Dave Eggers - Heroes of the Frontier

“I’ll get us some food,” Josie said.

She went to the Chateau, passing the main house, still no sign of any occupants, no new vehicles. Inside the Chateau, the rear living area brought on a terrible sadness. Now more than before the vehicle was a filthy thing. They were filthy people who belonged in this filthy machine. But then again, they were beautiful creatures who were at home in an immaculate cabin on a hundred-foot bluff. She retrieved milk and cereal and apples and returned to the A-frame.

Outside the cottage, birds were gossiping, the sun was rising. The wall of mountains beyond the bay took in the streaming sun with magnanimity. Josie and Paul and Ana ate, and washed the dishes with the faucet’s wonderful water pressure, and dried the dishes with the kitchen’s soft and absorbent paper towels. Josie decided they could stay another day. That they could make the beds and straighten the cottage such that it wouldn’t be obvious they had slept the night. They would linger on the grounds, see what came, and then, if by the afternoon no one had arrived, they could sleep there again. It was ideal here, considering anyone might be looking for them now: police, child services, Carl, someone sent by any one of them. Here their vehicle was hidden, they were hidden, there was no registry, no record of their presence. In fact, Josie thought that their reversals, their driving through the fire, might have served, unintentionally but brilliantly, to throw off whoever might have been on their trail.

After breakfast they explored the property, Josie ready at any moment for the arrival of the owners or caretakers. They removed the note from the door, deciding that if anyone came, she would pretend she and the kids had just arrived.

They found a path through the woods, leading to the bluff. But before the edge it bent and took them to a small white gazebo standing a few yards from the edge of the cliff, and she took this to be some sort of wedding location. Maybe the whole place was rented out for ceremonies, where five or ten families could gather and watch the vows and stay the night. Ana began running in circles in the gazebo and after the third lap was dizzy and holding on to the railing, panting. They could think of nothing else to do.

They returned to the main lawn and soon Ana had a soccer ball she’d found, and was kicking it, then running after it, attacking it as a cat would a giant ball of string. Paul thought this was very funny, and the lawn was wide and flat, and the sun bright and sky clear, so Josie saw no harm in sitting in one of the plastic lawn chairs and letting the kids run around while she did nothing. Could I live here? Josie wondered. Miles from anything. The road inaudible from your yard. The occasional moose. The possibility of bears and wolves. This spectacular view. The inability of your neighbors to complain about your leaving broken machinery in your yard. She thought of staying here indefinitely, but staying would mean waiting to get caught, and then there would be a negotiation, and she would have to contend with the look of distrust from whoever found them. If only, from now on, she could avoid judging eyes, she could survive. But all eyes were judging eyes, so better to move, and see without being seen.

But then again, this home, this property, was evidence of the glory of the land, this country. There was so much. There was so much space, so much land, so much to spare. It invited the weary and homeless like herself, her worthy children. She had the blurry thought that all the world’s searching and persecuted could find a home up here. Alaska’s climate was warming, was it not? It would soon be a forgiving place, with milder winters and uncountable millions of unpopulated acres, and so many empty homes like this, waiting to take in the desperate travelers of the world. It was a wonderful thought, a numbing notion. Josie closed her eyes, not expecting sleep.

—

When she opened her eyes, the air had chilled and her children were nowhere to be found. She startled to her feet, called for them, her mind popping with images of the two of them jumping over the cliff — of Ana jumping first, Paul trying to save her, the two of them tumbling downward, wondering where their mother was in all this. She’d been asleep in a plastic chair.

She found them in the barn, sitting on an antique tractor. It was not entirely safe, but not dangerous, either. Paul was up on the old metal driver’s seat, and Ana was on his lap, her little hands on the steering wheel. She turned to Josie, grinning.

“Look Mom!” she said.

The garage was full of mounted animal heads. Which seemed odd, to go through the trouble of killing and stuffing them all only to hang them in this dark unvisited place. Think of that! To kill animals, and care so much for them, or be so interested in celebrating the kills, that you would pay hundreds of dollars to mount them, only to warehouse them in this unseen room. It spoke of the endless bounty of the animal world, legions of replaceable mammals, more than enough to stuff and hide away some great percentage of them.

Josie thought of her own basement, the things she kept there even while knowing she would feel freer without them. She knew she felt liberated outside that house, and felt freer without her job, freer away from those hot dirty mouths. She felt freer here than at home, freer here alone than surrounded by her purported friends, and she felt sure she would be far freer without her bones weighing her down and her flesh draping over her bones, all this ugly aging skin needing food and water and moisturizer. To be a ghost! To see all, to see anything, but never to be seen — this might be bliss.

“We should go,” she said to them.

Paul was outraged. “You mean leave?”

She had just been struck by a strange feeling. The heads on the wall had done it. The sinister nature of their deaths had gotten to her. She’d been lucky the night before, and that luck could, would, fade or, more likely, change abruptly.

“No Mom,” Paul said. He then laid out an entirely rational argument. That they had been there one night already. That no one had come. That they had left the note on the door. That he could leave more notes — on the windows, on the door to the Chateau, to the cottage. That the worst that could happen would be that they would pay for two nights. The towering tragedy of a single parent is that your eldest child becomes not just confidant but valued counsel.

—

They decided to stay, with Josie reserving the right to change her mind at any time that day. The sky stayed blue all through the morning and they had an extravagant lunch of hot dogs and rice and pastrami, using the cottage stove and microwave and eating on real plates and with glasses made of glass, sitting on stools by the kitchen counter, and afterward Paul and Ana returned to the lawn, where they set up and played their own version of croquet. They found a tiny frog and Ana somehow caught it without fuss and carried it around in her little fat hands for an hour. And Josie watched from her chair, and finished her “Trails Grown Dim.”

A good one: “My great-grandfather James A. Layman, a Confederate veteran, Pvt., Co. D, Cavalry, Co. A, received an honorable discharge May 10, 1865, and entered Confederate Soldiers’ Home at Higginsville, Missouri, October 19, 1900, from Pulaski County, Missouri. He was listed as a resident there as late as 1902. He left to enter the home at Pewee Valley, Kentucky, and was there January 31, 1905, in Room 31 in the south wing. Here my record stops — no death date or place and no burial place. Will appreciate any help.”

The day was overtaken by dusk, Josie was exhausted, and there was very little food left. But she managed to make omelets and a bizarre salad containing lettuce and watermelon and bacon bits and pieces of sausage. The kids devoured it and by eight they were all ready for sleep.