At first light he roused from a sleep deep as hibernation. He coughed and spat gray phlegm. He lifted his sodden, filthy sweatshirt and saw a patchwork of bruises, his skin mottled and tender as bad fruit. Clear fluid seeped from his nose. A scab crusted over his bottom lip. His fingertips had ballooned, raw and swollen. Dirt and pine needles caked his knees. Sand and soot clogged his ears, and over the birdsong and twigs snapped by eager squirrels, a dull roar that grew and then faded, grew and faded. An engine, revving. Surf lapping a Mexican beach. The part of him that refused to die.
You weren’t lying, he’d say.
I know what the truth is, he’d say.
I love you, he’d say.
Robert Jackson Kelley started for home.