Title: Ollie Ollie, In Come Free (1/4)
Title: Ollie Ollie, In Come Free
Author: Hannah Orlove
Fandom: House, MD
Pairing: Daniel Wilson/OFC
Rating: R
Notes: Companion piece to Blood Letting. Written for werewolfbigbang. Thanks to mer_duff for cheerleading, perspi for hand-holding and consultations, and pwcorgigirl and nightdog_barks for beta-reading and Southern-picking. Title comes from the song Drive by R.E.M.
And a very special thank-you to ayalesca for lending me her dragons.
He’d picked twenty-three because it seemed like a good lie. Twenty-four and twenty-five sounded too old, and too big to pull off if someone looked too closely at his face or his hands. Twenty-two and twenty-one were too young, and if he was that age he wouldn’t bother to lie about that. He knew people - maybe not everyone, but some of them, sure - would tell he was lying, so he’d needed to pick a lie everyone could agree on. Besides, twenty-three sounded so mature back then. So much more, when he hadn’t known where he’d be two weeks into the future, much less three years.
He might even be home by now if he’d wanted.
And now he was twenty-three, and he could barely believe he’d gotten here. The ceiling fan whirled around, left on forgotten from last night and still not doing a damn for the humidity, casting shadows here and there in the early morning light, and it gave him something to look at before he’d need to pull himself out of bed, get dressed, and figure out where to go next.
There was a cheap diner down the block from the hotel, so there was that. And he had enough with him to keep going for a couple more weeks before needing to settle back down. So there was that, too, if he wanted, if he didn’t want to find an apartment and settle down for a few months again. Summer was coming; finding a place that needed a warm body for a graveyard shift wasn’t ever that hard.
The full moon was coming too, just four days away. He didn’t feel it like his brothers did, but it was in him just the same. If he was going to look for reasons to move on again, it was one of the best ones - move at night and sleep in the day, try to keep out of the worst of the humidity and heat with overpriced motel air conditioning.
He’d need to sort through his clothes again, if he wanted to travel as light as possible, the way he always did.
Staring down into his coffee - his birthday coffee, with birthday pancakes and birthday scrambled eggs - he thought east might be a nice direction to go. South-east, maybe. He hadn’t been to the coast in a while, and there was always work in shipyards. And when that was done, if he kept going, he might be able to hit a farm with a decent growing season. Strawberry farmers always needed an extra pair of hands.
He looked up at the waitress who’d come back over, who smiled at him when he asked if they had any ice cream. “It’s my birthday,” he explained, and she smiled for real, her cheeks going up, and soon enough he had his birthday ice cream. It was chocolate. His favorite.
“It’s on the house,” she said, and he smiled for real right back at her.
He’d waited until late afternoon to check out of the hotel, sleeping through most of the day. He’d bought a fresh road map at a gas station, double-checked the routes to take and stashed some beef jerky and energy bars at the bottom of his pack. It was already early evening when he started down the roads and night fell fast this time of year, but he wasn’t afraid. A single man walking alone at night wasn’t weak the way a single woman was, and wasn’t dangerous the way two men alone were. One man alone said a lot of things, and he’d learned how to tell most of the stories if someone wanted to listen. There weren’t schools or seminars or lecture series on how to do it right, but he’d managed to learn it just the same, casting himself in stories and roles just like he’d always done. His brothers playing a game, Jane in senior year, a trucker dropping peaches at sharp turns, four women heading out to a party the next town over - or nobody, just himself on the side of the road, stopping to look up at the stars and find north to make sure he was headed in the right direction to find something new.
He knew what would be there, and what would be on the way - starched sheets, the smell of vinyl booths, hoots and chirps from when nothing thinks there’s a person to hear, aches when the jerky’s not enough and the slow creep of morning. Maybe washing dishes again, or mopping up first-grade classrooms, loading trucks or picking fruit or just another room to sleep in for a few days before moving on again.
-
Cucumber season wasn’t something he’d thought about for a long time: it used to be he just went to the store and bought them, like bottles of apple juice. But he knew it well now, working the fields over and under, delicate work that was nobody’s friend. He kept his ears open and heard about oranges and strawberries, peaches and watermelons and tiny island limes. People’s plans to get fields of their own some day, go back home and start a family, work hard and keep their kids from joining them out here. He joined everyone for lunch and dinner because he’d stick out if he didn’t and nobody noticed if he didn’t say much.
He hadn’t needed to lie about his age when he got asked this time, and when he said it out loud, he didn’t feel any different, not like when he needed to remind himself of what was and wasn’t true - and by now he knew lies are easier to believe when they’re built out of true things. It’s something he’s known since fourth grade when he moved schools and had to explain his brothers and his birthday to the class.
He looked up at the horizon, thought about everyone’s face in the classroom, some of them getting it before the rest; he forgot about what he was doing, and dropped the other half of his sandwich into the dirt. Picking it up and dusting it off - it was just dirt, no need to be fussy if that meant going hungry - he took another bite before he noticed someone had come over and was about ready to say hello.
He squinted up at the face shadowed by the wide-brimmed hat. It was Jake. “Hey there.”
“Dan, right?” He nodded. “We’re going out to Jack Burton’s later, you wanna come?”
“Ah,” the press to say no and keep his distance was strong, but he got paid last week and could afford a few bucks for a couple of beers, “Sure. I’ll just tag along, okay?”
“Yeah, we’ll make sure to get you.”
“Thanks.” Dan gave a small salute to Jake who smiles and tips his hat in return.
It was nice having something to look forward to for the rest of the day, and that made the work go a bit faster. He watched Jake and his friends hang around each other, with each other, and he was glad to get a chance to join in even if it was just for tonight. And they did pick him up, waved him over when he was a bit slow in walking over to their group and hung back just a bit, having trouble remembering how to do one simple thing. He’d gotten a seat in the back of Luis’ pickup, dust kicking up into his eyes and whipping his hair as he looked back at where he’d just been.
The little roadhouse bar dusty and loud, all bright lights and colored signs promising local live music on the weekends, people shouting and yelling and he felt good in there, pushed around and laughing at things that weren’t so funny after some time to think about them, a young guy playing with the men because they knew he’s lonely. Kept to himself, didn’t follow them, had to be called over and invited.
The bartender served up beer in green glass bottles, nothing like the warm fuzzy bubbles he had at the few illicit off-campus parties, instead cool and smooth and smelling just a bit like fresh bread. He said that when Jake clapped him on the shoulder and asked him how he liked it, and he hooted in laughter.
“You don’t drink much,” Jake yelled over the crack of the pool table.
Dan smiled as best he could. “These are expensive! If I drank, I couldn’t eat!”
Rick and Eddie laughed at that, two other guys who didn’t have anyone waiting for them at the end of the night. It came after Dan was ready for it, the three beers hitting him harder than he thought they would - everything felt out of joint and out of touch and later as he lay on his bed too dizzy to take off his pants, he wondered if this was what it felt like for his family. Maybe just a bit, maybe enough, maybe nothing like it at all.
When the room was still he peeled off his clothes and crawled into bed, and when he woke up the next morning all he could think to do was piss, holding it just long enough to get to the toilet. He lingered in the shower, still hoping something special would happen to him, he’d look in the mirror or turn on the sink taps and something would appear in his brain that told him something special.
