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The sun is warm in Mexico. Sean thinks it should be as suffocatingly hot here as it was in Nevada, but despite all the sunlight in Puerto Lobos, he's basking in its heat, but doesn't die from it.
Instead, he dies differently.
A bit every day.
When once again looking for work, when for the first time he sees a man who looks like his father, he vomits, turns inside out in a dirty alley, he is suffocated by the pain of loss that has long been pushed to the farthest corner.
Sean remembers—knows—that he has to be strong for two. That he should be the strongest big brother in the world. That he has no right to go limp, has no right to give up, to surrender. He is learning again to be an older, responsible, adult. It raises the ability to care and protect to the absolute.
Now that he doesn't have to run, when he can breathe out—at least the pain of endless wandering—and settle down in a lair that is only theirs, he suddenly doesn't know how to live with it.
Now that he doesn't have to run, he no longer has a goal. Before, he had to run away, save up money, get to Mexico, and here they are, on the ruins of their father's life, and his own too, with no purpose.
Now he has to live somehow. Find a job, build a house, teach his brother Spanish and get him into school and start working on the workshop. But this goal is too big, too blurry, and Sean doesn't know where to start.
Things have changed: There journey's over.
He's changed: Now he's actually the oldest. Not just a brother, he's an adult now, a real adult. He is truly responsible for them. If he doesn't find a job, Daniel won't have anything to eat. If he gets sick, there will be no one to take care of his younger brother.
If something happens to him, Daniel will be left alone in the world. He'll be lost, there won't be anyone to take care of him, and he can't let that happen.
In the first few days, one realization after another falls on him in waves, like a snowball: he is now an adult, he is no longer a child or even a teenager, and has no right to be one.
He's the oldest.
And he doesn't have time for anything stupid anymore. His whole life is now subordinated to his younger brother, because otherwise—no way.
His whole life is now for him.
He sits in the "backyard" with his feet in the sand and writes in large letters in his sketchbook:
P L A N
do not die, he writes finely on the page's bottom.
to get money, he writes and emphasizes in fat and bold print, at some point pressing a hole through the page. He adds: legally, Inside him is a strange prickle of unacceptance, but Sean pays no attention to it.
He's not a criminal.
They were never criminals.
He writes: teach Daniel Spanish.
He writes: live a normal life.
But he doesn't know what that means.
He learns not to hide, learns not to look back, buries the past like half-eaten prey, never to remember it again. He learns to think of English as a foreign language, America as a foreign country, and Americans as "a democratic rabble living at our expense."
But America, he suddenly understands, is not just a country behind a huge wall that he and his brother left behind. America is a father buried in an unknown grave. It's a mother, suddenly found and lost forever, so unexpectedly! She would know what to do now. She knows what it's like to start over.
America is the crispy snow under Claire's and Stephen's feet. It is the barking of a puppy and the formidable roar of a cougar, the scorching sun of Nevada and the blurring horizon. It's a little brother, who Sean would give the last drop of his blood for, taking the last Chock-O-Crisp Bar. It's Lyla and the last cigarette shared between them in Seattle, a very different life that is becoming more and more blurry every day in Mexico.
America is the sound of ancient trees overhead and the smell of pine needles. It is the thick smoke from one joint for two, the hard ground under your back and the soothing melody of someone else's guitar.
America is not just what he lost. Not just what was left there, in the past that couldn't be brought back, no matter how hard Sean tries. America, he suddenly realizes, is also the strength of his little such an adult, for God's sake, brother. America is his first and last hug with his mother—whom he no longer refers to as just Karen anymore.
America, he thinks, is someone else's warm palm on his thigh. It is an insinuating "Then what are you afraid of?"—Oh, Dios mío, he is afraid of so much, if only someone knew! It's the gentle gaze of those soft blue eyes—they're the color of ice in the uneven light, but Sean still sinks into them like the sea—and how much he'd give, God, to stay in that moment. To get back to that camp, work on the damn hemp plantation, and then, at night…
After that, there was nothing.
After that, he is left with one eye, a lost brother, and…
Sean forbids himself to think about how much he wanted to crawl into someone else's hospital room, lie down next to him in bed, and let it all end. So that Daniel would suddenly be there and be perfectly fine, so that their father wouldn't die, so they wouldn't have to run all the time.
To make it all just end.
