STORIES

Joe R. Lansdale

FOREWORD

THE JOB

THE PIT

BY BIZARRE HANDS

TIGHT LITTLE STICHES IN A DEADMAN'S BACK

HELL THROUGH A WINDSHIELD

THE DRIVE-IN OATH

SIX-FINGER JACK

BILLIE SUE

NAKED ANGEL

NOT FROM DETROIT

BOOTY AND THE BEAST

STEPPIN' OUT, SUMMER, '68

INCIDENT ON AND OFF A MOUNTAIN ROAD

MY DEAD DOG, BOBBY

TRAINS NOT TAKEN

DOG, CAT, AND BABY

MISTER WEED-EATER

THE FAT MAN AND THE ELEPHANT

THE PHONE WOMAN

LETTER FROM THE SOUTH, TWO MOONS WEST OF NACOGDOCHES

BY THE HAIR OF THE HEAD

GODZILLA'S TWELVE STEP PROGRAM

DRIVE-IN DATE

BOB THE DINOSAUR GOES TO DISNEYLAND

THE STEEL VALENTINE

NIGHT THEY MISSED THE HORROR SHOW

DIRT DEVILS

WHITE MULE, SPOTTED PIG

THE BIG BLOW

BUBBA HO-TEP

A CHANGE OF LIFESTYLE

DEADMAN'S ROAD

ALONE

COAT

BESTSELLERS GUARANTEED

SURVEILLANCE

HANG IN THERE

CHOMPERS

BEYOND THE LIGHT

I TELL YOU IT'S LOVE

THE JUNKYARD

THE PASTURE

BAR TALK

BIG MAN: A FABLE

THE COMPANION

DRAGON CHILLI

THE FULL COUNT

HIDE AND HORNS

THE HONEYMOON

HUITZILOPOCHTLI

ISLAND

IT WASHED UP

THE LAST OF THE HOPEFUL

LISTEN

MR. BEAR

LONG DEAD DAY

MASTER OF MISERY

THE MUMMY BUYER

NIGHT DRIVE

OLD CHARLIE

ONCE UPON A TIME

ONE DEATH, TWO EPISODES

QUACK

THE SHADOWS, KITH AND KIN

SOLDIERIN'

THE STARS ARE FALLING

THE WHITE RABBIT

A FROG STRANGLER

AN ALL AMERICAN HERO

BILL THE LITTLE STEAM SHOVEL

BOYS WILL BE BOYS

COWBOY

THE CRAWLING SKY

DOWN BY THE SEA NEAR THE GREAT BIG ROCK

DRIVE-IN DATE

DUCK HUNT

THE DUMP

EVERYBODY PLAYS THE FOOL

THE FAT MAN

FIRE DOG

FISH NIGHT

FOR WHOM THE BELL BLOWS

THE FULL COUNT

THE GENTLEMAN'S HOTEL

GOD OF THE RAZOR

GOOD BUDDY

THE HONEYMOON

IN THE COLD, DARK TIME

JACK'S PECKER

LONG GONE FOREVER

LOVE DOLL

THE MAN WHIO DREAMED

MAN WITH TWO LIVES

THE MULE RUSTLERS

ON A DARK OCT0BER

ON THE FAR SIDE OF THE CADILLAC DESERT WITH DEAD FOLKS

O'RETA SNAPSHOT MEMORIES

PENTECOSTAL PUNK ROCK

PERSONALITY PROBLEM

PILOTS

SCREW-UP

SEVEN SHORT "SHORTS"

THE SHAGGY HOUSE

VEIL'S VISIT

WALKS

WHERE THE BIG ONE FELL

THE WINDSTROM PASSES

TRASH THEATER

UNCHAINED

About the Author

SOURCE MATERIAL

FOREWORD

Growing up in east Texas, I knew early on that I wanted to be a professional writer, even though I wasn't exactly sure what a professional writer was. I began to write stories at a very early age. Perhaps as early as seven, though I can't be certain of that, as family stories vary. I know that when I was nine I was seriously trying to understand how stories were told, and I even put together a book of stories, poems, and my interpretations of Greek and Norse myths. I also included, for some unknown reason, the ancient Greek alphabet that I had copied out of an encyclopedia.

