Unassigned Territory by Kem Nunn Page A

sister.” Bianca was by now, however, standing in the lot near the door. She leaned forward, almost touching Obadiah and spoke to Neil across the front seat. “My butt’s cold right now, honey. You can have the car, and this trip, too, as far as that goes.” With that she turned and walked off toward the gate. “That child,” Panama said, and followed the exclamation with one more burst of high-pitched laughter.
    Obadiah looked toward the trailers. The red neon drew a narrow vibrating line at the edge of the sky and above the neon a piece of the moon had risen like a chip of melting ice, bathing the desert in a snowy light.
    It was, alongside every other night he could think of, the longest Obadiah could recall. It dragged on interminably, charged with half dreams and bizarre levels of consciousness, the buzzing of lonely planes, and when at last he stood, along with Neil Davis, in the workshed at the far end of the trailers, checking for gas cans by the first gray light, he felt that they had been there, at the side of that narrow road, for at least several days.
    There was gas—perhaps two gallons’ worth, enough, the woman who had first met Neil at the door surmised, to get them to a Chevron station somewhere down the road. Neil gave the woman some money and, in a surprising offer of reconciliation, suggested that Obadiah drive. Perhaps he assumed that even Obadiah could not lose them on a road without turns. Perhaps he wished to save himself for the more important driving which lay ahead. Obadiah accepted the offer. He listened to advice on the avoidance of potholes and started down the road. For a time, he could see the woman from the trailers in the rearview mirror. She was standing at the edge of the chain-link fence in the maroon bathrobe, one hand raised to shield her eyes, one at her side. There was something in the pose, he thought, which suggested the wife of Lot, turned to statuary at the edge of Sodom. He looked at her several times and then at last she was gone and they were alone with the morning and it was, he had to admit, in spite of everything, quite beautiful. The distant hills which at sunset had turned purple appeared once more as jagged stripes of red and yellow on a field of crystal blue. The air was fresh—so fresh you could taste it, dry and clean, yet shot through with the scents of greasewood and sage. Obadiah wished he could feel more in tune with it, less a spectator. As it was, he clung to the wheel of Neil’s LeSabre like a ghost while the morning slipped past him, following a narrow dirt road as it crawled through a forest of Joshua trees.
    At last the car peaked a small rise and began a bumpy descent. In the distance a handful of buildings became visible—scattered across a corrugated hillside. The road curved and the buildings slipped from view.
    “There it is,” Neil said, “a Chevron sign, just ahead.”
    It seemed to Obadiah that he had seen something too—red letters on a field of white. He squinted into the dust, the twisted limbs of the Joshuas, the heat waves just now beginning to swarm at the edges of the land.
    When the sign appeared again Neil groaned and slapped at the dashboard with the palm of his hand. It was not a Chevron sign at all, but rather some kind of homemade billboard.
    Sunbeaten and buckled, it swung toward them from a turquoise sky. There were large letters on the sign. Once, Obadiah supposed, they had been red. Now they were the color of dried blood, flecked with white where the paint had fallen away, scarred with buckshot. Obadiah dragged a hand through his hair. “What is it?” Bianca asked from the backseat. As if in answer the dusty LeSabre made an odd kind of whirring sound and emitted a cloud of pale smoke. SEE THE THING! the billboard said. Sarge Hummer’s Desert Museum. LAST CHANCE GAS, COLD BEER.
    S low Hound, Pluto, Pluggard, Stinkhorn, Link, even a Ruth: Rex and Delandra Hummer had named all of their father’s creations—no matter how