Exit Kingdom

his notebook. It is good for him to have something to follow.
    Abraham doesnot very frequently bring up the topic of the Vestal, having seemed to identify it as out of bounds. The first time is while they are still at the citadel.
    So the girl’s lost? he says.
    Yep, says Moses.
    Not dead?
    Could be. Moses shrugs. Dead’s a kind of lost. But last I saw her she was amongst the livin.
    I reckon we should look for her.
    I reckon so.
    I would of thoughtshe’d come back here.
    Girl like that, Moses says with a wave of his hand, you can’t figure her. You can’t project what she’ll do.
    The next time the topic arises they are on the road. It is night, and the headlights illuminate the tall trees between which they drive.
    We could trace our path back, Abraham says. To look for her, the Vestal, you know.
    We could do that.
    Abrahamdoes not seem to be aware that this is exactly what they are already doing.
    What happened, Mose? Between the two of you, I mean.
    I just lost her is all.
    So it’s guilty feelins that’ve got you all puckered up about it?
    I ain’t puckered. I just lost her. She was lookin to be lost anyway – you and me, we were just fightin it from the very beginning. Nature takes its course is whathappens.
    They drive. Abraham sleeps in the passenger seat. Moses keeps his eyes wide, his fingers clenched on the wheel.
    On another occasion, Abraham raises the topic again but only indirectly. He asks Moses if he thinks much any more about his wife who went missing. He liked Moses’ wife, he says. She was an
okay woman. Women for the most part, he says, are a dodgy bunch – but he guesseshe can’t blame them what with all the men taking aim at them.
    Moses says nothing. He agrees that women are dodgy, but his mind is so full of lost ones now that he wishes his memories could take refuge elsewhere than in his sleepless head. He looks deep
into the tree trunks, hoping to see there another vision of the naked girl darting back and forth behind them.
    But there is nothing,and they drive on. At night, when they stop to rest, Moses hears his brother’s snoring and hopes he is dreaming among his dolphins.
    *
    They return to the town of Dolores where the whorehouse is, but the inhabitants have not seen hide nor hair of the Vestal.
    They drive south, out of the snow, over the mountains and down into the valley, where the arid desert lays claim to theland.
    It is just after dawn when they arrive at the Mission San Xavier del Bac and ring the bell at the gate. The mute woman who opens the door recognizes the brothers from the last time they were
here, and she ushers them inside. The monk Ignatius greets them in the chapel and feeds them eggs gathered from their own coops in the rear of the community.
    The brothers know they must notspeak, not here among the parishioners, and so they eat silently. Moses and Ignatius gaze at each other, and Moses tries to tell the man the entire story with his
eyes – for maybe that mode of communication is less treacherous. But soon Moses realizes there are untruths even in looks, so he stops trying and sits meditatively at the table.
    Later, while Abraham plays some version of soccerwith the children of the place, the children trying to teach him without words, making wide explanatory gestures with their hands – Moses
and the monk leave through the front gate and climb the hill behind the mission and sit on an outcropping of stones, squinting their eyes against the desert sun.
    Did you make it to the citadel? Ignatius asks.
    We did. We got her there.
    Did theyexamine her?
    They did. You ain’t gonna like it, friar.
    My liking it is beside the point.
    She’s got a disease. A hereditary one. It’s in her blood. That’s why the slugs don’t bother with her. She’s already half dead.
    Ignatius nods and smiles benignly at the horizon.
    So what’s bestowed on her, Moses continues, it ain’t a blessing.
    Ignatius shrugs.
    Disease or blessing,who can say? he asks. If a disease helps you survive in the world, then it’s no longer a disease but an adaptation. Evolution would tell you as much.
    But it’s more than that, friar. The girl, she ain’t a holy woman. She put on pretences.
    I know that, too. I never saw her other pretences – but the one she put on here was a righteous one, so I pretended along with her. Sometimes a thingbecomes true through enacting it.
Sometimes you perform faith in order to gain faith. Do you believe that?
    I don’t know. I don’t