like a muscle that’s been tensed too long, and so they suddenly stop constricting and let all of the blood flow. The body warms up all of a sudden and, even though you’re literally freezing to death, you feel hot. Sometimes people even start sweating.”
“So people start taking their clothes off?”
“Yeah,” I said. “And then sometimes, after they’ve taken off all of their clothes, they get that burrowing instinct. They’re found naked and frozen in some hole someplace.”
“Next time I ask you for a weird fact,” Tommy said, “just stop me. Or better yet, just tell me something to do with numbers. Numbers can’t be as bad as people getting naked and dying in a hole someplace.”
“You’re going to be okay,” I said.
“I know,” Tommy replied, no small amount of pride in his voice.
“I mean you’re not going to die in some hole,” I said. I felt my voice soften.
We walked several steps before Tommy answered. His eyes had narrowed and his chin stuck forward like the bow of a tugboat. It was obvious he knew that I was trying to tell him something subtle. Trying to make a point without hammering him over the head with it. I could almost hear the gears working in his mind, grinding in their slow, methodical, limited way.
“I hear you,” Tommy repeated. A patina of doubt clung to his voice.
“I can’t get along without you,” I said.
“I hear you,” Tommy repeated.
“Hey, here’s another weird fact for you.”
“Oh no,” Tommy said, palming his face.
“No, this one’s fun. So in ancient Greece they used to believe that, in the very beginning, men and women were one creature. Two heads, four arms, four legs, all of that.”
“First naked people digging holes and now this,” Tommy said from behind his hand. I could hear him holding back a laugh.
I reached over and pulled his hand away and, sure enough, there was Tommy’s wide, toothy smile. The one he didn’t show nearly as much as he used to. “Don’t interrupt me,” I said, and I was smiling too, even though I hadn’t intended to. “So men and women were one and then the gods threw down lightning bolts and split them into two. But the thing was that it split the soul in half. So men and women are always trying to find the other half of their soul.”
“That sounds like some weird kind of horror movie.”
“No,” I said and laughed. “The thing is, the story is about dating and marriage. It’s about how people fall in love. But what if it wasn’t? What if it was about brothers and sisters? What if you’re the other half of my soul and I’m the other half of yours?”
Tommy’s toothy smile faded, replaced by a warm, contemplative grin that bordered on embarrassment. “Leave it to you to think of a thing like that at a time like this,” he said.
“If I could be half of anybody, Tommy, I’d want it to be you.”
The words came from somewhere I hadn’t intended. But I meant them all just then. Looking back now, I wonder how I ever drifted away from believing them. I wonder how I betrayed my brother, who really was the other half of my soul, like I did.
* * *
The miles came and went. I counted off each footstep as a way of keeping my mind from drifting back to the cold that was always gnawing at the edges of me. I followed in Tommy’s shadow as the wind came down from somewhere in the world far, far away and poured over us both. No matter how hard the wind, Tommy never wavered. It was easy to follow him if I let myself.
Without speaking Tommy reached back and took my hand and pulled me off the road and down into the large ditch bordering it. When I started to ask what was going on he put a finger to my lips and slid closer to the grass and turned and looked up at the sky and seemed only to wait. After a few seconds I heard the sound of the car coming.
I held my breath and waited as the sound hissed closer. The wind pushed and pulled the sound so that the car seemed to be coming from all directions at once, like standing inside a bell after it’s been struck, but the glare of the headlights showed that the car was coming from the direction from which we had just come. There was no reason to believe that it wasn’t Gannon.
The seconds stretched out long.
The car came and the car passed, giving no indication that it had ever seen us.
After it had passed Tommy lifted his head and watched the car recede into the dark. “We should get off the road,” he said. “At least for a while.”
I only nodded and followed my brother’s lead.
He led us down the embankment toward a wall of dark trees that grew up along the road in dark, scruffy shadow. The bark shone in the dim starlight and bounced a reedy light off the cold, hard earth. The air inside the forest was denser, warmer. The sound of our footfalls and rustling of our clothes bounced around from tree to tree and came back to us sounding like the movement of a dozen other people. As if, at any moment, we might turn a corner and find our own faces peeking out at us from behind some tree.
“Stop,” Tommy said.
After a few seconds of standing in the cold, dense forest, I heard the sound. It was a gentle rustling at first, like canvas rubbing flesh. And then came the low, rhythmic thud of footfalls followed by young lungs pushing and pulling at the cold, thick air.
A light flared in our eyes, blinding us both.
“Who are you?” a hard, female voice hissed. “What are you doing out here?”
She held up a hand to beat back the light just as Tommy did the same. Then he took a step forward, putting himself between me and whoever was behind the flashlight.
Tommy lowered his hand and looked directly into the glare. Then, having nothing productive come of it, he shielded his eyes and over his shoulder whispered to me, “Who do you think they are, Ginny?”
I already knew who they were, even before the light was lowered and our eyes were able to adjust so we could finally see them.
There were almost ten of them standing in the forest before us, beneath the dim starlight. Embers, each and every one. And all of them old enough to be drafted. All of them trying to get away from the war.
Save for one, they stood with their heads down, coats pulled up to their ears, legs trembling from cold and fatigue, as though everything in their lives was being carried on their shoulders and was pushing them into the earth, grinding them down with each moment.
“Hey!” Tommy said before I could stop him.
In unison, they all trained their eyes on him. “We’re not police or draft,” Tommy said. “We’re just on our way to Florida,” he continued. “Heading down to watch the launch. How about you guys?”
After a long moment and a watchful stare, the person holding the flashlight spoke. She was dark-skinned with her hair cut close like a soldier’s. She had hard eyes. And when she spoke, her voice was confident as steel.
