—
Outside it would soon be the plain blue morning. The banks’ signs gave different temperatures: 28, 31, 36. Air whistled in around the side window where Ty had managed to sling it in place. East scanned the roadsides for a store. An idea. Anything.
“We gonna paint this thing?” East proposed.
“Whatever you want,” Walter replied, drained.
A small-town discount-store palace. Something about the big crumbly fort of the store, perched atop an old, sloping lot the size of a football field, promised to fix everything. There was a junction here, and around it had grown up a battlefield of paved spaces, a few of the buildings still doing business, some of the lots empty as if the sky had swiped them clean.
Walter sat straight. “Park up behind that Denny’s there,” he said. “Get between them trucks so we don’t stick out.”
The painted words along the blue side of the van were a dark, chalkboard green.
“What you want to do?” Walter asked, his white breath floating away.
East assessed the van. “Paint it over. Quick spray-paint job, good enough. And some duct tape to hold this window in. Tape the taillight red. And get going.”
Even at sunrise the store was busy—early-morning women with hair tied back. Single, angry men lugging detergent or powdered milk. Everybody tired, even the people getting paid to be there. Everyone with eyeballs, noticing the black boys. The lady with chin-length, orange-dyed hair, bright sweater, staring in the candles aisle. East felt small, tried to stay small. Fluorescent tubes twenty feet up. Pine chips and needles still dotted his sweater, and a rank, anxious sweat ebbed from his skin.
He felt wired, sick without sleep.
“Back there,” Walter said. “Paint and painting supply.”
The aisle was dazzling. Most of the store was patchy, stock falling over, end caps picked clean. But the paint aisle was straight, tight-packed.
“Help you guys find something?” A twenty-year-old kid poked his head around the corner. Mexican goatee, tattoo on his neck.
“We’re all right,” Walter said.
East noted the kid. Gang stripes on him. Even here. He eyed them with a calmness that set East on edge.
“Right here if you need me,” said the guy, and East could hear the R kick and rumble like a motorcycle. Like the south side of Los Angeles. This guy was from home.
“Thanks,” East said, nodding. As opaquely as he could.
Walter, studying the spray cans: “This will cover. Should we use primer?”
“No,” said East.
“What would Johnny say?”
East said, “Johnny doesn’t ever want to see this van again. Not now.”
“Primer is cheaper,” Walter said. “One can or two?”
“One. Jesus,” said East.
Walter picked out a spray can of primer gray. Shook it once, the agitator bouncing around the hollow can.
The paint man passed suddenly behind them. “Váyanse con Dios,” he whistled, making his accent plain. East watched him disappear around the end of the aisle.
They walked, Walter muttering to himself the whole way. They had paint, tape. Walter pulled a box of granola bars off a shelf in the aisle.
“We don’t need that,” said East moodily.
“Good price, man.”
“Impossible, man, you out here trying to save a dollar.”
“I like to eat, East,” Walter said. “I like to live.”
The cashier barely looked at them. East saw it now: the whole front end, the ceiling was dotted with cameras. Everywhere they went now would be like that.
“You think they had cameras going at that gas station?”
“Who knows?” Walter said. “I don’t know if we should even get back in the van.”
Outside, again, their breath rolled forth in sunrise plumes. East took the spray paint and shook it ready. “Where you wanna do this?”
“Anywhere. Not here,” Walter said.
Then they saw the police cruisers. Behind the Denny’s. Behind and around the van. The blue lights cut the air, and the red ones flashed high and stuck along the trucks, along the light poles. The cops milled, their uniforms and sticks on, all their cruisers churning smoke into the air.
“Man,” Walter said.
Then, without a word, he turned the other way.
East froze for a moment, paint can in his hand, dumbfounded.
So this is how it went. Downhill. Maybe the police had just arrived. Maybe they hadn’t thought to fan out yet, or were waiting on backup. Maybe they hadn’t approached the van, were just boxing it in, not sure it was empty. If you only had a minute, you clung to that minute, you were thankful for it, you made an hour of it, did what you could. Downhill to the road, putting cars between them and the scene developing. Not toward anything, only away. The van after a week called out to him: Defend me. The way he’d guarded the house. A fool’s voice. Gone.