When I was old enough to sort of understand what a writer did to make a living, and I began to entertain the idea seriously, I thought that I would be a science fiction writer. I read all the time, and not just science fiction, but there was a time in my life where science fiction -- and keep in mind I lumped fantasy, horror, science fantasy, weird adventure, ghost stories, anything odd, under that label -- was my main source of reading matter, coupled with supposedly non-fiction books about things like flying saucers, Big Foot, ghost, and Fortean activity.

When I finally began to write a true novel, it was in the Edgar Rice Burroughs vein. Somewhere, I hope, those efforts still exist. They are either in the library where my work is kept, or in my study, or, heaven forbid, I may have destroyed them. I remember thinking about it. I feel sentimental about those old pieces, and about ten years ago, when I last saw them, I took them out and was surprised to find they weren't really too bad, considering a kid, not even teenage yet, had written them.

But they were never finished. They just sort of went on and on in composition notebooks, but I didn't know how to reach a peak in the books, and then wrap them up. When I began to write novels with serious intent in my mid-twenties, I discovered I still hadn't learned that trick. The idea of novels became daunting. I decided I'd write something shorter, and in my mind easier, so I turned to short stories.

I had always read short stories, but for some reason it had never occurred to me to pursue them seriously. I had written a few, but none were any good, and I just assumed novels were where it was at. I began to review stories I had read and loved. Stories by Poe, Doyle, Bradbury, Bloch, others, and I began to read them more carefully, and I expanded my reading. I had read stories by Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and others of that ilk that I had enjoyed, but now I began to study them seriously. And then, I began to write.

I once spent about three months writing a story a day -- no kidding. I sent each one out to several markets, and all of them came back. Over a period of time -- more than three months -- I probably got a thousand rejects. I kept the stories and the rejects for years, and then, when we moved from Starrville, Texas to Nacogdoches, Texas, I had a ritualistic burning of stories and rejects. A few of the rejected stories survived, and were revised later and published, and some were published in a book I did of early writings, designed for the fan of this sort of thing; a book designed primarily to show that everyone has to begin somewhere.

But, I got hooked on the short story, and pretty soon, they were all I wanted to write. They were much harder than I ever expected. In fact, harder than novels. But, still, there was less of an investment in time, and therefore I could get something to market relatively soon; I could see an end in sight when I was working on them, and I could change moods and genres rapidly. That was appealing to me, since, essentially, I have a short attention span.

I became enraptured with short stories, and no longer just science fiction. I had expanded my reading, and now I expanded the type of stories I liked to write. When I finally began to sell my stories, I found I no longer wanted to write novels. I found short stories just too satisfying.

Still, since I wanted to be a full-time freelance writer, I knew I had to eventually write novels. I almost regretted when the novels began to sell; my excuse to write short stories began to evaporate. By the early nineties I was writing fewer and fewer short stories. Some of the energy I had invested in them went into the novels, and into comic book and film scripts. It wasn't that I had lost interest in short stories, but it was as if I got up one day feeling like I had met certain goals in the short story world, and now I was ready to see what I could do elsewhere.

Short stories, and novellas, are still favorites of mine, but I have really learned to appreciate the novel. And since I get paid more for novels these days than I used to, it has allowed me to return a little more frequently to short stories.

I doubt I will ever be a full-time short story writer again. That was hard, though I did pull it off for a time. But, it wasn't exactly more than a hand-to-mouth living. Now that I can get more for my short stories, I also make more for the novels, so it's easy to see which one I give the time. Besides, I like doing novels as much as short stories now. That said, I think short stories taught me how to write tighter, better novels.

These stories are the ones that I think taught me the most. They are personal favorites of mine. I could have added a few stories to this collection, replaced one with another in some cases, but these stories are the ones I think best reflect my work.

Growing up in the South, there's an expression you hear. "He's in high cotton now." "I felt like I was in high cotton."

This is taken from the fact that in the Old South, when cotton was good, it stood rich and tall and full. It was called high cotton. If you made your living from cotton, this was a good thing. The expression has carried over to include things that have nothing to do with farming or cotton.

