Just as it’s starting to get dark, the stick falls out of her hand, and she drops. “I told you to be more careful,” I say. “There are stones all over the road, cracks every third step. You all right?” She doesn’t answer. I shake her, try to wake her. She seems dead. I put my head close to her nose, hand on her wrist and then her temple. I hold my breath while I press my ear to her lips, put a finger in my ear and the other ear to her chest, but I still can’t hear her breathe or hear or feel any pulse or heartbeat.
“Then I guess I’ll have to try to make it alone,” I say. Louder: “Alone. I’m going. Leah, I said I’m going, I have to, I can’t carry you and try to make it also. You’re too heavy. Not ‘too heavy,’ meaning overweight. Just that I’ve been weakened by this trip too and can barely make it on my own. We’ve both been weakened. We’ve had little food these last few days, not much to drink. Both of us have walked three times the amount someone our age and particularly in our physical condition would normally be able to walk in the last three days. Monday … Thursday. Four days. This is our fourth day on the road. We’re weak in just about every way, that’s all. You can’t carry me, and I can’t carry you. I might be able to help you up, but that’s about all I can do for you. All right, I’ll not only help you up but help you walk as long as I’m able to. But I can’t carry you, remember that. I just can’t.”
She’s on her back. I lift her up so she’s in a sitting position and keep her up. Her eyes are closed. She still doesn’t seem to be breathing. “Leah, you alive or not? Because we can’t stay here. Night’s just fallen. It’s what I’d call semidark. It’s dusk, that’s the word, but a dark dusk, almost completely dark so almost not dusk. It’s already about five degrees colder than it was a half hour ago. We have to find shelter in the next hour, or we’ll freeze to death. We certainly won’t last the night. Or if we do, we’ll be so weak by morning that neither of us will be able to walk a single step or at least go very far, even on our knees. So try to stand up. All right, I’ll help you all the way up and help you walk, if that’s what you think it’ll take to get you to walk, but also because I said I would. But I won’t carry you—we agreed on that.”
I pull her up by her wrists. I say, “Walk. Walk with me. Or first try to walk on your own. Let’s just see if you can.” I let her go. She starts to fall. I catch her and hold her up. I put my arm around her waist, hold one of her hands, and start to walk. I have to drag her along, but we are now walking. Or moving. Slowly. Moving step by step, but my steps. Five steps already, six. It’s dark. Few stars out. I don’t know where there’ll be shelter ahead. There wasn’t any shelter the last mile or two. I don’t know this area. I might have been over it years ago in a car, but I forget. “There seem to be fewer and fewer trees,” I say to her, “and more and more rocks. But no tree or rock with any shelter underneath and no rock with a space for even one of us to crawl into. What do you make of it? Well, it’s the only way we could come. They say we couldn’t go the other way—or rather shouldn’t. That the other way would even be worse for us. ‘Worse’ meaning less chance to get food, fewer places to rest and find shelter for the night or from the rain. That it’d be colder, rainier, snowier. How it could be rainier than it’s been or snowier or colder, I don’t know. Of course I know. It’s not raining or snowing now, though the ground’s so soaked we could never be able to rest on it for the next couple of days or so or rest without getting wet and sick or just wet, and it could always be colder. If it’s thirty degrees now, it could be twenty degrees in an hour and ten degrees and then zero degrees later on and so forth. I’m saying it could always get colder. Maybe fifty degrees below, sixty, seventy degrees below is the limit, or has been the limit as far as I know, but only for the coldest regions on earth, which this area isn’t one. And snowier. It could snow for days. Could have snowed a couple of inches an hour for days. It didn’t. It just snowed, a moderate snow. Five inches one day, six? Rained a lot, though. I’d say two or three inches a day for the last three days. That’s a lot of rain. Maybe a record of rain in that time period for this area. How did we stand it? We just said, ‘It isn’t raining.’ Or ‘The rain can’t hurt us—our skins are unalterably waterproof.’ Or ‘You say that’s rain? That’s not rain. Those are sun rays coming down on us that only look like rain. So it’s sunny, and we should get out of the sun, or we’ll get a bad burn.’ Foolish, right, but it worked, didn’t it? And now the rain’s stopped. But it is getting colder. So we should do the same thing with the cold that we did with the rain. Call the cold ‘warmth.’ Say, ‘My, but it’s getting warm. Very comfortable. What a welcome change.’ Then when it gets much colder, say, ‘It’s getting too warm. I’d call it hot. We should get out of the heat. It’s beginning to stifle us. It’s at least stifled me. We should remove some of our clothes, in fact.’ Without doing it, of course. In other words, work the reverse. That’s a good self-preserving philosophy for now. Or self-surviving, self-sustaining, but you know what I mean. How you doing, by the way?”
