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When the Walk concluded, unsatisfactory for all, Stebbins woke inside a hospital ward lined by rows of beds on its longest sides, separated by thin blue curtains. On the bed to his left, McVries laid languidly overtop matching blue sheets, whistling. On his right, Garraty sat upright against the metal frame headboard, both feet wrapped and elevated on a stack of pillows.
An insufferable duo during the Walk. Even worse out of it. Nightmarish to sleep between.
They’d drawn the curtains back to see each other, leaving Stebbins exposed in the middle of their semi-private little bubble. He tolerated it. At night, when the dimmed lights turned them introspective and regretful, he allowed himself to mourn grand plans involving camera flashes and newspaper headlines followed by Earl Grey tea and family portraits, stripped of his silent spectator role.
Garraty brought both of them home. Or rather, his mother did, packing them into her beat up old Ford, Garraty perched in the passenger seat. She gave them a tour of her house, stuttering and wringing her hands as she led them to the bathroom and the kitchen, clearly unfamiliar with company yet happy to have it nevertheless. He and McVries shuffled around like red-handed burglars.
Afterward the two of them followed Garraty up to his bedroom, a pair of ducklings toddling after mother duck. All three lugged themselves up the stairs with significant effort.
Once inside, Garraty sprawled across his bed, a tiny twin size shoved in the corner that he’d long outgrown but couldn’t afford to replace. For the second time he awaited judgement from foreign men surveying his room. McVries busied himself with a box of old trinkets dragged out of the closet, sat on the cold hardwood floor, humming some odd tune. With a finger, Stebbins wiped a line of dust clean off the dresser. Idly rubbed it between index and thumb.
“Well kept,” he remarked, to which Garraty replied, “Fuck off.”
A row of books sat atop the dresser, most fiction, a few heavily censored textbooks. Stebbins plucked one out of the row at random, sat cross-legged on the floor beside McVries, and flicked through the pages. Skimmed over prose.
It was an ordinary book reflective of an ordinary boy, who’d long grown past suicidal half-baked plans of sedition, whipped into shape by an iron fist. If only they knew how close he’d gotten.
Discarded plush toys and dinosaur figures littered the floor. From the box, McVries removed a thousand piece puzzle set showcasing an idyllic cabin in the woods scene, then a highlighter yellow tonka truck.
“I wouldn’t dig too deep, Petey,” Stebbins warned. “Garraty’s the queer sort who goes out of his way to hide his dirty magazines in boxes in his closet.”
That drew a laugh out of McVries. Rolling his eyes, Garraty tutted, “Instead of under the pillow, like you?”
Stebbins clicked his tongue. “Don’t be crass. There’s a perfectly obvious middle ground.”
Garraty pinched the corner of his pillow to lob it in Stebbins’ vague direction. It missed him by a long shot, hitting the wall and falling to the floor next to him, pathetic. He picked it up to use as a cushion under his ass.
“I hope you weren’t pitching with that aim.”
“No, he seems more like a catcher, doesn’t he,” McVries said, impishly. They shared a look that Garraty did not appreciate.
“Bunch of perverts,” Garraty muttered.
McVries resumed his rummaging. After a moment he cheered, “Here we go,” and produced an old camera from the box.
“That was my grandma’s. Mom gave it to me after she died, so I could learn how to use it,” Garraty said. “I never got into it.”
“Shame. You’d be good at it, I think,” McVries said. Spent some time prodding at buttons and adjusting knobs until he figured out how to actually take a picture. In his fumbling, he managed to capture a compelling photo of Stebbins’ knee.
It left Stebbins thinking of old Barko, who complained incessantly about his glowering figure caught in the corner of a horizon shot, which brought thoughts of his old neighbor, who sent him off with a promise to record his victory using her fancy new VHS machine. Thought of how close she’d come to recording his final breath, if only things had played out different.
“Look alive, Stebbins.” McVries held up the camera with one eye clenched shut. “Say cheers.”
“It’s cheese,” he corrected, unsmiling. Then, coquettish, he struck a relaxed pose, arms resting on a bent knee, tilting his head to peer at McVries through the expansive black lens. The camera went off with a snap.
“Gorgeous. We could sell that face.” McVries patted Stebbins’ cheek twice, fond, before moving up to squeeze next to Garraty on the bed. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten about you, baby.”
He pulled Garraty in close, flipped the camera around. Snap.
“Let me see that,” Garraty said. Brushing fingers, he pried the camera from McVries’ hands to take a few of his own photos. Some close-up shots of McVries, shiny pink-white scar on display. One shot of their socked feet at the foot of the bed, misshapen and missing toes. One of Stebbins across the room.
