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There was this extremely heavy moment when the sun rolled over and Tig realized it was actually a giant, bloodshot eye glaring at him through the open gate of heaven and he caught himself thinking: well, God found me and now I'm in shit. But he got over it. Other than that, his day has been pretty vanilla, which is honestly a nice change. He hasn't shot at anybody or been shot at, his leg doesn't feel too stiff, there hasn't been much time for Clay to moon over Gemma. All good; sometimes you just forget about the bad shit you can't change and pretend it's all good. Pretend long enough, it even starts to feel true.
Sometimes, though, it's also good to take a personal moment, and not even the kind where you're actually just in the can with a girl who really doesn't know any better than to say 'yeah, sure' to the first sight of a cut. No. Man. Like, real personal time. It's rare because the human brain is always so connected to everything in nature by all these ... fucking wires and veins, like it's reaching with every perceptive faculty and threading itself through the metaphysical layer of skin wrapped around other living things that extends outward from their physical bodies endlessly, forever and ever before they live and after they die. Tig could be sitting on Mount Meru, the centre of the whole goddamn universe, with no one and nothing for miles and he'd still have mental fishhooks in the faces of all the people and cats and sunflowers and salt water lakes he's ever seen in his life.
So this is a precious moment. Yeah. This warm float on the meadow of wild summer, this amputation from all the bullshit tied to his bones. He doesn't really know where his body went, but it seems to be looking for someplace to put its ass, so Tig decided to let it take care of that and just really, you know, completely drift on empty space, glad to be distant and unreachable, glad to be away even if it means being away from his brothers.
Too soon, a long shadow falls over him. Pisses him off. Person coming along like plague, full of infectious community that a pure, disconnected mind can't refuse. That's the way minds are built. Not his fault, nothing he can do except scrape away the footsteps of previous visitors and close his borders to any newcomers. Tig's about to look up and tell this guy to get his own planet, but then he suddenly understands that he's already looking up and this planet belongs utterly to the woman approaching him.
It's Gemma.
No. Well, no, it fucking really looks like her and the sun is in her hair like a halo so it's hard to see her face. He thinks it might be Gemma. She leans close, smiling, and she's not Gemma. Got the same dark hair, but darker, black like the highest vulture in the sky. Same kind of smile, like: you idiot, it's okay. But she's got coyote-coloured skin and bare feet scarred by the road. She's standing on grass now but she doesn't like it, doesn't like being comfortable when she could be on the move instead. Tig knows. Tig knows just by looking at her.
"You got dolls in your hands, honey," she tells him. "I'm so proud of you."
Tig looks down. They're fucking, what are they, fucking voodoo dolls. Not just in his hands. Also hanging from soft twine all around him, swaying gently in a wind that kissed wildflowers recently. He's in someone's fucking voodoo doll hut, jesus. Holding them up, he looks into their tiny faces, trying to see if he recognizes anyone. No, and no, and no, he's putting them down carefully until there's just one and the woman wraps her fingers around his hand.
"I made that one for you," she says. "It should come with us."
He follows her into the cooking sun, walks through the res by passing through some two-dimensional representations of human beings and their motorhomes and pickup trucks and bullet presses. She takes him to the first fringe of wilderness available, the open field, still in silhouette. Tig accepts that he is not going to see her clearly. That will never happen. The little doll in his hand starts to breathe and he drops directly on his ass.
The woman sits close to him, very close, she could pull an eyelash away with her teeth. Tig looks at the doll. So does she. When she speaks, at first he thinks she's talking to it, but the words are for him and he can't escape what they mean. "You're family, honey, and I love you. I know you love me, so you've gotta listen. Watching over you, I wonder what's happening. Once I knew what you were about. You came to me and I said: I am Sam Crow and I know this boy. He belongs to me now. But that was a long time ago. I've been on the road, I've walked to places you ain't never seen, and I come back wiser. And where's that boy? Is he doing what he's gotta do? I miss him, honey. I hate that maybe sometime soon I won't love him no more."
Tig can't look at her. No shadows can hide the softness and the disappointment and the bloodthirst in her eyes. Instead he looks at the doll. It's got mousy brown hair made of withered heather and as soon as he thinks that it starts talking, it draws another tiny breath into those tiny honeycomb lungs and it whispers thinly for Opie.
"I made that one for you," the woman says to him thoughtfully. With a sun-hardened finger, she strokes his temple. "Don't you let this come to nothing. And don't cry neither, honey. Don't you cry."
She dissipates slowly, like the weighty smoke from an oil fire. It's really, it's fucking beautiful, but he can't watch. He can't watch her go. Tig is holding a piece of Donna's soul in both hands and he can't look away from that. He's never held sunlight before. It should be a really deep experience but it's only sad. It's so, so sad, he thinks, and Sam Crow told him not to cry.
It's a good thing Sam Crow isn't with him anymore.