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Elias, who was a second ago lost staring at the dead mouse in morbid fascination, stirs. “Huh? Where’s what?”
“My ring. My letter.”
“What ring? What letter? That cat just dropped a rodent at your feet and we’re not talking about it?”
“I had them with me, out in the desert, a ring and a letter. I was holding them.” Kyle turns to Elias. “Did you bring them back with you? To your house? Or here?”
“I was too busy saving your life to notice anything. Are we gonna address this weird cat or not?”
Kyle looks away. “Change of plan. I’m gonna put a bowl of tuna on my kitchen floor, then make a trip back to your favorite rock. Wanna come? Or stay and stare at the dead mouse?”
Elias gazes at Kyle, at a loss.
The cat glances from Kyle to Elias, back and forth, bored.
The dead mouse looks at nothing.
After Little Lion is contentedly eating from a bowl of tuna on the kitchen floor, Kyle and Elias set out, heading the wrong way out of the neighborhood back into the desert.
As they make their way, the two happen upon Kyle’s many breadcrumbs he dropped along the way: his shirt, his shoes, no sign of the socks, unfortunately, likely taken away by the wind throughout the day, and finally his pants and underwear. By the time they reach the spot, they have an armful of dusty laundry.
Kyle looks around while Elias dutifully holds the armful of laundry, casually glancing here and there. Kyle finds nothing in front of the rock. Nor behind it. Nothing to the sides, either. Kyle soon grows impatient. He walks in fevered circles around the rock, combing the ground, squinting at things. Where are they? “Oh, here it—” calls out Elias upon noticing something, only to realize what he’s found is just an oddly-shaped piece of stone glinting in the sand, not the ring. “Never mind,” he says, deflated, arms still full of Kyle’s clothes, then kicks at the rock and sends it flying off, doesn’t hear where it lands.
“Where’d you park your truck when you came here?” asks Kyle, turning urgently to Elias. “I think I dropped them along the way. Could they be in your truck?”
“You had nothing on you,” insists Elias. “You were naked, wrapped up in my shirt, I’m sure half of you was on fire. Maybe the letter was blown away, probably dancing around the Grand Canyon by now. It was just lightweight paper, right?”
Kyle stops at the rock again, staring at the crude, angular etching of Elias’s name. “I had them with me. Letter and ring. I was holding them. The ring …” Kyle thinks it over. “It fell on the ground next to me. It wouldn’t have blown away, too.”
“Someone else might’ve found it,” suggests Elias.
Kyle spins. “Who? No one comes out here.”
“Haven’t you seen those treasure hunter dorks with metal detector tools who comb the sands for valuable shit? They do it every day, looking for odds and ends they can sell, pawn off, melt down, whatever. They might’ve found it.”
Kyle sits on the rock and stares at the ground, defeated. The idea of a strange person snatching up the ring so quickly and taking off to sell it for a measly fistful of cash sickens him.
Elias joins him on the rock, still bearing Kyle’s clothes in his arms. “Meant a lot to you, huh? That ring?”
“They’d be lucky to make twenty bucks off of it. Whoever took it. And yet it was my …” Kyle closes his eyes. “It’s the last thing … the last thing I had of him … of my brother.”
“Oh … I’m so sorry.”
“He’s gone now … every bit of him, even his memory is … fading. I can barely see his face.” Kyle can’t believe he’s saying this. “You’re right, Tristan. Even memories die.”
Elias frees an arm from the laundry and places it around Kyle’s back, rubbing in circles. He says nothing.
“Doesn’t matter, I guess,” Kyle decides. “Just yesterday, I was prepared to say goodbye to everything. So what if I lose the last possession of my brother? Fuck it.” He hops off of the rock, Elias’s hand dropping. “And fuck that letter, too. It was just … It was just a paper full of lies, anyway.”
“What did it say?”
Kyle chooses a rock from off the ground, inspects it, weighs it in his palm, then pitches it into the distance. Despite his emotional state, he finds himself amazed at how far it flies. He squints to see where it lands. Far away, with a little crunching sound as it settles on the cracked earth.
Are his senses stronger now, after tasting Elias’s blood? It’s been so long since he’s been able to see so well, so far away.
That first night in the woods, when he could see an ant on a leaf in the darkness. Hear the scraping of its tiny legs …