I’ve been dragging her along for the last fifty feet. Her eyes have stayed shut. “Just sleep, Leah. Continue to sleep. It’s all right. You’re just sleepwalking. Sleepwalking is as good as regular awake-walking as long as you’re going at the same pace with the person you’re walking with and using most to all your own energy, as you would when you walk while you’re awake. In ways it might be better than awake-walking, since you’re also probably getting some rest. And you need the rest. I do too, but one of us has to stay awake. For suppose we strayed off the road while both of us were sleepwalking and, instead of going in the right direction, we went back where we came from? Who wants that? I don’t. I’m sure you don’t. So sleep. You’re lucky. But when you wake up, mind if I fall asleep and sleepwalk with you but with you awake and leading the way? Because I can certainly use the sleep. I’m very tired, sleepy, and weak.”
We walk another thirty or so feet. It starts to rain. I set her down on the soaked ground right off the road. I sit beside her, cover her with my body. I lie on top of her. I say, “Let’s just go to sleep. I know it’s not that late, but there’s something about country air that makes me sleepier much earlier than I get in the city. Is it the same way with you? And it’s a nice house. Good thing we found shelter in time. I don’t much like the furniture—the style, I mean, for the furniture itself seems comfortable enough and clean. And the room’s warm, no leaks in the roof where we’d have to run around looking for pots and pans, and enough food here to keep us for a week. Also, the bed’s soft, sheets seem fresh and no more than a few days old, covers seem to be filled with real down. Let’s even try having that baby we said we’d try to have if things got better for us, and then we’ll go to sleep for the night. The weather outlook is very good. Clearing tonight, sunny and warm tomorrow, and the extended forecast calls for continued fair skies and low humidity through the weekend. We can even plant some flowers outside tomorrow and maybe occupy this house free for the next year. I doubt the owners or renters or whoever they are will come back for it that soon. And it’s a decent area, neighborhood seems pleasant and safe, neighbors seem like hardworking honest people, and I hear the shopping’s good, and a car’s been left outside with a tankful of gas in it and the keys on top of the dashboard. And lots of other things we’ve been dreaming of having the last few days. And here they all are, suddenly available to us. Good thing I brought along our credit cards, or rather, that you reminded me to bring them along. So, like to start now? Having a baby I mean. No matter how tired and sleepy I said I was, I always have energy for that. There, what heaven. The good things in life are free. Want to wash up now? You’d rather just go to sleep? Fine with me. I love cuddling up in bed with you. You’re so soft, you smell so nice, I love you more than I’ve loved any one thing. Any one person I mean. Oh, maybe as much as I loved my parents when I was a boy. Whatever, I love you more than I’ve loved any one person since I was a teen. So good night, all right? One last kiss? Now have sweet dreams.”
I get up, walk another hundred feet in the direction we were going, look back, see her lying by the road, run back, lie beside her, put my arms around her, say, “Dearest, you don’t know how good it is to be back. Been away I can’t say how long, but that’s the last time I’ll ever do that. I’ve seen lots of things, met lots of people, but found I can’t live without you, can’t leave without you, can’t live or leave or even love without you, or at least for very long, no matter how many interesting places I go to and people I meet. And since you don’t want to leave here, nothing I can do but stay here with you and call this home. It’s not a bad place, as I said. Better than most places, in fact, when you consider all it offers in just natural surroundings and comforts and that by my staying here the kids will have both parents to dote on them till they’re grown-up. So I’m staying unless you say it’s a better idea that I leave. You don’t want to answer that right now—that’s certainly your right. You want to hold off your decision about my decision to stay here, do so for as long as you like. But believe me, staying here with you and our kids in this home is really the only thing I want to do. Okay, no more yap. Just give me a little hug, because I need one.” And I squeeze her into me, press my cheek to hers, put the side of my lips on the side of hers, and shut my eyes. “Sleep. Boy, do I need to, too. But I said enough already for one night. Sleep tight.”