Milk River

Kyle and i are looking for where I live. We've been searching for three days now and the longer we go without finding my house the farther we have to drive. Each evening after work we set out in a new direction and keep going until dark. We drive back roads because that's where I remember living. We drive back roads because there are no police to notice our empty bottles as they fly out of the cab of Kyle's pickup truck.

Kyle says it is only a matter of time until we find it; there are a finite number of roads and a finite number of trailers on those roads. Sometimes we go miles without seeing any homes but every time we pass a single-wide he stops, my stomach constricts and, before I look, I pray to Saint Anthony. I'm not even sure if Anthony is the right saint. My mother always called on him when she couldn't find the house keys or that necklace Papá gave her last anniversary. But maybe my loss is entirely too big.

I take a drink of my beer and feel it slosh inside my stomach as the road curves and loops back on itself. All around us the mountains are on fire, the trees shimmering orange, yellow, and red.

"What are the names?" I ask Kyle.

Kyle loves my interest in these trees. He can't believe that a boy like me, who has lived for seventeen years, could not know how the trees turn from green to gold each fall. But the seasons I knew in Mexico melded one into the other, furiously hot weeks ebbing into slightly cooler months of monsoon rain.

"Well, most of those bright ones are probably sugar maples," he says. "But there's some sourwoods and hickories that turn to colors like that too."

We drive higher and higher, up to where we can see the whole valley spread below. Kyle pulls over into the gravel and we climb out. Down by the river, a coal train winds along its track and the low sun glints on the blue belly of the Render municipal water tower. I hoped that from up here I could see some landmark that would help me know the way but in fact it seems like just the opposite. All I know is that the trailer I called home for the past four weeks was not near a river, or train tracks, or anywhere close to town.

I toss my beer bottle into the bushes and hug my arms around my chest. It feels dizzying looking down on this whole valley full of places that are not my home, like I might somehow lose my gravity and float away and nobody but Kyle would ever know what happened to me.

Kyle and I met last Friday, outside the porta-potty at the West Virginia State Fairgrounds. I was there at night when he came to clean up and I was still there, alone, in the morning when he came back to take the potties away. I explained to him as best I could how I didn't know the address of the place I'd been living. I explained how at the unknown address were my $982 and the only phone number for my family back in Mexico.

The wind blows cold up the ridge and Kyle opens the truck door, grabs two more beers. Over the western mountains the sun is already setting and this is the end of day three and we still have not found where I live. I take the beer from Kyle but don't open it. I'm a little afraid Kyle will want to give up the search soon. I'm not sure why he's even helping me at all, except that he seems to enjoy this excuse to avoid the sick-sweet baby smell of his own home and the screaming voice of his wife, Delilah.

"I ain't been out to this end of the county in a long time," Kyle says, gesturing with his beer bottle...