Martin spent the last of their cash on a package of cookies and drinks. The Messenger usually left them enough money for the year, but in the past few months they’d resorted to selling off some equipment and arms to Ebay thugs and pawn shops. That had only lasted so long; the road was expensive, and their cash flow thinned to a trickle. Maybe this was a punishment for losing Tony last year.
Martin could only afford a cheap diet raspberry ice tea. He ran the gamut of other drink options: beverages in Styrofoam cups (so, benzene poisoning), aluminum cans (so, aluminum salts and Alzheimer’s to follow) and plastic bottles (so, bisphenol-A to disrupt your hormones). Some drinks were sugared or chemicaled. Too many were caramel colored, caffeinated, and energized with herbal supplements the FDA still hadn’t bothered investigating. But raspberry tea always gave him butterflies. He never remembered if he liked it or hated it. It sounded good; so he let go his inhibitions. Enjoyed the lingering question. It thrilled him like the early-morning charge of heading out on an unknown road in their ‘79 Ford Quadravan, windows down, cold air deep in his lungs and the whole day before him.
Teresa slept with her cheek smooshed against her shoulder. Only a nomad could sleep so comfortably in that position. The sun winked over the distant hills behind her, the day still buried in piles of shadow beyond another prehistoric gas station tipping over the edge of American stupor.
He gagged suddenly on the drink. “Ick—too sweet.”
Teresa stirred.
He dropped the bottle in the cup holder. “I thought you were the one that didn’t like raspberry.”
“Peach,” she answered.
“Are you feeling better?”
“Chest still hurts. I think I fractured a rib coughing yesterday.”
“Exaggerator.” He tickled just under her triceps.
Her eyes opened, that dangerous blue of open water. “Don’t screw around Martin. I’m not playing.” She shut her eyes again and softened her tone. “Where are we, anyway?”
“Nowhere.”
“There again?”
He spent a moment admiring her. She had hit fifty in August but looked younger—even with the cancer. His thirty-eight year old body had taken as much mental and physical abuse as hers, and yet, glancing in the rearview mirror, he could see the old man gimping to the surface. Sometimes he wondered if this was genetic, if his parents had prematurely aged. He wished he could remember them better. All of his photos were either destroyed or left behind somewhere in the sprawling galaxy of roadside motels.
Eighteen years without seeing another person diminished everything to dry details. He remembered his parents held him at a distance because he was different, then because he reminded them of the other place, and then because they knew he’d leave someday anyway, to do the Messenger’s work. Birthdays were spent in solitude with heaps of unwrapped presents: butterfly knives, smoke grenades, M-80s, and pellet guns. They knew his destiny. His mother would be off Windexing windows and his father would be on duty doing good-guy police stuff, and Martin would always be left alone to think on his future, with no idea what kind of man he’d become, a man worried about the saccharin content of this horrible raspberry swill.
Teresa stared at him now. “Are we going to leave or what?”
“Or what what?”
“The last letter said the Heart of the Harvest would be in San Bernardino County this year, so I think we should head that way before we run things too close.”
“Like last October?”
Teresa said nothing and rested her head again. She’d looked a deal worse than this before. Right after the diagnosis, after the pneumonia, he’d wondered if she would even make it to another autumn.
She had.
She wiggled in her seat and glanced unhappily at the bottle of water he’d brought her. “Did you waste our last three bucks on that? I told you to pick up my Djarums.”
His morning rush vanished and Martin turned the ignition.
“They only had regular cigarettes.”