“What are you looking for?” Allen asked.

“Patterns,” Charley said. “Trajectory matches.”

“Smart,” Allen said. “You should try it at night too, against the stars.”

Charley and Allen were like Sister, Ruth supposed, all of them seekers of faith, or magic, or whatever meaning could be found combining the two. Ruth dismissed the alien talk from the men in her life the same way she'd walked away from Catholicism, with just the tiniest nagging doubts that it all might, in fact, be true. Ruth imagined St. Christopher at the controls of a lenticular spaceship, heading for Orion's Belt. She imagined each star in the constellation a nosy ghost ancestor with strong opinions about her choices.

“What do you see?” she asked, kneeling down next to Charley.

“I haven't been looking long enough to know.”

She could prove nothing, disprove nothing. She decided then to stop doubting Charley, to stop worrying about how he did or did not fit into the world. What if a hand-drawn map of tarantulas skittering across the desert really could unlock some mystic secret of the cosmos? Navigation might be the boy's hobby now, but Ruth recognized its potential for practical application.

“That's a smart kid,” Allen said. “Can you start tomorrow?”

Ruth sent a small prayer of gratitude to St. Christopher then, for Allen's kindness to her boy, for the job she needed, that nobody, so far, was suffering toothache or other pestilence. Ruth's eyes followed her children's fragile limbs as they stretched and contracted into the landscape.

RUTH WAS AN UNLIKELY state parks employee. After a few months on the job, her pregnant belly stuck out so far she tore a small hole in her sweater's seam. Everything about her was poorly suited for the environment. The February wind blew steady and unpleasant, pinning the flared legs of her park uniform against her shins. She climbed into the cab of the truck for relief, pulled a stocking cap over her hair. Desert sand made its way through the knit of her wool socks.

Allen cracked the driver-side door. “Ruth? You okay in there?”

“Just wanted a break from the wind,” she said. “I'm fine.”

“You need me to call Del?”

“He's probably not home.”

She had taken Sister's advice, lied to Del about her wages. She was adding to her creamed corn can every two weeks, praying to St. Christopher for the journey back home. Allen looked at her for a long time, shook his head, went back to work.