But there was no sharing this with his brother, ever. No having that discussion. His brother, his blood, had different bones.
East breathed in the icy air. His eyes were caked with something, starting to freeze. Walter stood lit pink, making his arguments to the tinted window. East couldn’t even hear beyond the blood churning in his ears. The problem was beyond discussing.
“Walter,” East said. “Fuck it. I’m too cold.”
Walter broke off and looked sideways. Surprised. Sometimes you could read him like a book. “All right,” he said.
But as they turned away, a scraping sound at the window made them jump. An old, rusty machine sound. The drawer waggled open, like a silver tongue.
“Go to them boys,” the amplified voice said.
Walter stepped back up the mound of rubble to the metal tray and pulled something out.
“Them boys will sell you what you need.”
“Wait a minute,” said Walter. “They’ll set us up? How do you know that if you don’t have a phone? If you didn’t call them?”
“I know. They’ll sell to you,” the old man said. “They’ll sell to anyone.”
East opened the back of the van, behind Ty’s bench, and found the sweaters. There were four—woolen, all dark, the kinky weave, cold already, prickly on his skin. Two were small—one he left for Ty. One was a large—Michael Wilson’s. He put it on over his own. The 4XL he handed across to Walter.
“What’s this?”
His face was so cold, he couldn’t make a word.
Walter looked amused, then sympathetic. “Easy,” he said, “I ain’t even cold yet.”
East was half deranged with cold and lack of sleep. The dark of the night started flaking away. Bugs, East’s mind said, and then: Something is wrong with me. Something wrong with my mind. Then he saw it: the lightest snow. The most helpless bits, riding instead of falling on an imperceptible wind. Unseen, unstoppable, brushing past them like strangers.
By the time he had put words to it, it was gone.
Walter made the heater blow its hottest. East bent to it, but it did not warm him. He shook like a machine spinning off center, like a clothes dryer walking and breaking apart. He quaked. Slapped his arms, his palms, his sides, his thighs. “Ty, man,” he began, and he lost it. Walter touched him: “East, man? East?”
Could not hold his jaw still on his face. Cold drool dripped.
“East? East?”
—
At last it lifted, the palsy, the shivering, and East’s mind came back into his body, the touch came back to his fingers, he could hold his mouth closed. Embarrassed but surprised too, to feel himself together again.
With some effort he talked. “Ty, man. The gun you have. Is that enough? Will it do?”
Ty drew out the silence. As if, even after his brother’s suffering, it cost him dignity to make an answer. At last he conceded: “Not this little gun. We gonna need more guns.”
East nodded. At least he’d gotten an answer.
The soundless dogs poured forth to chase them out.
“Lord. Get us the fuck out of here,” Walter said, though he was the one driving.
—
They regained the pavement, leaving the way they had come. East deciphered the old man’s note. They made away north, to the same town with the glowing grocery sign: HY-VEE FOOD STORE. Three skateboarders in parkas traced the lot. One cop watched them from his Impala.
East was quiet. The cold had mortified him.
“I see three options,” Walter said. “We can go on to this other house. I don’t know. We could call ol’ Abe and ask what he can do. Or we can drive around until we spot some black dude and ask if we can borrow him.”
“You ain’t finding nobody black out here,” East said. “So let’s call Abe.”
A pair of phones waited in front of the Hy-Vee. But Walter didn’t like the cop being there. So they searched until they hit a gas station: brushed steel box, quiet radius. Walter pulled the van up close.
“You want to do it this time?”
“You can,” East said. But he got out and stood with Walter at the receiver—somehow the predawn neon buzz of the gas station made it seem less cold—and he made the call. Cold buttons, still sticky. The same quiet operator: “I will connect you.” But then the phone went quiet.
Walter fished out more change, and East dialed again. The sexy girl blared, welcoming—East dreaded her now. She went on forever before the operator picked up.
“Abraham Lincoln, God damn it,” East said. “It cut us off.”
“No, sir. I tried to connect you, sir,” protested the operator. “Please, sir. He isn’t answering.”
“All right,” fumed East.
“Please, sir. I’ll try again. It’s a relay line: someone will always pick up.”
East grunted. The operator was afraid of him. He put his elbow up to lean, but the steel box bit through the sweater, too cold. A truck splashed into the lot, and a woman with wet hair and a bright, glowing cigarette hurried in under the lights. One bicyclist wobbled up the road in the dark, dun jacket, gray hat, the reflectors on the bike the only concession to visibility.
“Look!” hollered Walter.
“Yeah.”