East’s fingers knew more than the mirror did. His eye looked all right but felt fat and hot, liquid beneath. The napkin full of ice from Walter’s drink just made him wet.
“How bad he get you?” Walter asked again. Checking the mirrors every second. As if Michael Wilson could some way be gaining on them.
Ty sat dully in the backseat, staring out.
East remembered the last time he’d been beaten up. He was eight or nine. Yes, nine—it was in third grade, a week before summer. Third graders were going up to the next school. But four who were being held back would catch a boy each day and whup him, just to say good-bye. The principal wouldn’t suspend them—to be suspended was what they wanted. One of them was being held back for the third time. He was eleven already.
They’d bruised East’s face and shoulders, blacked his eyes, loosened a tooth. His mother screamed how she’d go to the school and there’d be hell. But she’d never gone. That was worse. But this hurt more.
That was the year Fin started taking East under his wing. Started showing an interest, making sure East had what he needed. Ty, he didn’t take much notice of. Ty was not his blood.
—
When East took the napkin off his eye, something was coming out of his skin. Walter took a look and bugged out.
“Telling you, man. Let’s get to a pharmacy. Get you some ointment. You need medicine on that. And bandages.”
East’s voice came small and faraway. “How does it look?”
Walter stifled a giggle. “Like you got your ass kicked.”
East put the napkin back.
“You all right?”
East nodded. He didn’t want to talk about it.
The high battling wall of cloud cut off the sun. Cars switched on headlights along the road. With stiff, trembling fingers, East opened his wallet and counted, one-eyed. He had two-sixty. He checked it again.
“How much money you got?” he asked Walter with his little hollow voice.
“Three hundred twenty-two dollars,” Walter replied without looking.
“How you get three-twenty-two if we started with three hundred?”
“Man, I had money. What, you don’t carry any?”
“They said no wallet,” East said. “What’s two sixty and three-twenty?”
“Five-eighty. And whatever Ty has.”
“Ty. How much money you got?”
They waited, Ty looking mutely out the window.
“Ty,” East said again. “We trying to find out what we got.”
Nothing.
“Here’s a town,” Walter announced. “Let’s get off. I’ll find you a store.”
East surrendered. “All right. How’s this gonna work, five hundred eighty dollars?”
“Minus gas,” said Walter.
“Minus guns,” said East.
Ty coughed. “They said you ain’t have to pay for guns.”
East said, “Oh? Did I hear a noise?”
“You heard me,” said his brother.
Now East turned, showing his brother his swollen eye. It hurt, hot, like a wound that’s poisoned, like a snakebite. “You want to tell me more?”
Ty stared mutely at the sunken median running by.
“You two, man.” Walter shook his head. “I need to be getting combat pay.”
—
East stayed in the van outside the drugstore. Ty didn’t budge. They watched the doorway glowing blue and white, a plastic city. White people teemed in and out, carrying chips bags, cases of drinks. Everyone seemed to know each other, talking or at least waving.
“Ty,” East called back. Here goes nothing. “What do you know about the guns?”
“This don’t seem like a drugstore,” Ty said.
“Says right there. Drugs.”
“Oh,” Ty pronounced ironically. “Guess it is, then.”
“You going to answer my question?”
“No,” said Ty.
“Did you set it up? Do you know the people?”
Ty just snorted low, like an old man.
It was like that, talking to Ty. He’d been a willful baby, a stubborn child. Now he was a wall. Every conversation, he made East feel like the police. Sometimes he thought Ty must have been learned from being brought in once or twice, spending time in questioning, stone-facing it across a police desk. But you couldn’t ask Ty. You would never find out.
Ty’s inscrutability refused the mother’s blood they shared. East could rally a gang of boys his age, shepherd junkies in and out safely. He could stare down a gun. But Ty had found a way to negate their childhood together, the two years of age East had on him. There was nothing East could do with him.
—
Walter brought antiseptic and a bandage as wide as a credit card. “I ain’t wearing that,” East said.
“You’re welcome,” Walter warned. “See how you feel by tonight. Might wish you had.”
“We’ll be at that gun house tonight?”
“You better hope Michael Wilson didn’t tell that girl where we’re headed.”
East thought about it. “Too stupid. Even for Michael.”
“Even to say Wisconsin, though. Even to say east. She knew we were going east.”
“He didn’t say nothing.” Here he was, defending Michael Wilson’s good sense. “Man, everything’s going to be all right.”