The World Without Flags

“You in a hurry to leave my company?” he asks me and holds his hand to his heart like I’ve hurt his feelings.

“No,” I say with a little chuckle. “I just can’t stop thinking about Eric.”

“Thinking’s a bitch,” he tells me. Then he smiles. “Dreaming is worse.”

I laugh but I don’t know why.

That night, after a meal of stew, I climb onto the back of the cart. The stars are out, but I don’t remember any of the astronomy that Eric taught me. Besides the North Star and the Big Dipper, I don’t recognize anything. When I close my eyes, I see Eric standing alone in the darkness. Although I’m exhausted, it’s a long time before I fight my way through the guilt to sleep.

128

I wake up miserable. My neck hurts and I can’t seem to get warm, no matter how close I sit to the fire. I don’t remember my dreams, but I feel the wake of them. I feel like my heart’s been dragged through a patch of thorns and thickets. The guilt for leaving Eric is so strong in me that I almost tell Randy that I’ve changed my mind and have decided to go back. For a moment, I figure that Pest and I can find our own place, north of Cairo. We can just walk into the forest and hole up in some abandoned shack or even a cave. But as I eat breakfast and think of a way to tell Randy, I begin to remember the good reasons why I’m here. If there’s anyone who knows of a place where we’ll be safe, it’s Randy. He’s spent his whole life out here, I tell myself. He knows every road and every community, big and small, that scrape out a living around here. He knows how people move, he knows where they go, and, most important for us, he knows where they don’t go. All I have to do is be a little more patient.

So I don’t return to Cairo.

But my bad night’s sleep and feelings of guilt don’t make me a very good travelling companion. I don’t do much that second day except nod and scowl. When Randy tries to talk to me, I just give him a dark look that tells him to leave me alone. He doesn’t seem to mind or notice, but just smiles and turns back to the road.

I’m in this mood all through the long day. We don’t find the place he told me about the night before. “Tomorrow,” Randy tells me. “We’ll get there tomorrow.”

I spend the day watching the roads, frowning, bitter about every mile that passes beneath the cart, taking me farther away from Eric and Pest. I hardly even say thank you for the evening meal and just go back to the cart to sleep. Thankfully, on the second night, my exhaustion wins over my guilt, and sleep comes to me almost immediately.

129

I dream of summer. I’m walking. I’m thirsty.

When I look over to my right, the man I know as my true father is walking beside me, holding my hand. When I look to my left, it’s my mother, holding my other hand. She smiles down at me, and her face is more clear to me than it’s ever been before. She’s got a thin face and long, straight black hair. Her eyes are golden and her neck is long and graceful. I never knew she was so beautiful.

Everything is clear in my dream. My father’s voice, my mother’s face, the feeling of asphalt under my feet. My father tells me, “Birdie,” he says. “I know you can do it. You’re going to be just fine, you hear me?”

I look up at my mother who leans down toward me. “Sometimes when the monster swallows you,” she says sweetly. “It spits you right back up!” She laughs and taps my nose.

“You’re going to be right as rain,” my father says. “You’ll see.”

But when he looks at me, his eyes are full of worms, and a river of dark fluid runs from his mouth.

130

I wake up suddenly, violently sitting up, protecting my face from the river of filth coming from my father’s mouth. When I realize I’m awake, I sit there, breathing heavily, and, I have to admit, moaning a little. I’ve never dreamed so clearly of my mother and father. Eric told me that I used to tell different stories about them when I was younger. I said they shot each other, I said they died of the Worm, I said they vanished, I said that they were killed by gangs. Over time, Eric and Lucia realized I didn’t really remember. As time passed, Eric told me, I stopped talking about them at all. All these years I thought I had truly forgotten them. These memories shake me. It’s a long while before the dream fades away. I breathe deeply, in and out, the way that Lucia taught me so long ago when I feel overwhelmed.

I focus on the smoldering campfire and Randy’s figure curled up in a sleeping bag next to it. By the time I settle down, I realize that it’s dawn. I breathe in and out and watch the sunrise. I listen to the birdsong and the wind in the trees.