"Val?"
"Judah?"
"Hi."

Valentine looked me over as if to make sure I was real as opposed to an apparition. He'd done his time searching on foot for us in the desert and a fair share of it trapped inside a mirage. "Spent my life since then wondering if it weren't a mirage that just kept on going. After all, they say the last moment of your life and every dream you ever dreamed or ever would dream flash in front of your eyes so that it's like living it all over again or for the first time," he'd told me and Phin once.
But we were in the present moment and I'd gone lone on an exit local road.

Val looked up from his newspaper from the other side of the counter and gave me his full attention.
"What are you doing here?"
I looked right back and shrugged.
"I got lost."
Valentine laughed and shook his head.
"Lost! It's impossible for you to get lost, Judah." Right. I have no base. How can I get myself lost when I've never had a place to be found? "Where's your mother? Your brother?"
"I'm alone," I said.
Valentine drew his brow into a furrow and looked me over good.
"She really did you in good, didn't she? I told her it would catch up with her one day."
I laughed.
"Well...we all grow up sometimes," I said. "Maybe Early's is still happening. Her growing up, that is. Has to have the road."
"Or maybe she's just running."
"Maybe mine is standing still. Or learning how to. But I don't feel grown up."

As we stood there talking to each other over the counter in Val's hard-earned/hard-worked convenience store, I noticed that his eyes had begun to wrinkle, little cracks, creases, around the edges that hadn't been there before. Maybe some people never grow up--like Early--and maybe others stay young on the inside but grow old on the outside. I wondered which I would do. A mix of dirt and sky and water.

"Well, come on," Val said and folded up the paper before putting it down in a shelf under the counter.
I smiled and followed him through the doorway. Half-way down the hall, Val stopped and half-turned to look at me.
"You got lost, huh?" he chuckled as if to himself. "You fell in love, didn't you? Or was it really only your mother's craziness?"
I couldn't help but let a smile crack out the corner of my mouth.
"I got lost. Lots of ways."
"Was she on the road, too?"
"Yeah. No Wheels. And not like us. But she was wandering, too."
"What's her name?"
"Little Blue Hawk."
Valentine raised an eyebrow.
I nodded.
"It's a long story," I said.
Like the road. But maybe longer, 'cause Little Blue Hawk got me to sleep atn ight and shut the nightmare out.

"Little Judah boy man, I sees me a fine lookin' hella fire of a whatso beauty up there on that horizon," Phinnaeus declared.
I barely heard him through my sleep, but I turned over and groaned. He punched me.
"Wake up, little brother."
"What is it!"
"We's got us a beauty," he said.
And I got up, right in the middle of the day no less and Phin had the wheel while Early was napping in the back with me. I looked over at my mother and climbed carefully around her and up into the front seat. Up in the middle of the bare rock mountain road with her long hair blowing around her like a protective veil and her thumb held out for a hitch was the most beautiful goodamned thing I ever seen.

Phin, my brother, slowed with his foot on the brake and I looked out the rolled-down window at her. I stared for who-knows-how-long and she smiled with a wall over her eyes like our Early. Like me.

"Gettin' in, yo?" Phin said, leaning over me.
She nodded and Phin punched me in the bicep.
"What!" I hissed and punched him back.
"Open up, little brother! Whatso man you gone stupid?"
"Shut," I said and twisted around to open the slider door.
"Watch out, miss," Phin said to her. "Our momma's dead asleep in the back you be sharin' a lift in now."
The girl nodded and in acknowledgment and climbed in with one, swift motion.