Dan had wanted to leave, today if he could, but there were another few weeks to the harvest and the pay was really good, all the tourist money, almost as good as strawberries and way better than cotton. So he walked over like he did every day, bought his lunch from one of the trucks like he did every day, but what made this day different was that he went right over and sat down with his sandwich and bottle of pop right next to Eddie in the shade, the first one to stake his claim on a seat.
“How are ya doing?”
Dan shrugged, took a swig and wiped his forehead with the bottle. “Pretty good. It was a lot of fun last night - thanks for bringing me.”
“Ah, it’s fine, we liked having you. You should talk more, you know?”
He shrugged again and took a big bite. Everyone was sitting in the shade soon enough, everyone he went out with last night and a few more besides, and it was nice not sitting alone. He liked being part of the conversation, the back and forth of the talking, but he slowly drifted out of talking to look over across the fields and watched the family over there with lunches spread out on blankets. While everyone around him was tossing their ideas about the Madame President back and forth he didn’t bother to liste,n but watched the way the wife handed her husband his water, the way the kids passed their food around to share with each other.
Next Friday night he was back at the roadhouse bar all over again. Nobody minded he didn’t share stories more than two years old - learning what it meant to be lonely, to be dirty, how to eat out of garbage cans and sleep anywhere - and he didn’t buy any beers after his first and drank three more, charming his way into them, each going down easier than the last. Most of the other workers were staying put - they already traveled plenty far to get here, and there’s plenty of work all year round for them, some of it farther away than the rest but all of it honest labor that kept them fed. They were all going on about what they’ll be doing five weeks, six months, two years down the line and he couldn’t add anything and didn’t know if he wanted to think that far ahead. He managed to get Luis to buy him a fifth beer and then a sixth, which he regretted before he got back to his place. The ride was bad, everything shaking hard in his head and his stomach, and it was just the start. He ended up puking out everything he had, but not in time: he started in the parking lot before he realized what was going on, catching some of it in his palm, then staring at it and flinging it away. He ran to his room and slammed the door behind him, not bothering to lock it, finally getting to the toilet and heaving even more into it, foul and sharp and bitter.
He was still drunk when he got done, drunk and sore and tired, and he didn’t bother to get under the covers, squeezing his eyes shut tight to keep from crying. He missed his mother.
He felt fine the next morning, same as usual and hungry for breakfast just like normal, and all that happened was Gary and Luis ask him how he’s doing since he looked so shaky last night. Dan shook his head and said, “I’m doing just fine.”
“You looked really bad.”
“I’m fine. Nothing a hot shower couldn’t set right.”
“Okay, man.” Gary slaps him on the arm. “You take care o’yourself.”
“I gotcha.” He didn’t bother checking the parking lot and took the long route around to make sure he wouldn’t know if anyone didn’t clean it up. The radio report said it’d rain this week, and that’d do it. If he was in a hotel he could count on people like himself to clean it up, but since he’s not, nature will have to take care of it for him.
-
Flipping from nocturnal to diurnal took a couple of days at most, and every time Dan moved he learned how to do it all over again. He’d also learned night was the time to move in summer, the cooler air making the humidity bearable - it still felt like suffocating in the shvitz, but it wasn’t as bad as trying to travel during the day. He did it just fine, since he didn’t have much of a choice about moving at all, so he took the choice to go at night.
There were diners that served breakfast twenty-four hours a day and only closed on Christmas and Easter. There were all-night Laundromats, bars that made last call at three in the morning and served better food than the diners, truck stops and train stations and bus depots where he looked like he fit in, someone off the street who was just as dragged-out as everyone else there, ready to count out exact change for a sandwich since he couldn’t afford to tip. Maybe they could. He didn’t know. He wouldn’t stay long enough to find out, anyway. Sometimes he’d consider going somewhere by bus or train - if he paid with cash, he couldn’t be traced, not that he kept a credit card anyway - but he could get where he needed to go on foot, and like always, he needed that money to pay for food. Food first, shelter second, and a lot more stuff tied for third place.
Big cities were easy. Everybody had something to do, no matter what time it was, and there was always room for another tramp to blend in, no matter where he came from or his accent. Small towns were easy, too, since nobody who wasn’t from them stayed around. Dumpsters behind big grocery stores were always good for day-old bread and dented cans, lost and found bins at coin-laundry places gave him new clothes for free, and all sorts of public service buildings where no one minded him coming in for a few minutes to brush his teeth or scrape a cheap razor over his chin. He’d learned how to go weeks without a shower, and he still thought it was funny he’d rather skip showering than brushing his teeth. His mother would be proud.
If he worked a stint in the fields or cleaning dirty tables, he made sure to get fresh toothpaste and shampoo and found luxury in brushing his hair and lying on the floor to read eight-for-a-dollar books from bargain bins. Sometimes he picked hunger and bought a six-pack of beer or a bottle of something cheap and tried to make it last more than three days, and never quite made it. If he worked something where he needed to get up at a certain hour to be someplace, he didn’t care what time of the month it was or what day of the week and knew that he’d never need to, not while he was out here, and that gave him a weird feeling he never tried to focus on.
The moon rose and fell and grew and shrank and he was always the same, never changing along with its cycles and patterns, never shifting, always the same, always ten good fingers and ten strong toes, never smelling someone from yesterday or seeing better at night.
It was on his mind while he brushed his teeth to get ready for another day in the orange groves. The day was - according to the reports - going to be as hot as it got this time of year, with more than enough humidity for everyone, plenty to go around. He spat into the sink and washed off his face; his brothers never liked summer too much, no matter what day it was or what they were doing, but he’d never had much of a problem with it.
He’d bought deodorant and used it anyway, even though it wouldn’t matter after working twenty minutes. It was the principle of the idea, of using something he’d bought until he couldn’t use it anymore, of using something that said he wasn’t being a vagabond right now, or a tramp, or a bum, or anything else that meant homeless runaway. Store-brand stuff worked just fine, especially if he knew if it didn’t matter how effective it was or not. Just that he used it.
It didn’t occur to him until he got to the fields, standing under the shade and rubbing sweat off his forehead and thinking there wasn’t any way his brothers could stand this for more than a few minutes - that nobody knew who he really was, and a moment after that, he hadn’t spoken to anyone like himself, in any of the ways that mattered and some that didn’t, for nearly six years.
Deep down he figured it was the sort of revelation that should have happened at night under the stars in a moment of deliberate introspection, but that wasn’t the case. He had more trees to prune back, the kind of fine-tuned work only hands could do, and he couldn’t give himself over to thinking about what he’d done with his life. He had to save it for the shower that night, even though it kept peeking out as he picked rotten fruit from the branches and kept a good one, just one, for himself. The owner could spare one for all the acres. Nobody was watching and he ate it right there in the shade, sucking the juice off his fingers when he was done before picking his shears up and getting back to his job.
-
There were more and more empty houses as he went, lost in what used to be fields that were going back to nature without people taking care of them. They were still standing fine, four walls and a roof and good solid floors, and that was all he needed to decide to spend the night there if he hadn’t realized how far away the next town was and morning was coming. Most of them were totally gutted, everything gone or smashed or stolen before he got there, and he’d gather a handful of branches to sweep away glass and dust and make a clean space to sleep. If there were any doors to close, he slept behind them, and if there weren’t, he slept in the house anyway. Sometimes there’d be a little piece of who used to be there that was left over for him to find, scraps of newspapers from 1943 with details about Allied troops, or feral tomato plants strangling each other in the back yard, or just some trash left over from the last person who came through.
