Freedom [258]
A grueling haul across the Rust Belt pushed their total trip mileage past ten thousand, their petroleum consumption past thirty barrels. It happened that their arrival in the Twin Cities, in mid-August, coincided with the first autumn-smelling cold front of the summer. All across the great boreal forest of Canada and northern Maine and Minnesota, the still substantially intact boreal forest, warblers and flycatchers and ducks and sparrows had completed their work of parenting, shed their breeding plumage for better camouflaging colors, and were receiving, in the chill of the wind and the angle of the sun, their cue to fly south again. Often the parents departed first, leaving their young behind to practice flying and foraging and then to find their own way, more clumsily, and with higher mortality rates, to their wintering grounds. Fewer than half of those leaving in the fall would return in the spring.
The Sick Chelseas, a St. Paul band that Walter had once heard opening for the Traumatics and guessed would not survive another year, were still alive and had managed to pack the Free Space event with enough fans to vote them on to the main event in West Virginia. The only other familiar faces in the crowd were Seth and Merrie Paulsen, Walter’s old neighbors on Barrier Street, looking thirty years older than everybody else except Walter himself. Seth was very taken with Lalitha, could not stop staring at her, and overruled Merrie’s pleas of tiredness to insist on a late, post-battle supper at Taste of Thailand. It became a real noseynessfest, as Seth prodded Walter for inside dope on Joey and Connie’s now notorious marriage, on Patty’s whereabouts, on the precise history of Walter and Lalitha’s relationship, and on the circumstances behind Walter’s spanking in the New York Times (“God, you looked bad in that”), and Merrie yawned and arranged her face in resignation.
Returning to their motel, very late, Walter and Lalitha had something resembling an actual quarrel. Their plan had been to take a few days off in Minnesota, to visit Barrier Street and Nameless Lake and Hibbing and to see if they could track down Mitch, but Lalitha now wanted to turn around and go straight to West Virginia. “Half the people we have on the ground there are self-described anarchists,” she said. “They’re not called anarchists for nothing. We need to get there right away and deal with the logistics.”
“No,” Walter said. “The whole reason we scheduled St. Paul last was so we could take some days here and rest up. Don’t you want to see where I grew up?”
“Of course I do. We’ll do it later. We’ll do it next month.”
“But we’re already here. It won’t hurt to take two days and then go straight to Wyoming County. Then we won’t have to come all the way back. It doesn’t make any sense to drive two thousand extra miles.”
“Why are you being this way?” she said. “Why don’t you want to deal with the thing that’s important right now, and deal with the past later?”
“Because this was our plan.”
“It was a plan, not a contract.”
“Well, and I guess I’m a little worried about Mitch, too.”
“You hate Mitch!”
“It doesn’t mean I want my brother living on the street.”
“Yes, but one more month won’t hurt,” she said. “We can come straight back.”
He shook his head. “I also really need to check the house out. It’s been more than a year since anyone was there.”
“Walter, no. This is you and me, this is our thing, and it’s happening right now.”
“We could even leave the van here and fly out and rent a car. We’d only end up losing one day. We’d still have a whole week to work on logistics. Will you please