Chimera

Chapter 18

The double vision was mostly gone, but reading the map was still a bitch. Rubbing my eyes against the blistering pain, I directed, “Take the next exit, then go left.”

Nodding, Michael announced, “I like driving. How much does a car cost if you actually buy one instead of stealing it?”

“Funny. Funny stuff.” I tried to thread fingers through my hair but backed off immediately with a grimace. The curls were matted thick with dried blood. Pulling down the visor, I took a look at myself in the mirror. Jesus. I looked like the the lone survivor of a ketchup factory explosion. I couldn’t check into a motel like this. I’d have to grab a shower at the doctor’s place.

“Are you hungry?” With his hands precisely at ten and two on the wheel, just as the manual said, he glanced over at me. “I still have food from the drugstore.”

My nausea peaked at the thought. “No thanks, kiddo.” It might be a day or two before I could keep anything down. Concussions were good for that. Football had taught me that particular lesson and working under Konstantin had only reinforced it. “Maybe later.”

That didn’t seem to satisfy him and he checked the rearview mirror, then the side mirror, before turning his attention back to me. “Are you sure? You should at least drink something. You’ve lost blood. You need to replenish your fluid volume.”

“Replenish, eh?” Holding my hands up in surrender as he slitted his eyes, I gave in. “Okay. Okay. There’s a bottle of something down here.” I retrieved the half-empty soft-drink bottle from the floorboards and opened it for a lukewarm sip.

Mollified, he let me drink in peace, although I had the suspicion he’d be pushing those snack cakes again in no time. After I finished drinking, I blew softly into the opening of the bottle. The resulting musical note accompanied the bass drum pounding between my ears. “I’m going to be okay, Misha,” I declared lightly, unsure of the best way to approach a delicate subject. “I promise. I won’t leave you all alone out here.”

His hands tightened on the wheel until his knuckles stood in stark relief. Setting his jaw, he denied stiffly, “I’m not afraid to be alone.”

Of course he was afraid to be alone. He’d gone from a tiny fishbowl to the wild blue ocean. And while he may have shared that tank with a piranha, that didn’t mean there weren’t predators out here as well; unknown dangers that lurked around every corner. Everything was strangely surreal, and nothing was quite like it was in the pictures and books he’d been shown. Naturally, he was scared. I’d have pissed my pants in his situation.

“I know you’re not,” I said agreeably. “I’m just saying.” It was one thing to be aware of his perfectly justifiable fear but another thing altogether to shove his nose in it. No teenage boy would be accepting of that, free-range or lab raised.

“That’s not why I came back for you.” Stopped at a light, he studiously looked out his side window. “It’s not.”

I knew it wasn’t, but that didn’t stop the tiny verbal nudge I gave him. “Then why did you?”

“Good question.” The light turned green and he fed the car more gas than was strictly necessary in a move that had nothing to do with inexperience. “That’s a very good question.”

Casa de Vanderburgh turned out to be quite the dump—big surprise. A squat block covered with stucco that was crazed with as many cracks as a two-dollar ceramic pot, it didn’t precisely shout House Beautiful. The driveway was floating islands of asphalt shot through with rivers of yellowed weeds, and the flower beds hosted only dust and cola cans. The one spotless and gleaming exception was the satellite dish on the flat roof. Cleanliness might be next to godliness, but twenty-four-hour-a-day porn beat lawn care hands down.

The twisted shit that stoked his engine couldn’t be found on television, not even satellite, but he was likely making do with what he could get, poor suffering bastard. I choked down the growl that threatened to push its way from my throat and closed the car door. This was business. If I kept that first and foremost in my mind, I might get through the next few hours without resorting to violence. Saul wouldn’t thank me for putting a source in the hospital . . . no matter how much he deserved it. As for paying his debt to society, ten years fell short . . . by about ninety or so.

Resting my hand on the hood of the car, I waited until the dizziness settled and then I headed for the front door. I plodded the ten feet and every step felt mired in the thickest mud. Michael hovered behind close enough to catch me if I fell, but I managed to avoid the embarrassment. Standing on the concrete blocks doubling as a poor man’s verandah, I raised my fist and knocked on the door. As we waited, I commanded, “Stick close while we’re in there. The guy’s a . . .” I stopped and reconsidered. Michael had had a psych course, true enough, but how in depth they would’ve covered child molestation I couldn’t begin to guess. And it was not a concept I particularly wanted to get into while standing on a pedophile’s porch. I settled on an evasive, “He’s a bad guy, and he likes to hurt kids. I want you to be careful, okay? Keep me between you and him at all times.”

