When Emmett arrived shortly after 7:00, he climbed into his fourth taxi of the day. But ten minutes into the ride, he saw the meter advance a nickel to $1.95, and it occurred to him that he might not have enough money for the fare. Opening his wallet, he confirmed that the various trains and taxis had left him with only two dollars.
—Can you pull over? he asked.
With a quizzical glance in the mirror, the cabbie pulled onto the shoulder of a tree-lined road. Holding up his wallet, Emmett explained that all he had left was what the meter was showing.
—If you’re out of money, then you’re out of the cab.
Nodding in understanding, Emmett handed the cabbie the two dollars, thanked him for the ride, and got out. Fortunately, before pulling away, the cabbie had the graciousness to roll down the passenger window and give Emmett directions: About two miles up take a right onto Forest; another mile after that take a left onto Steeplechase Road. When the cab pulled away, Emmett began to walk, his mind taken up with the scourge of infinitely bisected journeys.
America is three thousand miles wide, he thought to himself. Five days before, he and Billy had set out with the intention of driving fifteen hundred miles west to California. Instead, they had traveled fifteen hundred miles east to New York. Having arrived, Emmett had crisscrossed the city from Times Square to lower Manhattan and back. To Brooklyn and Harlem. And when, at long last, it seemed his destination was within reach, Emmett had taken three trains, four taxis, and now was on foot.
He could just imagine how Mr. Nickerson would have diagrammed it: with San Francisco on the left side of the chalkboard, Emmett’s zigzagging progression on the right, and every leg of his journey growing shorter than the last. Only, the paradox that Emmett had to contend with wasn’t Zeno’s. It was the fast-talking, liberty-taking, plan-upending paradox known as Duchess.
But as exasperating as this was, Emmett understood that having to spend his afternoon shuttling back and forth was probably for the best. Because when he had walked out of Ma Belle’s earlier that day burning with frustration, had Duchess been standing in the street, Emmett would have pounded him into the ground.
Instead, the train rides and taxi rides and this three-mile walk had given him the time not only to revisit all the causes for fury—the Studebaker, the envelope, the mickey—but the causes for temperance too. Like the promises he had made to Billy and Sister Agnes. And the advocacy of Ma Belle and Charity. But most of all, what gave Emmett pause, and called for some sense of measure, was the story that Fitzy FitzWilliams had told him over glasses of whiskey in that dead-end bar.
For almost a decade, Emmett had quietly nursed a sense of condemnation toward his father’s follies—the single-minded commitment to an agrarian dream, the unwillingness to ask for help, and the starry-eyed idealism that sustained him, even as it cost him his farm and his wife. But for all his shortcomings, Charlie Watson had never come close to betraying Emmett in the manner that Harry Hewett had betrayed Duchess.
And for what?
A trinket.
A bauble stripped from the body of a clown.
The irony hidden in the old performer’s story wasn’t lost on Emmett for a second. It announced itself loud and clear—as a rebuke. For of all the boys whom Emmett had known at Salina, he would have ranked Duchess as one of the most likely to bend the rules or the truth in the service of his own convenience. But in the end, Duchess was the one who had been innocent. He was the one who had been sent to Salina having done nothing at all. While Townhouse and Woolly had stolen cars. And he, Emmett Watson, had ended another man’s life.
What right did he have to demand of Duchess that he atone for his sins? What right did he have to demand it of anyone?
* * *
? ? ?
Within seconds of ringing the Whitneys’ bell, Emmett could hear the sound of running inside. Then the door swung open.
At some level, Emmett must have been expecting Duchess to appear contrite, because he felt a sharp stab of annoyance to find him standing there smiling, looking almost victorious as he turned to Billy and extended his arms—just as he had in the doorway of the Watsons’ barn—in order to say: —What’d I tell you, kid?
With a big smile, Billy stepped around Duchess in order to give Emmett a hug. Then he began to gush.
—You’re not going to believe what happened, Emmett! After we left the circus—while you were with your friends—Duchess drove us to the Empire State Building so that we could find Professor Abernathe’s office. We rode the express elevator all the way to the fifty-fifth floor and not only did we find his office, we found Professor Abernathe! And he gave me one of his notebooks in case I ran out of blank pages. And when I told him about Ulysses— —Hold on, said Emmett, smiling in spite of himself. I want to hear all about it, Billy. I really do. But first, I need to talk to Duchess alone for just a minute. Okay?