<<< Back Table of Contents Next >>> 26 Clean Break Anton stepped through the gates of Reinhold's compound onto a grim industrial street. The last snows of the season were melting, turning the earth to slush and mud. Gray-bellied clouds skimmed overhead, ripe with foreboding. He could feel their electric charge, and it was the shock of an ominous freedom. He trudged into town. For the first time in years he was alone, with no idea what to do. At the bus station he found a pay phone and called Steve's aunt. Tearfully, she told him what he'd already guessed, that she hadn't heard from Steve in a long time. "He went looking for you over a month ago," she said. "I tried to talk him out of it. I said you'd be back in touch, that it would all blow over in time." "It's not what you think, Mrs. G. It wasn't a lovers' quarrel." "Whatever it was, he didn't take my advice." "And you didn't hear from him after that?" "He called a couple of times when he first got to Portland. He was feeling anxious because he couldn't find you. He said no one would talk to him." "That doesn't surprise me. And then?" "He stopped calling. I figured he'd found you." "He did. But then we got split up again." "Oh." "Exactly. And he never came back after that?" "I'm sorry, he didn't. I was worried, but what could I do? You know how boys are, independent. You're that way yourself." He considered this. "So it's me looking for him now." "I guess so. I was really hoping he'd be with you." "I've been out of the picture lately. I need to get back to Portland and make myself visible." "Are you in some kind of trouble?" He gave a grim laugh. "I've left a few loose ends hanging. It'll take time to sort out." "Speaking of loose ends, Steve left some things here for you before he left. He said they were important to you. Are you coming this way? You can pick them up if you like." "I'm sorry, Mrs. G—" He didn't want to return to Idaho and test the warning he'd gotten from Reinhold's men. "I should get back to Portland before I do anything else. Can you send them to me? Are they already packed?" "He packed them himself. I haven't touched them." "I've got an address you can use, if you promise not to share it with anyone. It's of a friend of mine back in Iowa." He gave her Timmins' address. His things would be safe there until he quit Portland for good. "Do you think you'll find Steve?" she asked. "I'll look for him as soon as I get to Portland. The important thing is to be out in the open where he can find me, don't you think?" "What about your place in Twin Falls? He might show up there." "If he does, you'll know it. But I don't think it'll happen. There's nothing left for us in Idaho, anyway." This worried her a bit, but she didn't say anything. "When I find Steve," he said, "I'll have him call you. If you hear from him first, tell him to look for me in the usual places. Lizard Lounge, Cosmos, the Hi-Life Hotel." She laughed. "Is there really a Hi-Life Hotel? I thought it was just a silly song." He'd written a song by that name that described the bleary, absinthe-driven conversations he'd had there with magical singing heads and reptiles that played chess. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean 'silly,' I just—" "It's all right, Mrs. G. Hey, I'd better go. I've got to catch the next bus out of town." • • • On his first few days back in Portland, Anton roamed Zombieland, staying in back rooms with friends he knew. He wasn't in a hurry to return to his studio, and besides, he wanted to get into the thick of things. Like Steve, he found that no one would talk to him about The Last Assassin. Most of them had never heard of it. Others avoided the subject because they thought it would be touchy for him. Only a few seemed to know it was dangerous. People told him that Steve had passed through town a few weeks before, remained for a few days, and gone away again. No one seemed to know more than that. Apparently he'd stayed at the Windsor Hotel. Anton went there and showed the manager a photo of Steve. The manager had trouble fixing his eyes on the photo, because they kept shifting from the poster of Anton on the wall to the real person standing in front of him. Anton pushed the photo across the counter and tapped it a few times. The man shrugged. "A lot of kids look like him. It could be any kid. But yeah, he stayed here, I guess. In your old room, in fact. He had a thing for you, right?" Anton gave him a hard look. "Was he here a long time?" "I dunno, a week? Three or four days?" "Did he say where he was going after that?" The man let out a slimy chuckle. "We wasn't like, bosom buddies! He didn't tell me his every move." Anton went next to Steve's apartment. On the counter he found the note that Steve had left. "If you see this, give me a sign." He felt a rush of wild hope, until he realized that the note was from before Steve's disappearance. He folded it and slipped it into his pocket. The apartment reminded