He keeps Finn's letter. He reads it at night when Daniel falls asleep. He no longer has nightmares, but they still can't stay apart for long and sleep in the same bed, their bodies intertwined like a single organism. Daniel is afraid that one day he will wake up alone somewhere far from Puerto Lobos and their whole new life will be nothing more than a dream. Sean is afraid of so many things that he can't even list them.
He rewrites Finn's phone number on the flyleaf of his sketchbook, saves it in his new phone, learns it by heart, and sometimes when going through the numbers in his head, he thinks: no need to call.
He thinks: Everything is different now, everything is completely different. I'm here, and Finn's there, with community service, San Diego, and his three brothers. He thinks it's a chance for Finn to start over and not make any more mistakes that he can't fix.
But over and over he scrolls through his head the belief that Finn thinks of him. He thinks about Finn a lot more than he should. He has a brother who needs to be put on his feet, but his mind always shifts to that prickly touch of piercing stubble, the warm, wide palm on his thigh, then just a feeling of security. And Sean suddenly realizes in that night, in that moment together, for the first time, he forgot about how hostile the world is and how dangerous it is and felt that he was okay. That someone would take care of him too. That they would catch him if he stumbled. That they would help him up if he falls.
The world has since narrowed in half.
The world after it has become more dangerous than ever.
The world burned down in a strange little Church, the world was lined with strange, huge sculptures, formed constellations in the endless sky over the Grand Canyon, the world exploded with gunshots and painted red with Daniel's blood, the world roared with the surf of the ocean behind the house. But while Sean remembered that somewhere in this world, somewhere very far away, there was someone who cared about him, he kept breathing, at least sometimes.
Sean musters up the courage to call Finn before dawn, after getting out of his brother's bed—Daniel is snoring noisily in his sleep, curled up like a frozen cub—and his heart is pounding so fast in his chest that Sean thinks it's going to burst out, breaking his ribs. His hands are sweating even though it's chilly outside, his cigarette is shaking in his fingers, he's seventeen years old (and sometimes it seems as though he's seventy-one), and all he hopes is that Finn will pick up the phone.
"Finn?" he asks in response to a sleepy, rustling 'Hello'. How long has it been, for God's sake, he couldn't count the days, he can't live with it? "It's me."
A warm, desperate tenderness fills his chest.
His throat is so tight that he can't breathe, he's gasping for air like a stranded fish, he's squeezing the phone as hard as he can, and finally he can only breathe when, thousands of miles away from Puerto Lobos, Finn breathes his name into the phone.
"You made it," Finn says, so confident and relieved.
As if he'd really, really been waiting for this call.
If you close your eyes, then in the surf's noise you can hear the foliage whispering over their heads.
When all the teenagers fell in love, kissed for the first time, had sex for the first time, felt the pain of a broken heart for the first time, Sean kept only one love to his brother and the sense of duty, a promise to his father and the desire that everyone left them alone and let them live again.
In Mexico, he and Daniel don't need anyone. They are two wolf cubs who escaped as far as possible and their entire pack remained there in America, which has become a distant mirage. The mother wolf whom they hardly knew and the two old wolves who smell of snow are just another scar on Sean's scarred road.
But Finn stays. He's out there in San Diego, and Sean's waiting for him as long and faithfully as only a wolf can. He didn't have time to understand his feelings for anyone until Finn showed up. God, he didn't even have feelings for anyone until Finn showed up! But there were so many nights without sleep, so few memories, and time together, and Sean went through it all in his mind with the tenderness of a man who cherishes the most precious things to understand that he's waiting for him. He really wants to. Now he also lives in anticipation to the meeting; learning to pray and finding God, Sean goes through the old rosaries and prays that Finn feels the same.
He prays: Let that night not be in vain.
Let all this waiting not be in vain.
Mary, full of grace, may his path be of light and the wind fair. Protect him from danger, help him, let him get here alive and well.
The Lord is my shepherd; he speaks softly; I have never asked for myself; I have never asked for anything, but I ask now: Bring him home.
And he truly believes that here in Puerto Lobos, they—he and Finn—can really have a home.
Daniel is sleepily munching on his breakfast cereal when Sean ruffles his hair and tells him Finn is coming tomorrow.
The younger brother looks back in a very adult way, squinting his slightly swollen eyes, and asks:
"Is he staying?"
Sean wants to say, "Yes, yes, he'll stay forever," but just shrugs.
