Marty said, "I'd like to do stunt work."

"I don't think so," Pellam told him.

"No, it'd be fun."

"No, it'd be painful."

After a few minutes Pellam said, "So we got a cemetery, we got a town square, two barns and a farmhouse. We got a ton of roads. What else do we need?"

Marty flipped through a large notebook. "One big, big, big field, I'm talking sonuvabitch big, a funeral home, a Victorian house overlooking a yard big enough for a wedding, a hardware P store, a mess of interiors… Goddamn, I ain't gonna get to Manhattan for two weeks. I'm tired of cows, Pellam. I'm so damned tired of cows."

Pellam asked, "You ever tip cows?"

"I'm from the Midwest. Everybody there tips cows."

"I've never done it. I'd like to, though."

"Pellam, you never tipped a cow?"

"Nope."

Marty shook his head with what seemed like genuine dismay. "Man…"

It had been three days since they'd pulled off the Interstate here in Cleary, New York. The Winnebago had clocked two hundred miles, roaming through knobby pine hills and tired farms and small, simple pastel cubes of houses decorated with pickups in the driveway, cars on blocks, and stiff laundry pinned and drying on long lines.

Three days, driving through mist and fog and yellow storms of September leaves and plenty of outright rain.

Marty looked out the window. He didn't speak for five minutes. Pellam, thinking: Silence is platinum.

Marty said, "Know what this reminds me of?"

The boy had a mind that ranged like a hungry crow; Pellam couldn't even guess.