him of their early days together, before he'd dragged Steve into the affair of The Last Assassin. Feeling upset, he went outside to clear his head. He wandered a few blocks toward the river as if in a trance. Suddenly he noticed he was standing in front of a car with Idaho plates. The multiple tickets told him it had been there for weeks. Realizing it was his own car, and that Steve had left it there, his grief welled to the surface. Why did every precious thing turn to dust in his hands, he wondered? It was Steve who had paid the price for his ambitions. He blamed his own ego more than anything, though Reinhold had a role in it too. He and Reinhold deserved each other, he thought bitterly. He recalled his conversation with Steve on the night they'd met. "Evil creature that I am," he'd said. "Don't call yourself an evil creature!" Steve had laughed. Who had been right? He noticed he was only a few blocks from where Trashtown had been. He'd heard that the building would be torn down soon to make way for a shopping complex. He walked there and sat across the street for a smoke. As he was studying the ruins of his past life, a vagrant sat down next to him and asked for a light. The old bum took a drag on his stinky cigarette, dragging weatherbeaten knuckles across a grizzled jaw. He spoke, or possibly Anton heard it only in his mind. "There was a time," the man said, "when I, too, dreamed of early fame. I figured it would give me the chance to meet anyone I wanted. I'd look into the souls of celebrities, politicians and preachers, and see they were a sham. Instead I'd hang out with street poets and misfits, the voice of the people. Is that how it's been for you?" Anton shifted uneasily. "Something like that." "And the other times?" "It's been a real letdown, let me tell you. Most people have no clue how the world works, and celebrities are no exception. Only, they've got the ego and the resources to make themselves heard. They think they have something to say, so they splash it all over. And no matter how good I make my own message, it gets lost in the drizzle." He dropped his cigarette and ground it out. "So fame is a trap. If I could wreck my life and start over—well, that's what I'm doing." He looked over to check the man's reaction, but he was alone. That night he returned to his studio. As he approached the building, he was hailed by a drunk who looked a lot like the man he'd met earlier. It was as if the hobo clown from his room at the Windsor Hotel had come to life, and was stalking him around Portland. The man pointed to his studio and said, "I saw a cop push a girly-man out that window." Anton turned on him in a fury. Was the girly-man supposed to be Steve? "You can't push someone out that window. It's eight feet off the floor!" The drunk eyed him belligerently. "I saw what I saw. Do you live here, or what?" "Who are you, anyway? Why are you messing with me? Are you with the MetaDisney Coalition, that scheme I keep hearing about that wants to turn the world into a giant theme park? I hear they're putting actors on every street corner who can switch from preacher to prostitute, panhandler to cop with robotic precision. Are you one of those?" "You're crazy," the man muttered and walked away. Anton was used to actors with secret scripts. He knew for a certainty that at any given moment, a large part of America was working for Covert Activities. Covert Activities could include secret societies, weird religions, conspiracies inside or outside of government, even terrorist art movements like filling the Grand Canyon with thousands of dead buffalo. Not all of these factions worked for Reinhold, but they covered the same ground. In his case, Covert Activities included nearly everyone around him, from the guy dancing naked in the street to the woman who sold him herbal medicine. Everyone had a cover story, a secret identity that was his real identity. The drunk was one more intervention from that world. Walking into his studio for the first time in months, he found his things from Idaho stacked in the middle of the floor, tagged like evidence from a crime scene. His recording equipment was there, along with the furniture and household items Steve had left behind in Twin Falls. It struck him with eerie finality, as a reminder that his time with Steve was over. It was also a warning of how thoroughly Reinhold's goons could penetrate into his life if they chose. He went through the pile to make sure there was nothing in it of personal value. His notebooks and photos, his tapes of The Last Assassin, and Timmins' painting of the Virgin were all missing, which meant they were now on their way to Iowa if Aunt Clara had followed through. Once again he was grateful to Steve for all he'd done. His answering machine was full, as it had been for weeks. He listened to over a hundred messages, but none was from Steve. Of course, Steve would have been with him in Twin Falls at the