The boy was too old to be this naive, Ram thought. “It happened, brother,” Ram said. “What more can be said?”

They did not ask again. Ram took that as a sign of respect between men. He felt a burden lifting. He had been a coward, but his injuries had not been trivial; he had needed a doctor’s help. There was vindication in that.

THE LAND THAT JIVAN SINGH FARMED was nine miles away, forty-five minutes on horseback, less than two hours with a wagon and rested team of mules. Dusk came quickly. The air grew cool and the breeze more insistent. The Imperial Valley was empty, made of only chalk and space, so different from the lumber mill and Hambelton’s dark, lush woods, with their sharp tang of wet soil. Sitting up in the hay in the wagon’s bed, Ram felt unable to focus his mind. He dreaded the openness, the vast darkness that fell upon them from all sides. Night announced itself in the strange chirping that came from the sand, in a creature’s distant howl.

“There are jackals?” Ram asked.

“Coyotes,” Amarjeet said. After the meal, he had grown less shy. While Jivan and Karak shared the driver’s seat in front, he sat across from Ram, leaning back in the wagon bed, talking, asking Ram questions that Ram did not always answer.

Looking up at the dark sky, Amarjeet pointed to the darker outline of Mount Signal looming from Mexican soil. He knew the Valley almost as well as Ram knew Shahpur. He named the farmers who had homesteaded the land they passed. He told Ram of a great flood that had overtaken the desert towns several years before, of how men had held back the river, how Jivan Singh—his chacha-ji, he said proudly—had been one of them. He spoke as if his uncle were not present. “Chacha-ji cannot homestead any territory because he is an alien, but he says it does not matter.”

Ram had propped himself up at the angle at which the pain was tolerable. The wagon’s sturdy frame, the musk of the mules, the strength of their backs, their muffled footsteps on the sandy loam, all these comforted him, and slowly, he allowed himself to forget desperation. The desert was unknowable, but in this tiny wagon the four of them formed something familiar—he did not know how to name it. The dust-wind had grown gentle. The half-moon sailed white and brilliant beside them. Padma was under this same moon. She perhaps had looked up that same night, showing it to their son, teaching him the word “chanda.” He wondered whether the boy had begun to speak. Despite Amarjeet’s tales, he drifted in and out of a pleasant sleep.