He always checked the doorframes, just in case, knowing he wouldn’t find anything but wished to just the same. He still remembered the first time he realized other people didn’t have mezuzot in their houses and in their bedrooms, when he all of four years old and too young to know not to ask about that sort of thing. Back then, it took a lot of talking to get him to understand why other people were different; now he’s learned that lesson well enough to never forget it.
He got caught inside an abandoned house once, sudden rains sweeping up and waking him up in the middle of the afternoon, the roof holding strong enough to keep it out until nighttime fell. The porch was fine, too, and he sat there and watched it come down, for no reason other than to not be moving or going or working, just staying still, just for a little while. He couldn’t get back to sleep and hadn’t brought any books and he wanted to make the last of the jerky last, so that left the rain, which he took just fine. It’d been dusty as hell walking yesterday anyway.
Dan had walked to the edge of the porch and sat down, dangling his feet off the side as rain fell down all around him. He’d need new shoes soon, not quite yet but in a couple of months if he kept walking this much; fewer truck drivers made pick-ups in this area this time of year.
He breathed in the sounds of the drops hitting the grass and rooftop, the smell so bright compared to the same smell in a city, and looked out over the horizon that he could see through the rain, the slow curve of the hills and still-fallow fields. Looked at all the empty space, and him alone inside of it.
Literally no one else on the planet knew he was here. Nobody. His brother had always laughed at his tendency to use “literally” for emphasis when he didn’t mean it - not literally, he’d joke right back - but now he did. He kept staring down at his feet, up to the roof, out at the horizon, and tried to make sense of the knowledge he’d just come across.
He didn’t know where his brothers were right now. They could be anywhere, Chechnya or Mongolia or Shreveport, and he had no way to find out. He didn’t know, okay, he did know where his parents were. Dan knew his parents, and he knew, had known since he’d walked out of his dorm room, that they’d keep his bedroom just the way it was the instant they got the news, everything precise and perfect and probably buried under dust by now. They’d keep it that way just in case, if any news got back, something to make sure they’d be able to sleep at night.
There wasn’t a way right then to pretend he was back home, but he could close his eyes and breathe in the smell of the rain and remember long summers climbing trees and wrestling with his brothers, cook-outs and bike rides, the same sort of scent bringing everything out of the past to sit right in front of him. If he tried hard, took in a big breath, he could remember the sound the leaves outside his bedroom window made when they knocked against the glass in summer thunderstorms, the exact texture of the sprinkles on the ice-cream cones everyone got after a day at the water park, running to eat them before they got in the car and the afternoon’s rain came, murmuring and crashing towards them over the horizon.
When it finally stopped, the sun had almost set, the humidity all washed out of the air leaving nothing but the smell after rain. He waited a little while before heading back in to get his stuff, hoisting his backpack and bag up and setting his shoulders to set on out, stopping to take a look around.
The moon was in its third quarter, moving over to new, and out here in the country it was as bright as a full moon was inside a city. For a moment, he cupped his hands and opened his mouth, all set to howl and tell the world where he was so it could find him, but he stopped, let his hands fall and looked up at the early night sky. After a few minutes, he hefted his pack again and set out on the road.
-
He’d gotten used to people not looking at him early on, so the glances he was getting had started to get weird. A whole bunch of kids on the other side of the park - he’d decided on heading East again, a couple of weeks walking to the ocean and the shipyards - lounging around on some blankets and towels by the public grill, and a couple of them looking his way very carefully and talking to the rest. He’d been sitting on the bench when they’d gotten here, and maybe it was time he moved on and left the park’s lawn to them.
“Hey!” One of the girls who’d glanced called out as he hefted his bag. “Hey, you!” He made a show out of glancing around and pointing to himself. “Yeah, come on over! We won’t bite!”
He smiled, remembering when his brother had used that exact phrase to get someone to come over to play with them, and it worked now, too. He kept on smiling when he got there, nine kids, three boys and six girls, with two of the girls lighting up the grill and pulling meat out of a cooler and everyone else lounging. The girl who’d called him motioned for him to drop his stuff and join them, jerking her thumb over her shoulder, “We’re having a barbeque if you wanna hang around.”
“Thanks.” He joined them on the blankets, everyone introducing themselves - “It’ll be easier if y’all say hello to each other too” got them laughing and Mike said hi to Fi and Sam and Clara said hi to Rick and Susan, and Andy and Irene unwrapped the meat and waved the sausages at Chris. Dan wound up shaking hands with everyone at least once, a couple of times twice.
They were all classmates, sophomores heading into junior year, taking a few weeks to drive around in a van. “Off to see the great America,” Susan said, tossing her ponytail with a flourish Dan knew she’d practiced. “We got some tents if we need to, sleeping bags, you know? For when we can’t get to motels.” Dan smiled and nodded. “You know, right?”
“Oh, yeah, yeah, sometimes you’re out on the road and you’ve just got to stop.”
“It’s a lot nicer than the backseats, too. Just out under the stars.” She leaned onto her side, popped open a container of blueberries and started passing them around.
“So how long have you been caravanning around?”
“Two, three weeks?” Susan asked, getting a murmur of approval. “Something like that. Not long. Since the twenty-eighth.”
“Nineteen days.” Dan said without thinking.
“What?”
“Nineteen days.” He looked around and shrugged very deliberately to put everyone at ease. “I’m good at keeping track of time.”
Mike leaned in, “Can you do that day of the week in what year trick?”
“No, but I can always tell you what phase of the moon it is.”
“I know full and new, and that’s it.” Fi spat out a blueberry stem.
“There’s a lot of phases. Wax, wane, new, old. But it’s pretty useless.” He waited for effect. “I mean, not many people buy me drinks because I know it’s a quarter full. You need to list all the state capitals for something like that.”
“All thirty-eight? I can do that. Baton Rouge, Boston, Jackson, Concord, Trenton, Providence, Harrisburg, um…”
Mike grinned at Sam. “Take your time.”
It didn’t take long for everyone to find something to do, either cooking and getting the food out, starting a footie game, or just lying on the blankets. Rick and Clara kept him company, sprawling half on top on top of each other while they talked to him about the current state of their college careers and what they were planning on doing with their degrees when they graduated. “I keep saying paper airplane, but my mom wants it framed, so I can’t argue with her,” Clara said. Sometimes Dan stopped to wonder if the credits he’d gotten - almost three years’ worth - were still any good, and if so, if he could pick up where he left off or transfer them over somewhere else. She went on, “I understand she wants it, but it’s just a piece of paper, really. You can get those anywhere.”
“Not ones that expensive,” Rick said. Clara giggled behind her free hand; her busy one was twinned up in Rick’s, fingers laced up together. They’d been holding hands like that since before the start of the footie game and nobody had said a thing about it. This was a close group, but this was a little group inside of that, and Dan could tell - he remembered his brother with his girlfriend of nearly four years - they meant it as much as they could. Little kids. They were the age he was when he ran away, way too young to want to be doing what he did. He knew he wouldn’t be such a romantic figure if he hadn’t gotten lucky enough to find a cheap motel yesterday to shower at late that morning.
“So what’ll you do when you get back?”
Rick shrugged. “Classes? Graduate? We’ve got two years and we’re not going to just drop them.”
“Yeah, but they’re not going to start right away, are they?”
