Author(s): Steve Tolbert

Fiction

Transcontinental highwayman in his youth, Joe Broughton told himself vagabond living meant taking risks, cadging rides, living on the cheap. It could be scary, for sure, but intriguing too, his luck changing daily, having no idea what the next hour would bring or who he would be sharing it with. Now a septuagenarian widower, his daughter working overseas, his best friend recently deceased, Joe senses 'a steady drum beat of routine messaging that tomorrow will be the same as yesterday; that getting old is no better than dying young; that the good life exists only in his memories.' As the decades-old embers of vagabondage stoke up again, he decides to head off into the unknown one last time, specifically to the Himalayas: quiet, Luddite-friendly, far removed from humanity gone Twitter-mad. In Indian-occupied Kashmir, after his sister is blinded, his brother killed in a violent protest, Sameer Pandith joins Hizbul Mujahideen as a freedom fighter. When India institutes martial law, he is sent east to Ladakh on a mission of retaliation. Joe and Sameer are fated to meet; first through an exercise in compassion, then in barbarity.