time. Nor was there any sign that Steve had been to the studio since they'd left Portland together. On the other hand, he could tell that Kliff had been in and out of the space as he'd always been. A few little things were missing, like a brooch, a figurine, a feathered hat. Kliff had always given himself permission to borrow things like these to complement his own lifestyle, and apparently nothing would change that. He set up his recording equipment as it had been before, and settled uneasily into old habits. Aside from a longing for Steve that came less often over time, it was almost as if nothing had changed, as if the Idaho interlude had never happened. Friends dropped by to see him after his long absence, and for a while the studio was more active than it had been in years. Yet despite his best efforts, it didn't feel like his own any more. He felt like an intruder, like nothing really belonged to him. He'd heard that Icky had taken a regular gig at Cosmos, which told him there was no collective punishment for those who had joined his rebellion. One night he invited Icky and a few others to watch grainy footage of the Boise concert, which was the only time Generic Dummy had played together in public. The image and sound quality were both poor, and it was impossible to make out the words. This made the concert feel much more raw and chaotic than it had really been. "What happened next?" a friend said over the music. "We heard you got busted." Anton laughed. "Yeah, they locked me up! They threw away the key. I watched them do it, they dropped it in the toilet. My pals came in the middle of the night to saw off the bars." He took a drag on his joint and passed it on. "Or maybe I hallucinated that last part, but I know I played Boise, and I know they threw me in jail. After a while they let me go, and I never knew why. But it's all good. I just can't set foot in Idaho anymore, is all." He kept expecting Reinhold to make a move, but there were no signs of menace on the horizon. It was more unnerving than a real threat. Instead there was a lull or hesitation, a momentary suspension of time, like a window that has been shattered but not yet fallen into pieces. He felt a chill when he went out in public, but no open hostility. A few of his friends kept him at a distance, but no one disowned him. The people at Chaos Theory Records still picked up the phone when he called. For all intents and purposes, his life proceeded normally, so that after a while he began to wonder if he'd escaped danger. Maybe Reinhold's power wasn't all it seemed to be? He used this period to work on his final album, Clean Break. It had the texture of a factory-made pudding, and a deceptively smooth surface like oversaturated pop. But beneath the sugary coating was a bitter, self-lacerating album, in which he accused the entertainment industry of being fueled by drug money and guilty of murder. "Everyone in this room is guilty" went the refrain of one of his songs, which was a hit on the dance floor that summer because of its intricate, driving beats. For months the line, "Guilty, guilty, guilty" was a slogan in urban bistros and beachfront cabanas. The album gave Anton a taste of his former glory, but to reviewers and fans alike it was a middling effort. After the intense feelings generated by Destroyed Teen, there had been two years of silence and now, a throwaway album. People began to realize they were sick of Anton. He typified the excesses so common to the underground music scene at the time: religious fetishism, stunted emotionalism, narcotic self-pity. Clean Break was nothing but white noise, an existence filter. When big-name reviewers and self-produced zines alike used comments ranging from "grandiose posturing" to "pathetic drivel," Anton knew his career was on the ropes. It was his own fault, of course. He'd lost his edge. When he'd first started out, his music had been a flaming sword, but now it was more of a gray mist. He'd staked everything on his music and risen to the top of an increasingly stagnant profession, only to lose direction and fizzle out. Sensing his weakness, the very people who owed everything to him were clobbering him now from behind. Roadies who left equipment unattended, sound men who wired things up wrong, bouncers who slept with girls they let in for free, these were the ones who were turning on him now, badmouthing him to the press as a bully, a little dictator. What happened next was Jitterkid. Jitterkid came out of nowhere and was so fresh, so right for the moment, that suddenly no one was paying attention to Anton any more. Jitterkid was everything Anton was not. They filled the void. Where Anton was random, they were on target. Where he was scattered, they were all of a piece. Their first album, Jitterkid: The Musical, announced them to the world as consummate pros. Suddenly the public knew what they'd been waiting for. When Anton had come up, the field had been