As Derik Ames guided his car north along Ninth Street, he wondered for the hundredth time if this meeting was a good idea. It would be awkward. But Joe Johnson had swayed him with that last cryptic statement, “Don’t do this for me, do it for Sara,” before hanging up on him. It was enough to get Derik out of his apartment and into his car. His hands were sweaty on the steering wheel, despite the air conditioning and his head was full of wild speculation as he drove across town to Irwin’s seedy south side.
He pulled up in front of a decrepit shotgun house nestled incongruously between a laundry mat with soaped-over windows on one side and a boarded-up brick warehouse on the other, parked his Honda behind a rust-eaten Ford pickup truck, and got out of the car. Immediately the humidity wrapped itself around him like a heavy wet blanket. He glanced around. He saw no other vehicles, and the only other houses on the street were obviously deserted, their windows smashed, their weathered frames covered with graffiti, and weeds growing knee high in their mean little yards. No wonder Sara never wanted to bring him here. Across the street was a derelict junk yard surrounded by a high chain-link fence with a rusty NO TRESPASSING sign, and back the way he had come he could see the Ohio River between some gray and brown buildings. He could smell it too, even from here, a muddy, metallic odor. Everything seemed to have fallen still under the oppressive Indiana summer heat. The scene reminded Derik of one of those spooky Edward Hopper paintings.
From the pocket of his athletic shorts, Derik removed his silver Zippo (a birthday gift from Sara) and a crumpled pack of cigarettes. He shook out the last one, making a mental note to buy another pack on his way home, and lit it. Engraved on the lighter’s face was the Libra glyph which looked to Derik like the setting sun. Or maybe it was the rising sun? Sara was the astrology nut. Either way, he loved it because it was from her.
Dropping the lighter back into his pocket, he remembered the day she presented him with it, saying only half-jokingly, “If you’re going to kill yourself, you might as well do it in style, babe.” He balled up the empty pack and tossed it absently into the gutter with the other accumulated debris.
Derik took a deep drag and exhaled smoke into the blue-white sky. Butterflies—hell, bats—careened about inside his stomach. After a couple more pulls on the cigarette to steady his nerves, he dropped the butt onto the sidewalk at his feet and crushed it under the toe of his Nike. He headed toward the house on shaky legs, watching the windows (one of which had a whirring fan set in it) and getting an absurd, but undeniable, impression that they were watching him right back.
When he’d reached the halfway point between the car and the house, the front screen door swung open with a protesting screech and slammed shut again as a white man traipsed out onto the porch. He wore a Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt, blue jeans, and a greasy white ball cap with a black bill which covered his longish gray hair. Johnson descended the steps and advanced on Derik with an outstretched hand and a grin that flashed like a knife blade. “Derik?” he drawled.
“Uh . . . yes,” Derik said.
“I’m Joe Johnson.”
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Johnson.” Derik reached out, and when Johnson seized his hand, he squeezed it like a vise and held on long enough for Derik to feel uncomfortable before finally letting go. Derik noted the tattoo of the coiled snake above the caption “Don’t tread on me” on his inner forearm.
Johnson waved his hand dismissively. “Call me Joe.”
Derik nodded. “Joe, then.”
Johnson stood there grinning at Derik, saying nothing, and the moment stretched out like warm taffy. Despite the late morning sun beating directly down on them, Derik noticed the man’s face darken like an eclipsed moon. The humidity had already plastered Derik’s T-shirt to his back, and he felt sweat trace its maddening way down his sides to his waist.
“Where’s Sara?” Derik asked, trying to sound casual.
Johnson’s face appeared to go even darker, though the grin remained. “She’s around.”
“I’d sure like to see her.”
“I’ll bet.”
Derik didn’t like the sound of that.
“I’m a little confused,” he said. “What’s this about?”
The grin slipped, and Johnson’s expression looked injured. “I think a man has a right to meet the person his daughter intends to marry,” he said. “Don’t you?”
“Mr. Johnson . . . ”
“Joe,” the man corrected.
Derik sighed. “Joe. Not meeting you was Sara’s idea.”
“I know that.”
“Well, then—”
“But a man should have enough respect for another man to ask for his daughter’s hand. A man would have the balls.”
Okay, tread lightly here, Derik cautioned himself. The thought reminded him of Johnson’s tattoo. “And if I had asked you,” he said, “would you have respected me for it?”