“No, but getting back to campus, getting moved into a new room. We’ll need some time.” He lay back on the blanket, propping up on his elbows. “Maybe start a part-time job.”
Dan nodded carefully. “That sounds pretty good.”
“Where - I mean, can I ask where you’re going?” Clara cocked her head.
“Sure. I don’t know.” He laughed when he realized what he’d said. “I mean, yeah, you can ask me, and no, I don’t know where I’m going.” He kept the fake smile on his face as both the kids smiled back at him, definitely taken in with the idea of what he was doing with his life. He’d been taken in, too, for about a week and a half until the first time he got caught out halfway to the middle of nowhere and ended up needing to take a crap in a ditch by the side of the road.
“Soup’s on!” Andy yelled, stopping everything else going on within earshot. Dan got into the circle around the barbeque like everyone else, waiting for his turn, not wanting to push forward and stand out, even though his stomach was growling. It’d been a long time since he’d gotten food that smelled this good. It tasted as good as it smelled, too, and by now he knew not to ask what animal he was eating - if he didn’t know he could pretend it didn’t matter, just close his eyes and chew and swallow and not think of the chapters and verses and how he probably shouldn’t be eating it anyway. Hunger was a powerful motivator, and a great way to shove the cares away until he wasn’t hungry anymore. The potato and pasta salads were pretty good, too.
The conversations kept going, pairs and trios passing people between the groups to make a huge pack of sounds. He kept a set level of talking and spent most of the time murmuring and didn’t volunteer anything, which nobody noticed, just smiling at his hard-won knowledge. It was almost endearing, and a little sad, at least from where he was sitting.
Still, at least there was a free meal that afternoon, and even an invitation to come along since the second van still had some room and he wasn’t carrying around that much stuff anyway. “Come on, it’s got to be better than just walking.”
“I don’t want to impose.”
“We insist!”
“And I have to respectfully decline your invitation.” If he’d had a hat, he’d have tipped it, but he didn’t, so he just grinned his buy-me-a-drink grin and hoped for the best.
“You’re sure?” Sam asked. Dan nodded, and that was that. He waved them away as they drove off, and hefted his pack up and headed away in the opposite direction, kicking up dirt as he walked. It was too easy to feel sorry for them and too hard to feel cheerful, and it wasn’t any trouble at all to feel hopeful for them. It wasn’t like they were running away, after all - just taking a vacation. Scuttling around, bumming around, with tents and sleeping bags and places to go back to when they were done with their caravanning. And if it went like it should, like it was supposed to according to every folk tale and popular movie, they’d come home stronger, smarter, more well-rounded and generally better and wiser than when they’d left. Leaving home to seek your fortune did that, or at least it was supposed to.
Of course, they weren’t exactly running away, or staying away - sure, they were going away, they’d gone away, but they had mobiles, they could call home without a fuss, they knew where they’d be sleeping next October. He didn’t know if that was a luxury or a privilege. He just knew, as he waited for the light to turn green, that it wasn’t something he had right now.
Of course, there was the chance he could get that too, and if he started moving now he might make it back with enough time to take Alpert up on his old job offer.
As soon as Dan crossed the street, he turned around and started going back the other way. He glanced over at the setting sun; there were a couple more hours to nightfall. Plenty of time for walking. And, for a change, he knew right where he was going this time around.
He also knew it’d be at least a week to get into pissing distance of Alpert’s orchards, so just to make sure he got another gas station roadmap and made sure to double-check it against the stars when it got dark enough to see them in the city’s light and when he got out into the dark of the countryside again. For a moment, he held his hand to his forehead, laughing quietly when he imagined a sextant and compass to guide him. The moon was a quarter full, starting its cycle again, and he knew he needed the time to go but stopped to look at it anyway; it was too early to see the rabbit or the man, depending on where in the world you were standing, and it wasn’t yet time for people to be pulled by it either. But a new month had started just a few days ago, and even though most people didn’t know Adar from Shevat he did, and knew just as well that it was time for him to get moving again.
It wasn’t a good time of year for hitchhiking, and he wasn’t on a good road set for truckers, so it wasn’t worth his time to wait for anyone to come along. Just to move on his own, the way he’d gotten used to.
Dan didn’t take the exact same route back - it’d be a couple extra days tacked on for him to get back to the right road system - so he didn’t end up coming back down the same roads he’d walked out on. He hadn’t kept a journal of them, and some things looked the same everywhere, and after a while one side road winding between two farms looked like every other. Keeping track of when he got closer to cities and town was easy, though, not just for the lights at night, but for fewer animals, more and better cars, more signs declaring where he was and how far he was from some place. But mostly the lights at night, streetlights and lampposts and stoplights at four-corner stops out in the middle of nowhere kept blinking their lights for nobody but him, neon signs of old flags and places to eat and drink and sleep. Pull the day out of itself, chop it up, try to keep it going for as long as it can.
His parents had raised him to never be afraid of the dark. They’d taught him and his brothers to understand they didn’t need to be scared of it, or scared of what might be out there just because it was dark. He couldn’t defend himself the way his brothers could, couldn’t move through the dark they way they could, but he knew how important it was to have the dark. His family marked everything with light, and light didn’t matter if there wasn’t dark.
He stopped to think about it at the bottom of a glass just a day’s walk from where he needed to be - Alpert wasn’t exactly in the city, anyway, and after this one last drink he’d go to that same cheap motel he’d stayed in last time and clean himself up and get a bit of sleep - was about the best time he could think of to do it, since he’d left the real countryside behind yesterday morning just before dawn. The motel was right where he’d left it, and he had to stop a while and look at it, not quite ready to go back in, still getting used to being back at a place he remembered. He’d tried getting used to the idea of it getting here, and now that he was here he shouldn’t have bothered and just thought about drive-in movies instead, since it hadn’t done him any good to think about it before he saw it. And it was just a seedy motel halfway down a city block with decent rates for long layovers. It wasn’t anything special or important, just another place for him to sleep a while.
The soap smelled just the same, and Dan stood in the shower, cold water running down, sniffing deeply and smiling that this one tiny thing, something he could hold in his hands, hadn’t changed a bit. He curled up under the covers, cheap and starched and stiff, and sighed happily; the first night back in a bed was always the best.
He took another shower when he got up, just because he could, changed into his better clothes and locked the door behind him and started on his way to Alpert’s, who was right where he’d left him, behind his desk by the window overlooking his main orchard.
“Hello?”
Alpert glanced up from his screens, blinked, and broke into a grin. “Daniel Wilson. Good to see you back.”
“Glad to be back.”
“I really didn’t think -” He let out a chuckle, got up and walked to clap him on the shoulder. “Well, anyway, you got here just in time, we’re filling in some new fields and we’ve got plenty of tools for empty hands.” He shook Dan’s shoulder, still smiling, and stopped for a moment. “Anyway, right, are you staying in town again?”
“I’ll see if my old room’s there.”
“Let’s get your stuff ready.” Alpert moved back to his screens, Dan took the only other seat in the office, and soon enough he was on the payroll, shaking hands and promising to share some stories when they both had the time -- “Maybe we can go back to that bar, the one with those great slingshots”, “I’d be glad to, Tuesday?” - and heading back into the orchards, saying hello to the foreman and being recognized by him, too. Not by anyone in the fields, though, but there’d be plenty of time to see if anyone else had come back this year later, once the day’s work was done.