Short stories, for example.

I can't say that this is the best cotton grown. But in my personal field, this is the best cotton I've grown in the short form.

I hope, that as you pluck it from my field, you will enjoy the work better than those who pluck actual cotton, and I hope the product, once plucked, is satisfying.

I have been a published writer for nearly twenty-seven years now, and these stories were written in the last seventeen. They are fewer and farther between these days, but I hope that long before another twenty-seven years, there will be yet another book produced from my field, and if talent, luck, ambition, and hard work stay with me, perhaps the cotton produced will stand even higher.

I read an article in GEO magazine -- a magazine I believe has come and gone -- about dog fighting. It struck me as horrible and cruel. I had heard it compared to boxing, a comparison I don't buy. Boxers can choose to get in the ring or not, and they are taught how to protect themselves and there are referees. Dogs do it for the love of their masters and for something to eat. For a reward, when they lose, they are most often killed or abandoned. These dog-fighting guys don't want losers.

I thought about that, added in another story told me by a friend. Supposedly, back in the late fifties or early sixties, there was a small town where a black man's car broke down and he was captured and made to pull a wagon around the town square, and was fed axle grease on crackers. Finally, he escaped.

I swear. That's the story. I'm not saying it's true, but it was told to me as the truth and it was given to the teller as the truth. If it did happen, I have no idea where this took place. North, South, East, or West. But it got the story wheels turning. My thoughts about dog fighting, boxing, and this supposed incident, all came crashing together, and became "The Pit." This was about 1982 or 1983. I sent it out, and no one bought it. They didn't know what the hell it was. All the standard honor markets -- there were a number of them then -- thought it wasn't horror, and they were probably right. Some wanted it to have a twist ending, or another ending. One editor wanted me to give it a positive spin. I wouldn't. I pulled it. It lay in a file drawer for several years.

By the mid-eighties I was beginning to develop a name, and when I was asked for a story for a crime/mystery anthology being published by Black Lizard, I sent the editor this. He accepted it and later it appeared in my first short story collection, By Bizarre Hands. That's been many years ago and though it's been reprinted several times, it still hasn't gotten the exposure I modestly think it deserves. Maybe this collection will help.

Joe R. Lansdale

Nacogdoches, Texas

Created for this custom eBook from multiple "Author's Notes" and "Forwards"

Flyboy707

September, 2011

THE JOB

Bower pulled the sun visor down and looked in the mirror there and said, "You know, hadn't been for the travel, I'd have done all right. I could even shake my ass like him. I tell you, it drove the women wild. You should have seen 'em."

"Don't shake it for me," Kelly said. "I don't want to see it. Things I got to do are tough enough without having to' see that."

Bower pushed the visor back. The light turned green. Kelly put the gas to the car and they went up and over a hill and turned right on Melroy.

"Guess maybe you do look like him," Kelly said. "During his fatter days, when he was on the drugs and the peanut butter."

"Yeah, but these pocks on my cheeks messes it up some. When I was on stage I had makeup on 'em. I looked okay then."

They stopped at a stop sign and Kelly got out a cigarette and pushed in the lighten

"A nigger nearly tail-ended me here once," Kelly said. "Just come barreling down on me." He took the lighter and lit his smoke. "Scared the piss out of me. I got him out of his car and popped him some. I bet he was one careful nigger from then on." He pulled away from the stop sign and cruised.

"You done one like this before? I know you've done it, but like this?"

"Not just like this. Hut I done some things might surprise you. You getting nervous on me?"

"I'm all right. You know, thing made me quit the Elvis imitating was travel, cause one night on the road I was staying in this cheap motel, and it wasn't heated too good. I'd had those kinds of rooms before, and I always carried couple of space heaters in the trunk of the car with the rest of my junk, you know. I got them plugged in, and I was still cold, so I pulled the mattress on the floor by the heaters. I woke up and was on fire. I had been so worn out I'd gone to sleep in my Elvis outfit. That was the end of my best white jumpsuit, you know, like he wore with the gold glitter and all. I must have been funny on fire like that, hopping around the room beating it out. When I got that suit off I was burned like the way you get when you been out in the sun too long."

