Read Rootless for Free Online Page B

wagon steadied a little, eased up. I threw my tools to the front end, shuffling after them until I was horizontal. Flat instead of tall.
    The dirt was holding. For now.
    “Stay there,” I said, keeping Zee shoved at the windshield. I slipped into the front seat and spat dirt from my teeth as I cranked the engine and rolled us forward, the front wheels clawing their way deeper into the sand until we were right up in it, back end and all.
    “Come on,” I whispered, easing the engine a little stronger. A chunk of dirt shifted beneath us, just enough to get us going, and damned if the wagon didn’t buzz right on up, topping off, not exactly racing along or anything, but as that sun rose red behind us, we were crawling our way west.
    Zee scooted off the dash and wound herself against me, nuzzling her face in my neck and half crying, half laughing like a shanty loon. I’d never come close to being touched like that. I mean, a girl. Pressed against me. I could hear the broken sound of her lungs, and for a moment I wanted to wrap my arms around her. Tell her she was safe.
    But the moment passed.
    I shoved Zee aside and swerved the wagon. Because there, right in front of us, a lone figure stood in what was left of the road.

Our wheels spun to a halt and the dust rose in dirty pink sheets. I waited for the air to clear and stared back at where the road should’ve been. And I was about to crack my door open, when the man started from out of the dust like he was himself a part of it.
    He had long, twisting dreads, painted gray by the sand. And buried beneath that swarm of hair was a face old as I’d ever seen, with a beard hanging heavy and long.
    “Holy shit,” I whispered as the Rasta floated closer through the dirt clouds. It was the same old fool from shantytown, the same hockey stick held like a staff before him.
    “Who is he?” Zee said, her hand on my arm.
    We watched the man reach the front of the wagon and peer in at us, smiling with a set of big brown teeth. He started mouthing something and finally I got sick of just sitting there and I opened my door to climb out.
    “What the hell you doing out here?” I yelled at the old coot.
    “I and I be seeing the sunrise.” His voice was thin, like he’d worn it out. “Sun come up all the way from Zion this morning, bringing me news of the Promised Land.”
    “You walk out here?” I stared at the man’s bare feet, so old they’d practically grown into a pair of shoes all their own.
    The old guy nodded, smiling. “I sure be happy to see you, sire.”
    “Why? You wanting a lift?”
    The Rasta let out a burst of laughter. Just one quick roar. “You come here from the ocean, man. I see you. Spat like Jonas from the whale.”
    I stared back at the sun crawling up the horizon, the spray of the Surge turning misty in the distance. “Listen, pal,” I started to tell him, but he cut me off, throwing his staff up at the sky and his voice all of a sudden booming so loud I jumped back at the sound of it.
    “Jah has returned home, my lovelies. The roots that feed this giant tree. Sent ’cross depths of the ocean. Over hills and valleys of water.” The Rasta was almost singing the words, and he kept on with them as he ran to me and collapsed on the ground, dropping his staff at my feet. “Like the King before you, may you lead me back to that Promised Land.”
    Zee was out of the car now, running around the wagon and kneeling down to the pile of twisted hair and rags, reaching her hand to steady the old man’s shoulder as he swayed around in the dirt.
    “You’ve been there,” Zee said, half asking it but mostly saying it like it was fact. “The Promised Land.”
    “Seen it with my own eyes.” The man stopped rocking and stared up at Zee with his brown teeth gaping as his face broke out in a smile. “And Jah touched me with his own hand.”
    The Rasta sat back in the sand and reached to the rags across his belly, he fumbled around and finally pulled up his shirt.