At the police station there are questions about the blood relative.
‘She’s a nice lady?’ the desk sergeant asks.
Magnus shakes his head, indicating firmly he does not think so.
The sergeant tries again. ‘She’s difficult to like?’
Magnus nods. Difficult.
‘She’d be your grandma ….’ This has already been established, but the sergeant thinks confirmation might soften the boy’s attitude.
Magnus nods. She is, unfortunately.
‘So, you want to try to like her?’
Magnus shakes his head. He doesn’t like the suggestion.
‘That’s too bad ….’
Some kind of concession is called for, he realises, so Magnus nods again.
‘My grandma lived in Tucson,’ the sergeant says. “She kept chickens and a whole heap of junk in her yard. Used to embarrass the hell out of me when I went to visit.’ The sergeant sees that Magnus had become more attentive. ‘Tell you what … I wish I’d spent more time with her.’ He gives Magnus a long look. ‘She’s gone now,’ he says, eyes blazing.
The doctor is overweight. His watch-strap is too tight. Somehow, that connects with him being patient. Even his sweating is the patient type. Little beads that don’t form rivulets. He has a soft voice: he talks to himself and wants to be kind. This notwithstanding, his examination seems to Magnus to involve a disproportionate amount of gawking and psychological strategies to politely test for madness – which, in the end, is no bad thing, because evidently, Magnus is not mad. He had thrown up out of the window of Hunter Dobbs’s cop car just as they pulled into the station lot, but he is suffering from mild sunstroke, the doctor confirms. He might throw up again. Rehydration is essential. These cops know the drill. Something out of a sachet is dissolved in water and given to him. Medicated cream is applied to the skin that has been exposed. Magnus is to rest. A mild sedative is prescribed. A follow-up appointment is to be made with a doctor.
When the examination is complete, the doctor squeezes Magnus’ head between his big doughy hands, and smiles. ‘This boy …’ – he breaks off to commune with Hunter Dobbs and the others, each in turn – ‘this boy is lucky, and he knows it.’ He takes his hands away, as though wanting to see if the head will remain on the shoulders. ‘Don’t you?’
Magnus nods. The head stays on. The doctor is pleased. ‘He knows it,’ he confirms to himself.
‘We can get the car back,’ Magnus says plaintively.
His father turns his head slowly and stares at him uncomprehendingly.
‘It can be found,’ Magnus assures him. ‘It’s not too far.’
The staring continues, then Edwin breaks the fluttering silence. ‘You can find it out there in the desert?’ His voice is small, patient, unsettling.
Magnus hesitates, feels his ribs contract, as they did when he threw up outside the house in Bakersfield. ‘They can find it,’ he says.
‘Who?’ his father asks, leaning his face in, making like he wants to scare his son with this one-word question. ‘Your new friends?’ he adds.
Edwin begins to shudder. This shuddering becomes a mock rain dance. It seems to Magnus that the sadness in his father has turned to a terrible meanness. He is mesmerised by his father’s inhibited foot-lifting and his loose arms, which are extraordinarily strange and unfamiliar in their movement, but then, he has never seen his father do any kind of dance.
When he stops, Edwin sinks onto the bed, but sits bolt upright. His father needs comforting, Magnus realises, but does not know how he can comfort him. ‘We can get the car back tomorrow, dad,’ he says.
A boy knows all the lines on his father’s face. Knows how they bunch together to form a smile or a frown. Can read their configuration the moment his father steps through the door from work. But Magnus has not seen this alignment before, this complex bunching. He has seen his father merry with drink, but never wretchedly drunk with worry. ‘It just needs petrol,’ Magnus adds. ‘We don’t need to fix the roof.’
Nor has he seen his father cry, and now he sees the man’s angry eyes fill with tears. Magnus cannot fully connect this terrible reality with his taking the car into the desert and running out, but he knows he has brought it on. It has a lot to do with being loved, or not being loved. It makes him want to dance his father’s dance and cry his own tears.
But he does not. Some unknown force determines that he should stand as he is and bear witness with his entire being. This is the end of boyhood as surely as his father’s meeting with his blood parents marks his father’s coming of age. Watching this dance, not the driving into the desert, is the end of boyhood. The bloods, he notes, did not perform for his dad.
They retrieve the car. This is not the companionship Magnus wants, but it is part of their journey. They fill the tank. John Peatree’s mechanic fixes the roof, though it doesn’t sit quite right.
All the way back to Los Angeles, they have the windows and the roof up, and the air-conditioning on. There are jets of warm air leaking in, and that is new. The car doesn’t sound the same. It doesn’t like where it has been, but that has to be ignored.
Before they return the car, Edwin drives them around Hollywood, but they don’t feel like swanks. They stop to visit a department store, to buy the shirts they had promised themselves they would buy for the desert climate, shirts they will bring home now. They drive down part of Sunset Boulevard, but Magnus can identify no whores and doesn’t dare ask his father to point them out.
Magnus feels he has cheated his father on the car, and he hopes this city tour will make up for that, but his father is tired and inattentive, and Magnus believes he has failed to be a good son.
They are both inured, not despondent. They are sleepy and dull-witted – which is how it should be for two people exhausted from their trials. Together, they have done this thing and already some great but ill-defined opportunity is passing.
Edwin continues their baggy tour, even when Magnus falls asleep. He runs low on fuel, and finally he has to make a dash for the airport, because he has miscalculated and they are running late.
‘We’re here, Magnus,’ he calls out.
Magnus wakes, blunted and speechless, but the Sparlings are not yet at the airport. Not even close to it. It will be another twenty-five minutes before they reach the airport buildings.