"You gonna be able to do this?" "Did I say I couldn't?"

"You're nervous. I can tell way you talk."

"A little. I always get nervous before I go on stage too, but I always come through. Crowd came to see Elvis, by god, they got Elvis. I used to sign autographs with his name. People wanted it like that. They wanted to pretend, see."

"Women mostly?"

"Uh huh."

"What were they, say, fifty-five?"

"They were all ages. Some of them were pretty young.

"Ever fuck any of 'em?"

"Sure, I got plenty. Sing a little 'Love Me Tender' to them in the bedroom and they'd do whatever I wanted."

"Was it the old ones you was fucking?"

"I didn't fuck no real old ones, no. Whose idea is it to do things this way, anyhow?"

"Boss, of course. You think he lets me plan this stuff? He don't want them chinks muscling in on the shrimping and all."

"I don't know, we fought for these guys. It seems a little funny."

"Reason we lost the war over there is not being able to tell one chink from another and all of them being the way they are. I think we should have nuked the whole goddamned place. Went over there when it cooled down and stopped glowing, put in a tucking Disneyland or something."

They were moving out of the city now, picking up speed.

* * *

"I don't see why we don't just whack this guy outright and not do it this way,"

Bower said. "This seems kind of funny."

"No one's asking you. You come on a job, you do it. Boss wants some chink to suffer, so he's gonna suffer. Not like he didn't get some warnings or nothing.

Boss wants him to take it hard."

"Maybe this isn't a smart thing on account of it may not bother chinks like it'd bother us. They're different about stuff like this, all the things they've seen."

"It'll bother him," Kelly said. "And if it don't, that ain't our problem. We got a job to do and we're gonna do it. Whatever comes after comes after. Boss wants us to do different next time, we do different. Whatever he wants we do it. He's the one paying."

They were out of the city now and to the left of the highway they could see the glint of the sea through a line of scrubby trees.

"How're we gonna know?" Bower said. "One chink looks like another."

"I got a photograph. This one's got a burn scar on the face. Everything's timed.

Boss has been planning this. He had some of the guys watch and take notes. It's all set up."

"Why us?"

"Me because I've done some things before. You because he wants to see what you're made of. I'm kind of here as your nurse maid."

"I don't need anybody to see that I do what I'm supposed to do."

They drove past a lot of boats pulled up to a dock. They drove into a small town called Wilborn. They turned a corner at Catlow Street.

"It's down here a ways," Kelly said. "You got your knife? You left your knife and brought your comb, I'm gonna whack you.

Bower got the knife out of his pocket. "Thing's got a lot of blades, some utility stuff. Even a comb."

"Christ, you're gonna do it with a Boy Scout knife?"

"Utility knife. The blade I want is plenty sharp, you'll see. Why couldn't we use a gun? That wouldn't be as messy. A lot easier."

"Boss wants it messy. He wants the chink to think about it some. He wants them to pack their stuff on their boats and sail back to chink land. Either that, or they can pay their percentages like everyone else. He lets the chinks get away with things, everyone'll want to get away with things."

They pulled over to the curb. Down the street was a school. Bower looked at his watch.

"Maybe if it was a nigger," Bower said.

"Chink, nigger, what's the difference?"

They could hear a bell ringing. After five minutes they saw kids going out to the curb to get on the buses parked there. A few kids came down the sidewalk toward them. One of them was a Vietnamese girl about eight years old. The left side of her face was scarred.

"Won't they remember me?" Bower said.

"Kids? Naw. Nobody knows you around here. Get rid of that Elvis look and you'll be okay."

"It don't seem right. In front of these kids and all. I think we ought to whack her father."

"No one's paying you to think, Elvis. Do what you're supposed to do. I have to do it and you'll wish you had."

Bower opened the utility knife and got out of the car. He held the knife by his leg and walked around front, leaned on the hood just as the Vietnamese girl came up. He said, "Hey, kid, come here a minute." His voice got thick. "Elvis wants to show you something."

