American Rust: A Novel

As Henry contemplates getting into bed without Isaac’s help (he doesn’t want to ask Lee), he realizes his physical condition is deteriorating quickly. He can’t bathe himself and can barely undress. His organs slowly failing, he senses the end is near. He looks out the window at the “skeleton” of a house next door, stripped of its door, windows, and gutters as soon as the owner moved away. He thinks of Isaac—“[T]here’d always been something about the boy, he was smart and stupid at the same time” (285)—and realizes that he never appreciated his son or acknowledged his “genius.” Isaac, he knows, is smarter and stronger than Lee, hence letting her leave first; Henry knew Isaac could endure the caretaking duties better than his sister. He should have let Isaac go too, he knows now, but he feared the loneliness.

Poe, locked in solitary, is fatalistic about his chances: “There was no question they would kill him” (287). In the wake of an anxiety attack, an obvious solution occurs to him—tell the truth, but he cannot sanction trading his life for Isaac’s. He should have been here last year if not for Harris bending the law.

Poe remembers all his blown opportunities, jobs rejected for one arbitrary reason or another, and then he thinks of freedom—the freedom to enjoy the sun, nature, Lee. While he vacillates about whether to “rat out” Isaac, a guard informs him his lawyer has arrived, but he refuses to meet with her.

As Lee drives around town, visiting old haunts, she wonders whether she truly earned her place at Yale or whether it was simply a matter of privilege. She tried to persuade Isaac to join her, but his social awkwardness and his reluctance to leave Henry made that offer impossible to accept. Lee left for college very soon after her mother’s suicide and was not around to witness the changes in Isaac and Henry in the aftermath of her death. Lee, like all the characters in the story, looks back on her life choices, wondering if she should have done things differently.

Safely in the darkness of the woods, Isaac follows a stream that runs to a path. He realizes that all of his mistakes have been the result of over thinking, something Poe would never do. Thinking of Poe, he fears he will never see him again. After about a mile, he stops, peels off his old clothes, and washes and shaves in the stream. He continues past several upscale housing developments and compares the inhabitants’ cozy lives to his own, seeing himself through their eyes—a dirty stranger; “Call the police, half a minute of angst and back to your chardonnay” (298). He stops to rest, but behind his closed eyes, he sees Otto. He revisits the choices that have led him to this point, but they all seem inevitable now.

Grace enters Poe’s bedroom, memories flooding back, and she feels she’s failed as a mother. She picks up his rifle, wonders if it’s loaded, and then puts it back on its mount before dangerous thoughts can actualize. She ponders the justice of the universe—she has always done right, yet she is forced to suffer this fate, and Poe is in prison for what she is convinced was self-defense. Determined to save her son’s life, she takes a scented bath and invites Harris over.

Harris drives to Grace’s trailer and tries to console her, to assure her Poe will be fine, but he can’t pull her out of her own guilt and self-pity. They make love, but it’s awkward and passionless, leaving them both drained. She fetches Poe’s rifles and gives them to Harris, asking him to take them away.

Harris recalls a hunting trip to Wyoming when he became trapped in a cave during a snowstorm. Without food for two days, he nearly died. On the third day, he walked for 10 hours until he found a road, and he holed up in a motel until he recovered. He’s never told anyone the story. Pacing the room in the middle of the night, he realizes that Grace will never get over this heartbreak and that Poe will always be her top priority. He vows to “take care” of him but also asks her to not “say a word about this to anyone” (306).

Asleep at the edge of a field, Isaac is woken by a farm tractor. As the day dawns, he surveys his surroundings: broad stretches of farmland interrupted by a few housing developments and a marina. At the marina gate, he digs through a trashcan until he finds a nearly full bottle of water.

Later in the day, he enters a forest, although he fears he won’t find any food there. He also has a nagging feeling he’s being followed, so he crouches behind a rock and waits. Moments later, three stray dogs appear on the trail, sniffing the air. They smell Isaac, and, fearing he may be dog food, he starts hurling rocks at the lead dog until they all eventually run off. Nearly out of water, he regrets going into the forest and decides to backtrack to the state highway. By nightfall, he reaches the highway and finds a place to sleep under some pine trees. He still hallucinates about Poe and Otto. Then, thinking about his father, he realizes why he stayed home so long: not out of altruism but to seek his father’s approval.

The next morning, he finds a McDonald’s and buys breakfast (he has $2.80 left afterward). Walking alongside the interstate, he eventually comes to a rest stop where he washes in the bathroom and fills his water bottle. As he rests on a picnic table, a car pulls up, and a man dashes into the bathroom. Isaac walks past the car and sees the man’s wallet sitting on the front seat, the doors unlocked. He’s tempted, but he resists, his ethics overcoming his hunger, at least for the moment.

As night falls, he builds a shelter of branches and leaves and falls asleep, dreaming of his parents. He remembers his father in the hospital after his accident, and the last time he saw his mother. The next morning, he eats the rest of his food, drinks the rest of his water, and walks until he reaches an overpass. Gazing at the traffic below, he remembers his mother’s funeral—his father not wanting to leave the gravesite, telling everyone she had been murdered. In some sense, Isaac blames his father for his mother’s death, and not forgiving him is what has allowed Isaac to leave. He imagines how easy it would be to leap over the overpass railing, but he thinks of Poe—“unfinished business”—and finds the resolve to continue.