Free Northward to the Moon by Polly Horvath

sky. The same and all different. Not aware of the picture they present as a whole. But not seeing us below either, the vastness of each of us and the many. Not, for instance, understanding that all these dots below are divided, into such things as Democratic and Republican parties. People who like sweet things and people who like salty or sour. People who put FREE TIBET bumper stickers on their cars and people who put THE MORE PEOPLE I MEET THE MORE I LOVE MY DOG and things like that on their bumpers. Actually, people who put anything at all on their bumpers and people who don’t. Then I just gaze contentedly at the stars and don’t bother trying to think about anything.
    But later it occurs to me how Ned and I wanted to be outlaws and here we are, in the American West, in the high desert. We are escaping who knows what with a bunch of money from who knows where. Do things happen because you want them to? Can you create your life and adventures by imagining them? My head lolls from side to side for real now and when I next wake up, it is morning.
    I open my eyes and stretch. I have woken up because instead of the smooth gliding asphalt beneath the wheels, we are bumping along over potholes and spitting gravel. Then I see it is not so much a road as a long driveway. Land stretches in all directions but there is a barbed-wire fence. The fence with its leaning old wood posts serves only to accentuate the vast emptiness of the land. The fence slants in disarray and there is a rightness to this too. This is not a country that values uprightness. In the distance is an old-fashioned windmill. The kind you see from time to time on the plains or the desert, looking as if they have been left here by time in a place that doesn’t change from century to century. They stand in the windswept dust and turn for no one but they still turn.
    “Where are we?” I ask.
    “At Ned’s mother’s ranch,” says my mother, yawning.
    “How did we find it?” I ask.
    “We stopped in town about half an hour ago and got directions. You were asleep,” says Ned.
    We pull up in front of a big falling-down house.All the paint has been chipped off the siding by the centuries. When you look at it you see the decades that have gone by. A woman rushes out onto the porch. She squints her eyes to see who it is and yells, “NED!”

Dorothy’s Invitation
    T he woman flings herself at the car and practically drags him out of it. This reminds me of my mother’s first meeting with Ned on the beach when she ran across the sand and flung herself on him. If you want people yelling your name and flinging themselves on you, all you have to do is disappear for years at a time. It doesn’t seem fair somehow. Shouldn’t they upbraid him a little first for his neglect?
    “Hi, Mom,” says Ned. “Look at you. What are you doing here?” Ned, who has been hugging her, drops his arms and steps back. “Actually, I’m looking for John.”
    “Well, lordy Maudey, what do you want with
him?”
    “I’ve got something that I believe belongs to him.”
    “Money,” says Ned’s mother, sighing; then she turns abruptly and walks to the porch and starts up the steps. We follow her. “I can’t say I’m surprised. How do you think I got this ranch? John bought it. It rightly belongs to him. There’s more of his money in it than mine. Where he got the money, I don’t know.”
    “You bought a
ranch
with John’s money?” says Ned.
    His mother stops and turns around and gives him a level stare, which because she is one step higher than him brings them eye to eye. “Well, not entirely with his money. I did have some of my own. Your father, when he died, left me some.
That
was a surprise.”
    “Dad died?”
    “You haven’t exactly been in touch, have you?”
    “Wow, Dad died,” says Ned, and sits down right there on the steps.
    “Well, John doesn’t think so. He thinks that yourfather just decided to disappear on a more permanent basis. He thinks he’s in