“Respected?” Johnson appeared to give this some thought. Finally he nodded. “Oh, yeah.”
“But you still wouldn’t have given us your blessing, isn’t that right?”
The grin appeared again. “Right as rain.”
“And why is that?” Derik asked. But of course he knew.
Johnson gave him a sly look. “Come on now,” he said. “You’re a smart boy.”
It was Derik’s turn to smile, but there was no humor in it. He shook his head in rebuke, saying, “Then, what would be the point in asking your permission in the first place?”
Joe Johnson’s eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed in disdain. “The point”—He stabbed a nicotine-stained finger into Derik’s chest—“is doing the proper thing.”
Derik pushed the hand away. “Don’t do that,” he said.
“The point”—Johnson took a step toward him—“is paying respect to your betters.”
And here we go, Derik thought with resentment. Another day, another douchebag.
“My betters?” he said.
“That’s right.”
“And what makes you my better?”
“Like I said, you’re a smart boy. I don’t need to spell it out for you.”
Derik’s jaw tightened as he ground his teeth together. This redneck son-of-a-bitch wasn’t just pushing his buttons, he was hammering them. Well, Sara warned you about him, didn’t she? So why are you surprised?
“Are you sure you could spell it out?” Derik asked, his voice trembling with barely contained fury. So much for treading lightly.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
Derik said, “You’re a smart boy. You figure it out.”
Johnson frowned. “You’re gonna make me mad, and this will be over too quick,” Johnson growled.
“What?”
“Never mind.” Big wet patches had blossomed at Johnson’s armpits and chest. He smelled like sour whiskey and unwashed flesh.
Derik mopped sweat off his brow with his forearm. “It’s too hot for games, man.”
Johnson’s watchful eyes fixed on Derik’s. “You’re wrong. It’s a perfect day for games.”
Derik knew he’d made a big mistake in coming here. He should have called the cops. But what would he have told them? Hello, police? My white girlfriend’s father just called and asked to meet with me. Can you send a car out?
“Where’s Sara?” Derik demanded. “I want to see her. Now.”
Johnson seized him by the bicep. “Who the hell you think you’re talkin’ to, boy?”
Derik tore his arm from Johnson’s grip and headed back toward his car. There would be no reasoning with this asshole. And punching him, albeit tempting, was a bad idea. Johnson was a white man, after all, and this was Indiana, and Derik was wise enough to know how that scenario would likely play out. He was out of here.
He had taken maybe three steps when Johnson gave a shrill whistle and Derik heard the screen door spring open and slam shut again, followed by the sound of something frightfully large scrabbling across the yard toward him. He flashed on a line that had stuck in his head from a poem he’d read a few years ago: Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! In a panic, Derik put on more speed. He was ten feet from the car when the biggest goddamn German Shepherd he’d ever seen cut him off, stopping him in his tracks and snapping at the hand that was already reaching for the door handle.
“King!”
The dog drew back at his master’s command, then held its ground between Derik and his car. It growled low in its throat and fixed him with sharp, hate-filled eyes that challenged: Try to get past me, I dare you.
Derik froze, but his heart was going like gangbusters in his chest. He tried to slow his breathing, terrified his heaving chest would provoke the animal to attack.
Johnson sauntered up beside Derik and placed a companionable hand on his shoulder.
“Darky like yourself come knocking on my door six summers ago—campaigning for that Muslim in the White House, he was—and ole King set on him like there was no tomorrow. Tore him up pretty good before I finally stepped in. I tossed him in the back of Henrietta there”—He nodded toward the old pickup—“and drove him over to the emergency room. He was back on his feet in no time, minus a couple fingers. But do you think he’ll ever set his black feet on my property again?”
Johnson gave a satisfied chuckle as he squeezed Derik’s shoulder.
Ever so slowly, so as not to bait the dog, Derik turned his head to face this man. “You’re insane.”
Joe Johnson grinned at him. “Nope. I’m just done fucking around.” Then he gripped Derik by the upper arm again and jerked him toward the walkway between the empty laundromat and the house. “Let’s go.”
“What?” Derik protested. “Where?”
“Not far.”
