“I don’t want to go there. I don’t have the cash for a doctor.”

“That’s really not a problem right now,” Grayson said.

Dance pushed up his glasses. The broken lens looked like a kaleidoscope, splintering his face. I remembered he had cried when his mama had pulled him out of our grade school classroom. The fall leaves we had carefully cut out of construction paper and the stained-glass crayons melted between wax sheets were tacked on the bulletin board. And my bean seed in the plastic cup on the windowsill had sprouted, but I don’t think other kids’ had. Did he remember all that, any of that?

“Can I come with you?” he asked.

Another man. Another mouth. It would mean more work.

It might also mean less hassle. I pictured getting out of the truck with men beside me, their beards and low voices. I pictured walking beside them.

“It seems like this place is dying,” Dance said. “People acting like they did at the water giveaway. Rioting. Seems like we should get out now, don’t you think? Somewhere warmer, a bigger city, might have more resources, you know?”

I couldn’t think. “If you come along, you have to do your share,” I said. “You have to cook, wash dishes, clean up. Do you know how to split wood?”

“Wil,” Dance said. “I grew up in the Compounds.”

“Okay.” Grayson was staring at me, but I had to decide. “You and Grayson go through the farmhouse. Take anything you think we might need. Take Lobo’s old clothes if they fit you, I don’t care.”

“What are you going to do?” Grayson asked.

The shovel lay on the ground by the porch. I picked it up. It would be hard work, now that the earth had frozen. I should have done it months ago, as soon as Mama and Lobo had left.

We piled supplies into the bed of the truck. We packed the remaining grow lights in duffel bags, padding them with pillowcases and towels. We did the hard, complicated work of attaching the trailer of my tiny house to the truck hitch—work I had only helped with once before, back when Lobo was in charge. The air was so warm then I remember we had rolled up our shirtsleeves. I remember blue chicory wagged in the breeze. Now the thought of any flower bursting from the earth, any buried seed rising, any bright color breaking up the brown, white, and gray landscape, seemed extraordinary. The fields were white lakes. Snow gathered in the shrugs of trees.

I was in charge. It was my truck, my home, my idea. If I wasn’t so stunned, so exhausted and overwhelmed, if I wasn’t cycling through the motions of walking, bending, pulling, wrenching, I would have felt annoyed by all the men’s questions.