“I hear,” said East.
A hard chuck on East’s arm, right on the bandage—East kept from crying out. Ty unsealed the door with a rush of wind. He climbed out and straightened his colorless jacket. Ticket folded over once in his hand, he checked the traffic behind them and then mounted the sidewalk, passing people in parkas and colorful letter jackets. East watched Ty hurry toward the electric doors, which slid open for him, just another young man on the way somewhere else.
It took East a moment: now he was expected to drive the Lincoln off. DROP-OFF ONLY. Not to slide over: to get out and walk around the big car. He did so, his hands and chest tingling. Paused at the driver’s door and checked the little chrome key ring: DODGERS. The brand of home.
A girl passed on the sidewalk, small and black, leading her parents, who were all burdened down with garment bags and ski poles. East didn’t look: he knew she would be the Jackson girl, all big eyes and bravery. That face swimming atop her face.
Then she was gone.
He coaxed himself onward, opened the door, lowered himself into the driver’s seat.
—
Barely any noise. Solid. He checked the mirrors, moved the seatback up. He wished he’d watched the route more on the way. Ty drove the roads as if he knew them. East knew only one town.
If he could find his way back to the long old highway, he’d be all right.
The wind moved the trees. The rain was stopping. But the pavement was already dry.
The steering wheel was thick and almost drowsy in its softness. He would need a little sleep as soon as he could get it.
—
Back at the range, he spent a few hours. He polished the countertop. He cleaned the storeroom. In the evening dark he dragged items out to the Dumpster—his bed of clean, flat cardboard. His blankets—he saved his new, still-fresh pillow. The box he’d fit under at night. He slept his last night on the sofa, comfortable without the heaters. The cold didn’t bother him now. He wasn’t as skinny as he used to be.
The last day. East took alcohol and rubbed down the register, the bathroom, the door handles, the cabinets—any place he’d touched, any place he’d made his. He went to the bank and cleaned out his Ohio account, took cash, more than a thousand dollars. Added it to Ty’s money and Walter’s.
At a table outside the little grocery where farmers sometimes came, he bought a handmade bouquet. Dried flowers, yellow and orange. He walked them across the highway to the leaning-forward yellow house where Perry had lived with Marsha. He stood for a moment on the porch but didn’t knock. He left it on a rocking chair beside her door, with a note that said, From Antoine, thanks. RIP. An ambiguous good-bye. He didn’t know if she’d ever get them. He doubted she’d ever step inside the range again, or her son would. It seemed to have been abandoned, except for him. It seemed to have been just the one man’s dream, and when he died, it stopped. East had left it spotless. He hadn’t stolen a thing.
He cleaned the two old Iowa guns inside and out. Reburied them, deep this time. He spread the three like licenses out on the counter—East, Antoine, and the new one, the person who matched the plane ticket—and studied his face: the three times, different expressions, different shirts. But each one of them him. Each one a different life.
It wasn’t easy to decide.
The first he chopped to bits was Antoine. The van. The guns. The trail they’d made. He cut it to bits with Perry’s wire snips. Then it was down to the new name and East.
He wondered what Walter had invented for him, what sort of life, what weakness. What sort of story, should he not come back. And he was never going back.
In the end, he and East said good-bye. Age sixteen, licensed driver, State of California. Snipped him too into tiny squares. Wrapped him in the shreds of the one-way ticket back to Los Angeles. And left him in the trash can outside the doughnut shop, with the wrappers and the half-crushed cups of coffee. Became the new name, and no one else. He would grow into it as he was growing into the body stirring beneath him, the strange and turning body, as uneasy and teenage as it was hard and loyal. He looked different anyway now, fuller, older. The wind, the food—something out here was giving him pimples.
—
For a few minutes he parked the car at the range. He put his clothes and toothbrush in a grocery bag. Threw his pillow into the trunk. Wiped down counter and doorknobs again before exiting the building for good. Leaving the Lincoln visible while he did so was maybe not smart, but it would be fine. The car would do to take him east, to the dense snarl on the map, that opposite coast with its tangled cities: Washington, Philadelphia, New York. He had the rest of the week.