Vonetta tried to fire up the Harley. The engine didn’t catch.
‘—for the head,’ Shepherd continued. ‘Two full minutes to wash everything else. And two minutes to rinse.’
‘If we jump back to the motel together,’ Dylan said, ‘right now, the two of us hand-in-hand, are we going to wind up like the fly and the scientist?’
Shep’s next words were saturated with an unmistakable note of wounded feelings: ‘Shep doesn’t eat crap.’
Baffled, Dylan said, ‘What?’
When Vonetta keyed the ignition again, the Harley answered with proud power.
‘Shep doesn’t eat a narrow little list of crap like you said, a narrow little list of crap. Shep eats food just like you.’
‘Of course you do, kiddo. I only meant—’
‘Crap is shit,’ Shepherd reminded him.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean any of that.’
Straddling the Harley, both feet still on the ground, Vonetta gunned the throttle a few times, and the roar of the engine echoed across the meadow, through the hills.
‘Poopoo, kaka, diaper dump—’
Dylan almost cried out in frustration, but he swallowed hard, and maintained his composure. ‘Shep, listen, buddy, bro, listen—’
‘—doodoo, cow pie, bulldoody, and all the rest as previously listed.’
‘Exactly,’ Dylan said with relief. ‘As previously listed. You did a good job previously. I remember them all. So are we going to wind up like the fly and the scientist?’
With his head bowed so far that his chin touched his chest, Shep said, ‘Do you hate me?’
The question rocked Dylan. And not solely the question, but the fact that Shepherd had spoken of himself in the first person instead of the third. Not do you hate Shep, but do you hate me. He must feel deeply wounded.
Behind the house, Vonetta turned the Harley out of the driveway and rode across the backyard toward the meadow.
Dylan knelt on one knee in front of Shep. ‘I don’t hate you, Shep. I couldn’t if I tried. I love you, and I’m scared for you, and being scared just made me pissy.’
Shep wouldn’t look at his brother, but at least he didn’t close his eyes.
‘I was mean,’ Dylan continued, ‘and you don’t understand that, because you’re never mean. You don’t know how to be mean. But I’m not as good as you, kiddo, I’m not as gentle.’
Shepherd appeared to boggle at the grass around his bedroom slippers, as though he had seen an otherworldly creature creeping through those bristling blades, but he must instead be reacting to the astonishing idea that, in spite of all his quirks and limitations, he might in some ways be superior to his brother.
At the end of the mown yard, Vonetta rode the Harley straight into the meadow. Tall golden grass parted before the motorcycle, like a lake cleaving under the prow of a boat.
Returning his full attention to Shepherd, Dylan said, ‘We have to get out of here, Shep, and right away. We have to get back to the motel, to Jilly, but not if we’re going to end up like the scientist and the fly.’
‘Gooey-bloody,’ said Shep.
‘Exactly. We don’t want to end up gooey-bloody.’
‘Gooey-bloody is bad.’
‘Gooey-bloody is very bad, yes.’
Brow furrowed, Shep said solemnly, ‘This isn’t a Mr. David Cronenberg film.’
‘No, it isn’t,’ Dylan agreed, heartened that Shep seemed to be as tuned in to a conversation as he ever could be. ‘But what does that mean, Shep? Does that mean it’s safe to go back to the motel together?’
‘Herethere,’ Shep said, compressing the two words into one, as he had done before.
Vonetta Beesley had traveled half the meadow.
‘Herethere,’ Shep repeated. ‘Here is there, there is here, and everywhere is the same place if you know how to fold.’
‘Fold? Fold what?’
‘Fold here to there, one place to another place, herethere.’
‘We’re not talking teleportation, are we?’
‘This is not a Mr. David Cronenberg film,’ Shep said, which Dylan took to be a confirmation that teleportation – and therefore the catastrophic commingling of atomic particles – was not an issue.
Rising off his knee to full height, Dylan put his hands on Shepherd’s shoulders. He intended to plunge with his brother into the gateway.