Technically, Michael was probably too old for Vanderburgh, but he did look younger than seventeen. He had the self-possession and an intellect older than his years but the appearance and naïveté that could have him passing for fifteen, maybe even fourteen. Worse, he was beautiful. If anyone had said that to me when I was that age, I would’ve squirmed with outrage. Beautiful simply isn’t a word a guy wants applied to him. Good-looking. Hot, if it was a girl saying it . . . sure, no problem, but not beautiful. Unfortunately for Michael, that was the word that suited him the best. He’d outgrow it eventually. In a few years he’d be the model type I’d joked about when I’d cut my hair. But for now he was a young David, pure as shining white marble and incandescent as the sun.

“Why? I can take care of myself, Stefan,” he countered with an obstinate streak that was beginning to show more and more. “If I have to.”

Maybe he could and maybe he couldn’t. From what I’d seen this morning, he was in no hurry to hurt anyone, and that was all to the good in my book. It could be that might change when it came right down to the wire; I couldn’t say. Regardless, I wasn’t about to place him in a situation that required him to use an ability that he was so obviously ambivalent about; not if I could avoid it.

“Against assholes like this guy you shouldn’t have to,” I replied firmly before pounding on the door again. “So stick close.”

“Who is it?”

The wary question was easily heard through the cheap metal of the door. “Friends of Skoczinsky’s,” I answered. “We need a doctor.”

Silence. Then came a voice. “You have money?”

“I wouldn’t be standing here if I didn’t.” The jamb was scratched and the grain irregular beneath my hand, but it was enough to keep me upright. “Now hurry up and open the door before I give it a new puke paint job.”

There was the metallic chuckle of a lock tripping and the door opened, a rectangle of light in the dusk. Standing there in a dark blue robe over burgundy and white striped pajamas was Santa Claus. His pink scalp peeked through snow-white hair. His short beard was as curly as the cocker spaniel my mom had had before she died, and his eyes, half hidden behind bifocals, were the same limpid brown. Just how goddamn disturbing was this? Forget the better mousetrap; someone had built a better pervert. He was a malignant hook concealed in the bait of pudgy cheer.

Robe straining over the swell of belly, Vanderburgh looked me up and down. Full pink lips curved into a distasteful sneer. “You couldn’t have made yourself more presentable first?”

He had a lot of gall. He hadn’t wasted any spit and polish on the outside of his squalid shack, but he was bitching at me over some dried blood. I can’t say that I was much in the mood to hear it, whether it came directly from old St. Nick’s mouth or not. “And my money’s just as dirty as I am,” I drawled, “but I bet you’ll take it just the same.” Pushing past him without an invitation, I blinked. What he hadn’t wasted on the outside he’d run wild with on the inside. There wasn’t much space in the small living room, but what there was he’d filled with plush furniture, lamps of jeweled glass, and finely woven rugs that covered a dingy tile floor. The television was plasma and hung like a cherished painting in a place of honor on the far wall.

“Nice. I guess you don’t shoot all your cash into a vein.” I wanted nothing more than to sink onto that soft, soft sofa and sleep for days. But even if I’d trusted Vanderburgh enough to shut my eyes, it simply wasn’t in the cards.

“No, a portion I spent on this.” He lifted a pistol from his robe pocket and pointed it at me. It wasn’t anything fancy—your standard .38 available at any pawnshop—but it would do the job as well as the pricier models. Those soft brown eyes had become small, hard stones. “Now, let me see the color of your money. And, gentlemen, credit cards are not accepted.”

It wasn’t an unexpected turn of events; business was business. I opened up my wallet to flash the money at him. It was the only thing it held. My ID, genuine and fabricated, was hidden in a much more secure location. “There you go. Happy?”

He was. Six-gun-packing Santa clucked his tongue in satisfaction and laid his gun on the mosaic-inlaid coffee table. “Go to the back and try not to drip any bodily fluids on your way.”

Nudging Michael ahead of me, I obeyed. The back room was twice the size of the living room. There were cabinets of drugs and supplies, a low bed with plastic sheets, and a portable X-ray machine. “Sit down.” The esteemed ex-doctor waved a plump hand at the bed before pulling over a wheeled silver tray laden with instruments. He didn’t bother to ask what the problem was or give a heyhowyoudo as I took a seat. He had no bedside manner whatsoever. Wielding a pair of surgical scissors, he put a hand on my shoulder, shoved me flat, and deftly sliced my shirt up the middle before I had the chance to slip it off. After a quick look, he grunted and went to work.

