At the end of three weeks Raela gave the ten thousand dollars she’d collected to Eric. The next day Ahn and Raela went with Eric to the hospital and helped Thomas down the stairs and then to the station, where the brothers boarded a train bound for Phoenix.
16
On the trip to Phoenix, Thomas said to his brother, “You didn’t have to come with me, Eric. If you just gave me a ticket and a couple a bucks I coulda gone on my own.”
“But what would you do when you got there?”
“I don’t know. There’s always somethin’ to do. It’s not that hard.”
“I know, Tommy,” Eric said. “But we just found each other. The only reason you would even go to jail is because you were looking for me and because you saved Mona.”
“But what about her?” Thomas asked. “She needs you to be with her.”
“It’s not gonna take long,” Eric explained. “We just need to set you up somewhere where the police won’t find you. Then I’ll go back home. I promise.”
Thomas stopped arguing. He was happy to be able to spend time with Eric. He knew that Eric could use his help, that he was somehow lost and needed Thomas to lead him out of a dark corridor. He could tell by the way Eric looked away so often. There was even sadness in his smile.
So they took a room in a Phoenix residence hotel and began to plan for Thomas’s future.
The first thing they did was go shopping for clothes. They cruised through Banana Republic buying sweaters, shirts, pants, jackets, underwear, socks, and even a hat for Thomas. The young man was amazed by the variety and cost of these things. He hadn’t been to a clothes store since his days with Monique and Lily when he’d buy a new pair of pants and a T-shirt at JC Penney once every six months or so.
At the same mall they bought walking shoes and a big suitcase for the trip that Eric had planned.
“I’ve never been to New York,” Eric told Thomas. “That means the police won’t think to look for us there.”
“What about Dad?” Thomas asked.
“I told him we were going and that I’d get in touch with him.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing. He just looked kinda sad and nodded, and I left.”
“Why’s he so sad?” Thomas asked.
They were sitting across from each other on single beds in the Laramie Extended-Stay Hotel and Residence on the outskirts of the city. Their window looked out onto a vast desert of yellows and oranges.
“He’s been like that ever since Mama Branwyn died and they took you away,” Eric said. “All he does is work and sleep.”
“You can see it in his eyes,” Thomas added. “He’s got old man’s eyes.”
“I think it’s because of me,” Eric added. “When I was a kid I always made him do things for me, and I didn’t even see it. And then when I got older it was already too late.”
Thomas rubbed the palms of his hands over his black-cotton trousers. He thought about not being in jail or on trial.
“Maybe he could come visit after we get to New York,” Thomas suggested.
The next day they were on an eastbound train. They sat across from each other at the front of the car and talked for eighteen hours a day.
“I took riding lessons...”
“I found a glass-cutter and made drinking glasses from beer bottles for a while. After I’d make’em, I sold’em on the boardwalk in Venice until the police chased me away...”
“After the SATs I went to UCLA to study economics. I like numbers that do things in people’s pockets. It’s funny...”
“I never had sex with a girl yet...”
“I’ve never been in love...”
“And are you sad like Dad?” Thomas asked after three hundred miles were gone.
“Not like him. I’m not really sad at all. I have everything I want. Especially now.”
“But you look sad,” Thomas said. “You don’t hardly smile, and your eyes are always movin’ around like you’re looking for something all the time.”
“Up until now I guess I’ve always been looking for you. Dad tried to find you after a few years, but nobody even knew where your real father was. Finally they found him down in Texas, but by then he’d lost track of you.”
That first night on the train from Phoenix, Eric slept while Thomas sat and looked at the moon out of his window. Thomas felt safe sitting next to his brother. He didn’t care about being on the train or going to New York. He wasn’t afraid of the police finding him. The day Eric came to take him away, Thomas was already planning to leave. He thought he might go down to San Diego, where he’d heard a man could sleep under fruit trees and eat off their limbs for breakfast. But Thomas had a feeling of safety with Eric — between them they made something whole.
Thomas exhaled, and for a long moment he just sat there without taking air back in. The train lurched at a turn in the tracks, and he found himself breathing again, feeling deeply satisfied. For the first time that he could remember, he didn’t have to worry about who was coming or when his next meal would be or where he was going to sleep.
But looking out at the lunar-lit plains, Thomas began to think that he might die soon. Death made sense to him. So many people he had known were dead: his mother and Pedro and Alicia and Tremont, Bruno and Chilly and even RayRay. He had been so close to Death for so long that he wasn’t afraid of Him. But he didn’t want to die, because he wanted to be with Eric. Having a brother meant he had something to live for.
“Eric,” Thomas whispered in the darkness.
“Yeah?”
“You know what I worry about all the time?”
“Not having any place to live?”
“Uh-uh. There’s always a place to stay or hide,” Thomas said. “The thing that always scared me was if one day I went crazy and forgot about back home with you and Mama.”
“Which one?” Eric asked.
“Which one what?”
“Are you afraid of going crazy or forgetting?”
“They’re both the same thing.”
The next morning, in Denver, a young black woman got on the train. The two seats next to Thomas and Eric were free, but she went to a single seat four rows down.
“She’s pretty,” Thomas said to Eric.
“I guess,” Eric said, not really looking.
“Did you ever think that we would be together again on a train going to New York?”
“No,” Eric said. “I thought that I would probably die before seeing you again.”
“You?” Thomas grinned.
“What’s so funny?”
“I don’t know. I just don’t think about you dying.”
“I think about it all the time.”
“Why?” Thomas asked.
A young white man moved to the seat next to the young black woman. Thomas felt that maybe he should have done that, but then he thought, no.
“I think about killing myself,” Eric said seriously.
“What for? You got everything. And you said you’re not that sad.”
“Sometimes I think that it’s because of me that other people get hurt.”
“That’s crazy,” Thomas said. “Nobody gets hurt over you.”
“I met Raela, and three days later Drew killed Christie, shot you, and the police killed him.”
“And you think that it’s because you wanted her?”
Sheepishly Eric nodded.
Thomas looked away a moment. He noticed the white man talking to the young woman.
“I was lookin’ at the moon last night,” Thomas said, “while you were asleep.”