Garraty lowered the camera, suddenly displeased. “Get over here, Stebbins. We’re missing one.”
Stebbins shook his head. “We won’t fit.”
“Not with that attitude, we won’t. Scoot over, Ray,” McVries said.
They shifted impossibly closer and slightly to the side. Garraty practically melded with the wall. Leaving the book abandoned on the floor alongside McVries’ mess, Stebbins stood up with a sigh, knees cracking. The bed barely fit Garraty, let alone Garraty and McVries, let alone all three of them together. He squeezed in anyways, one leg slung off the side, the other outstretched to join their tangle of limbs. Faced the camera, which Garraty flipped again and hovered over all three of them, arms extended. Snap.
Stebbins thought of their blue curtain bubble. Blinked rapidly. Sniffed.
“You cryin’?” Garraty shifted up onto his elbows to get a better look. What a sight that would be, wouldn’t it, Stebbins weeping and sobbing curled up on his childhood bed. If only.
“No,” Stebbins said pettishly, then sneezed. “When was the last time you dusted?”
Two days after that came a fever and hacking cough.
Mrs. Garraty drove to the store to stock up on medication. In the meantime, Garraty and McVries moved him back into Garraty’s bed. Covered him in a pile of scratchy blankets. He shivered even with the blankets pulled up to his chin, then pushed them down when he grew unbearably hot, feeling wholly like a swaddled, colicky baby in the worst of ways.
“I haven’t been sick in ten years,” he groused. Buried his face into Garraty’s pillow, no doubt dripping snot all over.
Half-sat on the side of the bed, McVries pressed a hand to his forehead. Pulled it away with a soft tsk and tugged the blankets up a little higher. “You’ll sweat it out, Stebbins.”
“That’s probably a bad sign, right after the Walk.” Garraty, feeling useless, occupied himself with pacing a hole in his floor. Wrung his hands over and over, the same way his mother did. “We should take him to the hospital.”
“No, no, for Christ’s sake. I’m okay,” Stebbins said, voice stuffy. At Garraty’s doubtful expression, he insisted, “I’ll be okay. It’s just the flu.”
“It’s not ‘just the flu’ when you’ve got a shot immune system.”
McVries huffed. “Ray, he won’t get any better if you just sit around with your hands up your ass.”
“Yeah, shoo,” Stebbins agreed. “The sight of you makes me feel worse.”
“Alright, fine. Fine. I’ll make you some tea,” Garraty said decisively. Turned to leave, but stopped suddenly at the doorway, one hand rested on the frame. Strangely pedantic, he looked back to ask, “All we have is chamomile. Is that okay?”
“I don’t care,” Stebbins sniffled.
“Okay,” Garraty said, and disappeared into the hallway.
Their photos appeared on Garraty’s wall some time later, pinned to a corkboard next to his dresser. Clearly he’d tried to arrange them in a tastefully artistic way, and failed. Partially because they were just unsalvageable photos.
“Turns out he’s a second rate craftsman on top of it all,” Stebbins said when he spotted it, rifling through Garraty’s clothes in search of spare pajama pants, and maybe some socks.
On his right, Garraty threw an arm around his shoulder, pouting. He shook Stebbins lightly. “It was made from the heart, Billy. You can’t put a price on that.”
“It’s made from the heart, Billy,” McVries repeated at Stebbins' left, examining the photos over his shoulder, pointing at the awkward empty spaces amid Garraty’s collage. “All it needs is some more pictures. We could fly down to the Florida beaches, make a travel board out of it. We got the means.”
“Who the hell wants to go to Florida?” Stebbins scoffed. “I mean it. We could go anywhere, and you choose Florida?”
“Where would you go, then?”
Stebbins blinked. Hummed. He hadn’t thought about it before, even though he probably should have. He could go anywhere, do anything now.
“Texas, I suppose.”
“Texas,” Garraty said, incredulous. “Your home state, Texas.”
Brazos County, Texas, where his pale yellow house waited, already half empty because he’d thrown out everything he might have wanted replaced in advance, ready to be cleared out by the cleanup crew he’d arranged in the case that he lost. His neighbor’s recording was there, too. His mother’s photo albums.
“I have to go back eventually,” Stebbins said, and watched Garraty’s mouth tick downwards. The arm around his shoulder receded.
McVries shrugged. “Okay. You go to Texas. You can do that, easy,” he said. “What next?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.”
“Well, I know that skull ain’t empty. I’ve heard it rattle.” McVries reached up to ruffle a hand through Stebbins’ hair. “Come on. What next, Billy?”
He thought about it. In his mind’s eye, he trailed a path from Androscoggin to Brazos County, then back again. Two-way. The plane ticket would have to be two-way.