Hi, I’m sorry and it doesn’t matter because I’m gone anyway?
Then there’s a plane from Charlotte to Dallas, a panicked sprint through the terminal that only leads to even more waiting, another flight, and then at last — at last — a bumpy ride on a small plane to Salt Plains, South Dakota and a forty-five minute taxi ride to the Bluff City Motel 6.
I fall asleep hard and don’t dream.Chapter Thirty-FourLeviMy near-silence ends up lasting almost twenty-four hours. It lasts until Monday afternoon, when we’ve hiked from our campsite down to the footbridge that needs mending.
The repairs are simple and quick, especially with the three of us, and once we’re finished, Eli busts out a bag of candy corn and we sit on a flat gray boulder, sharing them.
“What are these made of?” Caleb asks, tossing a handful into his mouth.
“Heroin and MSG,” I suggest, slowly eating another, savoring the texture as I smash it between my teeth.
“They are addictive,” Caleb mutters. “But they’re also kind of gross? But good.”
“Sugar and wax,” says Eli.
“Really?” asks Caleb.
“Yup,” Eli confirms. “There’s also dye and gelatin, but it’s mostly sugar and wax.”
I’m lying on my back, and I hold up one kernel in front of my face, inspecting it.
“That can’t be healthy,” I say. “Wax?”
“Levi, I have bad news,” Eli deadpans. “Candy corn is not, in fact, a health food.”
I eat it.
“The sugar is probably worse than the wax,” Caleb muses.
“Neither one is good,” says Eli.
I pop another one into my mouth, staring up at the leaves above us.
Finally, I’m starting to feel like something deep inside me is unwinding, like a small door is opening. I thought I wanted to be alone but now that they’re here, I’m intensely glad that my brothers came along at the last second.
It’s good to have them along. It’s good to have people who are willing to hike ten miles and fix a bridge and sleep outdoors without ever once asking why they’re doing this.
“June is moving to South Dakota,” I say, still staring up at the sky, the half-bare branches moving across the blue-white expanse. “Probably.”
“Oh, shit,” Eli says.
“Probably?” Caleb says.
I eat another candy corn and really pay attention to it: the sickly-sweet taste, the way the outside crunches under my teeth, the slight grit against my tongue.
“She has a job interview there in a few days,” I say, and my voice sounds detached from me, like I’ve rehearsed this, though I haven’t. “She’s already had a couple interviews with this paper, so the in-person thing is probably just a formality. It’s a good job. An editor position. If she does well for a couple of years she could move on to a major paper.”
I sound reasonable, rational, like I’m not cracking apart.
I eat another candy corn. I watch the sky.
“And you?” Eli finally asks.
“Me? I’m right here,” I say. “Just right the fuck here.”
“Are you all right?” Caleb asks, even though the three of us all know the answer to that question already.
I’m quiet for a long, long time, because I can’t quite get a handle on words. Or, rather, I can’t get a handle on the right ones; now that I’ve broken the silence my head is full of nothing but words, clanging together, charging into one another, blaring and shouting and vying for my attention.
“She didn’t tell me,” I finally say. “I found out from Silas. She didn’t even tell me.”
Slowly, piece by piece, I tell them everything: the phone interview, the week in-between, Silas telling me, me confronting her.
In words, it’s short. It doesn’t sound like much, the sentences themselves nothing like heartbreak: she’s moving away and still hadn’t told me. She has a great opportunity and said nothing to me, and I don’t even know why.
“You could ask her to stay, you know,” Eli says.
“She lied,” I say, grabbing a whole handful of candy corn. “For a week. She lied.”
“Well, she just didn’t tell you something,” he points out.
“That’s still fucked up,” Caleb offers.
“People fuck up,” Eli shrugs.
“I can’t ask her to stay,” I go on. “I can’t ask her to give up on her dreams to stick around nowheresville, Virginia, and just sit back and think about what she could have done with her life.”
“It’s not that bad,” Eli mutters.
“She thinks nothing of me,” I say, leaning my head back, closing my eyes, letting the brightness of the sky settle against my eyelids. “She didn’t even hold me in high enough regard to tell me she was leaving.”
“Are you sure?” Caleb asks.
“Quite,” I say.
“I mean, are you sure that’s why she didn’t tell you?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say.
Caleb reaches out, takes the last candy corn, eats it, stands and crumples the bag.
“We should get back to the campsite,” he says. “I hate cooking in the dark out here.”
“I could use a jacket,” Eli says.