Page 64 of The Midnight Knock

And then, between one moment and the next

Ooh, and it’s alright and it’s coming on.

We gotta get right back to where we started from.

MAXINE NIGHTINGALE, “Right Back Where We Started From” (written by Pierre Tubbs and J. Vincent Edwards)

All life is a circle.

ROLLING THUNDER, Cherokee

Part IDÉJÀ VU

LEAVING

They left town at dawn. They left behind his brother’s body on the couch upstairs and most of his brother’s brain matter clinging to the ceiling. They left behind the shotgun his brother had used to kill himself. Years ago, Ethan had demanded that their mother buy him a Remington 12-gauge for his birthday so he could be like all the other boys in town. After much debate, their mother had bought two guns. She’d given one of them to Carter. “Keep an eye on him, won’t you?” she’d said.

Even then, when they were barely more than boys, Carter suspected that his mother, like himself, had known that his brother Ethan wasn’t going to die of old age.

Now, on a cold night a decade later, Carter had been downstairs playing a Nintendo game with Hunter. Carter was hardly a gamer, and the Nintendo was ancient and hopelessly outdated, but Hunter had taken to it instantly. Hunter had never touched a console before the boys met. It was the same with movies, books, TV. “My dad kept me too busy,” Hunter said. “And then I was on the road.” Hunter got restless with most things, but he took to video games with a child’s glee that Ethan always found touching. There was an innocence to Hunter, buried under all the scars and fangs and razor blades.

“When you die, you get to start over and you know what’s coming,” Hunter said of the game on their TV. “Can you imagine?”

Which is when they heard the shot: Carter’s brother, spraying brain matter across the room upstairs. Even before its echo faded, Hunter had the game turned off and a plot in place. “We can use this,” Hunter said with a cough, and spat a bloody wad of phlegm.

“No one knows your brother came home last night,” Hunter continued. “The shotgun took care of his face. They won’t bother with the expense of tracking down dental records if they don’t have to. We’ll take your brother’s truck. People will assume I left, just walkedback out of town. They’ll think you killed yourself for it. They’ll think you couldn’t stand another day of this.”

Carter, getting over his shock, said, “What about DNA? Fingerprints?”

“The fire will take care of those.”

The boys got up. They got busy.

“Grab the bag your brother brought,” Hunter said. “Don’t take any of your own clothes.”

“He didn’t bring a jacket. It’s freezing outside.”

“It won’t be freezing in California.”

Hunter had unlocked the door to the shop’s engine bays, dug out a spare can of kerosene. He said to Carter, “Take your brother’s wallet. Take his ID. Memorize the date of birth. Don’t think. Don’t hesitate. Don’t even think of yourself by your old name anymore. Not even in your head.”

They left behind the house, the shop, the street where he and his brother had played Cowboys and Indians until well after dark. They left behind the only life he had ever known. He already wondered, deep down, why he had been so willing to accept such a radical plan, to run away with a man he’d only known for six weeks, but he tossed the question out the window, pretended he’d never asked it at all. They were heading west, into the rising sun, and as they slipped onto the highway, they could see a cloud of smoke rising in their truck’s mirror as it all went up in flames.

“Carter Cross,” Hunter said. “I now pronounce you Ethan.”

They were driving to California. Everyone started their lives over in California.

In spite of his brother’s example, Carter—Ethan—still believed that it was possible to start your life over.

THE SILVER GLAREFERNANDA

4:00 p.m.

She had been driving for as long as she could remember. Driving and driving and driving. In all that time, nothing had changed outside the stolen Malibu. The same blue-white sky. The same gold-brown desert scrub. The same straight ribbon of road. The Malibu’s motor had thrummed at the same pitch for hours, the tires moaning against the blacktop. The Sierra Madres—or any other sign of the border—were still nowhere in sight.

Nothing had changed except the needle of the fuel gauge, sinking and sinking toward the red.

An unnumbered highway. The Dust Road. There were faster ways to Mexico, but when the girls had edged past the parking lot of the diner in Turner—past all the cruisers gathered there, lights flashing—Fernanda had chosen this route because Frank never sent his men down here. Frank feared the Dust Road, and for good reason. His mother had apparently disappeared at some motel somewhere out here. He used to wake up screaming in his bed, tormented by nightmares. Frank said his mother was still there, at the motel, calling to him.