The next day, just as warm. He allowed himself to sit for a few minutes at a booth in the doughnut shop. Ate his sandwich. A napkin holder of rust-speckled chrome. The morning light played over the salty lot like a single, insistent note.
He found the paint that Perry had used to paint the door and its frame white and, while the sun was bright, painted them again. He painted until the paint ran out; then he soaked the brush in thinner and cleaned the windows with a blade.
It wasn’t clear what he was going to do next. It was clear to East that he was waiting for something, some sign, some sudden clearing that would allow him to glimpse his desire. Clear that he deserved to wait. Not clear that he deserved such a sign.
But the day was fresh, and the air moved through, dusty, hopeful. At dusk he sat outside again, watching the house, Perry’s house. Marsha hadn’t come or gone. Two days now without customers, without cold. He regarded the driveway curiously, the hump of the yard above the roadside ditch.
He tried not to feel left out.
After a little while, the dog passed by again. East saw it coming. Careful, stepping quietly along the roadside, skirting stones. It knew what it was doing.
He had saved a part of his lunch this time, egg and cheese with the bread. He called to the dog, not a word but a sort of yelp. The dog stopped, eyed him uneasily. He threw it a chunk of greasy bread, and after the dog wolfed this, it stood squarely, assessing him now. It came for the handful of food he held out. He did not touch the dog. He could see the worn path something had rubbed around the dog’s neck, part scar, part dry riverbed. Like a landmark in the fur. He watched the dog eat, eyeing him shrewdly, and then move away.
He took a shovel from the locker atop the landing, and he dug his guns out of the piled dirt where they’d waited for him.
—
Long before midnight he was asleep, curled on his pallet, the single pillow. He slept the long and grateful sleep of men who work — a breathing sleep, a dreaming sleep of childhood, or flying, or pathways leading somewhere. He burped and shifted, and steadily inside him, like the ocean’s tide, one great muscle drew air and pushed it out, drew it again.
It was late December, a Tuesday. It had been a busy day.
—
The back door was open, as if someone were minding the range, as if the building were still airing. East slept. Beneath his box he did not feel the air. And he had been in the air all day, this southern air, which did not feel or smell so different from the air that he’d grown up in.
Only the noise, the sustained clattering, woke him. Like something being dragged, being broken. His eyes opened, and he lay paralyzed, as happened sometimes in dreams. The need to move. He could not move. It’s the middle of the night. Like a child’s excuse.
The sounds echoed up. Now he smelled the air. The nighttime wind and smell of melt, the milky smell of rock being ground. He reached up under the sink. The tough plastic creased there, formed a crevice, and into it he’d pressed the two guns he’d dug up. He dislodged one and fit his hand around it, and silently he stood.
The open back door looked out across the range toward the shushed lights of town. Nobody there. Just the man-size furrows of the field.
He crept to the stairs. The noise persisted: was it Marsha? A clank and a sigh, a clank and a sigh. Like a giant lugging his tool kit, shifting it with every step. In his hand the gun was strange and cold. He took the corner, paused, and stepped down.
The blow came from beside, below. It smashed the gun out of his hand, sent it spinning over the ragged sofa. Again it came and smashed him off the step. He plunged down the half flight of stairs, hit the concrete, and rolled. He tried to come up—the pavement is not your friend—but the blow struck a third time. Some sort of club, it bit into him. It smashed him down again, and now he heard the feet scrambling around, and he gave up getting away, just covered himself, his head shoved down by a kick. He locked it between his knees, rolled, took the ringing blows on his left side. They rained on him like whip strokes.
Not the head, not the stomach, not the back, he pleaded silently. Not the neck or the shoulder, the elbow or the arm. Not the places he was being hit: he yearned to save them, as if the blows were making him miss every part of his body. He yearned to protect it. He cracked under two more strikes, rolled away, hid his face again, under his arm, the way a bird hides under a shivering wing. Whimpering. Dreading the blow that would break his head, that would send him to join the others.
The feet backed off then. He’d thought there were two pairs, but now he eyed the shoes circling, switching direction. The dark staff resting. Just one. The shoes rested, poised and small, as if picking out a target. Dark high-tops. He braced again and closed his eyes.
The voice came soft and exquisitely amused. “Damn, boy,” it said. “You hold a gun like a girl.”
Then he did not need to look.
“You ran from me, man. You ran.”
East opened his mouth, but his throat was stopped.
“I knew you’d run,” Ty said. “I didn’t think you’d shoot me. Didn’t think of that.”
He opened his eyes, but they flooded. The concrete floor blurred, faultlessly clean. He was a fool. Left Ty for dead. But left him for dead was just something you told yourself. Dead had to be for real.
There was blood smudging his face; his arm was smacked open, raw. Painfully he moved it. “Ty,” he coughed. “You gonna kill me?”
He dared to look up. Above the sofa he saw something swinging — a nylon tote, hung on its strap from a rafter. Something in there shifted, causing the racket.
A decoy.
“Found you,” Ty said.
He closed his eyes.
“What are you doing here?”
“Found you,” Ty said simply. “Stand up.”
East was ready to die on the clean, hard floor. Like people did. Standing didn’t mean anything now.
Ty bent over him. He pulled at East’s shoulder, gave up. “I’ll whip you till you get up, then,” he said, almost helpfully. A foot helped nudge East onto all fours. His arm burned, and he sheltered it from Ty.
“Take a seat,” Ty said. He pointed with the club. It was just a stick, the broomstick East had used, he saw now. Unscrewed.
“You gonna kill me?”
“I should,” Ty said.
East eyed where the gun had ended up. Somewhere way past the other sofa. But Ty would be ready for that.
He sat.
Strange, long journey across the world. The world would have its way; you could not stop it. And his brother was the world.
Ty acknowledged it too. “Funny, seeing you again. Seeing where we left off.”
In the dark, East nodded.
Lightly Ty spun the broomstick. “You ask what I’m doing here? Did you try to find out about me?”
“Find out what?”
“Find out what,” Ty snorted. “Did I live? Did I live or die, nigger?”
“Where I’m gonna find that out?” East mumbled.
“Well, first, you got to care,” snapped Ty. “Care enough to try. Internet, man. But you don’t do that — I forget. Or call somebody. Call home. Let me tell you. They were gonna make me a state orphan. Give me to a farm lady. They asked me my name every day for a week. Then I walked out.”
“Out of what?”
“Hospital.”
“And then what did you do?”
“What you think?” Ty said. “I went home.”
“How long you look for me?”
“For you?” Ty said. “Since yesterday.”
East made a face.
“Didn’t look. I waited till you popped up. I knew you’d be out here somewhere, man. Every cow you looked at, you fell in love.”