He leaned into it, walking hard, but the sun was sliding away fast and the moon was rising beside it at the exact same tempo, like someone pulling a clock chain that was attached to both. The dark fell fast and heavy and the hotel dome gleamed under the moon and the wind was colder now, so cold, and yet Josiah didn’t appear to have gotten anywhere at all, had just as much of the wheat field ahead as he’d always had. As the dark gathered, he could make out a man at the tree line, the same man from the train, wearing his bowler hat and with hands jammed into his pants pockets. He was shaking his head at Josiah. Looked disgusted with him. Disgusted and angry.
The second dream faded and heat replaced it, an uncomfortable black warmth that eventually roused Josiah from sleep. When he opened his eyes, he saw that the sun was up and shining off the windshield of his pickup truck and right in his face.
He rose with a grunt, stumbled forward and leaned on the porch rail, felt the old paint flake under his palm. A dull throb came from his face, and only then did he remember the previous night, the white guy with the scruffy beard and the black kid with the blisteringly quick left hand. He felt around his eye with his fingertips, knew from touch alone how it must look, and felt the anger that had chased him into sleep return.
The beer had left his mouth dry, but his stomach was settled and his head was clear. Hell, he felt good. He’d taken a punch to the eye and then tied on a good drunk and slept sitting upright in a plastic chair, but somehow he felt good. Felt strong.
The phone started ringing, and he went inside, picked it up off the table, answered and heard Danny’s voice.
“Josiah, what’n hell you’d take off for last night?”
“Wasn’t feeling so hot. Needed some sleep.”
“Bullshit. I heard you went to Rooster’s and got knocked in the face by some-”
“Never mind that,” Josiah said. “Look, you done crowing over your twenty-five hundred yet?”
“That what got you upset, that I had some luck? Downright shitty, Josiah.”
“That wasn’t it. I’m asking, though, you still feeling big about it?”
“Feeling happy is all. Took a little beating later on, lost about eight hundred, but I still got more than fifteen of it left. That ain’t a bad night.”
“No, it ain’t. But is it a good enough night? It all you need?”
“What do you mean?”
Josiah turned and looked out the window, out into that sun-filled day.
“Time’s come to make us some real money, Danny. Time’s come.”
16
AN HOUR AFTER ERIC played the video, he was still staring at the wreckage that remained from his camera, trying to understand what in the hell was going on, when his cell phone began to ring.
It was Claire. Calling him even though he’d told her he would not be available for a few weeks. He held the phone in his hand but didn’t answer. He could not talk to her now, not in this state. A minute after it stopped ringing he checked the message, and the sound of her voice broke something loose inside him, made his shoulders sag and his eyes close.
“I know you’re in Indiana,” she said, “but I just wanted to check on you. I was thinking of you… You can call if you want. If not, I understand. But I’d like to know you’re all right.”
A week ago, he’d have bristled. Check on me? Like to know if I’m all right? Why would I not be? Just because you’re not here, I’m not going to be okay? Today, though, sitting on the hotel room floor surrounded by his broken camera, he couldn’t muster that response. Instead, he called her back.
She answered. First ring.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey. You got my message?”
“Yes.”
Silence.
“Well, I didn’t want to bother you. It’s just that you hadn’t really said anything about where you were going or when you might be back, so-”
“It’s fine. I should have explained more. I’m sorry.”
She was quiet for a moment, as if the phrase had surprised her. Probably it had.
“Are you okay?” she said. “You sound a little off.”
“I’ve been… Claire, I’m seeing things.”
“What do you mean, you’re-”
“Things that aren’t there,” he said, and there was something thick in the back of his throat.
Silence, and he braced himself for the scorn and the ridicule she’d have to levy now, the accusations. Instead he heard a door swing shut and latch and then a metallic clatter that he recognized so well-she’d tossed her car keys into the ceramic dish she kept on the table by the door. She’d been going out, and now she stopped.
“Tell me about it,” she said.
He talked for about twenty minutes, gave her more detail than he’d planned, recalled every word Campbell Bradford had said about the cold river, described the train right down to the gravel vibrating under his feet and the furious storm cloud that came from its stack. Through it all, she listened.
“I know what you’re going to say,” he said when he was through recounting the story of the man in the boxcar. “But it’s not booze and it’s not pills and it’s not-”
“I believe you.”
He hesitated. Said, “What?”
“I believe that it’s not booze or pills,” she said. “Because this has happened before. You’ve had visions like this before.”
“Not like this,” he said. “You’re thinking of that time in the mountains, but-”
“That’s one of them, but there were others. Remember the Infiniti?”
That stopped him. Shit, how could he have forgotten about the Infiniti? Maybe because he’d wanted to.
They’d been looking for a new car for Claire, back in California when things were good and the job offers were rolling in, and had gone to an Infiniti dealership to test-drive a red G35 coupe she’d liked. The car was brand-new, and she hadn’t wanted to spend that kind of money, but Eric was feeling cocky and flush and insisting cash wasn’t an issue. So they’d taken the car out, the two of them in front and a paunchy salesman with effeminate hands wedged into the back, jabbering on about the car’s amazing and apparently endless features: navigation, climate control, heated seats, pedicures, tranquilizers, a hand that came right out from under the dash and powdered your balls when you needed it. His voice was grating on Eric, but Claire was driving and it was her car to choose anyhow, so Eric had leaned back and closed his eyes for a moment.
He swore, even hours later, that he’d heard metal tear. He believed that in his heart. He’d heard the jagged, agonized rip of metal from metal, a sound that belonged at junkyards or disaster sites, and jerked up in his seat and opened his eyes to see the windshield splintered and spider-webbed, turned to Claire and saw ribbons of blood spreading across her forehead and over her lips and down her chin as her neck sagged lifelessly to the right.
He’d gotten out some sort of gasp or grunt or shout and Claire had hit the brakes and turned to him as the guy in back finally shut up, and then Eric had blinked and the freeway spun around him and then he focused again and could see that they were all fine, that the car was intact and the windshield was whole and Claire’s face was smooth and tan and blood-free.
The excuse he manufactured at the time-something about a sudden stomach cramp-had satisfied the salesman but not Claire, and when they got back to the lot she pulled him aside and asked him what was wrong. All he’d said: Don’t you even think about buying this car. He couldn’t tell her any more than that, couldn’t describe the way her face had looked in that terrible flash.