Chapter Text
Hillbilly's chest started bleeding again as they made their way across Texas.
"Hell," he said, the wind whipping his voice away and his hair wild around his face. He set his guitar secure between the casket and the side of the truck, pulled the cloth of his shirt away from his body with a frown.
"Here," Jay said, shifting over to help him with the dressing.
"I'm obliged." He pulled his shirt off with awkward, stiff movements, taking care to keep it clear of the blood. Jay's body blocked Eugene's view, not that he much wanted to see it anyway. He looked through the window of the truck, but could scarcely make Snafu and Bill out through the sticky grime clouding the glass, dust and dirt in so many ancient layers that it became repugnant to the touch, like days old dead flesh, or the heavy, familiar weight of the stock of a gun. He watched the casket instead, fighting not to wince each time the truck bumped and made the box jump in place, slamming back down reproachfully against the metal bed.
"Here he comes." Eugene looked up at Jay's words. Hillbilly's shirt was back on, and he and Jay were both leaning against the side of the truck, looking out at something. Someone. The truck slowed to a stop, Snafu not bothering to pull to the side. Cars rushed by them in roars and shrieks and sudden bursts of wind that made the truck shift on its wheels, but none of that mattered. Eugene watched Burgie make his way across a scrubby field, lifting his hand in greeting as he drew closer.
"Took you long enough," Bill called from the cab of the truck.
"There weren't no rush," Burgie answered. He put his hand along the side and jumped into the back, settling down next to Eugene. He stared at the coffin for a moment, then stretched his legs out as far they could go without coming in contact with it. "Sledge," he said, not looking away.
"Glad you're coming along, Burgie," Eugene said. Burgie only scoffed, his lips flattening.
"Like I'd end up anywhere else." He lifted his gaze, looked around him as they gained speed, the heat making the air shimmer, casting the landscape in rippling waves of greengold and brownred and blueblueblue. "Gonna miss it though. The sky, y'know? We've been halfway round the world, and I still ain't found anything to equal it." He lifted a hand, gestured. "The way it spreads out and stretches itself down to meet the land, and all some distance so far away it might as well be some other world."
"Maybe it is," Jay said mockingly. "Maybe we're going there."
"Maybe you'll come back here some day," Eugene tried.
"No," Burgie said after a moment. Eugene wasn't sure which of them he was answering. "I don't think so."
They drove on.
They each took a turn behind the wheel, everyone except Hillbilly; none of them would dream or dare to suggest he move from his spot at the foot of the casket. Eugene drove as the sun burned itself down behind them, an unforgiving red that poured across the surface of the truck's black-speckled mirrors, so that all he could see was the road ahead, the world behind them consumed. He glanced to the side, over at Snafu.
"They're still there," he said, as if he knew what Eugene was thinking.
"You didn't look."
"The fuck would they go, anyway?" Snafu said derisively.
"Something's wrong with Jay." Snafu threw him a cutting look, a smile all sharp edges. Eugene didn't know what it meant. He'd watched him and watched him and thought until he wore himself away to nothing, and he'd never once understood what Snafu meant. "Forget it," he muttered.
"Should stop for the night," Snafu said.
"Why? I can drive through."
"Just stop," Snafu said, shifting in his seat.
Eugene found a camping ground to stop at shortly after dark, and the six of them sat together around the empty pit, littered with the old wet ash of the previous users. It was blaringly hot, Eugene couldn't understand the number of fires flickering around them, throwing out needless heat. Folk would hold on to their damn rituals; a little fire to drive away the dark, to drive away all those things that only the black of night could show a man. Voices drifted to them along with the sweet-smelling smoke, lifted high with good humor, joy. And here they sat around an empty circle, locked in silence.
"When's the last time we were all together like this?" Bill said suddenly.
"God, Leyden." Jay's voice was tight.
"Just makes the rest of it seem pretty fucking meaningless. Like we coulda been like this a long time ago, and instead we went and-"
"And what?" Burgie snapped. "You'd better quit."
