After the End

I stop walking and stare at him. “Did the bird . . . tell me . . . it wanted to stay?” I clarify, watching him carefully.

He nods sheepishly. “It’s just that I saw you talking to it this morning, and . . .” He trails off.

“I don’t know what things are like in L.A.,” I say slowly, “but where I’m from, birds don’t talk.” I walk away from him, shaking my head. I can’t figure this boy out.

The uneven planks creak loudly as I step up onto the porch. I open a dirty screen with a big rip in the netting and give a little shove to the wooden door inside. It swings open, ringing a bell that hangs on a hook above the lintel.

The brightly lit space is spotlessly clean, with groceries stacked on shelves against one wall and one lone table with four chairs in the middle of the room. A woman wearing a red-checked apron matching the tablecloth and napkins bustles in through a door in the back.

“I’m Mama,” she a

Planting a fist on one hip, the woman cocks her head to one side and stares curiously at my eyes. Miles steps through the door behind me. She turns to him and says, “You kids are up bright and early this morning.”

Mama looks exactly like an illustration of Mrs. Santa in one of the books in our library: plump body, rosy cheeks, and snowy hair piled up on top of her head. From the outside of the shop and the pickup truck, I was expecting the owner to be a mountain man with no teeth, but seeing Mama, the cozy interior makes sense.

As if reading my mind, she chirps, “My mother always told me it’s the inside that counts. Plus, if we do up the front of the store, we’ll attract more undesirables.”

I lift an eyebrow.

“Tourists, I mean,” she says with a laugh. “Now, what can I get for you?”

“Breakfast to go. And a map,” I say.

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay and eat?” she asks, nodding toward the lone table.

“We’re in a hurry,” I explain.

“I have some fresh blueberry muffins. Picked the blueberries myself out back,” she says proudly.

“That sounds great,” Miles pipes in. “And some coffee?”

While the woman gets our breakfast together, I slide a United States atlas out of the magazine rack and flip to the page showing the Pacific Northwest. Studying it, I find a major road that heads southeast all the way to Utah, and wave Miles over. “We should get on that,” I say, tracing the red line with my finger.

“Or we could go due south,” he says, drawing a line down the coast to California, “and then head west to hook up with Route 66.”

“I don’t want to go to California,” I say, giving him a look that I hope will shut him up. “California isn’t southeast, and we’re going southeast.”

Miles puts his hands up in an “I surrender” gesture. “Fine,” he says, and leans in to look closer. “Highway 82,” he says. “We have to go through a town called Yakima.”

“You’re about a half hour from Yakima,” the woman says, emerging from the back room with two paper bags. Placing them on the counter, she says, “You taking that atlas?” I nod. She presses a couple of buttons on the cash register, and it springs open with a cha-ching. “That’ll be eighteen ninety-five.”

Miles is staring at me and I am wondering why, and then I jump as I emerge from this kind of lapse-of-memory daze and remember that I am no longer living in a share-everything extended family, but in a currency-based society where we have to actually pay for what we take.

Before I can do anything, Miles shakes his head and, digging in his pocket, spills a handful of bills and change on the counter. Sorting through them, he gives some to the woman, shoves the rest into his jeans, and mumbles something about not only having to chauffeur me across the state but foot the bill as well.

Thanking Mama, we head outside. “You know, your friends were driving in the other direction,” the woman says with a mischievous glint in her eye.

I freeze halfway out the door. “What friends?” I ask. My words come out in a rasp, since my throat feels like someone has grabbed it and is squeezing hard.

“The men who stopped by here about a half hour ago. Two in combat fatigues. The third with black sticky-uppy hair. Last guy asked me to call him if his friend with the star-shaped contact lens stopped by. Said you kept missing each other.” She holds up a piece of paper with a phone number on it.

“Please don’t call him,” I gasp.

She smiles and, crumpling the piece of paper, tosses it in a white wicker trash can with a red bow on the front. “They didn’t look terribly friendly, to be honest,” she says, crossing her arms. “And besides, who am I to stand in the way of young love?” And with that, she picks up a cloth and begins wiping down the already spotless counter.

In a flash, we’re back in the car, slamming the doors behind us and pulling on seat belts. As Miles turns the key, he looks at me with the weirdest expression on his face.

“What?” I ask.

“There are people after you,” he says.

My eyes narrow. “Did you think I was making it all up?”

He suddenly looks defensive. There’s a strange glint in his eye. A scared glint.

“You think I’m crazy,” I say, unable to stop a grin from spreading across my lips. Miles looks away. “Ha!” I laugh and shake my head in wonder. Tell people the truth and they’ll think you’re crazy. Maybe, with my story, that’s actually better than him believing every word I say, I think.

Miles thinks I’m laughing at him and in a heartbeat goes from scared to pissed off. Red-faced, he steps on the accelerator and spins out into the road. I am tempted to hold on to the dashboard but know he will make fun of me if I do, so I brace my legs and focus on keeping our coffees from spilling.

We’re heading at top speed toward Yakima, and I’m hand-feeding the bird crumbs of my blueberry muffin. Miles hasn’t touched his food, although he gulped down the coffee in a couple of swigs. I take a few sips of mine and then, grimacing, stow it under the seat. I’m used to chicory—this drink is too flavorless for me.

“The guys who are following you . . . are they dangerous?” Miles asks finally.

“Well, normally I would say that Whit wouldn’t hurt a flea. But from what Poe here told me—”

“Poe?” Miles interrupts.

“The raven,” I say.

“You named the bird?” Miles asks, his voice tinged with a note of hysteria.

Yet another reason for him to think I’m crazy, I think, and wonder again if that’s not actually a good thing. “Back in Alaska, we named all our animals after literary figures. It was something our teacher De

“Yes, thank you . . . I got the reference!” he snaps. His face is flushed red, but he does this deep-breathing thing and calms down a little. “Okay, first of all, we’re not keeping the bird. So don’t name it. I am not driving you to wherever it is we’re going with a wild animal in my backseat.”

“He’s not wild,” I protest.

“Has it shit on my shirt yet?” Miles asks, his nose wrinkling like he doesn’t really want to know the answer.

“Birds don’t shit while they’re sitting down. They would be sitting in their excrement, and if you haven’t noticed—which of course you haven’t, you”—I can’t think of an insult that fits the bill—“city boy, birds are clean.” I don’t know why I’m getting all defensive about Poe, but I can’t help correcting Miles’s glaring misconception.

“Secondly,” Miles continues, ignoring my argument, “a little while ago, you confirmed my long-held belief that birds don’t talk. Yet you just said that Poe”—he pauses—“I can’t believe I just called it that . . . this bird told you something.”