She gave the mental equivalent of a snort at that, and then she was back to business. C’mon, she urged me. Let’s get going! It will be dark soon.
With a sigh, I pulled the largest shrink-wrapped flat of water bottles from the shelf. It nearly hit the floor before I caught it against a lower shelf edge. My arms felt as though they’d popped halfway out of their sockets.
“You’re kidding me!” I exclaimed aloud.
Shut up!
“Excuse me?” a short, stooped man, the other customer, asked from the end of the aisle.
“Uh—nothing,” I mumbled, not meeting his gaze. “This is heavier than I expected.”
“Would you like some help?” he offered.
“No, no,” I answered hastily. “I’ll just take a smaller one.”
He turned back to the selection of potato chips.
No, you will not, Melanie assured me. I’ve carried heavier loads than this. You’ve let us get all soft, Wanderer, she added in irritation.
Sorry, I responded absently, bemused by the fact that she had used my name for the first time.
Lift with your legs.
I struggled with the flat of water, wondering how far I could possibly be expected to carry it. I managed to get it to the front register, at least. With great relief, I edged its weight onto the counter. I put the bag on top of the water, and then added a box of granola bars, a roll of doughnuts, and a bag of chips from the closest display.
Water is way more important than food in the desert, and we can only carry so much —
I’m hungry, I interrupted. And these are light.
It’s your back, I guess, she said grudgingly, and then she ordered, Get a map.
I placed the one she wanted, a topographical map of the county, on the counter with the rest. It was no more than a prop in her charade.
The cashier, a white-haired man with a ready smile, scanned the bar codes.
“Doing some hiking?” he asked pleasantly.
“The mountain is very beautiful.”
“The trailhead is just up that —” he said, starting to gesture.
“I’ll find it,” I promised quickly, pulling the heavy, badly balanced load back off the counter.
“Head down before it gets dark, sweetie. You don’t want to get lost.”
“I will.”
Melanie was thinking sulfurous thoughts about the kind old man.
He was being nice. He’s sincerely concerned about my welfare, I reminded her.
You’re all very creepy, she told me acidly. Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to talk to strangers?
I felt a deep tug of guilt as I answered. There are no strangers among my kind.
I can’t get used to not paying for things, she said, changing the subject. What’s the point of scanning them?
Inventory, of course. Is he supposed to remember everything we took when he needs to order more? Besides, what’s the point of money when everyone is perfectly honest? I paused, feeling the guilt again so strongly that it was an actual pain. Everyone but me, of course.
Melanie shied away from my feelings, worried by the depth of them, worried that I might change my mind. Instead she focused on her raging desire to be away from here, to be moving toward her objective. Her anxiety leaked through to me, and I walked faster.
I carried the stack to the car and set it on the ground beside the passenger door.
“Let me help you with that.”
I jerked up to see the other man from the store, a plastic bag in his hand, standing beside me.
“Ah… thank you,” I finally managed, my pulse thudding behind my ears.
We waited, Melanie tensed as if to run, while he lifted our acquisitions into the car.
There’s nothing to fear. He’s being kind, too.
She continued to watch him distrustfully.
“Thank you,” I said again as he shut the door.
“My pleasure.”
He walked off to his own vehicle without a backward glance at us. I climbed into my seat and grabbed the bag of potato chips.
Look at the map, she said. Wait till he’s out of sight.
No one is watching us, I promised her. But, with a sigh, I unfolded the map and ate with one hand. It was probably a good idea to have some sense of where we were headed.
Where are we headed? I asked her. We’ve found the starting point, so what now?
Look around, she commanded. If we can’t see it here, we’ll try the south side of the peak.
See what?
She placed the memorized image before me: a ragged zigzagging line, four tight switchbacks, the fifth point strangely blunt, like it was broken. Now I saw it as I should, a jagged range of four pointed mountain peaks with the broken-looking fifth…
I scanned the skyline, east to west across the northern horizon. It was so easy it felt false, as though I’d made the image up only after seeing the mountain silhouette that created the northeast line of the horizon.
That’s it, Melanie almost sang in her excitement. Let’s go! She wanted me to be out of the car, on my feet, moving.
I shook my head, bending over the map again. The mountain ridge was so far in the distance I couldn’t guess at the miles between us and it. There was no way I was walking out of this parking lot and into the empty desert unless I had no other option.
Let’s be rational, I suggested, tracing my finger along a thin ribbon on the map, an unnamed road that connected to the freeway a few miles east and then continued in the general direction of the range.
Sure, she agreed complacently. The faster the better.
We found the unpaved road easily. It was just a pale scar of flat dirt through the sparse shrubbery, barely wide enough for one vehicle. I had a feeling that the road would be overgrown with lack of use in a different region—some place with more vital vegetation, unlike the desert plants that needed decades to recover from such a violation. There was a rusted chain stretched across the entrance, screwed into a wooden post on one end, looped loosely around another post at the other. I moved quickly, pulling the chain free and piling it at the base of the first post, hurrying back to my running car, hoping no one would pass and stop to offer me help. The highway stayed clear as I drove onto the dirt and then rushed back to refasten the chain.