"You're saying you liked it out there?" Jay said, almost talking over Burgie.
"Easy," Hillbilly said. They quieted. Eugene pushed his shoulder against Snafu, just a slender, unsettled line of heat at his side in the dark. Snafu grunted and stood up, and Eugene followed after him, walking away and into the pine trees. They stood politely spaced apart as pine trees tended to do, so that it was easy to make their way between those long thin trunks, picking their feet up to avoid stumbling on the undergrowth.
When they got a little distance away, Eugene pulled Snafu to him, pushed his chin up with a hand on his jaw and bit him hard on his neck. Snafu sighed and loosened, leaning into him for a moment. Then he pulled away. Eugene let him go, and they went on walking.
"Do you remember that reunion?" Eugene asked.
"Sure I do."
"You remember, we were standing outside, and you were wearing a white shirt, you'd left your coat for some reason-"
"-Jesus, Sledgehammer."
"-and I asked you if you'd been happy. You remember that?" Snafu didn't answer, just like then, walked alongside him in stony silence. "You just stared at me like I'd sprouted two heads."
"Happy," Snafu said, twining the word up with disdain. "The fuck does that even mean? No, I wasn't goddamn happy. Wanted to snap your neck when you asked me that." He stopped suddenly, and so Eugene stopped. "Were you?" He asked accusingly. Eugene knew he would take it like an insult, no matter which answer he gave.
"I guess," he said, shrugging a shoulder. "Happy enough." He tried not to frown, then remembered Snafu couldn't see it anyways. "I was happy," he said, trying to infuse the words with certainty. Snafu made a noise in his throat and turned around, walking back the way they'd come. Eugene trailed behind him. "Were you happy over there?"
"Which there we talking about?"
"Don't do that."
They didn't speak again until they reached the edge of the pine trees. Snafu stopped walking, Eugene could hear him patting around in his pockets.
"I'd kill for a smoke."
"You could smoke if you wanted."
"It ain't the same." He turned in suddenly to face him. "I was happy enough."
Eugene reached out and touched his arm. "Bill shouldn't of said that. Not to them."
"Yeah."
"But." He hesitated, drummed his fingers restlessly against his arm and then let his hand drop away. "But I know what he means."
"Yeah," Snafu said again, his voice thick.
There was a stranger sitting in their spot when they got back. He wasn't alone: there were more of them, Eugene could feel them, but they were hanging back, letting the man speak on their behalf. He was talking to Hillbilly, gesturing with a hand. Eugene came and stood at Hillbilly's shoulder, Snafu at his side. Hillbilly was rubbing that spot on his chest, as if it was paining him again.
"-no need to travel so far," the man was saying, as Eugene and Snafu drew near enough to hear. "You can choose where it ends."
"That a fact," Hillbilly said flatly.
"It is," the man answered. There was just enough light for Eugene to pick out his broader points. He was dressed strangely well, in a light coat with a long vest beneath. He had a large hat that he turned back and forth in his hands as he spoke. "That's what we've done." He gestured behind him, towards the silent, waiting crowd. "They forced us to leave, and I talked myself in circles trying to obtain permission to return." He shook his head. "Better to throw water at the sea. So we went without their blessing. It's the right of every free man to choose his home."
"Even if someone's already living there?" Jay said darkly. "Isn't that what you really did? Ran off the ones that had been there first?"
"You're too young to know," the man answered, a scowl in his voice. "It was my right. Didn't I suffer for it? Look at these hands." He held them up, but no one could see them in the dark. "We kept peace with them as we could. And what is this, this first? They would tell you themselves that they had come from elsewhere, that the land wasn't theirs to claim." He gestured towards the trees. "Ask them, they say it still."
"Why're you here, if you say you went back?" Bill said. "Don't you want to be there?"
"Of course," the man said, sounding surprised. He paused for a moment, and when he spoke again he was hesitant, confused. "We're returning there. Not far now." He stood slowly. He waited a moment, standing tall and still in front of them. "Everywhere you find the marks of the one's who came before. This land has always called to the restless dreamers. They've tread back and forth across its length and breadth, and only a fortunate few found what they were seeking. The rest wandered, and perished." He settled his hat back on his head. "If you find your destination unreachable, you are welcome to return home with us."
