“Me and Jack Kerouac Junior. Who stole four grand from his old man and doesn’t even know where the money came from.”

“He’s a cheap bastard with a steelworker’s pension. He’s got plenty of money now that he’s not sending it all to my sister.”

“Who probably needed it.”

“Who graduated from Yale with about ten scholarships while I stayed back and looked after Little Hitler.”

Poe sighed. “Poor angry Isaac.”

“Who wouldn’t be?”

“Well to share some wisdom from my own father, wherever you go, you still wake up and see the same face in the mirror.”

“Words to live by.”

“The old man’s been around some.”

“You’re right about that.”

“Come on now, Mental.”

They turned north along the river, toward Pittsburgh; to the south it was state forest and coal mines. The coal was the reason for steel. They passed another old plant and its smokestack, it wasn’t just steel, there were dozens of smaller industries that supported the mills and were supported by them: tool and die, specialty coating, mining equipment, the list went on. It had been an intricate system and when the mills shut down, the entire Valley had collapsed. Steel had been the heart. He wondered how long it would be before it all rusted away to nothing and the Valley returned to a primitive state. Only the stone would last.

For a hundred years the Valley had been the center of steel production in the country, in the entire world, technically, but in the time since Poe and Isaac were born, the area had lost 150,000 jobs—most of the towns could no longer afford basic services; many no longer had any police. As Isaac had overheard his sister tell someone from college: half the people went on welfare and the other half went back to hunting and gathering. Which was an exaggeration, but not by much.

There was no sign of any train and Poe was walking a step ahead, there was only the sound of the wind coming off the river and the gravel crunching under their feet. Isaac hoped for a long one, which all the bends in the river would keep slow. The shorter trains ran a lot faster; it was dangerous to try to catch them.