Jack had never understood what his mother’s words meant. After all he’d worked for, buying her a new home, getting her the best of whatever she wanted. But all she ever wanted was happiness for her son. For Jack. And then, on his knees, hearing those feet recede into the distance, Jack realized that they needed the money more than he.

Working his way up from his knees to his feet, he’d felt the crack and pop of his joints, felt all the years of expensive dinners, felt the age. And he felt the heat of the day, intensifying the weight of his pack. Placing one foot in front of the other, limping at first until the hurt leveled out into a walk. Eyes gawked and followed his every step. Feeling the pain in his gut from the punch. From hunger. Ignoring the faces. Twenty-four hours had passed since he last ate. Hitchhiking to San Pedro de Atacama. Wandering in a dazed and famished state to the crossroads. Lifting his face to the sun’s warmth. Images and sounds came in snapshots alternating between reflection and real time. The volume of reality was being turned up. Growing louder and louder. Stucco buildings the shade of smoked vanilla lined the dirt street. Men played music. His wallet stolen, his identity gone. All the actions came in a mad whirl.

The sun was turning Jack’s pale sixty-five-year-old flesh the color of Irish red ale as he began to lift and test his creaking limbs. Right leg first, then the left. Pins and needles and a jolt of electricity coursing through his marrow. Sweat darkened his olive-drab fatigue pants and stained navy-blue “Life Is Good” T-shirt. Dust kicked up from his booted feet as he stomped in time with every clap of his damp, doughy hands, creating a rhythm that had nothing to do with the men who strummed their charangos like marionettes on strings, singing their Chilean folk music. No, all that echoed through Jack’s mind was what his mother had said before accepting her own finality, her sclerotic lungs wheezing those words: Run. Run and never look back. Words he had never understood and always questioned.

All around him, people watching began to clap and stomp their feet. Jack pulled his phone from his pocket, held it high. The music he danced to wasn’t from the street musicians; it was in his head. A backdrop to the echo of her words. But then, it wasn’t just her words. It was the loss—of his daughter, his mother, then his wife—that had brought him here after everything he’d been through.

And now, covered in dust from his unplanned street dance, mouth full of vegetables and cornmeal bought with his last dollars, Jack reflects on how it all started. How it all haunts him. What he is in search of.

ANNE

ANNE