"We're obliged," Hillbilly said. "But we ain't turning back." The man nodded and backed away, disappearing into the gloom. Eugene listened to the receding footsteps, a countless number of travelers.
"Wonder if they'll get there," Burgie said.
"Ain't made it yet," Snafu said.
Later, they laid themselves down around the truck, not that any of them would sleep, but even they had rituals that they hadn't let go of. And Eugene was tired, and it felt good to lay shoulder to shoulder with Snafu again.
"Do you remember on Okinawa," he said, "when we would lay on that rock at night?"
"Why you doing this?" Snafu said.
"You remember, you would make up constellations? Each idea dumber than the last."
"Goddamn you."
Eugene rolled over, slid his hand up Snafu's shirt, feeling along his ribs and chest. He was skinny, and hard, and hardly there at all. He'd always seemed a step away from up and disappearing, smoke wisping to nothing, starved as he had been of everything a human needed to thrive. Eugene lay his head down against his chest.
"It's funny," he said.
"What?"
"How I can hear your heart."
They crossed into Louisiana the next day, and Snafu changed, grew more chipper and more mean, picking endlessly at Jay.
"Don't gotta be here, y'know. Ain't no one forcing you."
"Go to hell, Snafu."
"You weren't cut out for it, no how. That's why they moved you out." Jay's eyes went tar-dark. "Hillbilly snapped you in half."
"Give it a rest," Eugene said, glancing over at Hillbilly. He was looking back and forth between them, frowning.
"Just the truth, Sledgehammer. He'd gone on to Okinawa, he'd a sunk down in the mud and stayed there." Snafu leaned back, his elbow and shoulder digging into Eugene, his eyes locked on Jay. "It's cuz we know, huh? That's why you won't leave. Why you been looking at us all hateful."
"That's enough, Shelton," Hillbilly said. "He's earned it. Didn't he bleed?"
But none of them had bled quite like Hillbilly.
They had to stop in the middle of the day, when a long line of travelers emerged from the slough and made their way across the road, heedless of how Bill braked with a jolting lurch and laid his hand heavy down on the horn. They were dark-skinned, glowing with the heat, dressed exceedingly simply, with light woolen shawls wrapped around their shoulders. Their eyes stayed trained ahead of them, but one man slowed and turned his head just slightly, a bold nose, a ravaged face. Bill stopped honking.
"Don't look back," he said, his voice a clear cold bell. "The way will close if you look back." He walked on, his face set steadfastly forward. Eugene looked to either side of the road. They seemed to have emerged from the stagnant water, and disappeared just as effortlessly into the wet pines on the other side.
"Hear that, De L'Eau," Snafu said. "You want out, gonna have to walk backwards all the way."
Jay glared at him, and then at Eugene. Then he turned his head, looked purposefully behind him. "I'm coming with you," he said grimly. Snafu grinned. The last woman stepped clear of the truck, and they continued on.
They drove straight into a summer storm, hot fat rain pouring down on them in a sudden deluge. Up front with Snafu, Eugene twisted around and peered through the smeared window. Jay and Bill were huddled in on themselves, shoulders hunched and heads ducked down into the shell of their bodies. Burgie and Hillbilly were half-sprawled across the coffin, trying to protect it from the rain.
"Think we should stop?"
"You see any kinda place?" Snafu said poisonously. They went on for a time, Eugene squinting out through the gray streaming curtains, until, like an answered prayer,
"There," he said, pointing to a barn off in the distance. The remains of a house sat next to it, half fallen in on itself, gray clapboard and exposed innards. It had caught fire at some point, and one end was blackened, with dark fingers stretching out along the rest of it. But the barn looked solid enough.
"Nah," Snafu said. "S'no good."
