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before them not yet splattered with blood and grey matter, the more particular shades of regret.
    The next town was two miles away. Kalvesta. It was on the way to Lydia. Lydia was where he was going. He’d forgotten for a while—driving north and east, fast, away from Texas, any way—but now he remembered again: Lydia.
    Then, like the tire wasn’t bad enough, pushing it through the tall grass and soft earth spun the water pump out, the bearing in there reeling silver angel hair out against the race.
    He could hear it, feel all the heat building up in the engine.
    Two miles.
    The Impala limped into town on three tires, favoring the tender steel rim. He nosed it into a service station, pulled the hood open from under the dash. Steam billowed up into the sky. He still had the handcuffs on.
    Before anything else—the station attendant approaching, shielding himself from the steam with a small, red rag—he had to protect the children. He did. He turned into a white person so as not to attract attention— White —all his hair telescoping into his scalp, pressing on his brain so that he had to set his teeth against it, hard, then broke the round key off in the trunk lock, using both hands because of the six-inch chain between his wrists. He had his shirt hanging from the chain, wrapped in his hands. Like he’d used it to twist the radiator cap off a few minutes ago.
    He followed the side of the car around to the open hood. The station attendant was trying to see through the steam. He looked up, the brim of his dingy brown hat framing his eyes. They were blue. The stitching on his shirt read TAYLOR.
    “I’d say she’s one hot bitch, yep,” Taylor said, pushing his hat back on his head to see under the hood better.
    “You don’t know me,” Amos croaked, shaking his head no, please. “I’m White.”
    And now Taylor was studying him, it felt like.
    There was only one thing to do.
    Amos reached under the hood and placed his bare palm against the radiator cap. The skin sizzled, curling back from the heat, and he fell to his knees, mouth open in a scream, just no sound.
    “ Holy —” Taylor said, didn’t get to finish because the water was pressuring out from under the cap. It was like a sprinkler head now. In hell.
    Amos backed off, holding his hand—his hands , chained together—close to his stomach, staring his eyes wide.
    Taylor dove for the water hose, pointing Amos inside, to the garage. Something about a first-aid kit on the wall.
    Amos turned, stumbled into the cool, dank air of the garage, and stood among the tools. His hand didn’t hurt anymore, never had. Not really, not him. He became Indian again and slowly removed the Def Leppard shirt from the chain of the handcuffs and straightened it on the hood of a Cutlass. It was his favorite shirt, the one concert he’d ever been to.
    The chain he set on a vise. The vise was welded to a three-inch pipe, the pipe set in concrete poured into an old seventeen-inch Ford wheel. There were probably bolt cutters here somewhere, a torch even, but the vise would work. He took a slag hammer by the very end of the handle, to make the most of the six inches of motion he had, then fixed the chain in the vise and tried to hit it with the hammer, missed, came down on the table instead, throwing sparks.
    Right next to the vise was a bench grinder, with a foot pedal. Amos smiled. He wasn’t White. He held the leading edge of the slag hammer under the grinder until it was shiny sharp, a flat point, then worked it between one of the links of the chain, started twisting, passing the handle of the hammer from one hand to the other. After three revolutions, the chain snapped; his hands fell free. And then he looked at the hammer, past it to Taylor, the Impala.
    Kalvesta. This was Kalvesta.
    Maybe they wouldn’t mind if he stayed here an hour or two.

FIVE 30 March 1999, Gove, Kansas
    The old man was standing in front of the convenience store. It was six o’clock maybe. The