I am holding everything in this room, the same as everywhere else. The canned peaches, stacked in their careful rows. The gun oil in its bottle. The generator, which is heavy, and which I press down on evenly so its feet stay flat against the concrete. The concrete itself, and the earth above it, all of which I hold against him and around him so that the ceiling stays a ceiling.
He built this place to keep something out. He does not seem to know that I am already inside it with him, that I came down the stairs before he did.
He counts things. He lifts the water jugs to feel their fullness, sets them back, lifts them again. I know exactly what each one weighs; I could tell him, if he could hear me, and it would settle him. He would sleep better knowing the numbers are steady.
But there is a weight on him I cannot find. He carries it up and down the narrow aisle at night, and it makes him lean, makes him set his hand against the wall as if the wall were tilting, which it is not, I checked. He calls it dread.
I have measured every ounce of him and every ounce of the world and there is no dread anywhere on my scale, and still he bends under it, more than the jugs, more than the generator, more than all of it together.
I cannot lift that one off him. It is the only load down here I am not strong enough for.
So I do the other thing, the thing I have always done. When he finally lies down on the cot and stops holding himself up, I take him. I hold him against the concrete, and the concrete against the earth. Whatever comes, or does not come.
I do not let go.