“Yeah,” she said, stealing a look at him, “tell me about it.”
The day glanced off the windshield. She gave the car some gas to get up the grade and there was nobody ahead of her, which was nice, but there was a whole phalanx of motor homes twisting down the hill in the opposite direction, big groaning fortresses of metal that seemed ready to fly out of control on every turn, and what kind of person would drive something like that? Somebody clueless. Somebody who was a slave to the corporation and the oil companies and didn’t even know it. She goosed the accelerator and the engine faltered till she goosed it again and another gear kicked in. A lone car flashed by, heading down, then there was a log truck, empty, rattling and clanking till you couldn’t even hear the radio, and then, emerging suddenly from its shadow, a cop car, the windows opaque with sun. That was when her passenger came to life, whipping round in the seat as the cruiser blew past, shouting “Fuckers!” out the window and stabbing both middle fingers in the air. He was right there, leaning into her, and she could smell the sharp ammoniac taint of his breath. “Fuckers!” he shouted. “Fuckers!”
It was over in a heartbeat, the cop car gone and vanished round the bend behind them along with the motor homes and the log truck, but she couldn’t seem to catch her breath. All she needed was another confrontation with the police. What was he thinking? Who was this guy? Was he on drugs, was that it? “Jesus,” she exploded, “don’t do that, are you crazy?”
She gave him a hard stare, but he was looking right through her now, his jaw set so that the muscles stood out in a ridge that ran up into the hard unyielding shell of his skull. He never even blinked, just turned his head, rigid and erect and unmoving all over again. She repeated herself—“Are you crazy?”—but he didn’t answer. She was on the verge of pulling over and telling him to get out because this was too much, she just couldn’t risk it, not now, not today, when it came to her: she knew him, of course she did. “I know you,” she said.
She shot a glance at him, then her eyes went back to the road. “From Fort Bragg High? I used to sub there.” Another glance. “You’re Sten Stensen’s son, aren’t you—Aaron? Or no, Adam—Adam, right?”
He didn’t turn. Barely moved his lips. “My name’s Colter.”
Colter. He wasn’t fooling her. Sten had been principal until he retired, and this was his son, Adam, the one who’d caused so much trouble for everybody concerned. She’d had him in class a couple of times—he’d had hair then, long hair, puffed out and braided into dreadlocks, an inveterate doper who wore Burning Spear T-shirts and affected a Rasta accent. Adam. Adam Stensen.
“Colter,” she said musingly, lingering over the r. “Is that a nickname? Or an online moniker or what?”
He wouldn’t answer and they were silent for a while. There was just the buzz and thump of the radio, the whoosh of the breeze and the sibilance of the tires catching and releasing the road. She wanted to instruct him, wanted to tell him she felt the same way he did about the corporate police in their jackboots and shiny patrol cars and let him know about the Uniform Commercial Code and the Sovereign Citizens’ Movement and the straw man and all the rest, but she kept her peace—at least for now—because a plan was already forming in her head. By the time they hit Willits and turned south on 101 for Ukiah, it was as firm as it was going to get. “You know,” she said, and they were the first words she’d uttered in the past fifteen minutes, “when we get to Ukiah? I mean, before I drop you off at, where was it, the sporting goods place?”
He didn’t turn his head, but he was listening, she could see that.
“It won’t take five minutes,” she said, watching him now, even as her eyes darted back and forth to the road ahead of her. “One quick stop, that’s all.”
8.
HE WAS GOING TO cooperate—he liked the idea, she could see that—but he insisted she had her priorities backwards. “You take me over to Big 5,” he said, “and then we go to the animal place.” It was the longest speech he’d given since he got in the car. “Because I don’t want to get hung up here, you understand?” He was looking at her now, actually looking at her, as if he’d come out of a trance.
“They close at five,” she said, “and I’m not going to leave my dog in there one more day, no way, José—”
“Look,” he said, pointing to the clock on the dashboard. It showed one-forty-five. “There’s a ton of time.”
“But my dog’s in there, don’t you get it? Every minute he’s locked up is like driving nails into my flesh. No, I’m sorry, but Kutya’s first—”