Chapter 23: 2:40

On the morning of the fourteenth day, I put on a T-shirt.

Rhonda stood in the kitchen doorway with her coffee and looked at my bare arms.

"There she is," she said, and her voice wobbled.

"Don't."

"I'm not. I'm just noticing."

"You're crying."

"I have allergies."

Brice picked me up at noon.

We drove up the county road in the white heat, with the air conditioner roaring and neither of us speaking.

The jail had called Brice at seven.

The state transport van had run at midnight, a white box with the air turned to sixty, and Lance had slept the whole way.

At nine, the prison doctor had written a single line: *Core temperature normal. Patient asks to stay indoors.*

He was in a cell with a concrete floor and no window, a hundred miles from the sun.

Brice parked at mile marker nine.

The green post, the gouge in the shoulder, and the flat place under the ledge.

It was 1:50 in the afternoon, and the thermometer on the dash read one hundred and nineteen.

"Last chance to change your mind," Brice said.

"About what?"

"Standing out there."

"I'm not changing my mind."

He turned the engine off, and the heat came in through the doors at once.

I got out.

The ground burned through the soles of my boots.

The sky was white, and the air shimmered above the ridge.

I walked forty yards into the sand and stopped where I had lain.

Brice stood at my shoulder, one hand on the water jug, and the second one on my back.

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