The intersection growls and gusts. Sammy Squirrel crosses unaware against the DON’T WALK sign, grubby as a bugbear from the roads and rails. Drivers brake and stare. His fresh abrasions gleam, his curly blond hair explodes in crusts and tangles, his dirty T-shirt and cargo shorts hang like shedding skin. When the honking and the glassed-in obscenities begin, the voice commands, Stop them Use the rock. He flinches and walks faster. He flicks up two pairs of two fingers, peace signs, then forms two hands in the shape of a heart. The grin is fixed. It never leaves his sooty, sunburned face.

He tours Arby’s looking for a plug-in, finally spies one beneath a table where a wiry man in western wear works ketchup-dipped fries past sleek blond muttonchops. His hat reads EAT THE WHALES. His shirt reads BUILD THE WALL. Under the table, this man’s tooled boots are shiny.

Stop him. Use the spike.

“The hell you want?”

Peace, Sammy Squirrel’s fingers promise.

Love, his hands frame.

“You come one step closer, Helter Skelter, I’ll snap your filthy neck.”

When the shiny boots have gone, he sloughs his backpack with a puff of railroad smut, crawls beneath the table, and plugs in his phone charger. As his battery gathers from zero, he watches large people angrily overeat piles of meat. When he learned about the exploding sheep he was watching news on the recreation ward TV. This is how people are, the voice told him that night. This is why Cassie died Get a knife. Get a gun. Get a bomb and stop them.

He broke his window. Chickenshit. He jumped and hurt himself landing. He ran and hid. He slept in doorways in Portland for a week, lost his shoes to a drunken man with a knife, ate from the Voodoo Doughnut’s dumpster, got the name Sammy Squirrel for climbing through trees along the Springwater, began to start and tremble when the voice caught up—That man! With the suit and briefcase! Stop him! Push him into traffic!—then met a homeless dude who showed him how to jump a freight and found himself huddled on steel mesh, his fingers locked through it, escaping, he hoped, on a car racketing high across the chalk-blue churn of the Columbia River.

The voice had followed him.

If you’re going to be such a chickenshit, just jump.

He waits and waits for the battery. At six percent, he gets on the Arby’s Wi-Fi and text messages his mother.

Hope all is good

Seven percent becomes eight percent on the cracked and dusty Samsung.

Cuz I’m doing good too

Becomes nine percent. His empty stomach snarls.

Don’t worry