirs. Driving drunk, or playing with fire. Harrison’s strokes are intentional, keeping the flame tidy. 

But that’s not enough. This fire benefits him, too. 

And there’s the next one. I’m scared of what they want from me. The benefits.

From the pile of goods in the back of Blueberry, I grab paper towels and my enameled camping dishes. As the meat cooks, I turn it out onto a plate, with paper down to catch the grease.

“Good tinder,” I say of the paper. 

Last night’s dinner usually starts tonight’s fire, the grease slowing down the flame and dripping onto fuel below it.

“Mm,” he says, with a nod. 

It’s a sign, when a guy isn’t willing to learn anything from me. When they stomp over it with something of their own to save face. Nothing about Harrison has felt that way, like he sees me as less than him. Even in the store, interrupting my amateur heist with his ‘grab the fucking food’ philosophy.

And as for what this man wants from me- I’ll keep asking myself to avoid having to ask him.

“I’m guessing you never smoked before,” he says. 

“Not weed,” I say, “But if you’ve got drink in there, I’ll be interested.” 

He smiles to himself. “You think that’s better?” 

Maybe? “Why?” 

“Alcohol can kill you,” he says, “No amount of weed can, unless it makes you do something stupid.” 

That’s the danger I expect would come of weed. It’s more than half the danger of alcohol, too.

But he pulls out a little silver flask and offers it between us. 

“Thank you,” I say. 

I have a few old bottles of one kind or another in the trunk, myself. 

Mainly, I asked as a way to turn his offer down to smoke.

But I take it from him and swig it back. 

Liquor, something smoky. I don’t know enough to tell what it is, but it bites all the way down.

Him not pushing it about smoking is convincing. 

Leaving it in the air, and offering what I asked for. 

This stranger finds silent boundaries and treats them like they’re spoken. 

But that’s at the cost of watchful eyes. 

I catch him looking about as often as he catches me. 

Men don’t have as much reason to be watchful. If you’re raised a woman, it’s natural. 

Out here where you’ve got to protect yourself, watchful means staying alive. I wouldn’t have the patience for cluelessness, if he was stumbling and dumb.

He hits his smoke again, the end glowing red over the shine of sweat on his face. He sighs like it’s a relief. Like he’s relaxed. 

I wish I could be.

“What you dressed up for?” I ask. Not exactly shooting attire. 

“From,” he says, “And, work. My job is on this side of the city, so I don’t bother going home to change.” 

Hm. “What happens Monday?” 

Instead of the clarifying questions I expect, he understands right away. “You make this work, right?” 

I nod. 

“I can too.”

Which doesn’t answer my question, really, but what does it matter? 

If I’m back where I started come Monday, having a guest out here is still a hell of a story.

A story I have no one to tell. But that’s besides the point.

The meat’s out of the pan, and he cracks the can into it with a sizzle that silences itself. 

“You want to try?” He offers the smoke, glowing slightly and adding tendrils to our fire.

It’s reckless, trying new substances under the circumstances. Bad shit has happened to me for less.

But so far tonight, reckless is serving me well. 

Conversation, and company, and pleasant dinner. 

A drink under the stars, and him smoking- which hasn’t really changed his behavior. 

Not in the way most drugs I’ve seen do. 

He’s unwinding. He unbuttons more of his shirt and fans cool air into the gap. It’s not like my mother ever was, itching and twitching for the next high. And it’s not like an alcoholic, changing face under the influence.

“I think so,” I say. 

“You think so,” he says, “What’s holding back a pure yes?” 

Now I know he wants real talk. And somehow, it’s easy to offer it to him. “Grew up under an addict. I’m wary to try anything.” 

He nods. “I think that’s wise. You don’t know me.” 

Sure enough. “But you’re smoking it. And it’s not doing you any harm.” 

He takes the drink back from me and has a little of that, too, before tucking it away. “I have a high tolerance.” 

Fair enough. “What’ll it do to me, then?” 

He holds it out between two fingers, looking at it in the light. “You’ll get tired, most likely. But not where it’s unbearable. This strain is kind of happy, and dopey. You’ll think anything’s funny.” 

Like staying up too late with someone I actually like talking to. Like being out all night with my brother.

I miss Chris more presently than I miss my other siblings. They were always- kids. Kids him and I had to take care of. Chris and I were allies in that, had each others backs. 