He cleaned the wound efficiently but without a whole lot of tender loving care. I gritted my teeth and endured it. Filling the raw channel with antibiotic cream, he covered it with a bandage and tape. “Hardly worth my valuable time,” he grunted as he flexed gloved fingers painted with dabs of red. “Let’s see if the head trauma is a tad more interesting.”

At the head of the bed Michael bristled slightly but kept an even tone. “He has a concussion. Even I can see that and I’m no doctor.”

There was an assessing look aimed at my brother, and it was one I didn’t care for . . . not at all. “A concussion, you say. Aren’t you the knowledgeable boy? Well, could be or perhaps it’s more than that.” Strong fingers mercilessly probed the gash in my scalp. “A slow bleed in the brain is a possibility, but without a CAT scan there’s no reliable way of knowing.” Cold, avid eyes moved from Michael to peer at me over the top of crescent-shaped lenses. “Then again the fact that you haven’t dropped dead yet can be counted a good sign.”

“Thanks. That’s a real comfort,” I muttered.

If he noticed the sarcasm, he was unfazed by it. “You’ll need stitches and IV fluids for the blood loss. Local anesthetic and painkillers are available at an extra charge.”

Hippocrates would be so proud. “Give me the local and a bottle of pain pills. I prefer to dose myself.” If there was any doping to be done, I didn’t trust Vanderburgh to do it. “What about the dizziness and nausea?”

“They’ll pass,” he said dismissively as he reached for a syringe and a rubber stopper vial. “I can give you something for it until then. Of course, it’ll cost—”

“Extra. Yeah, I gathered that.” The sharpness of a needle bit at my skin and filled it with a cold, numbing liquid. I was glad he hadn’t decided to shave a patch of my hair for the stitches. That would be taking my new look a step too far.

Michael was still at my side and looking less impressed with the ex-doctor all the time. He’d been fine through the dressing of the gunshot wound, but now at the sight of needles piercing flesh, a sliver of discomfort showed. That was only going to get worse when it was his turn. The memories made in the Institute basement were going to color anything medically related with suspicion and anxiety. I couldn’t change that or erase the past, but I still had some minor tricks up my sleeve.

“Misha.” Snagging his sleeve, I suggested, “Maybe you should check the car. Make sure you put it in park. With driving as shaky as yours, better safe than sorry.”

“Shaky?” It wasn’t outrage on Michael’s face. He had his emotions far too battened down for something as overt as that. Control was the name of the game, and it was a game that had kept him alive longer than that poor doomed roommate of his. That type of ironclad restraint wouldn’t allow for visible wrath, but it had no problem with annoyance.

“Why do you think I’m so nauseated? Forget concussion. It’s car sickness. You drive like a drunken grandma.”

The annoyance went from mild to a diamond-hard intensity. “I do not. And, by the way, I was not the one who ran over the statue of a large purple pig.”

“Now you’re just being petty,” I rejoined. “That pig died for the greater good and you know it.”

By the time Vanderburgh finished with the stitches, Michael had decided it wasn’t worth wasting valuable oxygen to argue with me, as I was clearly insane. Bending down to examine the results, he relented, “It looks better. Quite a few stitches, but I don’t think it should scar too badly.”

“What’s one more?” I asked wryly before sitting up. Within five minutes I had an IV going into the crook of my arm. I’d chosen the IV bag myself. As I’d said to Michael, better safe than sorry. “Okay, Doc.” The man was no more a doctor than I was despite his years of med school, but I had even less desire to say his name. It was bound to taste foul, like rot. “Now we have a more complex problem.” I explained, in very general terms, about the tracer planted in Michael. Being more specific wasn’t to our advantage. The man would sell us out in a heartbeat if he knew whom to get the money from.

“Intriguing.” Those repulsively fleshly lips pursed. “If it’s not too deep, it may be possible to remove it. I’ll need an X-ray first for location. That’s going with the assumption that it has a metallic component.”

“Yeah, here’s hoping,” I said, standing. Towing along the IV pole, I moved in front of the doctor. He’d left his gun in the living room, carelessly enough, but mine was still here with me. Retrieving it with one smooth motion, I centered it directly between his eyes. The muzzle indented rosy skin just below the V of silver-tufted eyebrows. “I’d just like to go over a few things with you first, Babysitter.” I smiled. It wasn’t a wolfish smile or that of a shark. It was merely a simple friendly one. After all, weren’t we beginning a trusted doctor-patient relationship? Didn’t I have Santa’s best interests at heart? Sure I did.

