In placing someone else’s needs before her own, she is like Sarah. Jack tells her, “I deeply appreciate that. You are way too considerate. You really should not give me all your food.”

“You will be hungry. You will need it more than I.”

Fabiola brings Jack his boots. Watches him put them on. Tie them.

Shaking her hand. It’s rough and hard, unlike Jack’s. He offers her a feeble smile and a baby-soft hand. Fabiola smiles back. Wishes him a safe journey and waves to him as he steps out the door.

The heat of the day beats down on Jack like Dempsey pounding on Jess Willard. Placing one foot in front of the next, the pack already tugging on his shoulders, bottles of water slosh behind him, and the phantom axe keeps digging into his lower back, a little deeper with every mile of progress.

The map says twenty hours by foot to Calama, but a little over an hour by vehicle. Taking in the mountainous outcrops and clumps of clay and rock in the wide and treeless expanse, Jack thinks this must be what it’s like on Mars. With each step, he listens for a vehicle. A truck or semi. He hitched to San Pedro from Argentina. There was no shortage of vehicles, of people offering the kindness of a lift. Today, he won’t be so fortunate.

Out here, there is nothing but space and time to reflect. With barely a hint of life, it is the serest, most inhospitable place he has ever seen. Out of habit, he looks to his wrist for the time. Nothing but a pale stripe to show where his watch once resided. A gift from Sarah, now gone forever, leaving behind only a bad memory. His tongue feels dry and foreign in his mouth. He thought about Fabiola—her kindness and her insistence that he believe in her dreams. That his are trying to tell him something about himself. Did she take him for a fool? Jack never believed anything outside the realm of science. He tried to explain this to her. If it wasn’t something of physical form, something he could apprehend through scientific methods, he had no use for it. But out here, maybe things are different. The people and their customs. Their culture. Their beliefs that were millennia in the making. Here, life is hard, but not nearly so maddeningly complex.