Until one low depressive night, he tried the drug. I already lost him then, even if it took a year or two.

I reach out, and the smoke passes from his fingers to mine, pinched between my thumb and index finger. 

“Pull gently,” he says, “Inhale with some fresh air still coming in to help cool it down.” 

I’m not quite sure what he means by that. 

I hit it like my mother’s cigarettes, but the taste’s like having a piece of gravel under my tongue. Earthy and dirty, as opposed to the bitter yellow of nicotine.

The first few seconds it coats my lungs are bearable, but it gets hot the longer I inhale.

“No need to hold it,” he says, “It’ll be enough on its own.” 

I hand it back to him just a moment before I cough out smoke. 

“Hell of a hit,” he says. It’s congratulatory, welcoming me to the inside of something.

As I keep coughing, working through the burning in my throat, he takes the liberty of patting me firmly on the back. “There you go.” 

I only just made the choice, but already it feels like the right one. The overthinking my brain is used to is lining up into three clear rows instead, the rest falling off before I have the chance to worry about them. 

The aches in my bones are hidden behind a wax-paper film, distributed among the rest of my sensations, and my water out of the bottle tastes fantastic.

Harrison has a cola from the robbery. He cracks it open and adds some of the flask. 

“There,” he says, “Rum and coke.” 

So it’s rum. 

My camping cup is with the plate beside me, and he points. 

I hold out the metal and he fills it. 

“What-” I say, realizing the guardrails are down between the words and I, “do you want out of this?” 

He looks like he’s wondering why I didn’t ask sooner. “It’s less to do with you- and more wanting out. Not often someone holds out a hand like that.” 

I can’t imagine making that kind of choice. Whatever he had going, it had to be better than this, right? 

Does that mean I don’t believe him? Not quite. 

I think he believes it, and that’s enough. 

My mind swims, every thought taking longer to sort. 

He pulls the beans out of the fire and my stomach aches for them. 

In a second, we’re devouring our food. 

I’m teleporting between moments. 

When I’m eating, that’s all there is; grease and the sweet tang of brown sugar. The predictable texture of smashing beans with my tongue, interrupted by the crunch and salt of the beef. 

Heightened and luxe, as if we spent cash on a restaurant dinner.

Then, I look up at the fire, and that’s all there is. Crackle of flame, dissolving its fuel chunk by chunk, sometimes collapsing like melting ice. The whole thing is getting smaller until Harrison adds another chunk he dragged over earlier. Then, it bursts into light again, crawling over the untouched surface.

A new picture, looking over at the stranger’s face while he’s eating. He scrapes the plate clean with his spoon, clearing out the last bite. Shine of firelight in his graying hair, flicker of flame reflected in his eyes. 

How much time has passed? Either an hour or a minute.

With the smoke, feelings are more whole, sliding over me like lenses and coloring the night. Deeply, I hope I learn to trust Harrison. That he doesn’t do something stupid to make me regret him being here. 

I’ve been fine, alone. 

But it feels like all my nights before have been double as hard.

  Breaking in was more fun showing him, and having dinner is filling more than physically. My mind is quiet, and I don’t want it to go back to its lonely circles. Even without really talking, just having someone next to me makes a difference. 

Harrison savors dinner with a deep breath and a swig of the bubbling carbonation. 

It reminds me of what he poured me. A soft hiss, and cold in my hand. Condensation that dribbles on my thigh with a shiver and goosebumps. Is it colder out here all of a sudden? 

Still, I swallow it back. The carbonation spices up the warmth of the alcohol. It’s wonderfully refreshing, cutting through the haze of grease stuck on my tongue.

I’ve gone silent, but it’s not uncomfortable. He’s silent, too. 

Getting up to get my jacket, I brace for some passing comment. ‘You look high,’ or ‘where you going?’ 

Anything would intrude, it doesn’t matter what, but- he doesn’t. 

He gets up himself and starts breaking branches over his knee by the back wheel of his car. 

Every glance somewhere is a whole scene, painted landscapes that fucking move. A world of the grasses at the edge of the driveway, golden light and black, waving and shushing against each other.

Another life, my Blueberry. Dents and rust, shotgun spray. Unmoving to the wind, strong and cold and flaring our flame. Sand gathers in the cracks of the asphalt, and sidewinds in visible curves as the air carries it past us, glittering like a snowscape.

I remember my jacket, with that wind. The reason I got up. 

