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Stickers covering the Jeeps and Subarus: THE EARTH DOES NOT BELONG TO US, WE BELONG TO THE EARTH. IT’S NOT A CHOICE, IT’S A LIFE. CRISTO SALVA. Bicycles on the back, in the bed, on the roof, wherever they could strap on. “Crazy motherfuckers riding bicycles up here,” said Walter. “You know there’s no air? Go out and see if you can run a hundred yards.”
“You can’t run no hundred yards,” said Michael Wilson, “anywhere.”
Somewhere in the afternoon they topped out finally and started coasting downhill toward the city of Denver. East eyed the silver Colorado State Trooper cars, Chargers and Expeditions and the long, flat Fords. They scattered everywhere on the downhill, working the speeders like sharks tracking prey. Once a trooper dogged their back bumper for miles. “I’m going fifty-five, motherfucker,” Michael Wilson protested. “Fifty-five minus two.” The trooper hit the lights, jumped out from behind them, and bit on a Jeep. Everyone started breathing again.
Ty’s gun, thought East. Ty’s gun, Ty’s gun, Ty’s gun.
The van knifed past the city, the buildings low and shiny and suddenly too colorful below the cold blue sky long-grained with clouds. As they merged from one highway onto another, East turned back to look. The mountains stood in line behind them, still close but collapsed now, pressed together. No hint of what they were, what they held. Just another line, a little brighter and sharper than the brown line of home.
And they could see what was coming. Flatland, an endless sea of it.
“Someone else drive,” said Michael Wilson. “I’m tired of seeing shit.”
Walter took the wheel. Michael reclined in the shotgun seat, rubbing his face with a pair of fingers. East sat back on the middle bench and watched him fuss and prod. “You learned that where? Tokyo Spa?”
“East, baby, no,” Michael said. “I learned this from your mother.”
East smiled and watched the road, the eastbound trucks. After a while he shut his eyes too. Let himself fall off to sleep.
Except for the chirping. He peeked around at Ty. Ty did not look back. The muscles in his fingers twitched around the gray plastic tablet of his game. Something with aliens and bombs. Ty could lie around playing forever.
“Don’t that thing run out of batteries?” East protested at last.
Ty’s eyes zeroed in. “Run out all the time,” he murmured. “But I don’t.”
“You go see your mother?”
“No,” snorted Ty. “Did you?”
“Yes. I took her some money,” said East. “Night before we left.”
“Well,” said Ty, more quietly, “ain’t you nice.”
East said, matching Ty’s quiet, “Somebody said you might have a gun on you.”
His brother’s eyes ticked up and down, following something minuscule along an inch-long track. Then at last the game flashed in his face, and he relaxed.
“That’s my business.”
“You know you got no need to be holding,” East pressed. “Fin said stay clean till we get the guns.”
“Fin said.”
“I ain’t trying to take it. But you should let me know.”
Ty dialed madly with his thumbs, and his game trilled. “Shit be crazy, ain’t it?” he murmured.
Shit be crazy. Between the two of them, it was a refrain, an old one. It meant nothing and everything at the same time, unreadable and obvious. Like a glance, like a wave in the street. It stood in lieu of ever being in their mother’s house at the same time or knowing where the other slept. It stood in lieu of East having the slightest control over his little brother, or of his owning up to losing Ty. For Ty belonged to nobody now, an unknowable child, indolent as bees in autumn, until he rose up and moved in a spasm of energy and force.
Where Ty had come from, where Ty was now: these things East knew. What had made Ty what he’d become: that was the unseeable, the midair coil the whip made between handle and crack. That was anybody’s guess.
Big brother taking the little, they called it babysitting. But it was not that. Nothing like it.
Deep in his game, Ty smiled. His thumbs drummed out a sprint. Then he relaxed his gaze. “You made me lose,” he said.
7.