The letter Bea received six months after that fight was tearstained and simple: I’m so worried. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I found a real doctor for Agnes. I can promise she will be okay. Please come home!

It had been the first mail Bea had received in the Wilderness State. She felt desperately lonely. And the image of her mother crying over her had almost made her sprint for the border. How could she have just left her? What had she been thinking? A terrible mistake had been made. These thoughts floated again into her head as she touched her mother’s letter on the pile. They often did.

Bea’s letter back to her mother had again explained her reasoning. And her mother’s reply was swift and engaged, still argumentative, but Bea saw an honest attempt at understanding. They corresponded, then, like it was their job to. Multiple letters at each Post received and sent out. Thoughts on this place, on the City, but mostly on caring for Agnes. That was what this was all about, wasn’t it? Her mother’s commentary on Agnes’s strangeness: Sounds just like you at that age. Her forgotten history opened back up to her.

Bea picked up this newest one. The return date was six months ago, and she imagined there must be another one on its way, if not already here, sitting at some other Post, unsorted, undelivered. The other envelope was from the law office that handled her finances and affairs while she was gone. She’d gotten many letters from them over the years and they were always updates on some kind of change in sublet fees for her apartment, or tax information, though she had no job for which to be taxed. It was the easier one to open. She eased her finger under the envelope lip and broke the seal.

We request that you be in attendance at the reading of your mother’s will on March 17th of this year. Aspects of her estate concern you and need your attention.

We hope you realize the importance of attending this reading.

Bea’s cheeks burned. She heard the whoosh of a hard wind, but felt nothing on her skin but the hard sun.

“No,” she whispered, tearing open the letter from her mother.

My Dear, Didn’t you get my last letter? I also called and spoke with a nice Ranger man who said he would take a message. Didn’t you get it? Well, I found someone who would treat me and I felt so lucky to get it, of course. But sadly, the treatment failed. The cancer is terminal. It is only a matter of time they tell me. So again, I’m begging you, please come home so I can look at my beautiful daughter once more. And bring your Agnes too. How wonderful it would be to have us three together again. I’d like to see how she resembles you now. Maybe she even resembles me? Love, Mom.

Her mother was dead.

Her mother had felt sick, been diagnosed, treatment had failed her, and then she’d died, all without Bea knowing.

All the while wondering why Bea wasn’t there.

Bea felt a warm, small, searching hand on her leg and heard, “Mama.” She looked up from the letter to see everyone staring at her from around the fire, their arms slack. She realized then that she was blubbering, not able to catch her breath. She tasted salty tears and snot and knew she must have been crying for some time. It could have been days later for all she knew.

Her arms dropped. The letter wavered uselessly in her grip. “My mother is dead.”

Glen made a truly sad face. Carl made a fake sad face. Val looked at the men and tried to make any kind of sad face. Her hand reached for Bea’s shoulder, but Bea stepped back. None of these people knew her mother. None of these people, she realized, really knew her. Not like her mother had. She felt her expression morphing into disgust. The faces around her looked away nervously.

Bea heard a whimper and looked down. Agnes had tears in her eyes, but her whimper had been purposeful, performed. She was imitating her mother. Trying to access the feelings she saw there.

“Nana is dead,” she announced to Bea, quivering her lip dramatically. And this enraged Bea, as though Agnes were trying to take ownership of this pain, of this relationship. This important relationship that Bea had abandoned in order to care for her own daughter, her own daughter who was strange and simpering there, her own daughter who seemed not to know what love was, who had turned too wild to know it, looking now for attention she rarely had desired before and did not deserve now.

Bea’s heart stopped for a moment. Her burning cheeks turned icy. Leaning toward Agnes’s face, with cold emphasis, she pointed to her own thumping chest and repeated, “My mother is dead. Mine.”

There. She felt her grief crawl back into her own arms and was so warmed and comforted by it, she almost smiled. Her mother was back with her, safe, where she belonged.

She tasted metal. She’d been biting her cheek and had drawn blood. She spit it onto the blanket. Agnes touched the glob with a finger as though testing if it was real, this bloody and tearful phlegm, and regarded Bea with curiosity and some fear.

A loud bellowing horn sounded, and Bea and Agnes both startled out of their trance.

Down the road a tanker truck was slowing, screeching. Bea saw that half the Community had already walked to the roadside to greet it. When had it appeared? It seemed like an apparition, but she saw the real dust it kicked in its wake. Seeing their shapes against the massiveness of the truck, Bea saw how truly hungry they looked. She felt how wildly their bodies moved. Perhaps they would ransack the truck’s bounty. Perhaps they would cut the throat of the driver, hijack the truck, and drive it far away from here.

Bea straightened. Smoothed down her hair with what spit she mustered into her hand. “I have to go,” she announced, and she moved toward it mechanically, automatically. As though it were a magnet attracting all her minerals and metals.

“Bea,” she heard Glen say, his voice edged with a warning. But no, she would not look back.

The driver pulled up to the group and leaned toward the open window of the passenger side. “I’m supposed to tell you to stay and wait for instructions.”

“Bea,” she heard Glen call again. But no, she would not look back.

“What did you say?” Debra asked the driver.

“Wait here for instructions.”

“What instructions?”

“I don’t know, man,” he said to Debra. “I’m just the messenger.”

“Where are you going?”

“Gas to Middle Post.”

Upon hearing Middle Post, Bea quickened her pace.

“When will we get instructions?”

The man shrugged wildly so that they could see him in the dark of his cab. “Stay here,” he repeated, and revved the truck engine.

Bea began to run.

“Bea!” Glen yelled, his voice high-pitched and alarmed. She heard running behind her.

No, no, no, no, no, she would not stay.

The truck pulled away from those gathered, slowly gaining speed, and Bea arced her path to meet it. She leapt onto the runner.

“Hey,” the driver yelled and slammed the brake.

Bea hung off the rig and opened the door.

“Get me”—she panted—“out of here.”

He looked afraid of her, and she herself felt dangerous because in this moment she would do anything to leave this place.

He nodded, and in a daze she hauled herself up and over his body and into the passenger seat and slumped against the window. She heard him gag from her smell. She heard the yelling of her name, the calls for her to stop.

“Are you in trouble?” the driver whispered.

She shook her head. “Go, go, go,” she yelled, pummeling the dash. She was under a spell. She rubbed her eyes, trying to wake from the fugue. The truck rumbled and began to move.

Only then did she regain her senses.

She looked out the window at the Community, some looking angry, some dumbfounded. She found Glen, a look of panic on his face. He’ll be fine, she thought, a wave of relief washing over her. And then she saw that his hands clenched the shoulders of her daughter, who stood, mouth agape, confusion and fury dancing across her face as her mother drove away.

Bea couldn’t breathe. She curled tightly into the hot vinyl seat and covered her face.

“Go, go, go, go, go.”

Part IV

The Ballad of Agnes

When Agnes woke, she saw the prairie dog that had sung lullabies in her ear all night on its haunches, watching her with a question on its face.

She rubbed her eyes and the dog recoiled but kept asking the question.

“I’m Agnes,” she answered. “And yes, I belong here.”

The dog cocked its head. Wrinkled its snout.

“I do TOO belong here.” Agnes flicked a stone with her bony fingers at the dog, whose face scrunched in protest before it disappeared into its hole.