There were no trees.
When he awoke with a start, the can was tipped over, dry to the touch. Grainy light. Flat clouds smudged the eastern horizon where the light was beginning. He cursed himself for falling asleep in the open.
Some of the parked cars had changed. A man combing his hair outside a Maxima was the same man who’d eyed him a few hours earlier. One of those. Dark birds hung like kites.
East descended the slope to the van, tapped Michael Wilson, and thumbed him over. Michael nodded, ashen, and squirmed across to the other seat. As soon as he’d fastened his belt, he was asleep again. East split open the warm can of Coke. He shortened the seat up and cranked the mirrors down.
Driving. He’d driven a few times for Fin, or dropped someone off, someone too gone to drive. He knew how.
On the other hand, he’d never been north of forty miles an hour.
For some miles he ran slowly, feeling the van track on the road, letting traffic funnel past. More cars now than in the evening. He could see them.
Then he picked it up to seventy-five.
The scene of the night before troubled East still: the flashing light under the canopy, the blood on the pavement, the chance that Ty was carrying a gun out here where they were supposed to run clean. And before that: the four of them bolting the van, leaving the job behind for—for what? Just a taste. It was all on camera—they’d made trouble. Maybe running down the road would let them leave it behind.
Only option he had.
The land changed—orange sky, light, the white of the flats giving rise to orange stone, crumpled and ridged, and dirt. The windshield filled with sunrise working its way up to blue.
He could glimpse the people in cars, the pickup-and-toolbox men, hidden behind wraparounds, heading to some job. The sleeping families, drivers with their coffee cups. The lone rangers, a man or a woman, sometimes intent on the road ahead, sometimes on the phone yammering. White people. Maybe some of them outrunning something too.
A half hour, an hour maybe, before everyone would wake up. That much alone, that much peace. The tires hummed, and he felt what Johnny had said about the van now: sorry-looking, yeah, but solid. He liked being up high, liked the firm seat. He could see the land, the flash movements in the brush, an animal, too fast to spot. Dog, maybe, or coyote. They had coyotes in LA, but they were skulking creatures, big rats. They ran down alleys and stayed in shadows, and before long somebody would shoot them dead. No law against doing it. Just another gunshot in the night.
When the other boys stirred and began cursing, East was sad. They rolled their limbs, spewed their night breath. They would be back with him soon. A chimneyed orange mountain loomed beside him, and East studied it closely as he passed it, its worn layers, saying good-bye. A secret. The last thing that was his alone.
—
Bright morning. East stopped at a shiny new gas station, TV screens humming at the pump. All the boys jumped out: East pumped the gas in the dry air. Los Angeles had dry air, but it smelled like something—always something. The air here smelled like nothing, or nothing that had a name.
Inside the store loomed hanging race cars and inflatable superheroes. A massive grill counter stretched across the back: no one there, yet people were taking food from a window. Walter studied it: you touched a screen till you had pointed out everything you wanted. Every item on every shelf had a price lit up in LEDs. Every little thing made a noise.
“This joint is fucking cool,” said Ty.
Finished pumping, East headed for the bathroom and its cherry-cake smell. Some things never changed. A white boy pulled up at the next urinal. Hat on backwards.
“Sup, homes,” he said.
East raised his eyebrows. This boy right up on him.
“Sup,” he pronounced ironically.
The white boy finger-stabbed. “Manny Ramirez. My man.”
East wasn’t sure. He tightened his eyes, rushed his hands below a faucet, then rushed out. What was it with some people?
This was white boy’s turf—he recognized that.
Outside the bathroom, Michael Wilson stood in line. Prepaid with twenties, so he had to wait for change every time—the price of doing business in cash. Blankly he stared, just a customer, and East watched him from behind. The cashier was an older lady with a huge amber stone caught in a fold of her throat.
“Seven dollars and thirty cents from sixty, sir,” she said.
“Ma’am, you got scratch-offs?”
“There’s no lottery in Utah, sir.” The same note in her voice.
Michael Wilson bobbed his head agreeably, and East let him walk away. What was it? Buying lottery tickets. Stealing a little. How much?
What did Michael Wilson expect to do if he won?
Something hit him on the shoulder. It was the same bathroom white boy on his way back out. “Be cool, bro,” he said, jabbing his finger. “Fly’s open.”