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“Well, I do,” he mutters, as if I completed my thought. “Never had another home than this one. So I’m not gonna leave it for the flimsy fantasy of a better, safer life somewhere else.”
“I really wasn’t suggesting we leave. It was just a random thought.”
He’s silent for a minute, but his face is working slightly, like he’s having an internal struggle about something. Then he finally bites out, “Why are you even having those thoughts?”
I blink, surprised by both the tone and the words. “What?”
“Why are you even thinking about it? Are you that unhappy?”
“No. No!” My response comes out more vehement than I intend. “They’re just thoughts. People have them all the time, and they don’t have to mean anything.”
“But they usually do. And something’s been eating at you for a while now.” He’s scowling at the road in front of us. “Why the fuck won’t you tell me what it is?”
“It’s not... It’s...” I try to speak. Try to explain. I genuinely try. I don’t know why I can’t get any words out.
“It’s what?” He’s slowed down to almost a crawl, and he leans toward me in his intensity. “Damn it, kitten, tell me!”
“I don’t know! I’m sorry, but I just don’t know. I feel restless. Jittery. Like I want something to happen. Like I want something to change. But I really don’t know what it is.” The words all tumble out in a messy babble, and I’m shocked by the admission. How private it is. And how I just let it all out.
“You want something to change?” His voice is soft and textured now. Not urgent anymore.
I shrug, staring down at my own hands. “I know it sounds silly. That’s why I don’t talk about it. I mean, what’s the point in saying you want something if you don’t even know what you want?”
Jackson is breathing heavily, staring at my face like he might be able to devour me whole.
It’s not a soft or a romantic or even a sexy look, but I want to lean into it anyway.
Something is shuddering in the air right now. I can sense it the way I can sense the wet thickness of the July humidity. I feel like it might be the answer I’m looking for if only I could reach out and grab it.
It dissipates when Jackson breaks the gaze and turns back to the road, accelerating back to his normal speed. “If you figure it out, you’ll tell me, right?”
I nod. Swallow. Stare at the blowing grassland around us. “Yeah. I’ll tell you.”
***
IT’S MIDAFTERNOON WHENwe come off the trails we’ve been following and get onto a small country road.
At least it used to be a road. Now it’s a lot of broken rubble with a few longer stretches of pavement.
“This isn’t normal wear and tear,” Jackson says, pulling off the road and driving on the grass beside it. “This has got to be earthquake damage. We must be getting to the right place.”
I hold on to the support bar because even the unpaved ground is all torn up and so the ride is bumpy. “This area must have been hit really hard. No wonder everyone made a run for it. Look, that used to be a church.”
It’s not even a building anymore. Just a pile of debris with half a cross sticking out from a section that used to be the steeple.
I pull out the roadmap again, comparing it against the sketched map on the note. “It looks like there are several old towns here worth checking out. Mack says that a few of the ones farther north have been resettled, but there’s a lot down this way that haven’t been fully explored yet.”
“We need small farms or acreages. Places that are likely to have smaller tractors.” He pulls to a stop and leans over to study the maps with me. “And along the way we’ll look for drugstores and pharmacies.”
We plot a route and follow it, stopping at several different rural properties. They must have been hit by other groups in the past because most of the houses and barns have been cleaned out.
Since the area we’re in has already been pillaged, we drive farther south, away from the bigger towns. On a small farm, we get excited since we find cabinets full of canned food in the house. We leave the cans for someone else, since we’ve got plenty of better food at New Haven, but it’s proof the place hasn’t been looted yet. There’s also an old pickup truck in the driveway that won’t run but that has a tank full of gas, so we siphon off enough to fill up our ATV.
“I can’t believe no one has found this place yet. Let’s check the outbuildings,” I say, breathless with anticipation as we get back into our vehicle. “Maybe they had John Deeres.”
Jackson is excited too. I can see it on his tense face. He drives us toward what used to be the large shed or workshop. The walls have fallen down, but it’s not too hard to move them out of the way to uncover two tractors painted in a familiar green.
I clap my hands and hug myself as Jackson runs over to check the models.
