Page 34 of The Drifter

"We'll be bringing John in soon."

Soon. Not no. Not John's got his own life. We'll be bringing John in soon—like a unit filling out a roster. Like somebody, somewhere, had a list with all seven of our names on it and was checking them off.

My mind was running now, and nothing it turned up smelled right. What had my brothers gotten into? A private outfit with the budget to fly jets into Texas scrubland, wrapped around a family that doesn't gather, gathering. A federal man with a vendetta aimed right at the middle of it. The middle of what?

"What is this, Tommy? What have you all gotten into?"

"Nothing we can't handle."

He said it easy, with the grin coming back up under it. I looked at my brother and didn’t believe him.

I didn't believe the can't handle and I didn't believe the easy. Something was big here. Bigger than big. You don't call in every man of a family for a job. A job takes hires. This took blood—somebody wanted all of us, specifically us, and Tommy was sitting in that armchair playing it like a reunion.

Why? Why be coy with me? I've held clearances that don't have names. If anybody on this earth was safe to read in, it was me. Instead, I was getting the furniture walked around.

I come out of a world where need-to-know is a religion. I have never once kicked against it. If I needed to know, I'd be told. That rule kept me alive for many years. I bit my tongue now out of respect for it.

But under the tongue-biting, something else was moving.

The pull.

The door was right there. My pack was ready in under a minute. There was a road out of this town, and a bus on it, and a seat on the bus, and nobody in the wide world who could make me stay. Whatever this was, it had lied to me, and the road has never lied to me, and the road was right there⁠—

"Also," Tommy said, "this is for you."

He'd pulled something else out of his pocket, and he held it up between two fingers.

A credit card. Black. Heavy-looking, the kind with no numbers on the face.

I took it because he was going to make me take it, anyway. It weighed like a knife.

"What is this?"

"That," Tommy said, "is your all-expenses-paid trip to Neverland."

I made a face.

He shrugged, entirely unrepentant. Tommy's jokes are a load-bearing part of his personality. Complaining about them has never once slowed him down.

"It works everywhere, it doesn't have a limit, and nobody's watching the statement, so don't get shy. Dinner out. New boots. A haircut. A makeover, if the spirit moves you."

"A makeover."

"I'm just saying the resources exist."

And that was the first time it landed on me—really landed—that my little brother, in his plain jeans and his plain T-shirt, looked put together. I did not. His plain clothes fit like they'd been introduced to him personally. Mine had been washed in a lot of sinks. He had a haircut. I had hair. There was a road-worn layer on me that I hadn't seen in years, because I hadn't stood next to anything that showed it.

"You're saying I need a makeover."

"No." Tommy stood, and the grin went all the way up into his eyes. "I'm saying you could use a sprucing. There's a difference, and a gentleman would know it." He looked me over, head to boots, with the frank cruelty available only to family. "How many T-shirts do you own, by the way? Total. On earth."

"Three."

"Three."

"One's nearly new."

We stood there grinning at each other like idiots.