He parked the truck at the edge of the Safeway parking lot and sat there with the motor idling, still talking softly to himself and staring around at the various cars—dirty Subarus and pickups—for any sign of the man who had once been his best friend in all the world, willing himself to stay there only because he thought the cargo he held in the bed of the truck would be the end of it, would close that one part of his past that he had left flapping open. The last thing tethering him to the world he had fled.
When he saw Rick at last his first thought was that he had come to look like his father, the man who, when they were children, would beat him and his mother until their screaming at last brought the sheriff into the trailer park. The resemblance filled him with a sadness impossible to articulate. He did not know what he had expected after so many years, but not this tiny broken car, not this filthy yellow Honda, its fenders rusted into holes and the door squealing on its metal hinges. And yet here he was in the parking lot of the grocery store, his body the same lanky frame protected only by a loose denim jacket insufficient for the cold and jeans that rolled down over the tops of scuffed cowboy boots.
Bill stepped out onto the asphalt. Hey, he said.
Rick stood there by the car’s open door, staring back at him, his face inscrutable. The years had streaked his black hair with gray.
I bet you’re glad to be out.
So there you are, Rick said at last. The voice the same. The eyes sparking blue in the freezing air.
Here I am.
Across the expanse of the parking lot, the Safeway sign glowed dim under a sky rolling with dark clouds. Pickup trucks in rows. A maroon sedan passing slowly, the driver nodding as they made eye contact.
That a cop?
Just someone from here in town.
Rick’s eyes followed the car and then turned back to where Bill stood beside the pickup.
You’re gonna have to follow me, Bill said.
No way.
There’re too many people here. Follow me.
I’m not following you anywhere.
You’re gonna have to, Bill said, and before Rick could react he slid back into the cab of the pickup and gunned out of the parking lot, his heart pounding, hands gripping the wheel so tightly that he had to will them to uncurl when he turned onto the street. He looked into the rearview mirror and saw nothing but the anonymous vehicles of his neighbors. Come on, he said. Come on. His breath stilled, stopped. And then at last the tiny yellow car appeared from the receding parking lot and swung onto the road behind him.
The figure in the mirror: a ghost from his memory. Even at this distance Rick looked like his father. The angular shape of his face had hardened and weathered like the desert itself, implacable, lines running under his eyes and the eyes themselves drooping at their most distant and downward edges, wet and clear and wide. There he was. There he really was.
He followed the highway south out of town, through the Kootenai’s broad, flat floodplain to where that valley pinched closed into a folded landscape of ridges and pines, scraps of cloud drifting between them like foam on some inland sea. He checked the mirror again and again, as if the yellow car might, at any moment, evaporate in a cloud of steam like his own exhaled breath. Because he wanted to be shut of it. He needed to be shut of it. And so he needed the yellow car to be there, to be following him as the forest hemmed in the road once more and their route was reduced to shadow.
Half a mile before the rescue he took a dirt turnout that expanded onto a brief patch of gravel partially hidden by trees and brambles and beyond which lay a small clearing surrounded by forest. Near the center of that circle, he drew the truck to a stop and waited for Rick’s car to appear. Then he opened the door and stepped out. Even now, so close to the end of it, he could feel his gut turning as if run through with an iron rod. The earth covered with dry tamarack needles the color of toast.
Then Rick was out of the car, standing there in his thin coat. What the fuck is this? he said.
Just someplace out of the way.
Don’t try anything, Rick said. This is bullshit. As if to underscore the statement, he pulled his jacket open to reveal a pistol handle extending from the front of his jeans.
Look, Bill said, you want to do it in town, with everyone watching? ’Cause we can go back to the parking lot if you’d rather do it there.
You’re stalling, Rick said. You’d better have what I came up here for.
I have it. He dropped the tailgate and hopped up onto the bed of the truck and pulled the plastic tarp free. The safe looked smaller than it had in the closet, a squat iron box not more than two feet on a side, its thick black paint shining.
What is this? Rick said. The rancor in his voice was replaced by something like bewilderment now.
What’s it look like? Bill knelt next to the box, pulling it forward a few feet clear of the cab and then stepping in behind to shove it the length of the bed.
I told you not to fuck around, Rick said at last.
I’m not. Bill was panting now but he had managed to get the safe to the tailgate and he stepped down onto the forest floor again. I never opened it, he said.
What the fuck you mean you never opened it?
He shrugged, his fingertips momentarily slipping into the tops of his jean pockets and then returning to hang loose at his sides.
Seriously? Rick said. He looked from the safe to Bill and then repeated that simple motion.
Seriously.
There was a pause and then Rick said, I don’t get it.
There’s nothing to get. Just put it in your car and go. You can have the whole thing. Whatever’s in there.
Rick stared at the safe. No, man, I don’t get it, he said. You never opened it?
I never did. I’m just trying to do what’s right.
What’s right? I should fucking shoot you. That’s what’s right. Why didn’t you open it, you fucking idiot?
I don’t know. I just didn’t.
My mom fucking died, man. God-fucking-dammit. You stupid asshole.
How different he looked and yet how much the same.
It’s like you just turned your back on everyone who gave a shit about you, Rick said.
I had to start over.
Rick looked at the safe again and shook his head. Put it in the trunk, he said.
Grab the other side.
Fucking asshole. You don’t know what I had to do to survive in there. Some of those guys would kill you for a pack of smokes. So you’ve got to kill them first. Do you understand what I’m telling you?