"It is," Eugene insisted. He looked at Snafu; his jaw was set square and hard, he was staring fixedly forward. "We gotta get him outta the rain, Snaf. It'll soak through, he'll start to stink."
"He's already stinking."
"We're gonna start to smell it." Everything started swimming, sinking down, and him along with it. His chest ached for a breath he couldn't pull in. Jesus, when was the last time he'd had one of these? He thought he'd left that behind him. "He'll smell like, he'll smell-"
"Alright, fucking hell, Eugene," Snafu bit out. He whipped the wheel around, drove them straight into the overgrown field, towards the barn, the tall grass thrashing down beneath them, the coffin clattering in the bed loud enough for them to hear it in the cab. Eugene leaned his head forward against the dash and sucked in big, shuddering breaths. "I ain't going in that damn house."
"No one's asking you to," Eugene ground out.
At the barn, Eugene got out to open the half-hanging doors, and Snafu drove the truck straight inside.
"Help me get him up outta the truck," Hillbilly said. His hair was ropey with the wet, the front of his shirt was one long red stain.
"You're bleeding again," Bill said.
"It'll keep."
They lifted the casket free, set it carefully down in the barn's sturdiest corner. Burgie sat Hillbilly on top of it and made him strip his shirt while the rest of them opened the tailgate and bounced along the back to drain the water out.
"How's the guitar, Jay?"
"Wet." Jay carried it over to Hillbilly, who cradled it in his lap and wiped it down with dry handfuls of straw.
"What d'you wanna hear?" He asked, not looking up.
"You never displeased, didn't matter what you played," Burgie answered. Hillbilly almost smiled. He started up a tune, and Eugene walked over to the open door to stand beside Snafu. He was leaning against the frame, looking towards the house.
"Can't be here, Sledge." Eugene looked at him. His eyes were wide and blankly silvered. He was staring at the house like it might be a train barreling down on him.
"Okay." Eugene took him by the wrist. "Let's go."
Snafu lightened and loosened as they walked away from the house, the barn. It was still pouring rain, but that only made him tip his head back, smiling as if the clinging wet hadn't ever cracked him, cracked them both.
"Run all around these parts, when I was small," he said eventually, lowering his head and giving it a wild shake. "Close enough to these parts, at least." Eugene was still holding him by his wrist; he lifted his arm up and pressed his nose and mouth against the bones there, long and fragile, the veins running thick and strong beneath the surface.
"Tell me about it."
"Nothing to tell. Ma worked for a sharecropper, cotton mostly. She was always hauling me along after her, but I shirked it soon as I could each day. My old man worked some, but he spent most of his time chasing down some big idea or other that never shook out. Then the whole place folded, and we couldn't stay, and we ended up-" he stopped abruptly. Eugene waited until they cleared the field, their feet finding a neglected dirt road. They turned down it, the mud sucking at their boots.
"None of it was any good?" Snafu slanted a look at him from the corner of his eye.
"Ain't saying that. S'alright. Daddy liked to hunt, and he'd take me along. I liked being on the water."
"Which way?"
He stopped and looked around, like he'd be able to tell by the direction the trees leaned, by the curve of the road. "C'mon."
Eugene followed him down the lane, and over a weathered, broken down wooden fence. They moved beneath trees, the rain coming down in patches on them now, the green almost sickening, surrounding them like it was, an unkillable creature. It was a clutching kind of green, the kind that wrapped itself tight around any foothold it could find and strangled and choked. Snafu pulled his wrist free of Eugene's hold, lifted it up and gripped him by the back of his neck. His hand was hard, reassuringly rough.
They reached the marsh's edge, and Snafu toed out of his boots, waded in until the fetid, mossy water had covered his ankles.
"You remember on the train?" He asked. He didn't turn around.
"Yeah."
"You sat right there, and I sat right there, and we just blinked at each other like a couple a cows." Eugene watched him, his form nearly lost in his baggy shirt and trousers, weightless enough to lift away, or slide down into the water without so much as rippling the surface. "You think I was yellow?"
"No." He frowned, stared down at Snafu's abandoned boots. "Maybe. If you were, I was too."
