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There’d been no rain for months and the vista seemed chalky and pale, the color washed out

Closer to us, the roadside dropped away into the treacherous canyon that had nearly th of an, there was still a chunk of concreteus from behind just as we caht he meant to continue, so I waited

He walked forward a few feet, gravel crunching under his shoes He was clearly uneasy as he peered down the rocky slope I looked back over htest attention to us

I studied the scene, picking out one of the scarred boulders I’d seen in the photograph, and farther down, the raw, jagged stump where a scrub oak had been snapped off at the base I knew the Santa Teresa police had swept the area clean of debris fro glass or creep around picking fibers from the underbrush

Bobby turned to me "Have you ever been close to death?"

"Yes"

"I reone’ I disconnected, I felt like a plant ripped up by the roots Airborne" He stopped "And then I was cold and everything hurt and people were talking to me and I couldn’t understand a word they said That was in the hospital and teeks had passed I’ve wondered since then if that’s hoborn babies feel Bewildered like that and disoriented Helpless It was such a struggle to stay in touch with the world Sending do roots I knew I could choose I was barely attached, barely tethered, and I could feel how easy it’d be just to let go like a balloon and sail away"

"But you hung on"

"Hey, my mother willed it Every time I opened my eyes, I saw her face And when I closed oing toto do this, you and I"

He was silent again I thought, Jesus, what must it be like to have a mother who could love you that way? My parents had died when I was five, in a freak car accident We’d been on a Sunday outing, driving up to Loe boulder tuh the windshield My father had died instantly and we’d crashed I’d been in the backseat, thrust down against the floorboards on iered,into a silence finally that I sensed was ominous and forever It had taken thee, trapped there with the dead whom I loved who had left me for all time After that, I was raised by a no-nonsense aunt who had done her best, who had loved me deeply, but with a matter-of-factness that had failed to nourish some part of nitude that it had brought hirave It was odd, when he was so broken, that I experienced an envy that h burble and he turned a puzzled glance on me