“First, you perverse prick, look at him like that again and I’ll kill you.” I didn’t bother to elaborate. He knew all too well which look I was referring to. “No warning. No second chances. Just a bullet to that squatting cancer you call a brain. Second, when you remove the tracer, you’ll be a damn sight more gentle with him than you were with me.” I pressed harder. “Are we clear?”

Those round eyes seemed to sink deeper into doughy flesh like oven-wizened raisins. He’d survived what couldn’t have been a cushy prison stretch; he wouldn’t scare too easily. But then again, I wasn’t trying to frighten him. I was only giving him the unvarnished truth, and that could be more terrifying than any threat. “I’m not—,” he started to deny. They always denied, his kind. Always.

“Are we clear?” I cut him off as a reddened bruise began to form beneath the metal.

He gave in to the inevitable. “We’re clear,” he said tightly.

“Great. Clarity is good for the soul.” I let the gun drop to my side. “Michael, are you ready?”

He had been or at least he thought he had been until that moment. Looking at the hospital-style bed so similar to the one from the Institute, he came within a hairbreadth of losing it. It wasn’t anything as noticeable as trembling or fear-sweat slicking his face. He simply went still. It wasn’t a human stillness. It was the crouch of a cocky jackrabbit frozen under the gaze of a hawk; it was the inner core of a stone hovering on the lip of an avalanche. He wanted to move; he wanted to run, but I couldn’t let him go. With that chip in place, it was only a matter of time until they found us again. He couldn’t ever be free until he lay down on that bed.

Trailing IV tubing, I placed a hand on the back of his neck and squeezed lightly. “It’s about time you kissed those assholes good-bye, don’t you think?”

He exhaled, then gave a wooden nod. “I think. I do think.” Making it to the bed under his own power, he lowered himself onto his stomach. The thin pillow was ignored and pushed aside as he used his folded arms instead. Despite his adult response, he’d never looked younger or more lost, not even when I’d plucked him from the heart of the Institute in the middle of the night. I dragged up a chair beside him, rested the gun in my lap, and ordered, “Get started, Doc. We don’t have all night.”

As he was pushing the X-ray machine in our direction, I reached out and pulled Michael’s left hand from beneath his head. Simple human contact was something he’d been deprived of most of his life. Here was hoping it could help him now. “Squeeze it as hard as you want, kiddo. It won’t break.”

A green and blue stare reminded me that actually it could, if he wanted it to, or worse. But he remained quiet and let his hand lie loosely in my grip. It was only after the X-ray was developed and his bare lower back was swabbed with Betadine with meticulously professional care that his hand swiveled in mine and tightened until my bones creaked. “Butch and Sundance,” he offered in a barely audible whisper.

It was a distant echo of a long-past conversation, one he didn’t remember and one I couldn’t forget. Swallowing thickly, I asked, “What about them?”

“They showed us the movie. Along with others, about all sorts of things. So we’d be convincing, you know? We’d be able to have normal conversations.” His cheek rested against the sheets. “If we had to.”

I don’t think he expected that occasion would’ve arisen—kill and get out; chatting rarely required. “What about our favorite outlaws?”

His eyes shut as a needle delivered the same local anesthetic used on me. His voice had thinned but was still solid. “When they jumped.”

On the run from the posse, they’d sailed off the cliff hand in hand, going down together toward an uncertain fate. “Yeah, I remember.” The soft drip of the IV hung in the background. “So which of us do you think will hit the water first?”

“You. Your legs are longer.”

I admitted with a small laugh, “You’ve got me there.”

He didn’t speak again throughout the rest of the procedure. It was done in a relatively short time although it had to feel much longer to Michael. The chip wasn’t implanted too deeply and was plucked free to lie bloody and innocuous on a sterile drape. It was small, one-third the size of my pinky nail. A tiny bathroom adjoined the room less than four steps away and I promptly flushed the tracer down the toilet. Let them follow that straight to the nearest waste disposal plant. I only wished I could see them stumping through the steaming muck.

Acutely conscious of my eyes on him, Vanderburgh sealed the inch-long incision with some sort of skin adhesive and covered it with a bandage. Backing away as I helped Michael sit up, he muttered something about getting our pills together and sidled over to a glass-front cabinet. I changed my mind about using the shower. I wasn’t turning my back on this piece of shit for a second, much less ten minutes.