"Guess we used it all up, huh? Threw it all away on killing, so that there weren't nothing to draw from when it came down to it."
"I dunno. Maybe we knew even then."
"I sure as hell didn't." He looked to the side with a sudden jerk of motion, and Eugene followed his gaze. There was woman making her way towards them, walking along the rushes at the water's edge.
"What you come for?" She asked, rich-voiced. She was long-faced and sinewy thin, her hair barely contained against the back of her head. She was wearing a plain, shapeless shirt dress.
"Not for you," Snafu answered, hostile. "You can walk on."
"Walk on?" She repeated, smiling. "You come to my water." She drew closer, her eyes shifting from Snafu over to Eugene. "I done run out the one before. He's still walking, but I ain't unkind. I blessed him 'fore he went so that his feet wouldn't never lead him back to his old ways." She stopped a few paces away, lifted a hand and crooked a long, bony finger at Eugene. "C'mere, boy."
"Don't," Snafu said. "She's an old witch."
"No one's talking to you," the woman said to him, her eyes locked on Eugene. "You ain't got no respect. Never gave it, never got it. Not like this sweet child." She motioned to Eugene again. "You c'mere. I got something here for you." Eugene came to her, Snafu muttering behind him, stood in front of her. She reached a hand into her pocket. "You come a decent way, but got further to go. But they cruel out here. You can't know 'less you lived on my side of it. Take this." And she pulled something free, a small brown bag, knotted closed with a simple leather cord. Her eyes were black, black enough to swallow the world. The sounds of the marsh seemed to heighten and pull in around them, like she was sucking in the pattering rain on the water's surface, the bird calls and the sobbing insects.
"You ain't rooting him," Snafu said, suddenly beside him, yanking on Eugene's arm hard enough to make him stumble, fall in against him for a moment. "Anyway, he's already got one." He reached into the collar of Eugene's shirt, pulled out his cross and showed it to the woman.
"Him?" The woman said with a cracking laugh. "Don't you know he's gone? Cleared outta these parts a long time ago. Washed his hands a us, that's what they say." She leaned forward, dropped her voice. "But you know, I think he left 'cuz we was drawing too close to his name."
"You're lying," Eugene said, angry, pulling free of Snafu. She just smiled and returned the brown bag to her pocket.
"You might could make it. That one's gone, but you boys've got another hand over you." She backed away until she was standing in the water, her eyes circling the air around them. She nodded. "A strong hand, a kind hand. You might could make it."
"C'mon," Snafu said, pulling on Eugene. They backed away, the woman watching them go, deep-eyed, the edge of her dress floating on the scummy water.
"Thank you," Eugene said, and she dipped her chin.
"You a sweet one. Got a good, strong hand over you both." They didn't turn their backs on her until she was out of sight.
The rain finally let up that night, and they all walked together out into the field and collapsed on their backs, their faces turned up towards a fat yellow moon, hanging low enough in the sky that Bill reached a hand out to it. Even Hillbilly had felt its call, had left his spot beside the coffin to lay out under the clear light. Eugene was soaked through all along his back, but he was warm, and Snafu's arm was pressed beside his on the sodden grass, and Bill was on his other side, tugging wearily on his lip.
"Christ, I'm tired," he huffed. Eugene hummed in agreement, and they lay together in the quiet for a moment, and then Bill spoke again. "I mean it, you know. You guys don't have to agree with me or nothing, but this was the only damn thing that ever mattered to me."
"Okay, Bill," Burgie said gently.
"Why's it so fucking beautiful?" Jay said.
"Harvest moon, ain't it?" Burgie said.
"I dunno," Eugene answered. "Don't think it's the right time of year." Snafu snorted, and then Jay snickered, and then they were all laughing, breathlessly wheezing, Snafu rolling over and burying his grinning mouth against Eugene's shoulder. The moonlight was pouring down on them all clean and golden, so that they didn't notice at first how an orange glow had started to rise up and out from the earth.
