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They're not on the highway anymore, they're on some back road, Farmer Jim Bob's road, who the hell knows, they're on some back road and Sam's shifting in the shotgun seat, wiping his palms on his jeans like he's about to start lying.
"You had the map, man, I dunno what you did with it," he says.
Dean scowls at the windshield and his foot hits the gas so that the car jerks forward, says, "Oh c'mon, you had it last, you're the navigator, you sit there and shut the hell up and tell me where to go."
"I'm supposed to shut the hell up and tell you where to go? I am multitalented, apparently. And telepathic."
"Well, always knew you were the freak in the family."
Sam huffs, an exhalation of breath in that inimitable exasperated way. "Says the guy with the freaky sex dreams."
"Hey, don't hate my subconscious 'cause it's imaginative.” Smirking, Dean speeds up more, weaving over the faded yellow line. “You wouldn't believe the stuff you can do when—"
"You don't wanna finish that sentence," Sam says, glaring at his brother, hand open for a fight.
"Think I do, Sammy."
"No, you don't."
Dean lets the wheel slip under his palms because they're on this lost road under the sky and there's no one to see them breaking the law.
The map’s there somewhere, in the recesses of the car, just like they are, somewhere on the road, in the recesses of these foothills waiting to turn into mountains. The trees started up about six hours ago, the vines tangling the trees four hours ago, and the wildflowers three hours. They’re headed right past the deep heart of mining country and the towns are strung out along the highways like slow veins and arteries.
But they’ve missed the highway, probably around the point when Sam said do you even know what state we’re in, and Dean said of course, Magellan, I always know where we are, and then Sam challenged him to even name all fifty states, in alphabetical order no fucking less, and they sniped at each other, bitch, jerk, idiot, asshole, who you callin’ an asshole you asshole, great comeback must’ve taken you all day to think of that, better’n yours what with your name-calling and dead-arming people, why don’t you stop hitting yourself, why don’t you not kill us by paying attention to the road, and they’ve missed the highway because Dean can’t seem to keep his eyes on the road and his mouth from talking shit, because Sam can’t seem to back down from a challenge and his smug smirk pushes Dean to up everything, ante up and go all in on a foolish hand.
So Sam stretches out over the back of the seat, shoving things around to find the map and Dean’s snickering because Sam’s got his ass in the air and as the driver, it’s his bound duty to find every pothole and vicious bump he can, see if he can get some part of Sam to hit the roof as Sam’s muttering under his breath.
“Dude, seriously, without me, you’d be stuck on some half-assed road without a damn clue which way is north. Even if you had a compass rose tattooed on your ass.”
“Uh, already stuck on some half-assed road and you’re here,” Dean points out, slapping Sam’s leg. “And if I had a compass rose on my ass, I wouldn’t be able to see it anyway, Sam. Unless I had a mirror and—“
Sam smacks his brother upside the head with something heavy. “Oops, thought that was the map.”
“Fucker, that better not’ve been your girly romance novel you picked up at that gas station. Don’t deny it, I saw it, I paid for it. If I see it again, I’m throwing it out the window. At high speed.”
Another exhalation of breath, but it’s just Sam’s laugh, his laugh that means what the hell, Dean, and Dean can never resist that, Sam knows it and Dean knows it, he always has to laugh along, some sort of unbroken, skipping cycle.
No map as Sam settles back into shotgun, no map and they don’t really care, they’ll end up somewhere, always do whether they fight it or not, so it doesn’t matter, the road is the road is the road, sad sort of meaningless tautology.
Dean says, “Can’t believe you lost my damn map.”
Sam glares from where he’s propped against the door. “It’s our map.”
Dean glares back and says, “No, actually, I can believe you lost my map. Why should I be surprised.”
“So I just lose things,” Sam says.
“My things,” Dean says.
“Your things. On purpose. That’s what you’re saying, Dean,” Sam says, eyes flat with disbelief.
“Why you gotta be like that? I’m an awesome brother,” Dean says, grinning to beat the band and Sam folds his arms across his chest, shaking his head, “Yeah, you deserve some kind of award.”
“I’m glad you recognize greatness.”
“I will when I see it.”
“Uncool, Sammy, really uncool,” Dean says, reaching out to flick up the volume because it’s the Stones and that’s always better than Sam’s withering humor.
But the song’s just getting going, Mick slow-talking them through it, then it’s all gone in a sickening spurt of static and the radio’s dead.