so barren, he'd simply walked up to the prize and taken it. No one had been expecting a champion to appear, and he'd been unchallenged. Now he had rivals! That was interesting. The odd part was that he'd cultivated these rivals himself. Jitterkid's new album was released on his own label, Chaos Theory Records. Normally this would have been good news, but it wasn't really his label any more, because Jitterkid had made a power play within the company. With Kliff's support, Jitterkid had joined with disgruntled staff to file a lawsuit accusing Anton of mismanagement and neglect. Vince and Blake had added their own claims, saying he'd squandered their profits. The case was now before a judge, who had placed Chaos Theory under court-ordered supervision. Until the affair was settled, Anton was forbidden from making decisions on behalf of his own company. He understood now how Reinhold would destroy him, not in a single stroke but discreetly, leaving no trace. A rumor began to circulate that Anton was under criminal investigation. The story changed depending on who was telling it, but the idea was the same. His career was little more than a money-laundering front, and his real wealth came from drug dealing, an underage sex ring, or trafficking weapons. When word got around about this, the grace period was over, and the window finally shattered. People turned away from him on the street. Club Omaha told him not to come back. His calls weren't returned. From his rooftop, he could see a billboard advertising Hollywood's latest thriller, Exquisite Corpse. "All for Nothing" went the tag line, and it was directed at him. From the styling of one of the actors, he could tell that this was "the Anton character." The movie Anton was a freak, a sexually twisted monomaniac with his hand in every pie. Bizarrely costumed, impetuous and willful as a child, he built an empire on slander and innuendo in the place of real talent, until he overreached and fell into a trap prepared by his own ego, with the help of federal agents. In the denouement, his empire in ruins and one step from being charged as a serial killer, he died romantically in his bedroom, naked, surrounded by mirrors, a flower in his hand, a single drop of blood at the corner of his mouth. The message to Anton was obvious. The best thing he could do was self-destruct. In response, he began to wonder if he could fragment into two beings. One would stay behind and fight, while the other would give them what they wanted and leave the world completely. He didn't want to fight, but someone had to do it. Then he realized he didn't have to fragment, because he already had Timmins to do his fighting for him. His enemies could attack him, but they had the wrong target. Timmins was the one who made the dream happen, while Anton was just a hollow shell. "You can't touch me," he laughed. "There's nothing here." Soon he would escape from the confines of the flesh, because the flesh itself was demanding this of him. His keenest pleasures came through the senses, but he was eager to experience pleasures more perfect than any one body would allow. He wanted to possess God's body, which was everywhere around him. He wanted to resume the physical union with God he'd once known. He wanted to taste everything with his own flesh: falls from twenty-story buildings, having his limbs torn off by dogs, explosions in a crowded marketplace. He wanted to be demolished, cast to the wind. These thoughts troubled him for days, during which he kept to himself and saw no one. He was preparing for the journey he'd always wanted, a journey into the unknown. He would start over from zero as he'd sworn to do. When he emerged, he was refreshed and reconciled to everything. From now on, none of the old battles mattered. He would leave it all to Timmins and return to the alien place he was from. One night he lay stretched on his mattress, the light from a nearby street lamp falling over his skin. He played with the hairs below his navel as sleep rose to cover him. A sudden engine roar racketed towards him, too fast. There was a long tire squeal, and the inevitable crash and shatter. He leapt to the window. Below, metal hissed and a body lay in the street. In the sudden stillness, his body tingled and ached for death. He felt like he'd walked in on an erotic secret. He watched as they covered the corpse and took it away. "He was like me. Now his pain is over." He stayed at the window a long time, watching where the wreckage had been. • • • That same night, he had a dream. He was sitting at a table with a three-day beard. There was an open window behind him, and a child's voice in the street. On the table were a bottle of red wine, a half-full glass, a two-way radio, and an ancient microphone. Mona leaned on the counter behind him, holding a glass of her own. As always, she wore a black dress with fishnet stockings. She tossed her head back and drank. "Warn the outer