Part two.
Author: Hannah Orlove
Fandom: House, MD
Pairing: Daniel Wilson/OFC
Rating: R
Notes: Companion piece to Blood Letting. Written for werewolfbigbang. Thanks to mer_duff for cheerleading, perspi for hand-holding and consultations, and pwcorgigirl and nightdog_barks for beta-reading and Southern-picking. Title comes from the song Drive by R.E.M.
And a very special thank-you to ayalesca for lending me her dragons.
He’d picked twenty-three because it seemed like a good lie. Twenty-four and twenty-five sounded too old, and too big to pull off if someone looked too closely at his face or his hands. Twenty-two and twenty-one were too young, and if he was that age he wouldn’t bother to lie about that. He knew people - maybe not everyone, but some of them, sure - would tell he was lying, so he’d needed to pick a lie everyone could agree on. Besides, twenty-three sounded so mature back then. So much more, when he hadn’t known where he’d be two weeks into the future, much less three years.
He might even be home by now if he’d wanted.
And now he was twenty-three, and he could barely believe he’d gotten here. The ceiling fan whirled around, left on forgotten from last night and still not doing a damn for the humidity, casting shadows here and there in the early morning light, and it gave him something to look at before he’d need to pull himself out of bed, get dressed, and figure out where to go next.
There was a cheap diner down the block from the hotel, so there was that. And he had enough with him to keep going for a couple more weeks before needing to settle back down. So there was that, too, if he wanted, if he didn’t want to find an apartment and settle down for a few months again. Summer was coming; finding a place that needed a warm body for a graveyard shift wasn’t ever that hard.
The full moon was coming too, just four days away. He didn’t feel it like his brothers did, but it was in him just the same. If he was going to look for reasons to move on again, it was one of the best ones - move at night and sleep in the day, try to keep out of the worst of the humidity and heat with overpriced motel air conditioning.
He’d need to sort through his clothes again, if he wanted to travel as light as possible, the way he always did.
Staring down into his coffee - his birthday coffee, with birthday pancakes and birthday scrambled eggs - he thought east might be a nice direction to go. South-east, maybe. He hadn’t been to the coast in a while, and there was always work in shipyards. And when that was done, if he kept going, he might be able to hit a farm with a decent growing season. Strawberry farmers always needed an extra pair of hands.
He looked up at the waitress who’d come back over, who smiled at him when he asked if they had any ice cream. “It’s my birthday,” he explained, and she smiled for real, her cheeks going up, and soon enough he had his birthday ice cream. It was chocolate. His favorite.
“It’s on the house,” she said, and he smiled for real right back at her.
He’d waited until late afternoon to check out of the hotel, sleeping through most of the day. He’d bought a fresh road map at a gas station, double-checked the routes to take and stashed some beef jerky and energy bars at the bottom of his pack. It was already early evening when he started down the roads and night fell fast this time of year, but he wasn’t afraid. A single man walking alone at night wasn’t weak the way a single woman was, and wasn’t dangerous the way two men alone were. One man alone said a lot of things, and he’d learned how to tell most of the stories if someone wanted to listen. There weren’t schools or seminars or lecture series on how to do it right, but he’d managed to learn it just the same, casting himself in stories and roles just like he’d always done. His brothers playing a game, Jane in senior year, a trucker dropping peaches at sharp turns, four women heading out to a party the next town over - or nobody, just himself on the side of the road, stopping to look up at the stars and find north to make sure he was headed in the right direction to find something new.
He knew what would be there, and what would be on the way - starched sheets, the smell of vinyl booths, hoots and chirps from when nothing thinks there’s a person to hear, aches when the jerky’s not enough and the slow creep of morning. Maybe washing dishes again, or mopping up first-grade classrooms, loading trucks or picking fruit or just another room to sleep in for a few days before moving on again.
-
Cucumber season wasn’t something he’d thought about for a long time: it used to be he just went to the store and bought them, like bottles of apple juice. But he knew it well now, working the fields over and under, delicate work that was nobody’s friend. He kept his ears open and heard about oranges and strawberries, peaches and watermelons and tiny island limes. People’s plans to get fields of their own some day, go back home and start a family, work hard and keep their kids from joining them out here. He joined everyone for lunch and dinner because he’d stick out if he didn’t and nobody noticed if he didn’t say much.
He hadn’t needed to lie about his age when he got asked this time, and when he said it out loud, he didn’t feel any different, not like when he needed to remind himself of what was and wasn’t true - and by now he knew lies are easier to believe when they’re built out of true things. It’s something he’s known since fourth grade when he moved schools and had to explain his brothers and his birthday to the class.
He looked up at the horizon, thought about everyone’s face in the classroom, some of them getting it before the rest; he forgot about what he was doing, and dropped the other half of his sandwich into the dirt. Picking it up and dusting it off - it was just dirt, no need to be fussy if that meant going hungry - he took another bite before he noticed someone had come over and was about ready to say hello.
He squinted up at the face shadowed by the wide-brimmed hat. It was Jake. “Hey there.”
“Dan, right?” He nodded. “We’re going out to Jack Burton’s later, you wanna come?”
“Ah,” the press to say no and keep his distance was strong, but he got paid last week and could afford a few bucks for a couple of beers, “Sure. I’ll just tag along, okay?”
“Yeah, we’ll make sure to get you.”
“Thanks.” Dan gave a small salute to Jake who smiles and tips his hat in return.
It was nice having something to look forward to for the rest of the day, and that made the work go a bit faster. He watched Jake and his friends hang around each other, with each other, and he was glad to get a chance to join in even if it was just for tonight. And they did pick him up, waved him over when he was a bit slow in walking over to their group and hung back just a bit, having trouble remembering how to do one simple thing. He’d gotten a seat in the back of Luis’ pickup, dust kicking up into his eyes and whipping his hair as he looked back at where he’d just been.
The little roadhouse bar dusty and loud, all bright lights and colored signs promising local live music on the weekends, people shouting and yelling and he felt good in there, pushed around and laughing at things that weren’t so funny after some time to think about them, a young guy playing with the men because they knew he’s lonely. Kept to himself, didn’t follow them, had to be called over and invited.
The bartender served up beer in green glass bottles, nothing like the warm fuzzy bubbles he had at the few illicit off-campus parties, instead cool and smooth and smelling just a bit like fresh bread. He said that when Jake clapped him on the shoulder and asked him how he liked it, and he hooted in laughter.
“You don’t drink much,” Jake yelled over the crack of the pool table.
Dan smiled as best he could. “These are expensive! If I drank, I couldn’t eat!”
Rick and Eddie laughed at that, two other guys who didn’t have anyone waiting for them at the end of the night. It came after Dan was ready for it, the three beers hitting him harder than he thought they would - everything felt out of joint and out of touch and later as he lay on his bed too dizzy to take off his pants, he wondered if this was what it felt like for his family. Maybe just a bit, maybe enough, maybe nothing like it at all.
When the room was still he peeled off his clothes and crawled into bed, and when he woke up the next morning all he could think to do was piss, holding it just long enough to get to the toilet. He lingered in the shower, still hoping something special would happen to him, he’d look in the mirror or turn on the sink taps and something would appear in his brain that told him something special.