The dog at their heels, Johnson led Derik through the overgrown backyard between an abandoned washing machine, a collection of discarded car parts, and out past a low metal gate to an alley. In the middle of the alleyway was a rusted rectangular grate. Johnson let go of Derik and bent down, hooking a thumb and forefinger through two of the grate’s square holes, the muscles of his forearm popping up and making the tattooed snake writhe. He squinted up at Derik and said, “Give me a hand with this.”
Derik snorted. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“I’m serious as a heart attack, champ.”
Derik scanned Garfield Avenue past the south end of the alley, the sunlight bouncing off the river several blocks away and stabbing at his eyes. No help that way. Across the alley from the backyard a tall chain-link fence topped with barbed wire guarded a dilapidated brick building on a weed-choked lot. Derik turned and glanced behind him toward the other end of the alley. Not a soul in sight.
Johnson read his mind. “Shout if you want to. Whole damn neighborhood cleared out back in oh-eight. Might be some junkies squatting in one or two of the houses around here but they don’t give a shit about nothin’ but their next fix. Cops don’t even cruise here anymore.”
Derik looked doubtfully at him, then Johnson startled him by suddenly yelling for help at the top of his lungs. He went on like that for ten seconds or so and when he stopped, the silence seemed even heavier than before, the air hotter and denser.
“Now get down here and help me, like I told you.”
Derik still hesitated.
Johnson heaved a sigh, then said sharply, “King!”
The German Shepherd lunged at Derik’s ankle, its teeth flashing in a white blur. Derik felt an immediate and searing pain rush up his entire leg to his balls and he cried out in fear and anger. “Call him off! Call him off! Call him off!”
“King!”
The dog retreated, licking blood off his snout. Derik groaned and stared down at his ankle which now bled red rivulets onto his bright white Nike. “Goddamn it,” he hissed.
“I’m not gonna tell you again,” Johnson warned.
With grunts of effort (during which Joe Johnson let loose a loud fart and snickered like a kid), they lifted the grate from its casing and held it upright. Derik stood looking down into a crumbling concrete space which was about seven feet deep and four feet wide. About halfway up its south wall, the round mouth of a concrete pipe yawned. Opposite this, a metal ladder attached to the wall descended to a foot above the floor.
Standing there in the unbearable heat, Derik felt an icy tingle run up his spine.
“Get on down there,” Johnson said. “And don’t test me, or I’ll let King there chew on you some more. Only this time, I’ll let him finish the job.”
While Johnson balanced the grate on the lip of the casing, Derik climbed to the bottom of the hole, his ankle on fire and his mind numb. How could this be happening? Where was Sara while it was going on? Why wasn’t she calling the police, or coming out to demand that her crazy father put a stop to this madness? Because she’s not in the house. It was just a lie to get me here. He even grasped at the possibility that this might all be a dream. But of course he knew better.
“Now, you got two choices,” Johnson said. “You can stay down there in that hole, in which case you’ll be dead from the heat in no more than two days, ‘specially without water. Or you can get in that drain pipe and start crawling for the river. It’s around three quarters of a mile, so your chances of making it are slim to none, but you never know. If you do make it, the pipe empties out about three feet above the waterline. All you have to do is wade over to the boat ramp and you’re home free.”
Derik stared at the opening to the pipe, his head spinning. “This thing can’t be more than thirty inches wide,” he said.
“Twenty-four,” Joe Johnson said. “But you’re a skinny buck.”
Still contemplating the mouth of the pipe (and that’s just what it was—a mouth, ready to swallow him whole), Derik said, “I’ll never make it.”
“Well, not with that attitude,” said Johnson.
Derik shot him a look. “What’s stopping me from going to the police if I make it through?”
“Not a thing,” Johnson answered. “But I’m willing to bet you won’t make it through.”
“You’re willing to bet your freedom?” Derik said. “Your life?”
Joe Johnson threw his head back and brayed laughter at the sky. “My life, he says.” When the laughter died down, he rubbed tears from his eyes with his free hand. “What life is that?” he said to Derik. “You took my daughter away from me. My Sara.”
Derik made one last desperate plea. “Don’t do this, Joe. Let me up out of here. You can still do the right thing.”
“You took her away.”
“I love her, Joe.”
“You took her away.”
“Joe, please.”
