Exit Kingdom

looks out at the road again.
    So I walked far as I could, he says. But my leg, it wasn’t cooperatin. I made it to the garage. Boxed myself in. Figured it to be as good a grave as any. Reckoned you were dead already or
would be dead tryin to fetch me back. It seemed like the end comin to bear all around. All I wanted was sleep.Suck my last breath ridin a dolphin to the bottom of the ocean.
    Abraham looks at Moses, and Moses nods but continues to stare straight ahead.
    Anyway, Abraham says. That’s the soup to nuts of what I’ve been up to. How bout you?
    So Moses explains how there was a battle between the soldiers and the brigands, how he came down into the middle of it to find Abraham, how he saw the VestalAmata but then lost track of her,
how he killed Fletcher with a bullet to his brain, how he found someone he took to be Abraham but it turned out not to be and the man died anyway, how the whole valley got urpped into the sky by
fire, how Moses got to his feet and walked away, how the world was so empty, and the sky so sooty from smoke, how he happened upon the garage and chanced to look inside.

    I got your boots in the back seat, Moses says.
    You do?
    Uh-huh.
    That bastard stole em, he said. He looked like me, huh?
    I couldn’t tell him – he was burned pretty bad. I was just goin by the boots.
    You let him go?
    Wasn’t no chance to. The burns got him first.
    Abraham nods. Then the shivers seize him again.
    They took my pills, he tells Moses. The ones for my leg.

    It don’t matter. We’ll get more. Anything you need.
    We goin to the cathedral?
    Uh-huh.
    Good. I could use a rest from wanderin for a bit.
    Moses nods – though he understands now that there are no rests from anything, not really.
    *
    Back at the citadel, Abraham is rolled away into the back rooms of the medical wing. The old pastor, Whitfield, finds Moses and clapshim on the shoulder.
    They’ll take care of him, he says. You needn’t worry.
    I ain’t worried, Moses says.
    You were there, in the assault?
    I was.
    It was bad, I heard. We had some casualties, but not many.
    Uh-huh.
    We’ll plant new growth over the burn. It’s something.
    It don’t matter. It’s just a symbol.
    Don’t disdain a symbol, says Whitfield. In this world, a symbolis the closest we come to magic.
    This may be true. Moses is too tired to think very hard on it.
    Did you find the girl? Whitfield asks.
    Found her and lost her again.
    She might have made it?
    Could of.
    We’ll pray for her recovery in the chapel. But I’ve seen very few women as industrious as she. I have great faith that she’s still out there and may find her way home.
    Moses wants to ask him
What home is that, Pastor?
Instead he just nods, because it is true. The Vestal is as industrious as any. And it’s also true that she’s likely still out
there on the wide, long roads of the country, having claimed her divorcement from Moses as just one more gorgeous escape.
    *
    They clean Abraham’s wound and wrap his leg with sterile bandages. Then they hookhim up to an IV and give him something to make him sleep. Moses stays by his bedside,
watching his brother’s dozing form, unable to sleep himself – exhausted though he is.
    Once Abraham’s eyes flutter open, and he seems to pull himself from sleep as a drowning man surfacing for a brief moment.
    Mose?
    Yeah. Right here, brother.
    Mose, have I still got my leg?
    It’s still affixed.The doctors say you’re gonna get restored.
    Goddamn miracle baby, ain’t I?
    You are at that.
    For a moment it looks as though Abraham will nod off again, but he revives himself once again and starts digging around with clumsy fingers on his chest.
    Mose?
    Yeah.
    Here. Take this.
    His fingers get under the cloth of the hospital gown they put him in and clutch at something.It’s the yewess bee given him by Albert Wilson Jacks, Moses sees, still attached to its
leather shoelace. Moses takes it from him and slips the lanyard over his head.
    They got machines here can talk to it. I know they do. Plug it in somewhere and find out what kind of bee it is.
    Moses says he will, and then Abraham lies back and shuts his eyes and dives under the surface of wakefulnessonce more.
    Later Moses takes Abraham’s plastic talisman and hands it to Whitfield.
    What is it? Whitfield says.
    Moses shrugs.
    It was give to Abraham. Can you all find out what it does? I’ll be back. I gotta run an errand.
    *
    He drives back to the valley, where the gasworks have mostly burned