Page 62 of So Far Gone

“Parking violation,” Jeff said. “Amaru, the serpent god. Luckily, they gave you aCantua buxifolia, too, the sacred flower. Just a warning. If that second symbol had been a lightning bolt, your car would be in a boot. Or they’d be towing it.”

“I gotta get out of here,” Brian said.

They thanked Jeff, who urged them to come back for the much larger Shambala festival in the summer. “Or,” he said, “come up in three weeks for the spring barter faire. I have a booth where I sell homemade soap and leather products.” He removed a brown, leather key chain from his pocket and held it out for them to see. It had the dark impression of bird wings stamped on it.

“That’s nice,” Brian said. “Reminds me of my old air force wings.”

“Take it.” Jeff took his keys off the chain. “It’s yours.”

Brian tried to object, but Jeff insisted, so Brian handed him a twenty-dollar bill.

Then, the three of them left, piling in the Bronco.

In the backseat, Bethany held up the rifle case. “Is this necessary?”

“Oh, you can just set that in back,” Brian said. He drove them through the parking lot and started back down the narrow two-trackdirt road. Kinnick felt exhausted by the last few days, but relieved to have Bethany back. He kept turning and looking at her in the backseat, as if she might disappear again. “Are you okay, Beth?”

She nodded but kept staring out her side window. She had her mother’s wide features, and thick eyebrows, and her long, black hair was tied back the way Celia used to wear it, parted almost in the middle, the first loose grays winging out from her scalp. Celia had gone totally gray in her forties, seeming to age faster than Kinnick in that difficult time. He shifted his body, so that he was facing Bethany in the backseat. “I feel like there are some things I need to say to you—”

She didn’t look up at him. “I might need a minute, Dad.”

“Sure. Of course.”

And so, they stayed quiet driving out of the woods, darkness already settling around them. Brian turned off the dirt road and onto the two-lane highway, driving them in silence another fifteen miles, when, without warning, an incessant buzzing began. One, then another, and another. They were coming back into cell phone range. Bethany pulled her vibrating cell phone from her backpack and began looking at the voicemails and texts. “Oh boy,” she said. “Here we go. Anna. Shane. Anna. Shane. Pastor Gallen. Shane, Shane, Shane.”

In the driver’s seat, Brian took out his cell phone, too. Once again, Kinnick felt left out. “Uh-oh,” Brian said. He handed over his phone.

On the screen was a text message from Joanie, Kinnick reading it with a renewed sense of dread.Brian! Where are you? Leah is gone! I can’t find her—

Five

What Happened to Leah

Grandpa Rhys had been gone only a few hours and Leah was ready to strangle Asher, her little brother rising to unheard-of levels of obnoxiousness.

After lunch, Asher sat at the counter, chomping carrot sticks as he grilled Joanie about Brian’s Native American heritage. (“Did Brian’s tribe ever fight the US cavalry?”Yes.“When?”In the 1850s. With some other tribes at the battle of Four Lakes.“Did they win?”For a while they did, riding just out of range of the soldiers’ guns. “Then what happened?”Well, the soldiers got tired of chasing them around the plateau, so they left the battlefield, went down along the river and burned the Indian villages and shot all their horses. “Did Brian have a horse?”That battle happened way before Brian’s time, but I do think his family had an old swayback nag when he was growing up. “What’s a swayback nag?”It’s an old horse.“But it didn’t get shot, though?”No, no, this was many years later.) At one point, Joanie happened to mention that Brian was learning Spokane Salish, the dialect that had been lost to his family after his grandparents were punished for speaking it at boarding school, and Asher (after asking what a boarding school was) asked what the language sounded like. “Well,” Joanie said, “in Salish, you would be, let’s see,x?x?n?utyears old”—her voice seeming to come from inside her throat.

“I’m six-nut!” Asher said excitedly to Leah. Then, turning back to Joanie: “How old will I be on my next birthday?”

“Let’s see, you’ll be?upn?.”

“Next year, I’ll be open! And how old was I last year?”

“Eight? Let’s see. That’she?én?m?”

“Hey-enim! Cool! How old is Leah?”

“Afraid I can count only to ten,” Joanie said. “You’ll have to ask Brian when he gets home. He can go a lot higher.”

“And how would you say my name?”

“Your name... is your name. So... Asher.”

He held up a carrot. “What about carrot stick?”

In Joanie’s answer, Leah heard a small measure of her own fatigue: “Asher, I really have no idea. Like I said, I can only speak a few words.”

“Do you think there was a Salish word for chess? OrTyrannosaurus rex?”

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