“You doing okay?” I asked as Michael rearranged his shirt and stood.

He nodded. “It’s still numb.” Even when the local wore off, it should only be mildly sore. “But I feel . . . lighter. It couldn’t have weighed even an ounce, and until today I didn’t even know it was there.” His hand unconsciously moved to cover the unseen bandage. “It’s stupid, I know.”

“You’re a lot of things, kiddo, but stupid isn’t one of them.” Putting away my gun, I grabbed a square of gauze and used it to quell the gush of blood that welled when I pulled out my IV. I accepted the piece of tape Michael scrounged for me from the pile of supplies on the counter and used it to fasten the gauze to my skin. The grinding headache was still present, but I felt slightly better. The fluids had lessened my light-headedness, if nothing else.

“Antibiotics and pills for pain and nausea. Follow the directions on the label,” Vanderburgh commanded curtly as he extended a clear plastic bag filled with three brown bottles in my direction. I took it, opened all three bottles, and extracted a pill from each.

With my other hand gripping his thick wrist, I placed the pills, red, purple, and white, on his palm. “Dry or with a glass of water. Your choice.”

His fingers closed over the pills. “What?”

“I’m just not a trusting man, Doc. Go figure. Now take the goddamn pills.”

Opening his hand back up, he stirred the tablets with a finger, then took the red and purple ones. Swallowing them dry, he opened his mouth to reveal an empty pink cavity. The white pill he crushed underfoot. “I think perhaps we can find you a different pain pill.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” The gun at my back positively itched to be used. Despite my recent career, I wasn’t prone to violence. I did what I had to do, but I hadn’t liked it. I would’ve liked hurting this man. I think I would’ve liked it quite a bit.

Once he’d demonstrated the new pills were safe, it was payment time. Meanwhile, Michael had moved with alacrity back out to the living room. He may have survived the experience, but it was unlikely he wanted to hang around that medical environment any longer than he had to. By the time I finished passing over the cash and followed, he’d had time to hide Vanderburgh’s gun and start messing with the man’s VCR/DVD player. Yeah, he’d hang on to the VCR part as long as he could. No doubt some of his best stuff hadn’t made it to DVD or Blu-ray yet.

I took note of the now-empty coffee table and was duly impressed. Vanderburgh probably wouldn’t rush out to shoot at us as we drove down the street, but there was no need to leave him the option, and Michael hadn’t. “Let’s go, kid.”

“Okay.” He dropped the tape he was shifting from hand to hand and stood from his squat. As he walked toward me, he passed close to Vanderburgh—much closer than I liked and much closer than he normally would have. I’d noticed in the store and restaurants that Michael had a large sense of personal space—not surprising considering what he’d been through. That he was voluntarily violating it now made me wonder . . . until I saw his hand brush Vanderburgh’s robe below the tie. It was the lightest of touches with the most drastic of consequences.

The old man’s face went an unpleasant plum color and the portly figure of the former doctor fell to his knees with a choking gasp. Fat hands paddled desperately before settling on his crotch, cupping with exquisite care. “What?” Air whistled through his open mouth. “What—what’s happened?”

What indeed.

“Good-bye, Dr. Vanderburgh,” Michael offered politely before exiting from the front door. He didn’t look back at his handiwork, although I did. Vanderburgh had fallen onto his side and curled up, an obese and tearful fetus. He could cry the proverbial river; it wasn’t going to equal one of the tears of his victims.

Trailing after my brother, I closed the door behind us and cut off the pants and sobs issuing from behind us. “Misha.” I watched as he fished the keys from the pocket of his sweats.

“Mmm?” He inserted the key into the lock.

“All right, Mr. Casual. What did you do?” I demanded.

“Cut off the blood flow to his testicles. Permanently.” Opening the door, he looked at me across the top of the car. “You were right. He’s not a nice person. Not nice at all.” Then he disappeared behind the wheel.

The tape. Michael had seen something on that tape that had given him a glimpse at Vanderburgh’s blackened soul and that glimpse had given new meaning to the phrase “blue balls.” Once in the passenger seat, I took one of the pain pills. After swallowing, I said in the best big-brotherly tone I could manage through my pounding headache, “You really shouldn’t destroy a man’s balls.”

“No?” The car started, the sound only ratcheting up the pain in my head a notch.

“No.” I closed my eyes.

“Even if they deserve it?”

He had me there. “Well . . . yeah, the son of a bitch definitely did. There’s no denying that. But I don’t want you getting hurt in the process.”