THE PIT

Six months earlier they had captured him. Tonight Harry went into the pit. He and Big George, right after the bull terriers got through tearing the guts out of one another. When that was over, he and George would go down and do the business. The loser would stay there and be fed to the dogs, each of which had been starved for the occasion.

When the dogs finished eating, the loser's head would go up on a pole. Already a dozen poles circled the pit. On each rested a head, or skull, depending on how long it had been exposed to the elements, ambitious pole-climbing ants and hungry birds. And of course how much flesh the terriers ripped off before it was erected.

Twelve poles. Twelve heads.

Tonight a new pole and a new head went up.

Harry looked about at the congregation. All sixty or so of them. They were a sight. Like mad creatures out of Lewis Carroll. Only they didn't have long rabbit ears or tall silly hats. They were just backwoods rednecks, not too unlike himself. With one major difference. They were as loony as waltzing mice.

Or maybe they weren't crazy and he was. Sometimes he felt as if he had stepped into an alternate universe where the old laws of nature and what was right and wrong did not apply. Just like Alice plunging down the rabbit hole into Wonderland.

The crowd about the pit had been mumbling and talking, but now they grew silent.

Out into the glow of the neon lamps stepped a man dressed in a black suit and hat. A massive rattlesnake was coiled about his right arm. It was wriggling from shoulder to wrist. About his left wrist a smaller snake was wrapped, a copperhead. The man held a Bible in his right hand. He was called Preacher.

Draping the monstrous rattlesnake around his neck, Preacher let it hang there.

It dangled that way as if drugged. Its tongue would flash out from time to time.

It gave Harry the willies. He hated snakes. They always seemed to be smiling.

Nothing was that fucking funny, not all the time.

Preacher opened his Bible and read:

"Behold, I give unto you the power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy: and nothing will by any means hurt you."

Preacher paused and looked at the sky. "So God," he said, "we want to thank you for a pretty good potato crop, though you've done better, and we want to thank you for the terriers, even though we had to raise and feed them ourselves, and we want to thank you for sending these outsiders our way, thank you for Harry Joe Stinton and Big George, the nigger."

Preacher paused and looked about the congregation. He lifted the hand with the copperhead in it high above his head. Slowly he lowered it and pointed the snake-filled fist at George. "Three times this here nigger has gone into the pit, and three times he has come out victorious. Couple times against whites, once against another nigger. Some of us think he's cheating.

"Tonight, we bring you another white feller, one of your chosen people, though you might not know it on account of the way you been letting the nigger win here, and we're hoping for a good fight with the nigger being killed at the end.

We hope this here business pleases you. We worship you and the snakes in the way we ought to. Amen.

Big George looked over at Harry. "Be ready, sucker. I'm gonna take you apart like a gingerbread man."

Harry didn't say anything. He couldn't understand it. George was a prisoner just as he was. A man degraded and made to lift huge rocks and pull carts and jog mile on miles every day. And just so they could get in shape for this--to go down into that pit and try and beat each other to death for the amusement of these crazies.

And it had to be worse for George. Being black, he was seldom called anything other than "the nigger" by these psychos. Furthermore, no secret had been made of the fact that they wanted George to lose, and for him to win. The idea of a black pit champion was eating their little honkey hearts out.

Yet, Big George had developed a sort of perverse pride in being the longest lived pit fighter yet.

"It's something I can do right," George had once said. "On the outside I wasn't nothing but a nigger, an uneducated nigger working in rose fields, mowing big lawns for rich white folks. Here I'm still the nigger, but I'm THE NIGGER, the bad ass nigger, and no matter what these peckerwoods call me, they know it, and they know I'm the best at what I do. I'm the king here. And they may hate me for it, keep me in a cell and make me run and lift stuff, but for that time in the pit, they know I'm the one that can do what they can't do, and they're afraid of me. I like it."

Glancing at George, Harry saw that the big man was not nervous. Or at least not showing it. He looked as if he were ready to go on holiday. Nothing to it. He was about to go down into that pit and try and beat a man to death with his fists and it was nothing. All in a day's work. A job well done for an odd sort of respect that beat what he had had on the outside.

