Fellis climbed out first, and I followed. His sneakers on the ladder scraped loose flakes of rust that fell like bloody snow, and so I climbed up looking down at the bottom of the silo. I couldn’t see he’d stopped climbing, and so I bumped my head on his heel.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “Be quiet.”

I sneezed and the noise reverberated through that empty silo.

“Goddamn it,” Fellis whispered. “Shut up.”

Olamon Industries was out back behind the tribal lumberyard. It had been years since the industry produced anything or stored any materials in those silos. The tribe used to make audio cassettes, but they started in on that when CDs were becoming a thing, so the venture didn’t last too long. Then the tribe’s business was saved, just for a time, when they partnered with some contractors to manufacture tactical landing light systems for the US so aircrafts could identify landing areas. Not sure why the tribe stopped making those—maybe the US had landed in every possible place so they no longer needed Indians to help them out.

Or maybe we just sucked at making them.

The car Fellis waited for to pass passed by.

We went out and over the edge and climbed down the ladder to the ground.

“Christ, it’s bright when you’ve been in the dark so long,” Fellis said.

We stepped into the woods past the lumberyard, the shortcut to our roads home. And we weren’t in the wooded path for more than a rock’s throw before Fellis asked me to come over for breakfast, said his mom would make us something.

“I got to get home,” I said. “I told my mother I’d go see my grandmother this morning up at Woodlands.”

“It’s still early,” Fellis said. He looked up in the gray fall sky and pointed. “Sun’s right there. It’s not even nine yet.”

“Then I’m late,” I said, and it was then I realized I was shaking. “Can I get a pin?”

“They’re at home,” Fellis said, but I knew he was lying. He had them on him last night. “Come by and I’ll give you some.”

“No,” I said. “I have to get home.”

We came to the end of the path and out onto the road, and Fellis went one way and I went the other.