Dave Eggers - Heroes of the Frontier

Ana walked over to her chair and leaned against it. Her bow was around her shoulder in a startlingly professional way.

“Mom?” Ana said. “Are there robbers here?”

“No,” Josie said. On cue, a distant siren knifed through the air. “That’s a fire engine,” she said, pre-empting. Paul was nearby, still shooting his arrows.

“But are there bad guys?”

“No.”

“Where are they then?”

“They’re really far away,” Josie said, and caught Paul’s eye. Why tell her there are bad guys at all? he seemed to be saying.

“You’ll never see them in your whole life,” Josie said. “And we have army guys fighting them.” Again she caught herself saying unhelpful things.

“What about the Joker?” Ana asked.

“What about him?”

“Is he real?”

“No. He’s pretend. Someone just drew him, the same as I could draw him. Someone like me made up the Joker.”

“Someone like you?”

“Yeah. Or someone like your dad. More like your dad.”

“What about skunks?” Ana asked.

Josie tried not to laugh. “Skunks?”

“Are they real?”

“Sure, but they’re not dangerous. They can’t hurt you.”

“But are monsters real?”

“No, there are no real monsters.”

“How do we know about monsters then?”

“Well, people made them up. Someone came up with an idea and drew it and made up a name.”

“So someone can make up a name like Iron Man?”

“Sure.”

“How about Randall?”

“Randall?”

“Yeah, is that a name?”

“It is. Did you hear that name somewhere?”

“I think so. I heard that word.” Ana’s brow furrowed. “I didn’t know if it was a name.”

“It’s a name,” Josie said.

Another pair of sirens threaded through the sky. Ana listened, her eyes concentrating on Josie’s arm. She was tapping it with her tiny fingers, as if sending a coded subterranean message.

“Are the army guys big?” she asked.

“They are. Much bigger than the bad guys.”

“Are they monsters?”

“Who?”

“The army guys.”

“No. They’re regular people. They have kids, too. But then they put on a uniform and they fight the bad guys.” And to try to end the discussion, Josie added, “And they always win.”

“But they killed Jeremy.”

“What?”

“Someone killed him, right?”

Ana had been building up to this, Josie realized. She had heard the entry from “Trails Grown Dim,” the words robber and shot and had been sorting it through ever since.

“Who told you Jeremy was killed?”

Now Ana turned to Paul, who had stopped his archery, having heard it all. When Ana turned back to Josie, her eyes had welled. Josie had not told Ana about Jeremy’s death, and had not told Paul, either. She looked to him now, disappointed.

“Mario told me,” Paul said, petulantly. Mario was another camper, another boy Jeremy had babysat. And then, as if to answer Josie’s next question, he said, “Ana should know. Otherwise she thinks someone’s alive when he’s dead. That’s stupid.”

A mechanical wheeze sounded behind Josie, and she turned to find an enormous vehicle, slowing to park behind the Chateau. There was dust all around, but when it settled she saw that it was a silver pickup truck with a wooden home, pitch-roofed and painted black, sitting in the bed. The little house had windows, and a tiny tin stovepipe, looking altogether quaint but for the words “Last Chance” painted on the front-facing wall. Below those words, in smaller print, were the words “Beholden to None.”

“What’s that, Mom?” Ana asked.

Josie said nothing. She expected that one of the truck’s doors would open momentarily, and didn’t want to be caught describing the inhabitants. There was good reason to pack her children up quickly and leave, given the friendliness of the people steering a vehicle like this, which could not possibly be street-legal and hinted at the end of the world, was not guaranteed.

“Paul, come here,” she whispered, and he brought his bow and arrow to her, and she subtly arranged both him and Ana such that she stood between them and this harbinger of doom.

The door opened. “Are we open?” a cheerful voice said. It was a young woman with a brilliant mane of raven-black hair. She emerged from the truck in a two-footed jump, her heavy boots making an assertive sound of arrival in the white gravel. Wearing a loose black T-shirt and denim shorts, she began to stretch, one arm raised high, revealing a lithe and busty torso, while her other hand pushed the passenger seat forward, allowing the release of three children, all athletic and tanned, from the depths of the truck. They each jumped from the truck as she had — that is, as if landing on the moon. All seeming to be within the age range of Josie’s kids, they ran directly to the empty booth, having assumed Paul and Ana had gotten their bows there. The driver’s door opened and a short man emerged, no taller than the woman, and said, “Is it open?” He leaned back, stretching with a loud groan. Broad-shouldered and muscular, he wore a V-neck undershirt and canvas workpants tucked into hiking boots. He made his way around the truck and down the slope toward the archery field.

“I asked her but she didn’t answer,” the woman said, nodding her chin toward Josie. Her tone was familiar.

“Sorry,” Josie said. “I didn’t know you were asking me . I don’t work here. We just got here and have been messing around.”

“So it’s free,” the man said. He had an impish, closed-mouth smile but his eyes were tight and bright and lit with a kind of mischief that could go either way — practical jokes around the house, or handmade bombs in the shed.

“There’s no more bows, Dad,” one of the new children said. This was a girl of about nine. She and her younger brothers had investigated the booth and found it empty.

“You bring those?” the woman asked Josie, indicating the bows and arrows Ana and Paul were holding.

“No, they were just in the field,” Josie said. “Your kids are welcome to use them. We’ve been here for a while.” By this Josie meant that she and her children would be ceding this field to this family, and would be fleeing quickly.

“No, no. We came because we saw you guys out here. We can wait,” the man said, and extended his hand. “I’m Kyle. This is Angie.” Josie shook their hands and introduced Ana and Paul. Kyle and Angie’s kids were soon upon them, and were introducing themselves — Suze, Frank and Ritter — with the utmost civility, making Paul and Ana look skittish and impolite by comparison.

“Do you live there?” Ana asked. She was pointing to the black home sitting in the truckbed.

“Ana,” Josie said, then turned to Kyle and Angie. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. We sleep there at night, yup,” Kyle said to Ana, squatting down in front of her. “You like it?” Ana was noncommittal at first, then gave a slow nod. “Sure you do,” he said, smiling his closed-mouth smile, his bright eyes shining in their devilish or saintly way. His grin grew, and now Josie saw his teeth, oversized incisors, lending his face a wolfish cast. “We built it ourselves,” he said. “You want to look inside?”

“No, no. That’s okay,” Josie said, but found herself and her children being led to the truck by the eager Kyle. Angie stayed with her children, who were now using the bows and arrows dropped in the high grass by Paul and Ana. Kyle jumped onto the truck’s back bumper and opened the back door of the structure, which resembled a chicken coop from the outside and inside, an army barracks, with a series of bunks on either side, the floor covered in a carpet remnant. There were also stacks of towels, and magazines, and baseballs and bats, blankets. At the end of each bed, a flashlight hung from a hook.