American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,176

sidewalks.

Mona feels for the Glock again. She’s not used to inaction, and she especially isn’t used to running away. But Parson whispers, “What are you waiting for?”

Mona jumps in and starts the truck. She does not peel out, as every muscle in her body wishes her to do, but eases away, eluding any undue attention.

She counts the cars again. They’re all still there. No one new, no one missing. She can never say for sure, of course, but she thinks her visit to Mrs. Benjamin’s has gone unnoticed.

They drive on in silence, going nowhere except away.

“Is she going to get hurt?” asks Mona.

“I don’t know,” says Parson. “I would not think so. But now… so much is uncertain. We were told we could not die, and yet we die. We were told not to harm one another, yet clearly some can do so, or at least attempt it.”

“Shit. What should happen if they tried?”

He makes a hmph, as if the subject embarrasses him.

“What?” she says.

“I have told you this already,” he says irritably. “They would break the rules, and be punished. And you have seen the consequences.”

“I have? When?”

“Yes. Was I not punished before your eyes?”

“Wait. Wait, your coma?”

“Yes. Like I said, I broke a rule. We are not permitted to discuss our nature with any outsiders, with any who do not know. I violated that particular law, a little, but just enough. The same should happen to any who attempt to harm another. Yet some of Her laws now appear malleable. So what do they know—whoever they are—that I do not?”

A bat flits into the stream of headlights, wings gleaming, then darts away.

“There must be some way around them,” says Parson. “I do not know. I was not close with Her. She was very hard to relate to. She had many expectations. She was never very… content. I often wonder if She simply had us out of boredom.” He pauses, aware he’s said a bit too much on an awkward subject. “Anyway, that may be why I know nothing of your own mother. If she was somehow… manipulated into bringing us here.”

In the sky west of town there is a flash of light, followed by a deep growl of thunder. Parson turns and peers at it, looking through the fluttering clouds like a soothsayer parsing tea leaves.

“Then who was close with Her?” asks Mona. “They’d know, wouldn’t they?”

Parson is silent.

“Is there anyone?” she asks.

Parson sniffs, rubs his nose with his knuckle.

“There is,” she says.

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“He is”—Parson looks out the window for inspiration—“best left alone.”

“Best left alone?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Parson… shit, Mr. Parson, are you not aware that this is a goddamn fucking emergency? I honestly don’t care what’s best done! Tell me who it is, damn it!”

He frowns into his lap. Unbuttons a shirt button, re-buttons it. “He is different,” he says.

“Oh, I give a shit.”

“You would care. He is very different.”

“Different how?”

Silence. Then: “Very, very different.”

Mona drives on for a bit, not speaking. Finally she says, “He’s not… like you, is he?”

“Like me?”

“A person. Or… fuck, I don’t know. Inside of a person.”

“No,” says Parson solemnly. “You are right. He is not. He is more like Mother than I am. Than any of us is.” He sighs and rubs his brow. Mona can’t help but notice how many human mannerisms have seeped into his behavior. “In my family, there were five who were eldest, as I once told you. I am the second eldest. My exact name… well. Many of our names are indecipherable to you. They cannot be translated to anything you would find logical. His name, however, is different. His is simple. Its meaning remains the same no matter how it is translated.”

“What is his name?” asks Mona.

Parson points out the window, directing her down a dirt road that heads west out of Wink, straggling through pines and under the shadowy thunderhead of the mesa, until it finally crosses a small, sloping canyon that, Mona eventually notices, has fewer and fewer trees the closer it gets to the mesa.

“His name,” says Parson, “means ‘first.’ ”

They park the truck in the trees below the canyon. Parson wants to start ahead immediately, but Mona holds up a hand and has him wait while she surveys the roads behind them. She sees no headlights, and driving without headlights in this country would be suicidal, so she’s reasonably sure they weren’t followed. But who knows what else is in these hills, she thinks.

Mona stops at the edge of the road before the trees