“I did!” Wayne said. “The trade is in the glove box. You’re always too watchy for me to slip things in your pocket. How’dyou get so good at that, anyways? You’re a rusting coachman.”
“Practice,” Hoid said solemnly. “A verygreatamount of practice.” He opened the glove box, and a bright white creature with a long, hairless tail peeked out. “Wayne. Alive rat?”
“I call him Sir Squeekins,” Wayne said. “I wasn’t gonna bring him, but he snuck into my pocket, he did. So I figure, ‘That’s the seventeenth time you’ve let him escape his cage, Wayne. Better give him to someone responsible.’”
“You are a uniquely bizarre individual,” Hoid said, smiling as the rat crawled up his arm. “But… trade accepted, I guess?”
“Great, great,” Wayne replied. “He likes strawberries and booze, but don’t give him none of the booze, ’cuz he’s a rat.”
“Noted.”
They waited at the edge of the wide roadway. And Wayne, he’dhad this feeling all day today. Something was happening. Something important.
“You ever feel,” Wayne said, “like you wish life was like the stories?”
“What do you mean?” Hoid asked.
“There’s always a good ending in those stories. The ones my ma used to tell… theymeantsomething. People, they wereworthsomething.”
“I think we live stories every day,” Hoid replied. “Ones that we will remember, and tell, and shape like clay to be what we need them to be.”
“The last story my ma told me,” Wayne said, “was about a lawman. Funny, huh? That I’dend up becoming one. Except he was a hero. And I’m… well, I’m me.”
“You do yourself a disservice, Master Wayne,” Hoid said softly.
“Can’t be no hero if you were a villain, Hoid.”
“But in most of the stories, it is the villain who knows the hero best.”
Wayne chewed on that, watching the flow of cars on the road ahead. And… found himself imagining that roadway as a river. Because a part of him wished that what Hoid said could be true.
Then he waited some more.
And some more.
Damn. Someone really ought to come up with a way to make it so cars that wanted to cross had a better chance. Maybe you could hire someone to stand at the corner and fire a gun in the air when too many cars were blocking the way, and frighten them to move faster? Anyway, that zooming of cars… that road could be a wide river. Yeah, a river of stone and steel. Faster than any other river in the world.
He smiled, remembering a calm, beautiful voice that had kept his world solid for so long.
Yeah, there’s a bandit to be chased,he thought.But it’s still wrong. Where’s the hero? He should be here, but he stayed behind.
In a lull, Hoid gunned the truck and they scooted across—earning only three honks from cars that had to slow. Pretty good, considering. You could cross even the fastest river, full of the worst kinds of rocks,if you were in a bigger rock yourself. No need to fly, like Jak had in the story. This wasn’t cheating. It was just a smarter way, it was.
Followed by the last of their convoy, they pulled into the dim warehouse lit by some unlatched windows up along the tops of the walls. Why put the windows up there, where nobody could see outta them?
Oh, right. Illegal stuff. Yeah, that made sense.
“Thanks for the ride, Hoid,” Wayne said, pulling out his gangster hat—a worn wool cap traded off one of the thugs they’dcaught. “You might wanna keep your head down if this next part gets shooty. Hope it won’t though.”
“Understood, Master Wayne,” Hoid said. “Best of luck.”
Wayne nodded, and it was time to become someone else. He scrunched up his face, squinting like Franis did—that was the guy he’dgotten the hat off of. A fellow Wayne’s height and age, but more weathered. By time, by smokes, by the things he’ddone. Wayne already wore a wig to change his hair color, along with a bit of rubber on his chin to square it out, and some makeup to sink his eyes. With the hat, hewasFranis—missing only one thing.
He climbed out and swaggered. Franis sure knew how to swagger.
VenDell—wearing the Cycle’s body, a man named Granks—met him outside the truck. The others waited quietly. All those dirty conners in the trucks would jump out only when they had someone important to catch. Someone more than a bunch of useless, low-level cretins.
Not that Franis was a cretin. He just needed work, you know? You started by taking a job at the docks, but work there grew tight. And the schedules were so bad. Then you heard your friend Vin had a job with someone who paid better, and all you had to do was move some boxes. Who could get into trouble for moving boxes? Even if you did have to keep a gun on you at all times, and be ready to shoot.