defenses," she told him. "Enemy forces are closing in. Contact may come at any time." He reached for a cigarette. "They'll slow down now that they're close." "Don't you think our people should have time to prepare?" she snapped. Eying her belligerently, he reached for the microphone. Without waiting for him to use it, she pressed a button on the counter, and a boy came in from the street. He put down the microphone and turned to the boy. "Would you take a message to Province Seven on your bicycle?" "I'd be honored, sir." "That's the spirit!" He scribbled something on a piece of paper. As the boy was leaving, he had an afterthought. "Can you read?" The boy answered from far away. "Yes...." There was a time lag as the words left his lips. "Then read the message. On it depends our civilization and everything we know." "I wouldn't know about that. I'm just a message boy." As he was speaking, the boy was shot from behind and collapsed on the floor, mouth open. Anton grabbed for his gun. He had to cross the room to get behind the counter where Mona was. As he was moving, a man in dark clothing came in through the door. The man was tall and nearly filled the doorway. Anton took a shot as the man stepped into the room, then dived for the counter. The man fired a shot of his own and Anton was hit. • • • Mona had come to him in dreams before, of course. She was Sabrina's dream double who represented chaos, nihilism, anarchy. Why she would visit him now after a long absence, he didn't know, but her message was clear. "Enemy forces are closing in." Kliff showed up later that morning to tell him the same thing. It was the first time they'd seen each other since Kliff's visit to Twin Falls. He wanted to slam the door in Kliff's face, but the shock of seeing him there made him hesitate. Kliff got to the point. "In a few hours the police will be here. I didn't find out until today. They're planning to make a spectacle of it on live TV. A raid with SWAT teams and everything. They want lots of drama, so everyone will hate you. After that you'll disappear forever." Anton whistled. "Real police? Not Reinhold's men?" "Real police. You gonna let me in?" He made room for Kliff to squeeze past. "Reinhold's invested a lot in keeping you safe until now," Kliff told him, "but recently, he stopped. You've done crimes in the real world, lots of them. Trafficking, money laundering, conspiracy, incitement to riot, illegal weapons. The evidence is out there. Need I go on?" "I did those things for Reinhold! They're supposed to be secret." "Not any more." "No one will believe it. I'm a musician, not a gangster. I've lived my life in the open for all to see. I'll get some good lawyers, and this will blow up in your face." Kliff shook his head. "For months now, ever since The Last Assassin, word's been going around that you've got something to hide. Something big, something nasty. People are waiting to find out what it is. The mainstream media has turned against you. They never liked you much to begin with, but your fame forced them to climb on board. Now they're like sharks in the water, waiting for blood. As for lawyers, how will you pay them?" "With money, Kliff. With money." "Your last album barely broke even. The others aren't doing too well, either. Now that you're fighting for control of your record label, you won't be able to raid the kitty there like you always did. Meanwhile, a lot of old debts are coming due. A lot of old friends have waited a long time to get paid off. So if you check your accounts right now, you might find you don't have much money left." Anton almost laughed. "Everyone's piling on Anton." "Exactly." "Just one thing, then. You say the evidence is out there, but who gave it to them? Someone who knows my secrets, right? Who's the snake in the grass?" Kliff blushed. "Oh, you mean me." Anton felt a blind rage. If he'd been holding a weapon, he would have used it. On the other hand, he knew that Kliff carried a knife and was the better fighter. He turned away in disgust. "You kept asking me to trust you," he said. "Sometimes I did." "It could have been different. I wish it was." "Spare me the regrets and get out of here, now." "Are you gonna wait here until they bust in?" "That's none of your business, now, is it?" "Because I came here to help." Anton glared at him incredulously. "After ratting me out? After lying to me for years? Thanks for the help, Kliff." Kliff bristled. "When you followed my advice, did it get you in trouble? It's only when you broke away that trouble started." "That's my point, exactly. Shouldn't you have seen this coming? Wasn't it obvious I'd break away someday? I'm an artist, Kliff. Reinhold is a manipulator. What business do I have with a guy like him?" Kliff sneered. "You were enjoying it at the time. You kept wanting to go deeper." Anton's eyes flashed, but he held his tongue. A scene from the Citadel passed through his mind. The Colonel was standing over