Dean says, “Oh, c’mon, what the hell,” and then the car is winding down, the engine spluttering like she’s choking and Sam’s leaning forward, gaze on the dash as if he can see everything grinding to a halt there on the side of this wandering little back road.
“What’d you touch?”
“Nothing,” Sam says and Dean glares again, so Sam glares too, bright and sharp in the confines of the car, before he shrugs, “I didn’t touch anything. The seat. The door. The window. What.”
“Oh, I know you did something,” Dean says, “because the car’s dead.”
“And that’s my fault,” Sam says, level and calm, like he’s reasoning with pure insanity and Dean’s insulted.
“Everything’s your fault.”
He eases the car onto the almost nonexistent shoulder, tiny flowers and sweetgrass brushing the metal, and there isn’t really a ditch as much as there’s a little hollow before the land stretches out.
They get the hood open, using dirty t-shirts around their hands, before poking and prodding and the sun’s sticky-hot on their backs and the car looks fine except that it’s dead, Dean’s getting annoyed, head stuck under the hood and Sam’s getting fidgety, twisting a wrench in his fingers when a miniature voice says, “Hi there.”
Somehow they keep their dignity, Dean doesn’t hit his head and Sam doesn’t drop the wrench and there’s a small boy standing barefoot in the grass, a smiling bear on his t-shirt and he gives a quick wave, a curl of his fingers.
“Hi,” the little boy says again, “I’ve never seen you afore.”
“You always talk to strangers?” Dean says and Sam elbows him in the side with the wrench.
The boy doesn’t act scared though he has to tilt his head back so that he looks like he’s about to fall over just to see them, he simply shrugs, a huge movement from such birdwing shoulders, and says, “Not many people come this way.”
“Are you lost?” Sam asks and Dean rolls his eyes, but Sam ignores him, says, “Where’s your home?”
“Back thataway,” the boy says, jerking with his thumb behind him. “I’m waitin’ for my brother.”
“How long have you been waiting?” Sam says as the boy blinks up at them, looking at Dean, then Sam, then Dean. Dean remembers Sam at that age, about five, asking question after question after question and when the boy shrugs again, that big unhurried lift and fall of his shoulders, like it’s nothing at all, Sam glances at Dean, something isn’t right here.
“You live over there?” Dean says and the boy nods and jams his fingers in his mouth.
Sam puts out a hand, almost on the boy’s head and it’s a familiar gesture, though they usually aren’t around children, so Dean’s confused where it comes from, then Sam’s saying, “You wanna show us and we’ll go find your brother?”
The little boy turns in a tight circle in the grass, swaying like he’s thinking, then he nods again. “It’s thataway,” he says wetly around the chubby fingers still stuck in his mouth. “But I can’t go there.”
“You can’t?” Dean says right as Sam says, “Why not?”
Eyes wide, the boy shakes his head and his hair falls over his forehead, thick and straight, and when Dean looks at Sam, he’s already watching Dean with a lost expression, like he’s remembering or relearning or he’s found something.
“All right, let’s go find your brother,” Dean says, “he got a name?”
“Seth,” the boy says, then he pauses and kind of spits out his fingers, wiping them on his blue shorts. “I’m Joey.”
“Well, Joey, I’m Dean and this here’s my brother, Sam.”
“You got a brother, too,” Joey says excitedly. “You look old. My brother’s old. He’s sixteen.”
Sam nods seriously. “That is old,” he says and Joey nods seriously too and before the two of them can launch into a discussion about how old is really old, Dean points to the tree-hemmed country beside the road.
“Well, let’s go get your brother.”
The boy leads them towards a crooked fence, split wood and thin wire, rusted in places with shining barbs and he watches solemnly as they work their way over it, a rotting post cracking under Sam’s weight and he doesn’t flinch as the sound echoes.
They’re a few steps into the grass on the other side when they realize he isn’t with them. He’s standing at the fence, little fingers wrapped around the wire, hazel eyes bright in his face.
“I’ll wait for you right here,” he calls and Sam says, “Stay away from the road, big guy.”
And Dean’s heard that before, he has, somewhere, and Joey salutes Sam who salutes him back.
Dean says, “At ease, soldier,” and high little boy laughter follows them like nostalgia.
They round a stand of trees to find an overgrown path, wide enough for trucks, dirt and gravel spread out undisturbed.