"What is that?" Jay said, and even as he spoke Hillbilly was lurching to his feet with a strangled curse, was running back towards the barn.
"It's burning," Burgie said, jumping up, the rest of them tumbling after him.
It was already licking greedily along the walls, smoke rolling out in waves around it. Eugene couldn't understand how it had grown so quickly, how they hadn't heard it before, talking like it was as it ate its way across the barn. And the wood had been soaked through from the rain, it was unnatural, it wasn't right. Hillbilly had already disappeared through the doors, and Snafu peeled away from Eugene's shoulder, and Eugene looked over to see him making to run in the other direction. He reached out and snagged him by his elbow.
"Gonna collapse," Snafu said, but he was looking at the house. That was when Eugene realized that the house was burning too.
"Jesus, don't go in there." He pulled, and Snafu struggled against him. "Snaf! We gotta get the casket, the truck." He shook him, and Snafu glared at him, his eyes wild, gone, and then he cursed and shrugged Eugene off and plunged into the barn.
The others were dragging the casket towards them, bent low against the thick gray smoke. It had caught fire at the foot, where Hillbilly tended to sit. Burgie glanced up. "Get the truck." Snafu ducked past them and Eugene followed after. He could scarcely see Snafu as he opened the truck door and jumped inside, not with how roiling thick and gray the air had grown. He could scarcely hear the sound of the engine starting up over the growing voice of the fire. Eugene glanced to the side, saw Hillbilly's guitar laying untouched on the bare dirt. He snatched it up and ran after the truck as Snafu drove it backwards through the doors.
Outside, Bill and Burgie had whipped off their shirts and were using them to beat out the fire on the casket. Eugene looked towards the truck. It was still running, the door hanging open. Snafu was gone.
"Oh, God." He looked towards the house. Had the doorway been open before? Had there ever been a door there in the first place? "God." He dropped the guitar and ran. The smoke was billowing out through the gaping doorway, the crumbling roof. Eugene fought back images of crawling, scrabbling men streaming fire and screams, and threw himself inside.
It was a small house, more a shack than anything else, so he didn't understand why he couldn't find Snafu, even with the way the heat was making the air haze and turning everything so hellish bright that he could hardly see. He stumbled through rooms, over crumpled walls and burning detritus, yelling for him with his arm up over his mouth, his streaming eyes. But Snafu didn't answer. Eugene couldn't find him.
"Don't do this, don't fucking do this," he muttered under his breath, ready to drop down and let it fall on him, ready to pull the place apart one scorching beam at a time until he reached him, and then he saw him, crouched in front of a pile of burning wood, his shirt up over his nose and mouth. He was shifting through the pieces, throwing them aside with furious intent, heedless of the fire. His hands were, his hands - "Jesus Christ," Eugene said, almost falling against him. He wrapped an arm around his chest, hauled him back. Snafu tried to pull free, raised one of his ruined hands up to try and tug Eugene's arm off of him. Eugene's stomach heaved, and he wrapped his other arm around his waist. "Damn you, goddamn you."
"She's under there, she's under there," Snafu was saying, chanting. "Get off, help me, she's under there." He had always been stronger than he looked, and he was wild now as he fought against him, but somehow Eugene managed to slowly pull him away, latching on to that old desperate feeling that he had never been able to forget or let go of, clutching Snafu to him as they stumbled backwards together. And then Burgie was there, and suddenly it was just a shack again, and Burgie grabbed on to Snafu by his kicking feet and together he and Eugene managed to carry him bodily out the door.
Eugene fell backwards with Snafu on top of him, and Snafu elbowed him in the ribs and kicked hard against his legs and thrashed his limbs to get free, and all Eugene could do was grit his teeth and cling on to him. "Snaf," Burgie said somewhere above them. "Stop it, goddamn it."
"You sons a bitches," Snafu said, still struggling. "You fucking sons a bitches." Then he stopped, collapsing boneless against Eugene, the back of his skull knocking painfully against his nose. "The hell wouldn't you help me, Gene? Why didn't you help me?" Eugene didn't answer, just slid himself out from under him and helped Burgie drag Snafu further away from the house, the fire roaring as it glutted itself on the broken remains.
