Ain't Talkin'

Roche woke when Lucky made her way back up the tailgate into the truck. Her weight and hoof-steps rattled the metal and shook loose dust and dirt that had blown in from the night before. Roche sat up quickly, found his whiskey right where he had left it between his heels and uncapped the bottle and took a big swig.

Alex Markus was still asleep when Roche swung into the cab, shoved the mixed-tape back into the deck and kicked the dashboard yelling “S’go!”

“Alright, alright, I’m up, I’m up.” Markus let the scratchy blanket he’d slept in fall from his shoulders, sat up in his seat, put in the clutch started the truck.

Within seconds after a full-hearted start, the two were back on the drive again with the horse safely tucked in the canvas-back of the truck again, watching out over the tailgate as the desert wasteland shrank away thirty miles to the hour.

the equili

“What was the wolf?”

“Hm?”

Markus hadn’t spoken the whole morning. Somewhere around nine they’d turned along a main intersection and were headed along the 361 North. They’d skirted around a city that a green and white sign claimed used to be Luning. Here the roads were better, and besides swerving through the occasional blockade of ancient cars, the driving was clear. Now Markus was asking about the wolf.

“The wolf that was in the ether. It showed up just as we were stepping back into the world. Stood a ways back like it was just watching but you didn’t seem to care. Nothin’ I guess. Just made me think that maybe you’d seen it before.”

“Have.” Was all Roche replied with.

The mixed-tape looped on the deck.

Yer gonna cry, cry, cry and you’ll cry alone,

When everyone’s forgotten and you’re left on your own.

Yer gonna cry, cry, cry.

“So. . .” Markus filled the space in the cab.

"So I’ve seen him before. That’s all. Long time ago and a couple times since.”

“I didn’t know animals could go into the ether.”

“‘Course they can. You’re not that fuckin’ stupid. If you wanna talk about my feelings then lets just talk. No use prodding at me with ignorance.”

Markus clamped his mouth shut tight.

“The wolf was the first creature I ever saw besides my own self when I first went in. Long time ago now. At the time I guess I didn’t rightly know animals could go into the white either. Takes a special kind of creature to have the forbearance to just keep on going like that.

They wander in now and then. The same way a leg-hole trap works because occasionally a coyote will get stupid and step just there. So my guess is that wolf wandered in some way and just never was conscionable enough to let go and die. So there he sits. He wanders some. Last I checked he never leaves, because he’s always there. Seems to find me all too often, too.”

“Does he find you or do you call out to him?”

“Now you shut your trap right there, kid.” Roche swigged on the bottle.

“Did it help you?”

“What, the wolf? Never could catch him and eat him so no, he didn’t help much.”

“No. But if you saw that a wolf could manifest and stay alive that long in a nothingness that made no sense and all too much sense at the same time didn’t it give you a little bit of hope that you’d be alright and not to let go.”

Roche screwed up his mouth around another drink, watching the Mojave sift by like an hourglass. “I didn’t need no help letting go. I let go a long time ago. What I needed was for the white to just give up on me and digest me like it should have.”

“And the old indian-”

“Wind In The Trees. Stupid fuckin’ name with no trees around for the wind to blow through.”

“Right, Wind In The Trees said you walk with many legs. Was that what he meant. The legs of the wolf and the white-eyes following you.”

“I always took that to be what he meant until I asked him one day.”

“And what’d he say?” Markus swerved the truck when he turned his head his hands followed. Lucky stamped a hoof in the back of the truck in protest. Markus righted himself after a look of reproach from the walker and kept his eyes front.

Roche thought for a while before he answered. What the fuck did this kid care? He was either passing the time or was getting a little chubby on the hunter who’d helped get him this far back to Polkun County and the Res.

“Wind In The Trees said I left something behind with me the first time I took to the white. Now there’s no way that he can know this unless he’s walked with me this whole time and just been invisible, or those indians really can see things that ain’t better never seen. He said I left something when I meant to bring it with me. He said I left a pair of legs behind. And now all I do is kill and keep walking, hoping I’ll find me a better set of legs to walk with, but at the same time all those men I killed just keep on walking beside me and behind me and I can’t stop ’em.”

Markus chewed on Roche’s words. “Who’d you leave behind.”

“I never could figure. Don’t know if Wind In The Trees meant the girl I brought with me or the wolf that found me after. Which set of legs. . .”

“Girl?”

Roche knew he’d said too much.

“Shut the fuck up and keep eyes on the road, shithead. Quit talkin’.” Roche swallowed three long gulps of whiskey hard and rolled his window down for a smoke.