There There: Part IV: Tony Loneman (4) Summary & Analysis

After abandoning his mission, Tony walks away from the booth where the safe is being kept, but turns around at the sound of gunfire, believing the others are shooting at him. Instead, he sees Carlos shooting at Octavio, and begins shooting at Carlos himself. After a couple shots, the trigger sticks and the gun becomes too hot to hold. Tony drops it and feels himself get shot in the leg. Tony feels like he’s going to pass out, but pushes himself to start running towards Charles, determined to tackle him. Even though Charles continues shooting at him, he keeps running, and uses the last of his strength to bring Charles to the ground.

Charles reaches up and begins choking Tony, but Tony fights back. He grabs Charles’s gun and shoots him in the head. Tony, exhausted, rolls over onto his back, and feels himself sinking. He hears the sound of Maxine singing an old Cheyenne song, and becomes determined to stop himself from giving in to the sinking feeling. He rises up out of himself and looks down at his body, and realizes that both Tony and the Drome were “masks” he wore. Tony looks back on an afternoon when he was three or four. After helping Maxine with the dishes, he went to his room to play Transformers, constructing the same story he always does—“a battle, then a betrayal, then a sacrifice.”

Tony feels himself return to his body—he is anchored to “the middle of the middle of him[self].” Lying on the field of the coliseum, he believes he can hear birds singing, and remembers how Maxine once told him that when dancing he should be light on his feet as a bird’s morning song. Tony tells himself to be light—deep inside him, he feels the birds are singing.