“Wyoming plates,” Eric said, but he might as well have said aha. “That’s why you have Wyoming plates.”
“Well, yeah,” Chad said. “So?”
“You guys,” Eric said, slowly, “you guys are a real long way from Jasper, Wyoming.”
“Oh hell. Are we in Kansas? We’re in Kansas, aren’t we?” Chad turned to Bode. “I told you we took a wrong turn outside Laramie.”
“You guys aren’t in Kansas,” Eric said.
“Then where the hell are we?” asked Chad.
“You’re … Oh man.” Eric blew out. “You’re in Wisconsin.”
A beat. Then two. Chad broke the silence with a laugh. “That’s crazy.”
“No.”
“What are you talking about, no?” Chad sniggered again and shook his head. “No, he says. How many spiffs you smoke tonight?”
“What?” Eric waved that away. “Never mind. Look, I started out in Wisconsin this afternoon. I know I didn’t take a snowmobile into the storm and end up blown clear to Wyoming. So we’re either still in Wisconsin, or somehow we’ve all ended up in Wyoming.”
“Mountains are right,” Bode said. “Valley’s right for Wyoming.”
“That’s true. But I honestly don’t think that’s where we are.”
“So we’re in Wisconsin?” Chad asked. “Like where in Wisconsin?”
“I’m not sure of that either, but if we are … then we’re north,” Eric said. “I … I don’t know exactly where.”
“No, of course you don’t,” Chad said.
Battle’s head still floated in the mirror, but Bode focused on Eric’s reflection. “What if …” His tongue gnarled. Bode licked his lips and tried again. “What if we’re not anywhere?”
“What?” Chad said.
Eric returned Bode’s look. “I don’t know where we’d be, then.”
“What are you guys talking about?” Chad asked. “We’re right here.”
“Yeah, but where is that, exactly?” Eric said.
Or when. The thought was suddenly there in Bode’s mind, like the rip of a fart you just couldn’t ignore. “Maybe we’re in between, like limbo.”
Eric’s dark brows drew together. “Wouldn’t we be dead then?”
“Dead? You guys are nuts.” Chad bounced an anxious glance from Eric to Bode, then out the passenger’s side window. “Nuts,” he repeated, jiggling his leg, picking furiously at his sore. “I’m not no Catholic, man.”
Bode said to Eric, “Where you shipping out to, again?”
“Marja, I think,” Eric said. “Probably.”
“Well, I never heard of that.” Chad’s voice was tight with fear and anger. “Is that, like, north or south?”
“South … actually, southwest.”
“So, like, close to Phuoc Vinh? Or Dau Tieng?”
“Dau …?” Eric paused, and Bode saw that the other boy couldn’t ignore that awful stink either. “You guys,” Eric said, evenly, carefully, “what war are you fighting?”
Bode’s mouth was dry as dust. He couldn’t speak. A fist of dread had his throat.
“What war?” said Chad, and gave a sour laugh. “Why … ’Nam, of course.”
ERIC
One Step Away From Dead
OH, OF COURSE. A balloon of sudden fear swelled in his chest. Vietnam, of course.
Yet it made a certain loopy sense. Factor in the vintage uniforms, the old Dodge, the way these guys talked—not only their slang but what they didn’t know. Bode and Chad were from the past. Or Eric was in it. Or, maybe, Bode was right and the valley was some crazy kind of limbo.
But it’s also real. How could that be? His right hand closed around Tony’s handset. That’s real. The others are real, and so is Emma. This has to be real. Or he was going crazy. The fear was an acid burn, eating its way up his throat, and Eric thought he might actually scream if he wasn’t careful. Oily sweat lathered his back and neck and face, and he pressed the back of one shaking hand to his forehead, the way he used to do when Casey had been little and got sick. Don’t, don’t do it. His lungs were working like a bellows. Come on, calm down. Sipping air, he breathed in, held it, let go … in with the good, out with the bad … Just hold it together.
What if … what if this was limbo? Maybe he was being punished. Could that be it? God sent him here because of Big Earl? What kind of justice was that? Big Earl was the adult; he hurt people. Big Earl shot at him; he would’ve killed Eric if he had the chance. The beatings had gone on for as long as Eric could remember. Yes, but how long was that, exactly? A day, a minute, five years, ten?
He. Did not. Remember.
No. Eric’s heart knocked in his throat. No, no, no, how can I not know? He remembered how careful he’d been in high school changing for gym, always slipping into a stall or coming in with just enough time to spare so that the locker room had already emptied out. I have scars on my back, my stomach. Every beating’s written in my skin. Why don’t I remember? How could his memory be scrubbed clean like that, as white as all that snow?
Because … because … because it never happened?
Before he could talk himself out of it, he bit the inside of his left cheek, very hard, wincing as his teeth sank into his flesh. There, that hurt. A moment later, there was the warm, salty taste of blood on his tongue, and that was good, and so was the pain. Swallowing a ball of blood, he savored the ache, grabbed the feeling, held it close. See, Ma, I’m real. I feel pain, so I must be real.
Unless the pain was just for show. Or—and this was a truly strange thought—he was real … but only here and nowhere else.
That’s crazy. What are you, nuts? His shirt, sticky with sweat, clung like a second skin. There’s got to be an explanation that makes sense. This has to be a dream, or I’m sick and I’ve got a really high fever and I’m delirious or something.
Or maybe … oh Jesus, oh God … maybe Big Earl hadn’t missed. Maybe that bullet blasted into Eric’s skull and drilled into his brain, and now he was lying in a hospital somewhere, his ruined head in bandages, a tube down his throat, IVs in his veins: hooked up to machines that were breathing for him, keeping him alive—and it was only a matter of time before someone pulled the plug.