Dan had wanted to leave, today if he could, but there were another few weeks to the harvest and the pay was really good, all the tourist money, almost as good as strawberries and way better than cotton. So he walked over like he did every day, bought his lunch from one of the trucks like he did every day, but what made this day different was that he went right over and sat down with his sandwich and bottle of pop right next to Eddie in the shade, the first one to stake his claim on a seat.
“How are ya doing?”
Dan shrugged, took a swig and wiped his forehead with the bottle. “Pretty good. It was a lot of fun last night - thanks for bringing me.”
“Ah, it’s fine, we liked having you. You should talk more, you know?”
He shrugged again and took a big bite. Everyone was sitting in the shade soon enough, everyone he went out with last night and a few more besides, and it was nice not sitting alone. He liked being part of the conversation, the back and forth of the talking, but he slowly drifted out of talking to look over across the fields and watched the family over there with lunches spread out on blankets. While everyone around him was tossing their ideas about the Madame President back and forth he didn’t bother to liste,n but watched the way the wife handed her husband his water, the way the kids passed their food around to share with each other.
Next Friday night he was back at the roadhouse bar all over again. Nobody minded he didn’t share stories more than two years old - learning what it meant to be lonely, to be dirty, how to eat out of garbage cans and sleep anywhere - and he didn’t buy any beers after his first and drank three more, charming his way into them, each going down easier than the last. Most of the other workers were staying put - they already traveled plenty far to get here, and there’s plenty of work all year round for them, some of it farther away than the rest but all of it honest labor that kept them fed. They were all going on about what they’ll be doing five weeks, six months, two years down the line and he couldn’t add anything and didn’t know if he wanted to think that far ahead. He managed to get Luis to buy him a fifth beer and then a sixth, which he regretted before he got back to his place. The ride was bad, everything shaking hard in his head and his stomach, and it was just the start. He ended up puking out everything he had, but not in time: he started in the parking lot before he realized what was going on, catching some of it in his palm, then staring at it and flinging it away. He ran to his room and slammed the door behind him, not bothering to lock it, finally getting to the toilet and heaving even more into it, foul and sharp and bitter.
He was still drunk when he got done, drunk and sore and tired, and he didn’t bother to get under the covers, squeezing his eyes shut tight to keep from crying. He missed his mother.
He felt fine the next morning, same as usual and hungry for breakfast just like normal, and all that happened was Gary and Luis ask him how he’s doing since he looked so shaky last night. Dan shook his head and said, “I’m doing just fine.”
“You looked really bad.”
“I’m fine. Nothing a hot shower couldn’t set right.”
“Okay, man.” Gary slaps him on the arm. “You take care o’yourself.”
“I gotcha.” He didn’t bother checking the parking lot and took the long route around to make sure he wouldn’t know if anyone didn’t clean it up. The radio report said it’d rain this week, and that’d do it. If he was in a hotel he could count on people like himself to clean it up, but since he’s not, nature will have to take care of it for him.
-
Flipping from nocturnal to diurnal took a couple of days at most, and every time Dan moved he learned how to do it all over again. He’d also learned night was the time to move in summer, the cooler air making the humidity bearable - it still felt like suffocating in the shvitz, but it wasn’t as bad as trying to travel during the day. He did it just fine, since he didn’t have much of a choice about moving at all, so he took the choice to go at night.
There were diners that served breakfast twenty-four hours a day and only closed on Christmas and Easter. There were all-night Laundromats, bars that made last call at three in the morning and served better food than the diners, truck stops and train stations and bus depots where he looked like he fit in, someone off the street who was just as dragged-out as everyone else there, ready to count out exact change for a sandwich since he couldn’t afford to tip. Maybe they could. He didn’t know. He wouldn’t stay long enough to find out, anyway. Sometimes he’d consider going somewhere by bus or train - if he paid with cash, he couldn’t be traced, not that he kept a credit card anyway - but he could get where he needed to go on foot, and like always, he needed that money to pay for food. Food first, shelter second, and a lot more stuff tied for third place.
Big cities were easy. Everybody had something to do, no matter what time it was, and there was always room for another tramp to blend in, no matter where he came from or his accent. Small towns were easy, too, since nobody who wasn’t from them stayed around. Dumpsters behind big grocery stores were always good for day-old bread and dented cans, lost and found bins at coin-laundry places gave him new clothes for free, and all sorts of public service buildings where no one minded him coming in for a few minutes to brush his teeth or scrape a cheap razor over his chin. He’d learned how to go weeks without a shower, and he still thought it was funny he’d rather skip showering than brushing his teeth. His mother would be proud.
If he worked a stint in the fields or cleaning dirty tables, he made sure to get fresh toothpaste and shampoo and found luxury in brushing his hair and lying on the floor to read eight-for-a-dollar books from bargain bins. Sometimes he picked hunger and bought a six-pack of beer or a bottle of something cheap and tried to make it last more than three days, and never quite made it. If he worked something where he needed to get up at a certain hour to be someplace, he didn’t care what time of the month it was or what day of the week and knew that he’d never need to, not while he was out here, and that gave him a weird feeling he never tried to focus on.
The moon rose and fell and grew and shrank and he was always the same, never changing along with its cycles and patterns, never shifting, always the same, always ten good fingers and ten strong toes, never smelling someone from yesterday or seeing better at night.
It was on his mind while he brushed his teeth to get ready for another day in the orange groves. The day was - according to the reports - going to be as hot as it got this time of year, with more than enough humidity for everyone, plenty to go around. He spat into the sink and washed off his face; his brothers never liked summer too much, no matter what day it was or what they were doing, but he’d never had much of a problem with it.
He’d bought deodorant and used it anyway, even though it wouldn’t matter after working twenty minutes. It was the principle of the idea, of using something he’d bought until he couldn’t use it anymore, of using something that said he wasn’t being a vagabond right now, or a tramp, or a bum, or anything else that meant homeless runaway. Store-brand stuff worked just fine, especially if he knew if it didn’t matter how effective it was or not. Just that he used it.
It didn’t occur to him until he got to the fields, standing under the shade and rubbing sweat off his forehead and thinking there wasn’t any way his brothers could stand this for more than a few minutes - that nobody knew who he really was, and a moment after that, he hadn’t spoken to anyone like himself, in any of the ways that mattered and some that didn’t, for nearly six years.
Deep down he figured it was the sort of revelation that should have happened at night under the stars in a moment of deliberate introspection, but that wasn’t the case. He had more trees to prune back, the kind of fine-tuned work only hands could do, and he couldn’t give himself over to thinking about what he’d done with his life. He had to save it for the shower that night, even though it kept peeking out as he picked rotten fruit from the branches and kept a good one, just one, for himself. The owner could spare one for all the acres. Nobody was watching and he ate it right there in the shade, sucking the juice off his fingers when he was done before picking his shears up and getting back to his job.
-
There were more and more empty houses as he went, lost in what used to be fields that were going back to nature without people taking care of them. They were still standing fine, four walls and a roof and good solid floors, and that was all he needed to decide to spend the night there if he hadn’t realized how far away the next town was and morning was coming. Most of them were totally gutted, everything gone or smashed or stolen before he got there, and he’d gather a handful of branches to sweep away glass and dust and make a clean space to sleep. If there were any doors to close, he slept behind them, and if there weren’t, he slept in the house anyway. Sometimes there’d be a little piece of who used to be there that was left over for him to find, scraps of newspapers from 1943 with details about Allied troops, or feral tomato plants strangling each other in the back yard, or just some trash left over from the last person who came through.
