Page 109 of The Man Made of Smoke

It’s already obvious from Craig’s body language that he isn’t intending to head off straightaway, and John feels a prickle of sweat on his back. He needs the man to leave, but he can’t afford to give the impression that anything is wrong. He has to go through the motions as best he can—act as though this is just another day. He’s just out here enjoying nature. There isn’t a monster somewhere out there in the trees, watching them both right now.

As always, Craig offers him a cup of coffee from his thermos. John sips from it and does his best to engage in the requisite small talk. How are they doing? They’re both doing well—or at least, as they ruefully acknowledge to each other, as well as you can be doing when you get to their ages. What have they both been up to? Not much. Craig talks about the daily tours he makes: checking on the land; repairing signs and fences; picking up litter.People, right?he says, and John nods.People indeed.Craig asks how retirement is treating him, and John tells him that it’s better than he expected, that he enjoys a quiet life with a slower pace. And as he says it, it surprises him to realize that it’s true. Or that it was, before now.

A moment of silence.

“And how’s your boy?” Craig says.

“Not a boy anymore.”

“Ha! I guess not. Time, right?”

“It gets away from you.”

John thinks about the last time he spoke to Daniel, when he was driving to Darren Field’s house. It seems like a lifetime ago. But even then, it had been weeks since their previous conversation. How is Daniel? It’s not a question he can answer, and that causes a flower of sadness to bloom in his heart. He knows very little about his son’s life.

But he does know one thing at least.

“I’m proud of him, though,” he says.

“Really?”

“Yeah.” John takes another sip of coffee. “He’s doing great.”

Despite himself, he glances back at the trail that leads up to here from the car park. There’s nobody there. But something strange happens while he’s looking: after his head stops moving, the landscape doesn’t. The wall of trees behind him continues to rotate for a second. And when he turns back, the same thing happens again. He tries to focus on Craig, but the man keeps being farther to the side than he should be, and his face has too many eyes now.

“I’m sure he’ll be glad to hear that,” Craig says quietly.

John looks down at the thermos cup he’s holding.

He thinks about all the times out here on the trails that he’s taken a coffee from Craig: just two old men sharing a drink, shooting the breeze, and putting the world to rights. But he notices that, even though Craig has as many hands right now as he does eyes, all of them are empty.

He’s not drinking today.

Damn, John thinks.

“It’s all that we want, isn’t it?” Craig says. “Our kids to be okay.”

John stumbles a little. Drops the cup.

“You… have kids, Craig?”

“I did once.”

“I didn’t—”

Somethingpoundsagainst John’s right arm with such force that it knocks the breath out of him and bruises his lungs. There’s a moment of disorientation, and then he registers that it was the ground that just hithim, or vice versa, and that the edge of the Reach ahead has flipped upward into a ragged vertical scar. A second later, the world begins to spin sickeningly. Craig’s muddy boots appear in front of him, but the sight of them is already lost in the whirling circle that life is becoming.

Damn, John thinks again.

Craig’s voice drifts in from a different place.

“I did once,” he says again. “But not anymore.”

PART FIVE

ACCEPTANCE

Thirty-Two

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