Shift (21 page)

But I had no choice. I worked the tire off the rim with my tire irons, ripped the old tube out, and found the sliver of amber glass from a broken beer bottle still stuck in the housing of my tire.

I don’t know how long it took me to replace the tube and get back on the road. I do know that my heart had stopped pounding, and now all I was feeling was rage toward the guy I’d been trusting with my life the whole way across the country. I climbed back onto the seat of my bike and started pedaling, quickly picking up speed as the incline pulled me forward.

What would I say to Win when I found him? Maybe I’d just hit him. Hit him and flatten both his tires and then leave
him
behind. Revenge fantasies carried me all the way down the hill, past a half-burned, crumbling trailer next to the side of the road, and were still percolating as I pulled into a gas station next to a sign welcoming me to Concrete, population 790.

I didn’t see Win, but I needed water, so I got off my bike, grabbed my bottles, and unclasped my chinstrap.

A tiny little woman was perched on a plastic folding chair, her head dwarfed by a broad straw hat and a pair of dark glasses.

“Got any water?” I asked.

She swept a gnarled arm around in a backward arc. “Round back’s a tap. Help yourself,” she said between sips of her coffee.

I walked in the direction she’d pointed and found the tap as promised. The rusted wheel stuck for a second before the water began to trickle out in a slow stream. I uncapped a bottle, held it under, and leaned against the wall, my head inches from a window ledge peeling paint in giant flakes. I closed my eyes; the aftermath of the adrenaline rush had left me drained.

The cool water spilling over the top of my bottle and onto my hand made me open my eyes abruptly. When I did, I saw something that made me ignore the puddle of water forming around my feet.

On the sill of the window just in front of me were five adhesive patches lined up in a neat row.

My patches.

Win.

I turned off the spout, capped my bottle, and grabbed the patches. I charged around to the front of the building. The woman was still sitting in her chair.

“How long ago was he here?” I demanded.

She seemed confused, then she stirred herself enough to speak. “Kid on the bike? Maybe ten minutes ago.”

I caged my water bottle, stashed the patches into my saddlebag, locked my left pedal in place, gave a push, swung the right leg over, and rode west.

I rounded the corner of the house and headed for the open barn doors. I could hear the sound of hammering inside. The back fields still bore the scars of the harvest—deep ruts left behind by the tractor wheels.

The hammering was steady, insistent, my heartbeat falling into rhythm with the pounding. Even in this open space it felt like my world had collapsed again to this barn.

Win was standing in the barn, his back to me, bent over a pair of sawhorses laden with two-by-fours. He looked taller. I was mildly surprised to find him not in a pair of bike shorts and a jersey, but wearing a pair of grubby Carhartts and a ratty T-shirt I didn’t recognize. I realized then that I’d sort of frozen him in my mind as I’d seen him on the day he disappeared—bike shorts, gray
shirt, cycling shoes, helmet—looking like he had every day of our trip. But of course, he’d changed.

“Hey, Win,” I said.

He stopped hammering at the sound of my voice. He was standing exactly where we had wrestled a month and a half ago. Had it only been that long?

He didn’t turn at first, just rested his palms on the board he was nailing and said, “I knew you’d come.”

I dropped my pack and sat down on a crate near the open door. “What tipped you off? Could it be that you pretty much told me where you were?” The anger crept into my voice unbidden. It had always been there, and now that its source was standing in front of me, it was drawn out like a magnet.

Win didn’t seem to notice. “Might have been that,” he said. He turned, and I could see he’d let the stubble he’d started this summer grow into a full-blown beard. The cut on his face from the night we fought had knit itself into a neat scar. His hair was longer.

Win looked happy. More than happy—peaceful.

It took me completely by surprise.

“What?” he said. I hadn’t realized I was staring.

I shook my head. “Nothing. You look different … that’s all.”

He nodded. “Probably. So do you. You look older.”

“I guess I am. My birthday was last month.”

“Yeah, I remembered,” he said, moving to a low stool across from my perch. “Thought about calling.”

“Really,” I said without interest. Now that I was here, I didn’t want to pull the trigger.

