What he meant was, I can’t do it, I won’t, I’m not fucking insane.

X, though, had no patience for fools and their feelings. “We spoke recently of your youngest son, Trevor. We’ve never really talked about his older brother. Thomas, I believe.”

“Thomas, yes.” The warden nodded stupidly.

“He lives at home, I’m told.”

“He helps his mother.”

“He has a girlfriend? A job?”

“No. Neither.”

“Physically, though…” X sat, and laced his fingers. “How is young Thomas?”

41

Nothing changed until the phone rang. After that, we drove for a long time, open roads at first, and then traffic sounds, starts and stops that felt like the city. By the time we stopped for real, Chance had been too quiet for too long, and I was half-dead from the heat. The car rocked when the driver got out, and it was another bad moment, because it felt so final.

I didn’t die, though.

He left us in the trunk.

Ninety degrees on the outside, maybe one-forty in the darkness. Chance was as loose as a dead man.

Was he breathing or not?

I couldn’t tell; I didn’t know.

I thought maybe I was dying.

When the trunk opened, it was dusk, and I was still alive. I saw black trees and that purple sky, everything fuzzy at the edges. I couldn’t move, and he knew it. Maybe that’s why he’d left us in for so long. Or maybe he wanted us dead the easy way. It wouldn’t take much more. He stood there for a few seconds, and then was gone; and I drank down cool air, lustful, lost, and drowning. When sound came, it was a slaughterhouse sound, like a pig squealing. He hauled me out and dropped me down, folding Chance like a blanket beside me, dead or alive, I still couldn’t tell. His heat could be trunk heat, his movements involuntary as wheels squealed again, and he rolled us toward a house I’d never seen, then down a ramp to a room filled with tables, cages, and horrible things made of bright metal so they glittered in the light.

At the first cage, he rolled us inside, and then dragged us onto the floor. I hit hard, but couldn’t feel it. Chance’s head bounced. A knife appeared, but cut tape instead of skin. He didn’t look at my face or say a word, just closed the cage, and locked it with a hunk of brass the size of my fist. I thought he would leave us then, but he ran a hose and sprayed us down with cold water, the shock of it like a slap as it hit my face and mouth, and choked me. It was water, though, and when he was gone, I sucked it off the floor.

I couldn’t feel my arms or legs.

Chance never moved.