"Oh," was all Jay could say, when he ran to help them, and got a look at Snafu's hands. "Oh, Christ."
"Shut up," Eugene grated. He was easily moved now between the three of them, sliding listless along the grass until they reached the truck, the coffin. They let him go, stood sentry over him to make sure he didn't try to get back up. Eugene could hardly stand to look at him. Hillbilly moved away from the casket, blackened and singed thin along its foot but still whole, came and knelt down by Snafu. He took him by his elbows, looked his hands over carefully.
"You don't go alone, Shelton. You know that." Snafu turned his face to the side and Hillbilly laid a hand along his forehead. "We'll have to wait and see." Eugene looked over at the barn. It was throwing heat and angry light every which way, the fire billowing out in plumes as the walls slowly collapsed.
"How the hell did it even start?" Bill asked, standing beside him.
"I shouldn't a left him alone," Hillbilly said.
"Did you do it, Gene?" Eugene looked down at Snafu. The fire was making him glow the way any sort of warm light always had, like it was pulling something out that lived just beneath the surface of his skin.
"No."
"You wanted to burn him up so you wouldn't have to smell him. Wanted to burn them all up so I wouldn't have nothing but you."
"No, Snafu." He didn't know what else to say. Snafu sat up, stood up, holding his hands against his chest. He looked at the house for a long moment, then turned and walked away, across the wet dark field.
"C'mon, Jay," Burgie said, and he and Jay set off after him, trailing a distance behind. Eugene walked over to the coffin, knelt beside it and fell forward so that his chest and arms and the side of his face were pressed against the wood. There was a fire burning red behind his eyes.
"He was just talking," Bill said, standing over him. "Like he always does."
"I wouldn't do that to him. I wouldn't do that to him."
"We all know it, Sledge," Hillbilly said. Eugene spread his hands out wide and flat along the coffin.
"I would never do that," he said to it, the wood growing wet again beneath his face.
No one asked them to drive that next day, not that Snafu could with his hands contracted and clawed like they were. The two of them sat next to the coffin, turned in towards each other. Eugene cradled Snafu's forearms in his lap, curled himself over them and kissed the blistered, cracked skin. Snafu leaned against his shoulders and didn't speak or look at him, stared dull-eyed at nothing.
The land rolled up and they twined their way through it, their progress slowed by how all the roads wound around the rising foothills. Everything would take longer now, Eugene knew, as they started picking their way north. He felt a tugging in his chest, the persistent call of home, trying to pull him back in. Had Burgie felt this as they left Texas, had Snafu felt it as they cut their way through Louisiana? He tried to ignore it, kept his eyes trained on Snafu's hands.
"Why aren't they getting any better?" He asked Snafu, late that night. They had found another campground to stop over at, and Snafu and Eugene hadn't joined the others when they climbed out of the truck and went to sit around another empty fire. They stayed as they were, folded together beside the coffin. "Don't know what else I can do to make them better."
"Cuz it ain't got nothing to do with you," Snafu said, finally speaking.
"How the hell are we gonna get there, if wanting a thing this badly can't make it happen?"
"It'd of all gone different, if wanting was all it took." Eugene lifted his head. It was too dark to see him, but he could feel him, feel him coming back. "Shouldn't of said any of that shit, Eugene."
"It doesn't matter." Snafu dropped his head down against his shoulder. "I'm thinking about going back, one last time." He felt him go still, pressed his cheek against his temple. "Will you come with me?"
"Always wanted to see it," Snafu said after a moment. They stood up and stepped down off the truck, set their feet south and started walking.
