he alone hove to the true axis. After a while he turned his face from the window, closed his eyes, and
slept.
The bus' movements fell into a common drop and rhythm and Joe only opened his eyes when it
stopped, and he could watch Carter alight from the black SUV and walk to other places, other camps.
Some were open air and one had barbed wire but none was underground like the Pit. After each stop
two or three and once as many as five men came out with him and Carter put them on the bus. Joe did
not pay too much attention at each stop, because he felt strangely tired, with none of the joy and
wonder at the wide world that he might have expected upon being free. He did not, for that matter,
feel very free. So he would notice Carter going in and then coming out with men behind him and then
he would close his eyes again so as not to meet anyone's face. He didn't want to know.
After dusk they crossed the river. Joe watched it underneath them and he thought of all the
times he'd driven across it before the war and it seemed not to have changed, nor this time in which he
was crossing it on a bus with strangers at all unconnected to any other time, when he'd been with
those he'd loved. The bridge was still there. This meant something, and nothing.
The bus pulled over to the side of the highway and at a clearing that might have been a rest
stop once it parked and the driver opened the door. Carter stepped up the stairs, cigarette still in hand,
and looked out at the men. "We're here for the night," he said. "Food will be brought to you. You can
find a shallow spot to piss if you like. Don't wander off."
"Can we get off the bus?" someone, who hadn't processed what he'd been told, asked. Carter
didn't answer him and just got off.
So they got off the bus. It was dark. Some of them did go and piss and then they came back and
got back on the bus. One or two stood on a rise and looked at the river, which flowed by slowly but
somehow gave off the distant echo of a great roar. After a while they trickled back onto the bus. Joe