“You’re ridiculous.”
“Drop it, Tyra.”
“Fine. Whatever.”
Tyra spun around and slumped in the seat, reaching for the radio and moving it up the dial, passing John Denver and the Hollies before settling on Eric Clapton and turning it up. I wasn’t surprised by her feelings for my brother. I’d seen similar things in one form or another. Fascination. Loathing. Jason understood the effect, but paid little attention. He kept the dark glasses on, kept the silence.
Back at the car, he picked up on the tension. “What?”
He slid into the driver’s seat, and Tyra shook her head, arms crossed. Sara tried to smooth it over. “Party slows down without you. That’s all.”
“Well, I’m back.” He rustled around in a paper bag. “No wine, but I got these.” He handed a pint of vodka to Sara and another to Tyra, who twisted off the top and took a pull.
Sara touched her friend on the shoulder. “We all good now?”
Tyra drank again, and spoke to Jason. “Let’s drive, all right?”
Jason did as he was asked, backing away from the curb and making a slow roll through the little town. The kids watched us pass, and so did the old men. In the empty lanes beyond, the day was just as clear and bright, but the mood had shifted. Tyra sulked and drank. She put her hand in Jason’s lap, and looked at Sara as if offering a challenge no one understood or cared about.
“Here.” Sara passed the bottle, but I had little use for straight vodka. “You sure?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’m good.”
She took the bottle back, drank small sips, and trailed a hand in the hot, hard air. After that, no one really spoke. The radio played. The sun beat down. I watched the countryside, liking how large certain trees grew when they stood alone in empty fields. Around four o’clock, we came to a crossroads and a right turn that took us deeper into the countryside. Jason took his first pull on the bottle, gesturing at pine forest, shimmer, and sandy verge. “This is the edge of the sandhills. Another hour or so, then we turn back west. Everybody happy?”
Strangely, I was, and it was only in part because of Sara. Her hand was back on my leg, yes, but Jason was being very cool, and Tyra had settled into the kind of quiet resentment that was easy to ignore. I thought the day had found its second breath, that everyone was good.
I was wrong about that.
The first sign came when Tyra took another giant pull on the bottle, and Jason said, “You might want to slow down.”
She took another swallow instead, turning the radio louder.
“Do you mind?” I asked. “They’re new speakers.”
She turned them even louder. Jason studied her from the corner of his eye, then said to me, “I’ll buy you new ones if she blows them.”
“Damn right.” Tyra said it loudly, and turned her face to the wind.
After that, Jason took us south. At first, we had the road to ourselves, but we passed a pickup, an old sedan. They fell away, far behind, and the car was steady at seventy miles an hour when we crested a small hill and saw the bus a mile or two ahead. We dropped off the slope, and heat devils shimmered far out on the blacktop. Beyond the distortion, the bus seemed half-real and half-mirage, a white shape that floated above the road and solidified as Jason took us up to seventy-five and then eighty, the road perfectly straight as it cut through a world of wind and sunlight and scrub. The bus swelled as we raced up behind it, and I could feel the speed building.
“Shit.”
Jason’s foot came off the gas as we closed the gap. The car fell back, fifty yards behind the bus, then a hundred. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said. “Reflex.”
I looked from my brother to the bus, and understood, at least a little. Tall, black letters stretched across the back of the bus.
LANESWORTH PRISON
INMATE TRANSFER
I saw the windows next: the wire mesh in steel frames. I saw the prisoners, too.
“You good?” I asked.
“Yeah, man. No problem.”
It was the first time I’d known anything about prison to affect my brother. At trial, he’d been calm and cool, even as the verdict came down, guilty. He’d looked at me for a slow moment, then held out his hands for the bailiffs and their cuffs. I’d visited prison once, and he’d been sanguine then, too. You’re too young for this, he’d said. I’ll see you in a couple years. It was a rule of childhood that Jason was unlike the rest of us, and it was strange, now, to see him so human.
“What’s the problem, pretty boy? Let’s go.”
Tyra was impatient and drunk and speed-addicted. She moved to the music, half-dancing. Jason frowned, but accelerated until the gap closed and I could see the bus better. It was half-full, maybe fifteen inmates, their clothing as black and white as the bus. We hung on their tail for a full minute, and no one but me noticed that Jason was sweating. Tyra was lost in the music, and then suddenly not.
“Whoa, hey! Convicts!”
She sounded callous and cruel, the kind of voyeur that would watch a good friend fail, and smile on the inside. Maybe that was unfair, but it bothered me to see such ugliness in such a beautiful woman.
From the rear of the bus, two men stared at us through dirty glass. Tyra clapped and grinned, bouncing where she sat. “Pull up beside them! Pull up!” Jason moved on automatic, his right hand tight on the wheel. “Yeah, like that. Right alongside them.” He eased into the left lane, and Tyra turned in her seat to watch the bus slide up beside us. We were alone on the road—us, the bus, and a second lake of shimmer, far out in the flatness. “Not too fast,” Tyra said. “Right there.”
“This is not cool.”
Jason spoke quietly, and Tyra ignored him. Men were watching now, their fingers curled in the mesh. Tyra rose to her knees, her left hand on the top edge of the windshield as she waved and mocked them, pushing out her breasts and blowing kisses.
“Tyra…”
Jason spoke in that same lost tone. His eyes were locked on the road ahead, as if no part of him could bear to look right. He was paler now than when I’d seen him yesterday.
“Jason, just go around.” I leaned forward.
Tyra’s hand found his shoulder. “Don’t you fucking move.”
His hesitation lasted a few seconds, but that’s all it took. Tyra lifted her top, exposing herself and laughing. Her breasts were large and pale, but I watched the convicts instead. If she’d meant to give pleasure, she’d failed. The faces I saw were angry or bitter or sad. Only one man smiled, and it was the kind of smile I hoped to never see again.
“Tyra, that’s enough.” I turned to Sara for help, but she was looking away, her head shaking in small movements. In the bus, men began to stand, seven or eight crossing from the other side, their fingers, too, in the mesh.
Tyra said, “Watch this.”
She touched herself below the waist, grinding her hips, her breasts still exposed. A prisoner beat on the mesh; another did the same. Behind them, a guard was moving down the aisle, pushing, shouting. Men began to yell, most of them on their feet. The guard pulled a prisoner from the window, then another. A third prisoner pushed back, and the bus swerved across the dotted line, forcing Jason onto the road’s edge, tires in the gravel as the car shimmied, straightened. I said, “Jesus, Tyra!” But she was excited, oblivious. Another guard appeared, his baton rising and falling. It was a riot, a beatdown. Blood flecked the glass. “Jason, let’s go!”