"Can I sleep with you tonight?" Daniel then asks—tonight is their last night together before Finn arrives. Sean nods, he never says no, he loves his little brother just as much, and Daniel needs him a lot more than he thinks.
Sean cuddles Daniel, who still snores when he falls asleep, and catches himself thinking Daniel is letting him go. It's like he's letting him do something for himself. Like he did in Away with the words "Just tell me what you want to put in there!"
Sean thought about it a lot, if only because he can't afford to do anything rash anymore. About whether this is all normal, right, or even possible: him, his little brother, and a stoner from Montana who Sean is still head over heels in love with? If he recalls the words of his father: What kind of example will he set for his brother? Will they set. And if Finn stays, if he really stays, what will they be to each other? Boyfriends? The family that Finn had been looking for and that Sean needs so much now? Something more?
Back in America, none of this would have meant anything. In a big city in Mexico, probably not, too, but in a tiny town on the coast with a high crime rate, regular fights between gangs… In a town where they were strangers, illegals, could they really live here?
And what if they couldn't?
Questions swarmed through him, stinging painfully. And Sean has no answer to any of them.
"And when I got out of prison," Finn said in his recollection, "I decided to fuck everyone."
"Fuck everyone," Sean repeats.
He will protect his brother. Himself, too. And Finn. They can handle anything.
Daniel has long outgrown fairy tales, but like hundreds of times before, he asks about the wolf brothers. This story could be written endlessly because it will live as long as they live. And Sean tells him: how the wolf brothers made their lair on the ocean shore and the younger wolf brother found new friends. How different animals came to them for help, and in return they brought meat and bones to the wolves, and how…
"...did an old friend get to them?" Daniel asks sleepily, his eyelids slowly closing.
He still falls asleep so fast.
"Yes, he did," Sean says, stroking his brother's hair. "He has come a very long way to a place full of danger, so he can reunite with his little pack."
He adds to himself: forever.
And he doesn't dare believe it.
Sean is so worried that he smokes through a pack of cigarettes while sitting in front of the house. Daniel is worried too, but recently he has become a little more secretive, a little more silent. Sean writes it off as age. He was like that too, he thinks and tries to take it for granted. His brother is about to be twelve. His brother has new friends, new interests. His brother is almost an adult but as small and helpless as a newborn wolf cub. Sean knows he will care for him until he dies. This is his responsibility. It's his duty. It's his burden, and he never, God knows, ever grumbled about it.
But again he thinks: Let Finn stay. Let it be mine alone. I need someone too.
This selfishness burns through him, and it hurts. It hurts, and everything inside is beating: you have no right, you have no right to do this. Guilt is gnawing at him like a hungry wolf biting at the bark of a young oak tree, just to eat something. Guilt howls in him, pain, and the need to forget everything and remember that Daniel needs him.
That Daniel couldn't do this without him.
That Daniel is still a child.
Finn has a backpack slung over his shoulder and a hoodie tied around his waist. He is exactly the same as Sean remembers him, with a wide and bright smile, with a warm, always curious look; confident, strong, free, and unbroken. He appears liked an image, and the longer Sean stares, frozen in place, not daring to look away, the more afraid he is that the image will disappear, dissolve, and turn out to be a dream.
It takes him a moment to notice that Finn no longer has dreadlocks, but plain wind-tossed hair. That he has new tattoos and looks older—time has not spared him. Sean awkwardly rubs his cheek under the eye patch, glances at Daniel, who is busy with his own business, but as if sensing his gaze, he looks up and sees Finn too.
The little one takes off like a whirlwind, almost bumps into Finn, hugs him with all his strength, and shouts something, and McNamara says something back to him and ruffles his hair, but Sean doesn't hear it.
Finn only looks at him, and that's all that matters.
Suddenly he realizes he does not know what to do. What to say, how to behave, how to be. He had replayed this moment in his head for so long, but it was still not so. Everything is completely different. Sean's cigarette is smoldering in his fingers, all the emotions are exploding in his chest at once, he didn't even know he could feel so many things at once, and it's only when Daniel finally pulls away from Finn still talking that he forces himself to stand up.
It's Finn pulling him into his arms. Sean had forgotten that Finn is a little shorter, so he bends his head, buries his nose in someone else's hair, greedily inhales the scent of dust and shampoo, hugs back with all his strength, and thinks only: You're here, you're here, you're here.
"Hi, honey," Finn says so softly that it's like the wind is whispering the words for him.
So much time has passed, dios mío…