We headed west, through Phoenixville and out beyond it on Route 724, past clapboard houses with American flags stabbed into their front lawns and through towns where the Fourth of July bunting still crisscrossed the road. We saw fields of corn and cows, yard sales and flea markets and heaps of rusted junk and more cornfields. I could feel the heat of the sun on the back of my bare neck, and the cooler shadows of trees passing on the road beneath me. I was so lost in the landscape that I almost missed it: a sign for Pottstown. Was Wilson taking me there? I tapped him on the shoulder, and he pulled to the side of the road.

“I don’t want to go to Pottstown.”

“We’re not. It’s just a town on our way. Anyway, he’s not there. He’s in prison.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. He was arrested in the hospital, and the cops took my statement there, and they had yours. They had a search warrant for his house and found stuff. He was arraigned last week. No bail. We don’t have to worry about him.” Wilson put his hand to his jaw.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“My lawyer.”

“Are you in trouble because of all this?” Had my mom gone to a lawyer those few days she was here? Did she need one?

“No. Well, maybe for beating him up in the first instance, but I had a lawyer long before that because of other stuff.”

“Yeah,” I said, as if I really knew what he was talking about. Maybe it was for robbery, or for that night they said he punched out all the windows, or possibly for dealing drugs, which he still did.

I got back on the bike, and we continued west.

After Reading, we passed Minersville. I knew already we were in mining country. Everything looked like it had slumped slightly; even the sky sagged, as we passed coal trucks and anthracite signs and lots of American flags. A few miles beyond Buck Run, Wilson turned off the main road. We went down two small roads and onto a dirt path that sent up white dust all around us, like ash. The path ended at a chain-link gate and a sign that read No Trespassing and another that read Blasting Area. Other vehicles had driven right over the fence; just to the left of the gate, a whole section lay flattened on the ground. Wilson drove over it. We had come through a tunnel of trees, but in front and all around us now was nothing—no vegetation, no trees, no color. Wilson kept on driving forward, but the landscape was completely bare.