He always checked the doorframes, just in case, knowing he wouldn’t find anything but wished to just the same. He still remembered the first time he realized other people didn’t have mezuzot in their houses and in their bedrooms, when he all of four years old and too young to know not to ask about that sort of thing. Back then, it took a lot of talking to get him to understand why other people were different; now he’s learned that lesson well enough to never forget it.
He got caught inside an abandoned house once, sudden rains sweeping up and waking him up in the middle of the afternoon, the roof holding strong enough to keep it out until nighttime fell. The porch was fine, too, and he sat there and watched it come down, for no reason other than to not be moving or going or working, just staying still, just for a little while. He couldn’t get back to sleep and hadn’t brought any books and he wanted to make the last of the jerky last, so that left the rain, which he took just fine. It’d been dusty as hell walking yesterday anyway.
Dan had walked to the edge of the porch and sat down, dangling his feet off the side as rain fell down all around him. He’d need new shoes soon, not quite yet but in a couple of months if he kept walking this much; fewer truck drivers made pick-ups in this area this time of year.
He breathed in the sounds of the drops hitting the grass and rooftop, the smell so bright compared to the same smell in a city, and looked out over the horizon that he could see through the rain, the slow curve of the hills and still-fallow fields. Looked at all the empty space, and him alone inside of it.
Literally no one else on the planet knew he was here. Nobody. His brother had always laughed at his tendency to use “literally” for emphasis when he didn’t mean it - not literally, he’d joke right back - but now he did. He kept staring down at his feet, up to the roof, out at the horizon, and tried to make sense of the knowledge he’d just come across.
He didn’t know where his brothers were right now. They could be anywhere, Chechnya or Mongolia or Shreveport, and he had no way to find out. He didn’t know, okay, he did know where his parents were. Dan knew his parents, and he knew, had known since he’d walked out of his dorm room, that they’d keep his bedroom just the way it was the instant they got the news, everything precise and perfect and probably buried under dust by now. They’d keep it that way just in case, if any news got back, something to make sure they’d be able to sleep at night.
There wasn’t a way right then to pretend he was back home, but he could close his eyes and breathe in the smell of the rain and remember long summers climbing trees and wrestling with his brothers, cook-outs and bike rides, the same sort of scent bringing everything out of the past to sit right in front of him. If he tried hard, took in a big breath, he could remember the sound the leaves outside his bedroom window made when they knocked against the glass in summer thunderstorms, the exact texture of the sprinkles on the ice-cream cones everyone got after a day at the water park, running to eat them before they got in the car and the afternoon’s rain came, murmuring and crashing towards them over the horizon.
When it finally stopped, the sun had almost set, the humidity all washed out of the air leaving nothing but the smell after rain. He waited a little while before heading back in to get his stuff, hoisting his backpack and bag up and setting his shoulders to set on out, stopping to take a look around.
The moon was in its third quarter, moving over to new, and out here in the country it was as bright as a full moon was inside a city. For a moment, he cupped his hands and opened his mouth, all set to howl and tell the world where he was so it could find him, but he stopped, let his hands fall and looked up at the early night sky. After a few minutes, he hefted his pack again and set out on the road.
-
He’d gotten used to people not looking at him early on, so the glances he was getting had started to get weird. A whole bunch of kids on the other side of the park - he’d decided on heading East again, a couple of weeks walking to the ocean and the shipyards - lounging around on some blankets and towels by the public grill, and a couple of them looking his way very carefully and talking to the rest. He’d been sitting on the bench when they’d gotten here, and maybe it was time he moved on and left the park’s lawn to them.
“Hey!” One of the girls who’d glanced called out as he hefted his bag. “Hey, you!” He made a show out of glancing around and pointing to himself. “Yeah, come on over! We won’t bite!”
He smiled, remembering when his brother had used that exact phrase to get someone to come over to play with them, and it worked now, too. He kept on smiling when he got there, nine kids, three boys and six girls, with two of the girls lighting up the grill and pulling meat out of a cooler and everyone else lounging. The girl who’d called him motioned for him to drop his stuff and join them, jerking her thumb over her shoulder, “We’re having a barbeque if you wanna hang around.”
“Thanks.” He joined them on the blankets, everyone introducing themselves - “It’ll be easier if y’all say hello to each other too” got them laughing and Mike said hi to Fi and Sam and Clara said hi to Rick and Susan, and Andy and Irene unwrapped the meat and waved the sausages at Chris. Dan wound up shaking hands with everyone at least once, a couple of times twice.
They were all classmates, sophomores heading into junior year, taking a few weeks to drive around in a van. “Off to see the great America,” Susan said, tossing her ponytail with a flourish Dan knew she’d practiced. “We got some tents if we need to, sleeping bags, you know? For when we can’t get to motels.” Dan smiled and nodded. “You know, right?”
“Oh, yeah, yeah, sometimes you’re out on the road and you’ve just got to stop.”
“It’s a lot nicer than the backseats, too. Just out under the stars.” She leaned onto her side, popped open a container of blueberries and started passing them around.
“So how long have you been caravanning around?”
“Two, three weeks?” Susan asked, getting a murmur of approval. “Something like that. Not long. Since the twenty-eighth.”
“Nineteen days.” Dan said without thinking.
“What?”
“Nineteen days.” He looked around and shrugged very deliberately to put everyone at ease. “I’m good at keeping track of time.”
Mike leaned in, “Can you do that day of the week in what year trick?”
“No, but I can always tell you what phase of the moon it is.”
“I know full and new, and that’s it.” Fi spat out a blueberry stem.
“There’s a lot of phases. Wax, wane, new, old. But it’s pretty useless.” He waited for effect. “I mean, not many people buy me drinks because I know it’s a quarter full. You need to list all the state capitals for something like that.”
“All thirty-eight? I can do that. Baton Rouge, Boston, Jackson, Concord, Trenton, Providence, Harrisburg, um…”
Mike grinned at Sam. “Take your time.”
It didn’t take long for everyone to find something to do, either cooking and getting the food out, starting a footie game, or just lying on the blankets. Rick and Clara kept him company, sprawling half on top on top of each other while they talked to him about the current state of their college careers and what they were planning on doing with their degrees when they graduated. “I keep saying paper airplane, but my mom wants it framed, so I can’t argue with her,” Clara said. Sometimes Dan stopped to wonder if the credits he’d gotten - almost three years’ worth - were still any good, and if so, if he could pick up where he left off or transfer them over somewhere else. She went on, “I understand she wants it, but it’s just a piece of paper, really. You can get those anywhere.”
“Not ones that expensive,” Rick said. Clara giggled behind her free hand; her busy one was twinned up in Rick’s, fingers laced up together. They’d been holding hands like that since before the start of the footie game and nobody had said a thing about it. This was a close group, but this was a little group inside of that, and Dan could tell - he remembered his brother with his girlfriend of nearly four years - they meant it as much as they could. Little kids. They were the age he was when he ran away, way too young to want to be doing what he did. He knew he wouldn’t be such a romantic figure if he hadn’t gotten lucky enough to find a cheap motel yesterday to shower at late that morning.
“So what’ll you do when you get back?”
Rick shrugged. “Classes? Graduate? We’ve got two years and we’re not going to just drop them.”
“Yeah, but they’re not going to start right away, are they?”
