East liked driving here—the flat, unruffled fields with no one in sight, blind stubble mown down into splinters, maybe a tractor, maybe an irrigation rig like a long line of silver stitches across the fabric of earth. The flatness. There was more in the flatness than he’d expected. The van’s shadow lay long, and the fields traded colors. The boys slept in intervals or complained. Riding in a car for more than a few hours, he thought, was like suspended animation—somewhere under the layers of frost, your heart beat. To the left, a thunderstorm hovered, prowling its own road.
They crossed under the front end of a line of storms, everything wet and alight in the slanting sun, and then they were out the other side but in the cloud’s dark. The tank was low again, and East angled in for gas and stepped out. Little park of pumps under long white storm shelters and a steak-and-eggs place with a shop under a bright yellow plastic roof. Pickup trucks moved in the low, narrow roads on either side and climbed onto the highway, high and chromed or capped and rattling or stuffed with tools or crops or white bags of dirt. Men and women in their windows looked at him, eyed him with interest.
“You boys the only niggers they ever seen in real life,” drawled Michael Wilson, “except Kobe.”
“That was Colorado,” said Walter. “We’re in Nebraska now.”
“Don’t tell me Kobe ain’t got some girls in Nebraska too.”
East waited while Michael Wilson paid. Then he filled the tank and parked the van. Ty was sleeping, a reptile: East locked the doors around him and went in to sit in a bathroom stall. The farther east they got, the dirtier the toilets. Like every toilet in the country had been cleaned the moment they left LA and none of them since.
East shook his head. Sleepless. The person in the next stall wore his music through headphones and moaned along under his breath. Straining, suffering, only one word audible, at the end of the lines: You. You. He smelled like rotten eggs, like rot inside, and then he was gone. East grimaced and stopped breathing. Trying to press his gut out like a toothpaste tube. His thinking was frayed, sleepless: he had to think straight. They were close to getting there. He had to make sure everyone slept tonight. And walked around, cleaned out their heads.
He zipped up and left, no lighter.
Outside, the storm was about to catch them. It rose flat-faced, a gray curtain, sweeping loose trash along. Walter had taken the wheel and was idling at the curb. East swung himself up and in on the shotgun side. Then he noticed the smell. Like the mall, the kiosks where Arab girls tried to spray you: Sample, sample? You like it. That fruit-sweet smell.
The second thing he noticed was the shoe. A golden shoe, like a wedge of foil, with a girl’s foot in it. It hovered brightly between the front seats.
The rest of the girl sat in the center of the van. Michael Wilson was beside her, all sideways and charming. In the back, Ty sat straight in his seat like an exclamation point. For once aroused but not sure what to do. Walter, steering the van away, was trying not to even look.
She was white. Sixteen, seventeen, red hair in curls and loop-the-loops. Bravely she looked at East, or curiously, as if she were nervous. But she was used to courage seeing her through.
No one else was saying anything, so East said it: “Girl, who the fuck are you?”
Michael Wilson made a crackling with his tongue. “E, this is Maggie. She just might ride for a while, over to Omaha. We can drop her off at the airport.”
East said, “No. She ain’t.”
Michael let out a grin and a sigh.
“E,” he began. “This girl needs help. She was just lost up in this rest stop.” He had a hand snaked across the girl’s belt, which, East saw, matched the golden shoes. “Wasn’t nobody going her way. But we are going her way. Right?”
The girl put her hand down on Michael Wilson’s black track pants. Put it right on his dick.
A cold wave rolled up East’s spine. The yellow-outlined parking space in Vegas. He made dead eyes at the girl.
“No she ain’t. Stop, man.” He whacked Walter. “Drive back in there. Back where you were.” Walter exhaled a shaky breath and swung the van back around the apron.
The girl kept her hand on Michael Wilson, and he rolled underneath it.
“E,” Michael Wilson drawled. “Girl needs a ride. That’s factual. May be something in it for all of us. Something in it for me, I know. So why don’t we drive now so I don’t have to fuck you up.” The girl blushed uneasily and Michael laughed his little, trailing laugh. Something had happened to his face. His mouth crooked open as if dangling an invisible cigar. “Drive, Walt,” Michael Wilson added. “Don’t listen to this boy.”
Walter rubbed his cheek, wasn’t sure. “Right there,” East insisted. He pointed out a space. “Right by the door.”
“East, I’m gonna hurt you, man,” Michael Wilson warned.
East dimmed his eyes, stared a cold hole through the girl. Her green eyes bright, but she stared back; she was used to sizing people up. For an instant he was looking at the black girl outside the house, the Jackson girl. The same: defiant. And curious.
“Get out, girl,” East said. “It’s nothing good for you here.”
She did a little hitch with her lips, a smile. Then she leaned forward, her hair swinging like a fragrant bough. Her fingers climbed his left hip.