Paco's tortured body. "Who am I to judge a man's ambitions?" he'd said. "I only realize them." It applied to Anton, too. Kliff saw the chance to defend himself. "I ratted you out, sure, so I could stay in the loop. I gave them what they wanted, so they'd let me in on their plans. I needed them to trust me, so I'd know when they made their move. And now here I am, spoiling their trap." Anton stared at him in amazement. "That's an excuse I almost believe." "So will you listen to me now? You need to be out of here by six o'clock. The SWAT team hasn't arrived yet, but they're setting up a security perimeter around the building. They're watching everyone who comes and goes. The only way out is through the basement." Anton nodded, impressed with Kliff's resourcefulness. "You should change the way you look. Get rid of that hairstyle, those fancy clothes. The best camouflage is to look like everyone else. Can you do that?" Anton laughed. "It used to come naturally." "It's a skill you never forget. You know the gym two blocks away?" "Rick's Body World?" "That's right. Remember those passages in the basement I showed you before? Go down there and take the first corridor on the left. There's a hole in the wall near the end. Slip through it into a big room full of desks. The door in the far right corner leads to another corridor, and you'll come to some stairs up. That'll take you inside the gym. Dress for a workout so you can blend with the other clients." "Thanks," Anton said, not knowing what else to say. They stood awkwardly for a moment. "I don't want to take any more of your time," Kliff said, turning to go. "Wait. Will this get you in trouble? With Reinhold, I mean." Kliff gave a wry grin. "He'll find out soon enough. But I'm a survivor, remember? So don't worry about me, I'll find a way out of it. Because I'm useful to him no matter what. He needs me right now to bury your career, just like he needed me to build it. Are you okay with that?" Anton waved an indifferent hand. "Bury away. I don't want to be visible any more." They embraced, and Anton was alone. He had a few hours in which to think and act. His first thought was to wonder if it was all a bluff. Maybe Reinhold wanted him to run, and he'd sent Kliff with a false alarm. Yet even if that were true, what could he achieve by staying in Portland any longer? If the end didn't come now, it would come soon enough. SWAT teams or not, there was no future for him here. He wished he had somewhere to run besides Iowa, because he didn't want to bring misfortune on his friends. But where else could he go to get away from Reinhold? Everyone he'd met since leaving home was connected in one way or another to Reinhold's empire. Fleeing to Iowa would buy time, but not much. He had no illusions about that. They would catch up with him sooner or later. Once he arrived, he would have to move quickly to assemble the resources he needed to go into hiding for real. He was about to find out what it meant to walk away from fame like it had never been, and become nothing more than a fugitive, a hunted man. He gave himself a buzz cut and put on a baseball cap and a pair of old jeans. He looked like what he'd been before, a kid from the Midwest. He tossed whatever he could carry into a duffelbag, starting with clothes, a toothbrush and razor, and whatever notebooks or tapes he found lying around the flat. There weren't many new ones since his return from the secret prison. Next he went to his library and took down a few books. He was paging through them, trying to decide what to take, when he remembered he was out of time. He threw the books down in disgust, and decided on the spot to burn everything before he left. He raged through the studio, tearing down fabrics, grabbing videos and figurines off of shelves, pulling his art collection from the walls. His intention was to take it all down to the loading dock and set a big fire in the yard. He dragged everything to the freight elevator, where it formed a huge pile. He added his books on alchemy, his tribal masks, his rock star regalia. "Vanity, vanity!" he cried as the pile grew. Suddenly he stopped, remembering what Kliff had said about a security perimeter around the building. If they were watching him now from nearby rooftops, he couldn't do anything to excite suspicion. He had to slip away unseen. On the other hand, he couldn't let the police, who were thugs of the state, or Reinhold's own thugs get their hands on his treasures. He grabbed a can of gasoline and splashed it into the elevator. He would set the fire right there. A fire in the studio was a good thing, he told himself. By the time it was visible from outside the building, it would have reached crisis proportions. That would serve as a diversion, drawing their attention to the studio once he'd already slipped away. They would be forced to send fire trucks instead of SWAT teams, confusing their plan. It was an act of folly, but he