“No, but getting back to campus, getting moved into a new room. We’ll need some time.” He lay back on the blanket, propping up on his elbows. “Maybe start a part-time job.”
Dan nodded carefully. “That sounds pretty good.”
“Where - I mean, can I ask where you’re going?” Clara cocked her head.
“Sure. I don’t know.” He laughed when he realized what he’d said. “I mean, yeah, you can ask me, and no, I don’t know where I’m going.” He kept the fake smile on his face as both the kids smiled back at him, definitely taken in with the idea of what he was doing with his life. He’d been taken in, too, for about a week and a half until the first time he got caught out halfway to the middle of nowhere and ended up needing to take a crap in a ditch by the side of the road.
“Soup’s on!” Andy yelled, stopping everything else going on within earshot. Dan got into the circle around the barbeque like everyone else, waiting for his turn, not wanting to push forward and stand out, even though his stomach was growling. It’d been a long time since he’d gotten food that smelled this good. It tasted as good as it smelled, too, and by now he knew not to ask what animal he was eating - if he didn’t know he could pretend it didn’t matter, just close his eyes and chew and swallow and not think of the chapters and verses and how he probably shouldn’t be eating it anyway. Hunger was a powerful motivator, and a great way to shove the cares away until he wasn’t hungry anymore. The potato and pasta salads were pretty good, too.
The conversations kept going, pairs and trios passing people between the groups to make a huge pack of sounds. He kept a set level of talking and spent most of the time murmuring and didn’t volunteer anything, which nobody noticed, just smiling at his hard-won knowledge. It was almost endearing, and a little sad, at least from where he was sitting.
Still, at least there was a free meal that afternoon, and even an invitation to come along since the second van still had some room and he wasn’t carrying around that much stuff anyway. “Come on, it’s got to be better than just walking.”
“I don’t want to impose.”
“We insist!”
“And I have to respectfully decline your invitation.” If he’d had a hat, he’d have tipped it, but he didn’t, so he just grinned his buy-me-a-drink grin and hoped for the best.
“You’re sure?” Sam asked. Dan nodded, and that was that. He waved them away as they drove off, and hefted his pack up and headed away in the opposite direction, kicking up dirt as he walked. It was too easy to feel sorry for them and too hard to feel cheerful, and it wasn’t any trouble at all to feel hopeful for them. It wasn’t like they were running away, after all - just taking a vacation. Scuttling around, bumming around, with tents and sleeping bags and places to go back to when they were done with their caravanning. And if it went like it should, like it was supposed to according to every folk tale and popular movie, they’d come home stronger, smarter, more well-rounded and generally better and wiser than when they’d left. Leaving home to seek your fortune did that, or at least it was supposed to.
Of course, they weren’t exactly running away, or staying away - sure, they were going away, they’d gone away, but they had mobiles, they could call home without a fuss, they knew where they’d be sleeping next October. He didn’t know if that was a luxury or a privilege. He just knew, as he waited for the light to turn green, that it wasn’t something he had right now.
Of course, there was the chance he could get that too, and if he started moving now he might make it back with enough time to take Alpert up on his old job offer.
As soon as Dan crossed the street, he turned around and started going back the other way. He glanced over at the setting sun; there were a couple more hours to nightfall. Plenty of time for walking. And, for a change, he knew right where he was going this time around.
He also knew it’d be at least a week to get into pissing distance of Alpert’s orchards, so just to make sure he got another gas station roadmap and made sure to double-check it against the stars when it got dark enough to see them in the city’s light and when he got out into the dark of the countryside again. For a moment, he held his hand to his forehead, laughing quietly when he imagined a sextant and compass to guide him. The moon was a quarter full, starting its cycle again, and he knew he needed the time to go but stopped to look at it anyway; it was too early to see the rabbit or the man, depending on where in the world you were standing, and it wasn’t yet time for people to be pulled by it either. But a new month had started just a few days ago, and even though most people didn’t know Adar from Shevat he did, and knew just as well that it was time for him to get moving again.
It wasn’t a good time of year for hitchhiking, and he wasn’t on a good road set for truckers, so it wasn’t worth his time to wait for anyone to come along. Just to move on his own, the way he’d gotten used to.
Dan didn’t take the exact same route back - it’d be a couple extra days tacked on for him to get back to the right road system - so he didn’t end up coming back down the same roads he’d walked out on. He hadn’t kept a journal of them, and some things looked the same everywhere, and after a while one side road winding between two farms looked like every other. Keeping track of when he got closer to cities and town was easy, though, not just for the lights at night, but for fewer animals, more and better cars, more signs declaring where he was and how far he was from some place. But mostly the lights at night, streetlights and lampposts and stoplights at four-corner stops out in the middle of nowhere kept blinking their lights for nobody but him, neon signs of old flags and places to eat and drink and sleep. Pull the day out of itself, chop it up, try to keep it going for as long as it can.
His parents had raised him to never be afraid of the dark. They’d taught him and his brothers to understand they didn’t need to be scared of it, or scared of what might be out there just because it was dark. He couldn’t defend himself the way his brothers could, couldn’t move through the dark they way they could, but he knew how important it was to have the dark. His family marked everything with light, and light didn’t matter if there wasn’t dark.
He stopped to think about it at the bottom of a glass just a day’s walk from where he needed to be - Alpert wasn’t exactly in the city, anyway, and after this one last drink he’d go to that same cheap motel he’d stayed in last time and clean himself up and get a bit of sleep - was about the best time he could think of to do it, since he’d left the real countryside behind yesterday morning just before dawn. The motel was right where he’d left it, and he had to stop a while and look at it, not quite ready to go back in, still getting used to being back at a place he remembered. He’d tried getting used to the idea of it getting here, and now that he was here he shouldn’t have bothered and just thought about drive-in movies instead, since it hadn’t done him any good to think about it before he saw it. And it was just a seedy motel halfway down a city block with decent rates for long layovers. It wasn’t anything special or important, just another place for him to sleep a while.
The soap smelled just the same, and Dan stood in the shower, cold water running down, sniffing deeply and smiling that this one tiny thing, something he could hold in his hands, hadn’t changed a bit. He curled up under the covers, cheap and starched and stiff, and sighed happily; the first night back in a bed was always the best.
He took another shower when he got up, just because he could, changed into his better clothes and locked the door behind him and started on his way to Alpert’s, who was right where he’d left him, behind his desk by the window overlooking his main orchard.
“Hello?”
Alpert glanced up from his screens, blinked, and broke into a grin. “Daniel Wilson. Good to see you back.”
“Glad to be back.”
“I really didn’t think -” He let out a chuckle, got up and walked to clap him on the shoulder. “Well, anyway, you got here just in time, we’re filling in some new fields and we’ve got plenty of tools for empty hands.” He shook Dan’s shoulder, still smiling, and stopped for a moment. “Anyway, right, are you staying in town again?”
“I’ll see if my old room’s there.”
“Let’s get your stuff ready.” Alpert moved back to his screens, Dan took the only other seat in the office, and soon enough he was on the payroll, shaking hands and promising to share some stories when they both had the time -- “Maybe we can go back to that bar, the one with those great slingshots”, “I’d be glad to, Tuesday?” - and heading back into the orchards, saying hello to the foreman and being recognized by him, too. Not by anyone in the fields, though, but there’d be plenty of time to see if anyone else had come back this year later, once the day’s work was done.
Part two.