“Guess we found the driveway.”
“Welcome to suburbia.”
“That doesn’t even make sense, Dean.”
“Like you ever make sense.”
They find the house. Not far from the fence, they can actually look back and see Joey, a bouncing blonde dot in all the grass. He’s singing something, over and over, his voice running high and low.
The house is a sun-burned shell, a husk collapsing in on itself, broken beams and weather-destroyed walls like smashed teeth and haphazard bones. The roof has fallen in at one corner, given up, and the porch sags raggedly sideways with an air of quiet resignation. The windows are missing panes of glass, staring out blinded and bitter as they approach cautiously and Dean’s hand itches to reach for his gun and Sam makes a quick movement, a stopped half-reach of his own before he glances over his shoulder at the boy, still singing as his feet appear in a tumbling cartwheel.
“Dean, what the hell.”
“Got me, Sammy. No fucking clue.”
Keeping each other in their line of sight, they circle the house, calling out for Seth, postures friendly, Sam’s hands in his pockets and Dean’s nails scratching against the legs of his jeans, it’s only a house under a sky that’s careless blue because the house is only a house, long abandoned and the little boy’s all by himself out here, there is no brother, the sky is such a distant blue. Gone.
The front door is incongruously closed, as if it could provide any sort of shelter, as if the house is any shot-through definition of shelter and Sam’s staring at jangled remnants of windchimes.
“He’s out here alone,” Sam says, black-edged.
Then he takes off without waiting for Dean, stalking around the house again, a wide swing as Dean chases to catch up and that’s when Dean remembers.
Putting out a hand on Sam’s head as they walked in a July-shiny town somewhere, six and ten, dogs days losing their kamikaze fight to autumn, and Sam ran ahead and Dean said stay away from the road, big guy, you might scare the cars, you wouldn’t wanna scare the cars.
The stand of trees where the fence ends in knots of vines, barbs and wire, and Sam says his name twice, like he’s apologizing or guilty.
Under the weather scars, the cross is raw beautiful handiwork, two pieces fit together with four small nails in the middle and the eye of the knot framing the carved name and dates. It took time and precision and a hell of a lot of grief to make the cross, probably from a tree nearby as Dean squints, closes his eyes to the sun.
A rosary with blue beads swings as Sam traces over the loops in the name with a fingertip.
“He’s out here alone,” he says again helplessly.
Following the fence back to Joey, they don’t talk because they know, they know too much and it’s never made anything easier, so Dean gets a hand on Sam’s neck and Sam tips his head back, not looking where he’s going, letting Dean pull him along.
“Hi there again,” the little boy says, waving, curl of his fingers, and Sam looks now, waves too and Dean gives his neck a squeeze, hand in Sam’s hair before letting go.
“So, Joey,” Sam begins and Joey interrupts, “Did you find him? I’m still waitin’.”
This sort of thing always falls to them and Sam’s better at it because Dean’s too honest, so it’s Sam who says, “Seth isn’t ready yet.”
Joey just scowls, like it isn’t news to him, and he says, “Yeah.” He bunches up the hem of his teddy bear shirt in his hands, pulling it down, the bear’s smile stretching.
And because Dean’s too honest, he says, “You like buried treasure?”
It’s as if he’s produced ice cream out of thin air because the boy grins, missing a front tooth, and pulls the shirt even more, saying, “Like pirates!”
“Yeah, like pirates,” Dean says. Sam loved pirates before he hated Halloween and when Dean glances up, Sam’s watching him from under his bangs, but Joey’s gearing up, boundless energy.
“For my birfday, Seth told me about some buried treasure in those trees! He’d found a map and everyfing! X marks the spot and the Jolly Roger and Seth told me to sail the seven seas, me hearty, so I followed the map, and he helped me count the steps, I mean, paces, and guess what?”
“What, big guy?” Dean says and Joey grins even bigger.
“There was buried treasure! It’s a dump truck! I played with it and made hills for the ants and helped with the minin’ and then one night, I went out and buried it again, so I could dig it up again! Come lookit!”
Sam’s hands are shaking at his sides, but all he says is, “I think we got a shovel in the trunk, Joey, you wanna us to help you dig up the treasure?”
The boy nods happily, bending at the knees, ready to pop up out of the grass in his eagerness. He trails them to the car, telling them about the truck, it’s yellow and it’s metal and the tires are real rub-ber, not plas-tic like Tom-my’s and maybe he’ll get to drive a real dump truck a’cause they’re really big and loud.