We were both quiet for a moment. “Remember that time you
had that birthday party at the mini-golf place, and the manager yelled at us for doing that thing with the club and the clown?”

I actually smiled. “Yeah, but it was totally you. I just got blamed for it.”

He laughed. “Sort of like this, huh?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Sort of.”

Then we were quiet again. Win messed with the hammer, tossing it so it landed claw down in the dirt, over and over again. Finally I spoke. “What are you doing here?”

He sighed. “Harvesting, mainly. Now that that’s done, I’m just sort of doing a few odd jobs, building a new gate, clearing brush, working on the tractor when it breaks down—”

“Damn it, Win. That’s not what I meant.”

He let the hammer fall to the ground once more and looked me in the eye. “I know what you meant, Chris.”

“Well, then why’d you let me come all the way out here if you’re not going to answer my questions?” I said, my voice edging higher, louder than it needed to be.

“It’s not like that, Chris,” he began. “It’s … complicated.”

“Not really. I mean, your dad’s a controlling prick. We’ve known that for years. You wanted to get away. College almost nine hundred miles from home wasn’t quite far enough, so you hide out here.”

He didn’t say anything. Suddenly I had the sensation we were wrestling again.

“The part I’m still having trouble understanding is that you used me, Win.
You used me
. You knew all along you were going to stay out here, didn’t you?”

“Not here exactly …,” he began.

“But you knew you weren’t coming back. Definitely knew you had no uncle in Seattle.”

“Yeah. Sorry about that.”

“Sorry? You’re sorry? That’s classic! Screw everybody over and expect an apology to cover it?” I was shouting now.

He shook his head. “I didn’t see any other way.”

“You had twenty thousand dollars in your saddlebag, and this was the only way?”

“Heard about that, huh?”

“No. I found it the second week. In Indiana.”

He looked surprised. I enjoyed the advantage. “Why didn’t you say something?”

I still hadn’t figured out how to answer that question. “How was this the only way to escape?”

“Not escape, exactly,” he said. “The only way to get away and say good-bye at the same time.”

Jacob and the angel all over again.

“Good-bye? Your parents think you’re
dead
. At one point they suggested I murdered and robbed you! Now they’re just convinced I know where you are or that I helped you plan all this. Your father’s been to see me on campus. He’s had his own personal FBI agent harassing me for the last month, Win!”

“You know how he is, Chris … he’ll lose interest in me after a while—”

I went for the pin. “He bought my dad’s company.”

Win fell silent, his mouth hanging open.

“He’s going to fire him unless I give you up.”

Win dropped his eyes and stared at the floor as we sat. He
stood up abruptly, walked over to the workbench, pulled a coffee can off the top shelf, and removed the lid. He withdrew an envelope. “This is for you,” he said, crossing to me and dropping it at my feet. “I told you I’d pay you back.”

“What is it?” I asked without reaching for it.

“The money I owe you. And a little more. I figured school’s kind of expensive, and I didn’t want you to have to pay for the bus tickets—”

“What the hell, Win? I don’t want your money.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Chris,” he said. “You need it.”

“That doesn’t mean I want it. You’re just as bad as he is! What am I supposed to do? Take your money and feel grateful? Your dad’s been trying to throw his money around, buy me off, and threaten my dad … but you? I never thought you were
that
much like him.”

“I’m not like him!” he said.

“Of course you are! You’re using people like he does. You’re just acting like it’s noble or that you had to do it. At least your dad has the balls to do it outright.”

“Shut up, Chris,” he started.

“It makes perfect sense that you came back to the place you figured they’d be happiest to see you, ask the fewest questions. They probably don’t even mind being used. And I’ll bet you haven’t shared any of that money with them,” I said.

“I mean it, Chris,” he said.

“Or what?” I said. “Let’s see what the old man has taught you. What kind of threats you can make?” My eyes stung, but still I stared at him, silently daring him to say the wrong thing, to give
me a reason to do what I’d come out here for. “What have you got for me?”

“Do you want to know? Do you
really
want to know what he’s taught me? Well, here it is. I’m pretty sure I could make him proud in the intimidation and manipulation department.” His voice caught. “And that’s what scares the crap out of me!”

