“We should cross one at a time,” Howard whispered. “From the other side you can see more of the intersection,” pointing to Beacon a block away where a traffic light rattled in a cold gust. “Then, if it seems safe, wave the second man across.”
“I’ll go,” Dex said.
“No. I should be the one.”
The declaration was brave. Dex felt a little of what this trip meant to Howard. Howard never talked much about himself but Dex had learned a few things about him, in the same wordless way he came to understand the kids who filed into his classroom every September: by gesture and posture, by what was said and what wasn’t. Howard took no delight in defying authority. Dex pictured him as the bright, quiet kid who always picks a desk at the back of the room, the one who doesn’t smoke on school grounds or liberate bags of M M’s from the corner grocery. The one who follows the rules and takes a certain pride in doing so.
Not much like me, Dex thought. A middle-aged man with no possession but himself and too careless even with that. He said, “No, I’ll go.”
Howard seemed to be working up an objection, but Dex made it moot by vaulting out onto the windy space of Oak Street.
He sprinted toward the opposite side. He felt a little giddy, actually, out here on the empty pavement. Once, when he was seventeen and living with his parents in Phoenix, he had gotten drunk at someone’s party and ended up walking home at four in the morning. On an impulse he had stepped into the middle of what in daylight was a busy suburban street, and he had sat down cross-legged on the white line. King of creation. There had been no other pedestrians that night, no traffic, only dry air and a patient, starry sky. He had stayed in that sublime lotus for almost five minutes, until he saw a distant wink of headlights; then he got up, yawned, and sauntered home to bed. It amounted to nothing. But the feeling still lingered in his memory.
He was tempted to sit down in the middle of this street. A dumb and reckless notion. It was a familiar impulse, though, the urge to wave some flag of defiance in the face of the universe, and he supposed one day it would get him hurt or killed—probably sooner than later, given the state of things. But at times like this he felt both genuinely alive and somehow closer to Abigail and David, who had perished in the fire fifteen years ago. Maybe they were around one of these dark corners. Maybe, if he tempted fate, fate would deliver him to his lost wife and son.
But he crossed Oak without incident and stopped, a little breathless, in the shadows on the opposite side.
The silence seemed larger here. He paid attention to it, sorting through wind-sounds for the rumble of a motor. There was nothing. He braced himself against a brick wall and leaned into the street. He looked hard east and west and saw only streetlights, traffic signals, and the icy white sidewalks.
He located Howard’s silhouette in the alleyway and waved an all-clear.
Howard jogged toward the meridian of Oak in gawky, birdlike strides. He wore a khaki hunting jacket that came nearly to his knees and a black watch cap too low over his eyes. His duct-taped eyeglasses winked in the artificial light. He looked like a cartoon terrorist, Dex thought, and why the hell didn’t he get a move on? He was a target out there.
Howard had only just crossed the white line when Dex saw headlights probing the corner of Oak and Beacon.
He took a half step out of the alley and waved frantically at Howard, trying to hurry him in. Howard saw him and did exactly the wrong thing: froze in place, confused and frightened.
Dex heard the sound of an approaching motor, probably headed south on Beacon. We are seconds away from being seen, he thought. Shouting was a risk, but unavoidable now. He cupped his hands. “Howard! Get the fuck over here! RUN, YOU DUMB SON OF A BITCH!”
Howard looked left and saw the headlights reflected in window glass. It seemed to untangle his legs. He began to sprint, and Dex admired the speed with which the physicist covered those final yards of blacktop.
But the car, a black patrol car, had turned the corner, and there was no way of knowing what the men inside might have seen.
“Get down,” Dex said. “Down behind the Dumpster. Back against the wall. Draw your knees up.” And he did the same.
The patrol car had turned and was coming their way along Oak; he could tell by the sound of its engine.
It growled a lower note. They’ve seen us, Dex thought. He tried to imagine an escape route. South down this alley and maybe out some fire lane to Beacon or one of the suburban streets: get lost in tree shadows or crouch under a porch…
There was a sudden light. Dex watched it sweep the alley. He pictured the patrol car, the driver, the militiaman in the passenger seat with a hand-held spot. He was aware of the sound of Howard’s tortured breathing. “Run,” he whispered. “Run if you have to. You cut left, I’ll cut right.”
But the alley was suddenly dark again. The engine coughed and tires crunched on cold asphalt.
Dex heard the sound fade down Oak.
Howard let out a shuddering breath.
“Must be they only caught a glimpse,” Dex said, “or they’d be down here after us. Christ, that was a near call.” He stood and helped Howard up. “I vote we get the hell back across Oak and head for home while we can. Pardon me, Howard, but this whole thing was a stupid idea.”
Howard pulled away and shook his head. “We didn’t get what we came for. We’re not finished. At least, I’m not. You can go home if you want.”
Dex regarded his friend. “Well, hell,” he said finally. “Look who’s Rambo.”
Clifford Stockton sat at the top of the high hill at the center of Powell Creek Park with his bicycle beside him and the cold night wind plucking his hair.
There had already been flurries of snow this season, and it felt like there might soon be more, although the sky tonight had grown crisply, vividly clear. But the cold didn’t bother him. It was exhilarating. He felt completely alive and completely himself, far from the world of his mother and the soldiers and school.
The town lay at his feet. From this high place it resembled the map he had pinned to his bulletin board back home. It was completely static, a grid of stationary lights, except for the patrol cars performing their slow waltz. The cars moved like a glittering clockwork, pausing a beat at each intersection.
“Go to hell,” Clifford told them. This was a whisper. A delicious heresy. The wind carried it away. But there was nobody around to hear him. Giddy, Clifford stood up and shouted it. “GO TO HELL!”
The patrol cars wheeled on, as implacable as the motion of the stars. Clifford laughed but felt near tears.
It was almost time to go home. He had proved he could do this; all that remained was to prove he could get back safely. He was excited, but the cold air began to seem colder and he thought about his room, his bed, with a first pang of longing.
He picked up his bike. Down the brick path to Cleveland Avenue and west toward home. That should be easy enough.
But something caught his eye.
The hilly part of Powell Creek Park overlooked the business district. Clifford enjoyed an unobstructed view down to the intersection of Oak and Beacon. He saw the twin red taillights of a patrol car as it reached the corner—on schedule.
But the car turned west on Oak… and shouldn’t it have gone east?
And now the car slowed, and that was strange, too. Its spotlight probed an alleyway behind Beacon Street. Clifford crouched on the grass, watching. He felt suddenly vulnerable, too obvious. He wished he had his scanner; maybe he could listen in.
The spotlight winked out and the patrol car moved on along Oak and turned a corner. It disappeared from Clifford’s view behind the stores on Knight, but he was able to track the glow of its headlights. Down Knight to Promontory, farther from the park. Then east again. Then, mysteriously, back onto Beacon.