Sam’s careful not to look at Dean or the little blonde boy hopping along like a grasshopper, chattering with his gap-toothed smile, he keeps his head down and finds the shovels as Dean closes the hood, then closes the trunk, and he’s careful not to look at Dean or the little blonde boy, instead, catching his fingers on the barbs as they walk along the fence and sometimes Dean doesn’t know how to fix things.
They’re lead to a spot at the trees on the other side from the cross, too close to be coincidence, and this was the last stand of someone’s heart here.
There’s only one grave, but two deaths happened here.
Dean takes a shovel without a word and goes around to the side of the cross because this isn’t for Sam, it never should be and for a moment, Sam looks lost, left with Joey at his side.
Then Sam says, “Let’s find this buried treasure, me hearty,” mouth in a small smile and Joey says, “Aye aye!” before pointing vaguely to the ground at their feet. “X marks the spot!”
The day has gone so far astray and it doesn’t seem to matter, they always end up somewhere, so Dean digs in silence, listening to the murmurs of Sam and Joey.
He hears it as Sam says I wanted a fire truck, and Dean keeps digging as Joey says yeah, one that lights up, and Sam says yeah, and the siren works, then Joey splits the wide open space with a loud careening wail and Sam’s laughing as Joey giggles, and Dean keeps digging.
They find the truck before Dean finds the diminutive handmade casket; they’re loading dirt and dumping dirt and making hills to drive over and around, so Dean sprinkles salt into the hole, pours in some kerosene and goes around to find Sam cross-legged, tearing at the blades of grass within his reach as the little boy hums, vroom vroom vroom, under his breath, his hand steering a scratched dump truck.
“I need a hill made right here,” Dean says, hunkering down, and Joey nods, releasing the dump box to scoop dirt into it, with all the appropriate machinery sounds.
They build hills fit for adventurers and destroy mountains like gods and this isn’t what sorrow looks like, but hell if it sure does feel like it, Sam knows it and Dean knows it and they help Joey with his king-sized construction site.
It’s almost an unconscious decision, but they put their bodies between the boy and the cross, so he won’t look back and when Sam’s eyes are darker than Dean’s seen in a long time, he stands to stretch, dislodging the mining base camp and wanders away in a loose circle that might involve matches thrown in a surreptitious gesture.
Out here under the careless distance of blue sky, there’s not much else they can do.
The truck is yellow, real metal and rubber, and the boy hums, vroom vroom vroom, under his breath until he goes, “Oh.”
Dean’s hoping for a missing-tooth smile and there might be one before the little hazel-eyed world is gone.
Sam doesn’t get up for a while, just sits folded, like he does, like he’s done since he was small, he sits like he thinks he could be that small again and pulls up handfuls of grass and lets them go, over and over.
There’s piles and hills and maybe the ants can march on them, claim the dark overturned soil.
They burn down the house and its time-grinding grief. It seems like the only other thing to do.
The rosary stays on the cross, swinging in the bit of wind stirred up by the fire, the rosary stays for the land, deep-hearted and remembering.
When Dean turns the key, the car starts like the day hasn’t happened and on the radio, the Stones are telling them all about that moonlight mile.
“Sammy?”
“It’s. Okay, it’s okay. Just drive, Dean.”
Head pressed against the window, Sam takes the truck from his jacket. He runs it over his thigh, rubbing at the dirt with his thumbs and Dean says, “So which way’s north.”
Later, they’ll finally find the highway again and then find a motel and enough food to knock Sam out for a few hours. Dean takes the toy dump truck from the car and washes it in the beige sink, getting all the dust out of the cracks, drying it good as new. When Sam wakes, Dean’s next to him, waiting, watching TV, and then he watches as Sam loads the truck with salt, then drives it around and creates salt mounds, over and over, until Dean says c’mon, sasquatch, grab your coat, and Sam says why, where we going. We’re gonna get a drink, Dean says, and at the bar, someone feeds the machine, punching in the numbers and the Stones are on the juke, telling them all about that moonlight mile and as they stumble back to the room, arms around each other’s shoulders, fake fighting, jerking each other sideways, Dean says where to next, and Sam shrugs and says I dunno, you had the map last, what’d you do with it, and it really doesn’t matter, they always end up somewhere.