That wasn’t what I’d expected.

“I mean, even though I hate him, it scares the hell out of me how much I’m like him,” he said.

“Way to face those fears head-on,” I said. “Nothing like running away from home.” I could feel my rage slipping away, like a slow leak in an overinflated tire. But part of me didn’t want to let it go.

Win sprang to his feet, wiped his eyes, and began pacing the barn. “He’s all talk, you know that.”

I clenched my hands. “Right now his talk is pretty damn scary!”

“You know he won’t do it, Chris.”

“No, I don’t. If he’s all talk, why’d you stay out here? Why couldn’t you handle it? Why do I have to take the heat? Why does my dad have to get fired?”

He shook his head. “The talk’s enough when you hear it for as long as I have. I had to get someplace where his wasn’t the only voice I heard inside my head. Someplace I could figure out who I was.”

I didn’t respond.

“When I said ‘good-bye’ before,” he began, “I didn’t mean to them. I meant good-bye to you. To us.”

I nodded. Certain things between friends are said not because
you don’t know them, but because you need the other person just to say them.

“But here I am,” I said, softening a bit more. “As good-byes go, this one’s a bit unconventional.”

“Here you are,” he agreed. “I tried to tell you on the road, Chris. I did. Every time you asked about my uncle or we talked about school …”

“But you didn’t,” I said, throwing my hands up in the air. “If you had, I could have just told your dad you took off, and he might have left me alone.”

“My dad would have come down on you even harder if I’d told you anything! And you can’t lie, Chris. It would have been worse.”

“But at least
I’d
have known! You should have told me!”

“I couldn’t, Chris, and you know why. You’d have talked me into going back. You’d have been the one to make me see that I shouldn’t do it.”

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “If you’d explained how bad it really was—”

“That’s you
now
talking, Chris. We’re both different people. I don’t think I realized how different until after you’d gone. That trip changed us.”

I nodded.

“
Now
, you know that I’m supposed to be here.
Then
, you would have done what you’d always done. You would have talked me off the ledge, told me I could get through it. And you’d have been right.”

“But now?” I asked.

“Now,” he said. “Now you and I both know that when you change as much as we have, when you’ve proved that you’re more than everybody thought you were, you can’t go back to the place you started. You’ve outgrown it all. The place, everybody’s expectations … yourself.”

He was right. And in the second that I realized it, I stopped fighting.

“Still, you could have told me,” I said.

He picked the hammer up again, began pounding his palm. “I tried, Chris. I
really
tried. That day on the road with the coyote. That night in the barn. With the patches. When you passed me outside Concrete.”

“You stayed in Concrete?”

He nodded. “Watched you ride past me. I hid in a stand of trees a quarter mile off the highway. Even with the flat and my head start I was pretty sure you’d catch me.”

“Then, you never made it to the ocean,” I said.

He shook his head. “Coast to coast, almost. But you made it. I knew you would.”

The Win I’d spent the last decade with would never have admitted that. This incarnation was humble, even wise. We
had
changed. At least, he had.

“I knew you were up to something anyway,” I said. “The money was sort of a clue. What kind of idiot carries around that much cash on his bike for two months?”

He laughed. “You were probably pretty pissed about me borrowing off you.”

“Sorta,” I said.

“I figured if I didn’t keep being irresponsible Win, you’d really know something was up.”

“That might have given it away,” I admitted. I rubbed my hand through my hair—it felt sticky after those nights on the bus. A dog barked.

“What am I going to do, Win?” I said abruptly.

He shrugged. “Guess you know the answer to that question as much as I do.”

“I came because I was pissed. I came here to take you back,” I admitted.

“And now?”

“Not sure.”

We sat in silence for a full minute.

“I don’t even have to ask if you told anyone. I know that much about you, Eagle,” he said, the old nickname feeling like a favorite pair of shoes. “I’ve thought a lot about why I sent you those postcards. I wanted to get a real good-bye in. That was part of it. I wanted to tell you I was sorry about leaving you. I wanted you to know I didn’t use you.”