“It doesn’t hurt me.” He sounded so certain, but I remembered just last night how he’d told me he and the others at the Institute couldn’t do anything good and how in the morning he expected me to discard him as tainted and leave him behind.

I rolled down the window an inch and let the cold air play over my face. I was getting tired, damn tired, and the twilight chill would help keep me awake. “Funny. You didn’t seem so sure of that when those assholes had you trapped in the bathroom.”

“That’s different.”

I opened my eyes the better to see in his face exactly what it was he was trying to say. “How so?”

“He hurts kids. Normal kids,” he amended. “Kids who can’t protect themselves.”

“Yeah, they can’t protect themselves like you can, but that doesn’t mean you’re not normal.” He rolled a darkly disbelieving eye in my direction but didn’t comment. “But that’s not what I’m talking about,” I added. “I want to know why you’d do something for faceless strangers that you won’t do for yourself.” It wasn’t as if there was much he could’ve done in the face of two guns, but even if the men had been unarmed, I still doubted he would’ve “laid on the hands,” so to speak. I’d seen his face. He wouldn’t have done it . . . not then anyway.

He shrugged with discomfort that wasn’t as concealed as he thought, but I didn’t let it go at that. “Misha. Give. Why wouldn’t you protect yourself? You wouldn’t have to kill, God no. But you could give a little of what you gave to the doc. So why not?” I could understand his never wanting to use what he had in him. I might think it unrealistic, but I would understand. To use it for others and not himself, though, that I couldn’t.

There was the squirt of cleaner on the windshield and the swish of wipers. He watched them with fascination before reluctantly bowing to the inevitable. “Because”—he paused—“because I’m beginning to wonder if I don’t belong in a cage after all.”

That woke me up quickly and thoroughly. Glaring, I reached over and thwapped him lightly in the back of the head. Startled, he looked over at me with wide eyes. “Say something stupid like that again and you’ll never see an empty calorie again as long as you live. No cakes, no candy bars, nothing. You’ll be cut off.”

He was smoothing the back of his hair as I talked and entertaining the thought of giving me a dirty look. I could see it as clear as day. “Don’t bother,” I warned. “Bottom line, kid. You don’t belong in a cage. No one but no one is going to say that, not even you. Got it?”

“Guess I had better, hadn’t I?” he answered with what seemed to be only mild irritation. After a few minutes of the only sound being the tires on the pavement, he said quietly, “I wouldn’t have given up. I wouldn’t have let them take me without a fight.” The dusky purple light filled the car, making him increasingly hard to see . . . as if he were fading away. “I just don’t know if I could hold that part of myself back once I started to use it in a situation like that. All the adrenaline. Fighting for my life.” I thought I saw his face work in the darkness. “I won’t risk killing again. I can’t. I still remember how it felt . . . with that man’s heart beneath my hand. How it pounded; then the muscle melted like wax. I could feel it scream and die even through his chest.” He stopped, and I wasn’t sorry he did. Hearing that wasn’t doing either of us any good right now. There would be time to talk about it later. When we were free and safe, we’d talk about a thousand things until he was at peace with every one of them.

“Then you don’t have to.” End of story. “Leave the violence to me, Misha. I’m already used to it.”

He had something to say about that; I didn’t have to see him to know the wheels were spinning in his head. But winter air and determination aside, I dozed off before he was able to get the words out. Against a concussion and a pain pill, consciousness was a lost cause. Michael woke me up when we stopped at a gas station and I cleaned up as best I could in the grubby bathroom. The paper towel dispenser was empty and I scrubbed away dried blood with wet toilet paper. There wasn’t much I could do about what was matted in my hair, but hopefully I would pass a brief inspection at the motel.

I did. It was a small, run-down place with only ten rooms and a small gravel lot. The guy behind the counter had blond dreads decorated here and there with rusty metal hoops. If he had noticed the condition of my hair, it would only have been to give me a thumbs-up. The room was even worse than the outside, but it didn’t matter. With a thin, rock-hard mattress and a dingy cracked ceiling, it was the Ritz-Carlton as far as I was concerned. I fell into bed as if it were feather stuffed and covered with silk sheets. I was gone in an instant, and I dreamed. Like Michael’s, my dreams were of horses. There was also the beach with churning waves and a sky as improbably blue as an Easter egg. There was no strange man; no gun. There were only horses that lived to canter into the water and boys who never learned to live without their brothers. They were good dreams.

The best.