They walked along the edge of a river, because Snafu seemed to travel most swiftly with his bare feet in the water. If he was alone, Eugene felt certain he could reach the sea in two long steps, but they made their way well enough, eating up miles with each stride. The river narrowed and quickened, widened and slowed, and it was beautiful, and when they passed towns and folk called out to them to stop a while and hear their stories, Snafu would sneer and Eugene would lift an apologetic hand, and they didn't stop for any of them. Maybe that was all they were anymore, Eugene reflected. Stories aching to be told. He wondered if he was a different story from Snafu, or if they could even be told separately, or where one story could begin to unknot itself from the other without losing its heart.
When they had traveled south enough for him to pick up the scent of the ocean in the air, Eugene pulled Snafu inland, everything familiar now, God, it would be so easy to stay, to not go back. They stopped eventually in a gently rolling field blanketed in knee-high grass. It rustled beneath them as they lay back against it, shifting close to each other. The fireflies were out, glowing fitfully all around them and along the edges of the trees. Eugene remembered taking his boys out one evening, mason jars and sweet, open voices, meeting Sid and his two sons in a similar field. It might have been this same field. They had stood together and watched their boys run around in the gloom, each bug caught a separate marvel, the magic feeling growing as the blinking lights in their jars grew denser, glowing against small palms. He and Sid had grinned at each other, and in that moment Eugene had been happy, so damn happy. It had been a good life, despite the gaping hole at the center of it.
And where was Sid? Where was his mother and father, his brother? Eugene fiddled with the cross around his neck, hearing that woman's voice again, don't you know he's gone? He wondered if he would ever see them again. But he supposed they had all made their choices. In the end, everything got whittled away until the only things left were the hardest truths, carved into the core with sharp blades.
"Fucking bugs," Snafu said, but he didn't sound annoyed, thoughtful rather. "Dancing and crying 'til they die."
"You remember the train?"
"Already asked you that one."
"You know, I almost said something. I almost said a lot of things."
"Almost," Snafu said mockingly.
"What would we have done, if I'd said it? If you'd said it?"
"Don't know," Snafu said after a long pause. "S'not like it was near the end there, people just out and saying it, living it. We'd a been alone. Would've had to hide it all the time. Lie and lie."
"But I did that already. Hid it, and hid it, and lied. And missed you."
"Don't, Eugene."
"Did it ever get any easier for you?"
"Fuck you. You think I'd be here if it got easier?" Eugene rolled into him, pulled him closer by a hand on his waist. What would he have tasted like, if he'd kissed him like this when they were living? Here, he was dark, and thick with heat and smoke. Would he have responded this same way, surprisingly soft, if Eugene had dared to kiss him back then? Eugene dragged his mouth down along his throat, his chest. He'd always assumed death would put an end to this unappeasable need, but it seemed the only thing that it had ended was that hateful voice that told him all the reasons why it was wrong, impossible.
"It didn't get any easier for me, either," he said against Snafu's ribs. "Felt like my heart was gonna give out, when I saw you again at that reunion. You were like a stranger, and then you were the same." Snafu sighed and pulled on his arms until Eugene slid back up and bumped their foreheads together.
"Thought about not going," he said reluctantly. "Didn't want to see you looking old. Didn't want to know if your eyes had changed." He put his hand along the side of Eugene's face, and Eugene turned his head to press his lips against his palm, then paused, pulled back.
"Huh," he said, taking Snafu by his wrist.
"What?"
"Your hand looks better." Snafu grunted a laugh, Eugene didn't know what it meant, and rolled them over, reversing their positions. He held Eugene by his jaw with both his hands, dipped his face down so that their noses barely brushed.
"Sledgehammer," he muttered, low and gruff, and then they stopped speaking.
Hours later, they sprawled out across the grass, sated and fed. The fireflies were long gone, the stars fading as the sun started to cast itself pink along the top of the trees. "You'll have to help me back," Eugene said. "It's hard to pull away."
"Always did have to haul you along," Snafu said. He climbed to his feet, pulling Eugene up after him. Eugene took one last look around. It was the most beautiful place in the world, in every world, that was all there was to it. His home. But that was over now. He'd given it his life, left it his body; that would have to be enough. All the rest belonged somewhere else. He twisted Snafu's fingers up tight with his, and let him drag him away. North.