Exit Kingdom

a lie. Even
now. The fear in her eyes – it could be just another performance.
    I’m comin back, Moses assures her. I ain’t entirely done with this place. Abraham’s gonna want to see it with his own eyes. And maybe we can recuperate here for a bit.Besides,
you’re my beheld responsibility. Even though you’ve been workin contrary to it, it’s my thought to keep you safe till the full stop of this journey. Maybe this is it, but anyway I
got to make sure I ain’t delivered you into hazard.
    Fine, she says.
    But she won’t look at him.
    He goes to the door of the room and turns around once more before going out.
    I’m comin back,he says. Two days. You’ll be okay.
    Then she does turn to him, the full blaze of her eyes whipping sharp at his.
    See, she says. Whatever I am, so are you – but worse, cause you can’t admit to it. You ain’t no gentleman, Moses Todd.
    He looks at her a moment longer. Some part of him desires to take that crazily cut redhaired head and hold it against his chest as he would a small, shiveringanimal. Yet another part of him, a
confused and muddy and thickly despairing part of him, would like to wrap his hands around the girl’s neck and squeeze until she is quiet, until her witchy words no longer have the power to
sink him so low.
    No, he says. I guess I ain’t so much of a gentleman. Guess I never have been much of one.
    He waits a moment longer, but she has nothing more tosay. She turns again and looks out at the pelting snow. Their voices have been muffled and wrong in this building of plaster and
concrete.
    I’m comin back, he says one last time.
    Then he turns and goes.
    *
    Whitfield brings him a bottle of pills.
    Biaxin, he says. It’s an antibiotic – a powerful one. The doctors tell me it should keep your brother’s infection from spreading.But you’ll bring him back here? We have
the facilities he needs.
    Moses agrees and stuffs the pills into the pocket of his jacket.
    I thank you, Pastor, says Moses. I’m in your debt.
    Whitfield clears Moses’ debt with a wave of his hand.
    The world we’re living in now, Whitfield says, nobody owes anybody anything except kindness.
    You’ve been more than generous to us. I ain’tso accustomed to it. I don’t expect I know how to act around it.
    The pastor smiles.
    I’ve seen rougher than you, he says. This country hardens people.
    *
    Back on the road, travelling the inverse of his former journey, the world looks reversed. There have not been many times in his life that Moses has retraced his steps. He is
defined by forwardness – a true frontiersman,foraging the wilderness, chopping through the untamed tangles, burning to ash the road behind him. And there is ever more. There are an infinite
number of roads – an embarrassing possibility of directions to travel. You can keep moving your whole life and never cross the same intersection.
    Not wishing to meet them face to face, he looks for signs of Fletcher and his caravan. But he findsno trace of their immense footprint. Perhaps they have lost the trail – or perhaps they
have gone a different way.
    Back at the citadel, they filled his tank with gasoline, so he drives straight through without stopping. He knows, having just come from them, which roads are good and which are bad – and
he takes detours where necessary. Still, travel is slow. He remembers, in his youth,when miles and minutes were commensurate. On the freeways of the nation, you could measure the one against the
other with modest accuracy. But now, with the crumbled tarmac, the piles of abandoned cars, the collapsed overpasses, everything moves more slowly. The traffic of the dead and gone – there is
no more dense population anywhere.
    The sun goes down, and he makes his way in the dark.Normally he would stop rather than risk damage to the car by driving at night. But his brother is waiting for him, his leg rotting away by
the hour. He can see it, the rot, spreading through Abraham’s body. A creeping rot gripping his heart and lungs, greening his brain with sour fungus. His brother, a creature of rot and decay.
And so he is – and so he ever was.
    He drives, and the muffledsilence of the car is powerful. He has not, in his life, been much alone with his thoughts. It has been him and his brother. But now, by himself in the car, his large
body balking against the small seat, driving this desolate road under a sky full black like drowning – now he perceives entire the eminence of the