The plant has stolen my thoughts. 

Replaced them with florals. Poetry, instead of brutalist spirals of rust and paranoia.

How beautiful not to worry about it. 

How wonderful to brace against the wind.

In the inside pocket of my jacket, I find my sketchbook, still open to my page from earlier. 

I was drawing streetlights, waiting for it to get dark. Trying to convince myself it’s time to hold up another store. Making mental lists of reasons to do it. Food, fuel, oil. One of the three I still need.

I’m glad to be on this end of it, either way. Tomorrow is tomorrow’s problem.

Finding the unfinished food on my plate is a eureka discovery. I thought for sure, with the experience from the first few bites and everything that happened in between, I must have already finished it. Even cooled, it’s still fantastic.

Harrison loads broken branches into the fire. He breaks some off a landscaping tree in front yard, dried out in the time since it had been properly cared for.

“Hm!” He says under his breath, “What the fuck am I doing?” 

That he’s questioning too is a comfort. 

Our choices led us here by happenstance. Those choices are due questioning.

But, they’re fading out with the knots in my shoulders. I empty my plate gladly and don’t feel the compulsion to watch the man next to me. 

“How’s the high?” he asks. 

Delicious. “Real nice.” 

“Good.” 

If he tries to touch me, I will fight back.

Even liking him- I don’t want to so easily fall back into who I used to be.

The only issue is the hunger. I want someone touch me, that much has been clear. Restless nights in the hot cabin of the car, fogging up the windows on my own and getting nowhere.

“You do much camping?” I ask. The words are slow and stupid on my tongue. 

“Some,” he says. “Anything to break up my weeks.” 

Is it just boredom, putting him here?

It’s like he reads my mind, answering questions I didn’t find the words to ask yet.

For the first time in a long fucking time, I feel conscious again. 

And I feel like he is. 

I’m not some interruption to his routine, dirt in the cog of a machine no part truly understands. 

We’re both looking up at the size of it, and knowing we’re on the very bottom.

“I was on the edge of- who knows what.” He strokes his brow with both hands, blocking out the heat of the fire. He breathes steady, his hands and the skin of his face shushing against each other dryly.

With the size of the gun in his bag, I don’t doubt him. “On the edge of camping, I guess.” 

He laughs, and takes up his bottled drink. 

“To camping,” he says, clacking it against mine.

“To camping,” I respond, glad to have a reason to swallow down the last.

I pull out my sketchbook again, and Harrison asks if I have water. I direct him to my trunk, and only worry about snooping after he’s already brought the gallon back. 

Too busy, drawing the fire. My dishes, and Harrison’s bag in the shadowlight. Flickering flame makes it easy to leave the drawing messy, to reflect how it actually looks.

He watches me awhile, but doesn’t say anything. 

I’m lulled into complacency and I know it.

He’s right this would make me sleepy. And with food and drink on top, I’m practically nodding off. 

“Do you want to hunt?” he asks, “We should turn in early.” 

“Yeah,” I say. He stays where he is as I shuffle to my feet. Stretching my arms above my head, my jacket rides up and flashes the gun that hasn’t left my side. “Knock on my window to wake me.”

Part deliberate, showing off the gun. But part, I forgot it was pressed to my sweaty skin, with the drug behind my eyes. It’s body temperature, now, and I pull it free to slip it into my jacket instead, leaving behind gun-shaped lines in my hip skin.

Harrison doesn’t move an inch. Just pokes at the fire with that stick, shoving coals below ashes.

I lock in. All my doors, with the key in the ignition. 

He’s parked behind me, but I left a gap ahead for escape if I need it.

I worry it’s my mother’s paranoia, rubbing off. He’s done nothing to prove this much protection is necessary, my handgun loaded on the floor by my back seat nest. 

But, unless I drank enough to forget the need, I would be doing most of this anyway. If I’m paranoid, its consistent. Growing up, it was safe enough most people left their doors unlocked, and I worry sometimes I don’t do enough. 

I might be left vulnerable, exposing some unknown weak spot if I cast off all my mother’s erratic beliefs at once.

Tonight I sleep wary. Tossing and turning.

Part for him, sure. A stranger parked behind me, sleeping on his seats.

And part because I rarely sleep. My head will ache either way.

I’m in and out of sleep until the dark before dawn. Harrison wakes me on accident, clattering something together by a new fire.