liked it. After checking that his duffelbag was ready, he tossed the match. As he made his way through the basement tunnels, he wondered if Kliff had set a trap and some unpleasant surprise awaited him in the dark. Maybe he would be ambushed by the very commandos he was trying to escape. Maybe he would find himself back in the Citadel, face to face with the Colonel. Maybe there was no exit, and he would be forced to go back the way he'd come, to be led away in handcuffs as the "rock star arsonist." Instead, he emerged in a supply room of Rick's Body World as Kliff had promised. He walked out the front door like any client, in a faded T-shirt and jeans and carrying a duffelbag. He imagined the flames spreading to the kitchen and beyond. He took a bus to Portland's south side and started hitchhiking. His first ride was with the editor of a small-town California newspaper, who was fascinated by the "vagabond lifestyle" and wished he had the courage to try it himself. He kept a book about hitchhiking in his apartment. In this spirit of solidarity, he offered Anton a spot on his couch for the night. When they reached Crescent City, he gave Anton a tour of his newsroom, showing off its typesetting machines and printing presses. Later they ate fried chicken from a box and watched Twelve Angry Men. Anton got up early the next morning and caught a ride as far as Reno. This put him on Interstate 80, which would take him all the way home to Iowa. He tried to find a ride going most of the way, and he met a traveling salesman headed through to Chicago. "I'm a demonstration specialist," the man said once they were underway. "Gotta make a few stops to show off the goods." He gestured to some valises in back. Anton grunted his consent and leaned back in his seat, closing his eyes as the man kept up a stream of shifty-eyed chatter. He wondered what was in the valises. Kitchen knives? Car wax? Alarm clocks? He only perked up when they left the highway a hundred miles later. He thought they were stopping for gas, but they kept on driving. The road shot across the empty desert, heading north. He gave the man a troubled look. "Gotta pick up supplies," the man said. They drove for more than an hour through barren terrain. Soon they would be in Idaho, forbidden territory for Anton. He grew increasingly anxious, as if alarms would go off at the Citadel the moment he crossed the Idaho border. "How long will we be on this road?" he said finally. "It won't be long. Then we head back down to Ely." Ely was to the south of them now, on the Interstate. They came to an intersection in brown hills. The road they were on headed northeast, and a new road came in from the northwest, winding around a low mesa. Neither road looked like it went to Ely. A gas station and general store sat at the corner. They stopped for a fill-up, and Anton went inside to take a leak. When he came out, he told the man, "I'm getting off here." The man looked confused. "This is the middle of nowhere." "That's just it! You said you're picking up supplies, but there's nothing around here." "It's only a few more miles," the man said petulantly. "This is far enough for me." The man screwed up his face. "As you like, kid." Anton's next ride was with a bunch of drunken Navajos, who were headed back the way he'd come. They were packed into their tiny car like a clown circus, with himself as the straight man or stooge. He was squeezed in the back between two men who plied him with whiskey. The car swerved recklessly from side to side as though it might fly off the pavement. After half an hour, he asked them to let him out in the middle of the desert. He was ready to die gloriously for his ideal, but not stupidly in a car wreck. And he still had to see Timmins. It was dark by the time he got to Ely, and too late to continue. He consoled himself that he was back on the Interstate, and that he'd stayed out of Idaho. Demoralized by the wasted day, he looked for a patch of ground near the highway where he could spend the night. He could have checked into a hotel, but he didn't want to leave traces of where he'd been. Before bedding down, he went into a convenience store for nachos and soda. The kid at the counter had a sense of adventure. When Anton mentioned that he was hitchhiking across the country, the boy confessed that he shared the same dream. He felt trapped in his tiny town, and he wished he could be chasing the next horizon like Anton. "Keep your illusions," Anton wanted to tell him as he went outside to sleep on stony ground. The next day he bought a bus ticket, because he was tired of doing things the hard way. Besides, he was coming down with a cold and needed rest. He spent most of the journey in a fitful sleep. When he woke up in Council Bluffs two days later, he was back in familiar territory. He caught rides on country roads until he got near Timmins' house, and then he walked the last mile. <<< Back Table of Contents Next >>>