Johnson lowered the grate. And in that moment before it came down, Derik observed a commercial airliner inching its way across the sky ten thousand feet up, its contrails drawing out behind it. He thought about the people on board, being served their refreshments, plugging their ear buds in to listen to music, or cracking open a fat new novel, settling in for the long flight, and he wished harder than he had ever wished for anything in his life that he was on that plane.
After the grate was down and Johnson walked away, the dog appeared above, hiked its hind leg and proceeded to urinate down on Derik’s head. He threw himself against the wall in revulsion, covering his head with his arms, but the grate slots caused the stream to spray every which way. “Ugh. Fucking mutt!”
Then he was alone in the half-light, sweat and dog piss dripping down his skin and burning the wound on his ankle. He cried out in fury and frustration.
He leaned against the wall and stared up through the slots. After a little while he had an idea. If he waited until dark, he might be able to climb the ladder and create enough leverage to force the grate open with his shoulder, slip away and escape. The sonofabitch had to sleep sometime. There was the dog to consider, but still . . .
Derik heard the rattle of an engine approaching. A moment later the vehicle rolled onto the grate, where it stopped, its tire parked several inches above his head. A door opened with a squeal and slammed shut again. Derik caught the jingle of keys and receding footsteps. Then he heard Joe Johnson remark, “Just in case.”
Derik screamed.
Ten minutes later, after cursing Joe Johnson to hell, cursing himself for getting his ass into such a fucked-up mess, and screaming himself hoarse (a mistake which left him terribly thirsty) Derik started his reluctant journey through the drain pipe.
After the first few feet, he fully understood what an predicament he was in. The pipe was so constricting he could not take a full breath, and this triggered a low-grade anxiety he strove not to focus on, lest it spiral out of control into full-blown panic. His arms stretched out in front of him, Derik crawled forward by dragging himself along with clawing fingers and flexing toes. In no time at all, his lower back began to protest, then fiercely ache, and he tried to bend his spine to relieve the pressure, but the limited space would not allow it.
Soon even the diffused light was gone, leaving Derik in solid darkness, which only increased the suffocating claustrophobia taking hold of him. The pipe descended at a slight angle and he assumed the temperature would drop the deeper he forged. He was wrong. The pipe’s confines became explosively hot and that, along with the fact he could only take half breaths, quickly turned his plight insufferable. My Zippo, he remembered suddenly. Shit. He could have used the damn thing as a torch to light his way, but getting it out of his pocket now would be impossible.
He crawled on. Before long he had scraped his knees and elbows raw, every few feet leaving more of his flesh behind him on the concrete. At one point, he experienced a wave of panic so cold and paralyzing that he lay there in the dark, still as a corpse, for an interminable length of time. When he realized he was once again moving forward, he couldn’t even remember resuming. Derik wondered how long before he lost his mind in here.
Sweat dripped down his back and between his legs, causing a maddening itch made ten times worse because he couldn’t scratch it. It made him think of Tantalus, the Greek god he learned about in High School Lit class. Why does your brain come up with useless shit in moments like this? he wondered.
The air was thick and heavy, the humidity clinging, and sweat continuously ran down his face and burned his eyes. For a while he rubbed at his eyes to clear them, but it was hopeless as well as pointless and he soon gave up. He thought he would sell his soul for a drink of cold water.
Farther on, he came to a stench so strong it was like a physical blow. He halted, wincing as he tried he tried not to picture what might lie ahead, causing that ungodly smell, but his imagination ran wild regardless. He peered into the darkness and willed himself to see the horror waiting for him, calling him onward with its sweet rotted breath. It was no use. He was blind as a mole.
With a sigh that was nearly a sob, Derik started forward again. The smell was appalling. It surrounded him, seeped into his pores and made its way up his nostrils and down his throat, becoming obscenely intimate, a malevolent companion embracing him there in the dark. Inevitably he arrived at the source, his hands coming down in a gooey mess at the base of the pipe. At first he jerked back, crying out in revulsion. Finally, though, there was nothing he could do but continue on through the slippery muck. As he crawled over it, the slime sucked at his hands and arms with wet slurping sounds, releasing him only grudgingly. He slid across the rot on his knees and elbows, feeling its foulness mix with his own blood. Pieces of skin and coarse hair stuck to his sweat-soaked face and limbs. Somewhere in the midst of the mess, he vomited, then crawled through that too.
Then suddenly there were things on him, crawling all over him. On his arms, legs, and face. In his hair. Under his clothes. Biting him. He knew right away what they were. Carrion beetles. One tried to scuttle up his right nostril. Another one wriggled at his ear hole. Derik howled and rolled frantically back and forth and slapped at his head like he was on fire, the relentless stinging bites over much of his body feeling like dozens of hot match heads being held to his skin. They were everywhere, trundling over his body by the hundreds, the thousands, and in their agitation making a collective clicking sound he thought would drive him mad. In a frenzy he scraped them off by the handfuls, crushing their carapaces in his fists and flinging them away. But they kept right on coming.
In a mindless effort to escape them he scrambled forward as fast as the narrow space would allow, for as far as he had the strength to go before he needed to stop and rest. The beetles continued to crawl on him, to bite him. But he thought there were fewer of them now. And once he resumed his passage through the pipe, he felt them on him less and less the further he went.
Derik summoned Sara’s face, pictured it suspended in the darkness before him, and crawled toward it. The illusion didn’t last long though.
Something large scurried toward him from out of the dark. Before it reached him it halted a few feet away. Derik sensed it watching him in the dark, measuring him.
“Go away,” he hissed at it.
Instead it came closer, then something bristled across Derik’s outstretched fingers. He snatched his hand back in horror, screaming an incoherent warning at the thing. It scrambled away a short distance, then stopped. He felt it regarding him again.
Derik needed his Zippo.
He began gradually drawing his left arm back toward his body. It only took him a few short inches to realize he couldn’t move it straight down along his side—there just was not enough room to maneuver. So he rolled his shoulder under him and dragged his arm backward beneath his torso. The pain in his shoulder was immediate and excruciating. The position of his arm under his chest forced his back up against the ceiling of the pipe, and now he couldn’t breathe at all. Even worse, his chest now pinned his arm beneath him. He wrenched it forward, then back, then side to side, succeeding only in painfully scraping his flesh with no real movement of the limb.
He didn’t panic. What he did was brace the rubber toes of his shoes against the concrete floor and push. Once, twice, three times. He well knew his forward motion brought him closer to the thing in front of him unless his noisy progress along the pipe’s floor had frightened it away. He doubted it. Either way, he had to get a hold of the lighter. His arm rolled agonizingly beneath him, and for a few seconds he was sure it would pop out of its socket, but at last his hand fell against his hip. As he dug inside his pocket, something heavy crawled onto his right hand. Derik screamed and flung it away. He seized the lighter and yanked it out. But as he brought his arm forward it got stuck against his chest again, and this time he had no leverage to force it out in front of him. He couldn’t draw a breath.
You’re stuck like a cork in a bottle, babe, Sara spoke up in his head. What’re you gonna do?
Good question. What was he going to do? He could already see little red motes floating in the dark space before his eyes from the lack of air to his lungs. He would soon suffocate.
Then he remembered one time when he was about twenty-one, he had stopped breathing in his sleep one night for some odd reason. He’d sprung awake in a blind panic, leaping out of bed and reeling through his apartment, gasping for air. But it was no use. His lungs were locked shut. He recalled as he bent over with his hands on his knees, fighting for breath, his mind screaming, I’m going to die alone here and now. And I haven’t done a damn thing with my life.
What saved him was when he stopped trying to breathe in at all and instead exhaled forcefully what little air remained in his lungs. This had a triggering effect, and all at once his chest heaved as his lungs let in the biggest and sweetest breath he had ever taken.
He did that now, pushing as much air out of his lungs as he could manage. Even as he slipped into unconsciousness and experienced thoughts that might have been the beginnings of death dreams, he dragged his arm instinctively forward, the lighter clutched in his fist. He came back to himself with half a breath of sweltering air, his hand thrust out in front of him.
Derik flipped open the Zippo and struck the flint wheel with his thumb. In the sudden glare of orange-red light, the first thing he noticed was his knuckles had been scraped to the gleaming white bone. The next thing was a huge fat rat five feet away, its baleful black eyes fixed on Derik in the flickering light. The fire apparently didn’t frighten it in the least. It stood up on its hind legs and sniffed at the air, its snout nearly touching the pipe’s ceiling, then dropped back on all fours. Lowering its head level with the floor it stretched its neck out toward Derik, opened its mouth and made a high-pitched chattering sound. Derik felt ghostly fingers play along his spine.
The rat advanced.
Derik screamed, whipping the flame back and forth across the width of the pipe as tendrils of oily black smoke unspooled in the close space around him. He kept on screaming, hoping his voice, as well as the fire, would hold the damn thing back. It did . . . for a moment. Then the rat hissed at him and charged despite the flame. It streaked between his arms and snapped at his face and Derik felt a stabbing hot flash of pain in his bottom lip and tasted the coppery tang of fresh blood on his tongue.
He cried out in horror and disgust, striking at the rat with both fists, but the thing had already retreated. Drops of Derik’s blood stained its teeth and clung to its whiskers. Derik tried to scream a warning at it again, but couldn’t draw enough breath into his lungs now. He started hyperventilating, then lowered his cheek to the concrete, exhausted. The rat took advantage of this, scurrying onto Derik’s shoulders and compressing its sleek body impossibly flat to steal across his back and buttocks to the floor behind him. It immediately began to gnaw at his right calf. Derik kicked his legs like a swimmer and scrambled forward a couple feet before quickly spending his strength once more. Sweat poured off him in buckets. The rat went at his leg again and all Derik could do was drag himself onward, inch by torturous inch, as it fed on him.
After a while the lighter’s flame sputtered out, returning him to the awful darkness again.
He heard a voice up ahead. It echoed faintly along the pipe.
“Deriiiiiik.”
He stopped, straining to hear, and it came once more.
“Come to meeeeee.”
It was Sara’s voice, calling to him from out of the dark, and he did as it told him.
At one point, the rat slipped up the left leg hole of his athletic shorts to his crotch and began to sample what was there. At first Derik bucked and thrashed at the horror—the violation—of it. But he could only crawl forward and weep as he felt parts of himself being pitilessly consumed.
“Deriiiiiik.”
“I’m coming,” he croaked, his throat on fire. But eventually he grew numb to everything around him and time became meaningless and he lost all sense of himself.
***
Awake again.
There was a faint light ahead. He made for it, feeling stronger now. Unconsciousness must have given him his second wind. He realized he had lost the Zippo somewhere and didn’t give a flying fuck. The rat also appeared to have departed and for this he was grateful.
The light got brighter and before long Derik was climbing out the other end of the goddamn pipe. He tumbled headfirst into the warm brown water of the Ohio and then stood with it sluicing down his body, rinsing his abrasions and lapping red around his waist. He inhaled great lungsful of fresh air and gave his back a long luxurious stretch. The pain was already subsiding.
He’d clearly been in the pipe for a long time, because most of the light had bled out of the day, leaving behind a sky the color of ashes. He looked west along the river to find a dull and dying sun.
He waded toward the boat ramp. When he got there, he stopped dead.
High up on the wooden cross arm of a telephone pole sat Sara staring down at him, the long white gown she wore wafting around her dangling feet, though there was no breeze. On either side of her were a row of black crows, their bright dark eyes observing him with interest. As Derik watched, Sara slipped off the cross arm and drifted gently all the way to the ground.
As she glided down the boat dock toward him, he heard the crows cackling and whispering in human voices. Derik held out his hand to her and when Sara took it in her ice-cold grasp, he understood.
In his head, he was there. The dim interior of a shabby living room. A TV in the corner showing The Price Is Right. The greasy smell of fried pork chops coming from the dingy kitchen.
“I forbid you to see him again,” Joe Johnson was saying.
“Forbid me? I’m a grown woman, Dad. I’ll see anyone I want.” Sara heading out the door with a suitcase in her hand.
“I said no!” Johnson grabbing her by the arm.
Sara saying, “You can’t stop me. I love him and that’s all there is to it.”
“I said NO, GODDAMN IT!” Johnson wrenching her backward and jarring the suitcase from her hand, it dropping onto the threadbare carpet. Sara stumbling over it, toppling, her head slamming down on the corner of the end table next to the couch. All of it over so fast, her life ending in an instant.
Derik understood other things too. Things that would flabbergast and horrify the creatures wandering oblivious through this world, consumed by their trifling differences and irrelevant concerns.
But there would be time enough to think on these things later.
For now, he and Sara were together again, and that was all that mattered.
It was time to go home.
Joe sure would be surprised to see them.