The outside. It was strange how much he and Big George used that term. The outside. As if they were enclosed in some small bubble-like cosmos that perched on the edge of the world they had known; a cosmos invisible to the outsiders, a spectral place with new mathematics and nebulous laws of mind and physics.

Maybe he was in hell. Perhaps he had been wiped out on the highway and had gone to the dark place. Just maybe his memory of how he had arrived here was a false dream inspired by demonic powers. The whole thing about him taking a wrong turn through Big Thicket country and having his truck break down just outside of Morganstown was an illusion, and stepping onto the Main Street of Morganstown, population 66, was his crossing the River Styx and landing smack dab in the middle of a hell designed for good old boys.

God, had it been six months ago?

He had been on his way to visit his mother in Woodville, and he had taken a shortcut through the Thicket. Or so he thought. But he soon realized that he had looked at the map wrong. The shortcut listed on the paper was not the one he had taken. He had mistaken that road for the one he wanted. This one had not been marked. And then he had reached Morganstown and his truck had broken down. He had been forced into six months hard labor alongside George, the champion pit fighter, and now the moment for which he had been groomed had arrived.

They were bringing the terriers out now. One, the champion, was named Old Codger He was getting on in years. He had won many a pit fight. Tonight, win or lose, this would be his last battle. The other dog, Muncher, was young and inexperienced, but he was strong and eager for blood.

A ramp was lowered into the pit. Preacher and two men, the owners of the dogs, went down into the pit with Codger and Muncher. When they reached the bottom a dozen bright spotlights were thrown on them. They seemed to wade through the light.

The bleachers arranged about the pit began to fill. People mumbled and passed popcorn. Bets were placed and a little, fat man wearing a bowler hat copied them down in a note pad as fast as they were shouted. The ramp was removed.

In the pit, the men took hold of their dogs by the scruff of the neck and removed their collars. They turned the dogs so they were facing the walls of the pit and could not see one another. The terriers were about six feet apart, butts facing.

Preacher said, "A living dog is better than a dead lion."

Harry wasn't sure what that had to do with anything.

"Ready yourselves," Preacher said. "Gentlemen, face your dogs."

The owners slapped their dogs across the muzzle and whirled them to face one another. They immediately began to leap and strain at their masters' grips.

"Gentlemen, release your dogs."

The dogs did not bark. For some reason, that was what Harry noted the most. They did not even growl. They were quick little engines of silence.

Their first lunge was a miss and they snapped air. But the second time they hit head on with the impact of .45 slugs. Codger was knocked on his back and Muncher dove for his throat. But the experienced dog popped up its head and grabbed Muncher by the nose. Codger's teeth met through Muncher's flesh.

Bets were called from the bleachers.

The little man in the bowler was writing furiously.

Muncher, the challenger, was dragging Codger, the champion, around the pit, trying to make the old dog let go of his nose. Finally, by shaking his head violently and relinquishing a hunk of his muzzle, he succeeded.

Codger rolled to his feet and jumped Muncher. Muncher turned his head just out of the path of Codger's jaws. The older dog's teeth snapped together like a spring4oaded bear trap, saliva popped out of his mouth in a fine spray.

Muncher grabbed Codger by the right ear. The grip was strong and Codger was shook like a used condom about to be fled and tossed. Muncher bit the champ's ear completely off.

Harry felt sick. He thought he was going to throw up. He saw that Big George was looking at him. "You think this is bad, motherfucker," George said, "this ain't nothing but a cake walk. Wait fill I get you in that pit."

"You sure run hot and cold, don't you?" Harry said.

"Nothing personal," George said sharply and turned back to look at the fight in the pit.

Nothing personal, Harry thought. God, what could be more personal? Just yesterday, as they trained, jogged along together, a pickup loaded with gun bearing crazies driving alongside of them, he had felt close to George. They had shared many personal things these six months, and he knew that George liked him.

But when it came to the pit, George was a different man. The concept of friendship became alien to him. When Harry had tried to talk to him about it yesterday, he had said much the same thing. "Ain't nothing personal, Harry my man, but when we get in that pit don't look to me for nothing besides pain, cause I got plenty of that to give you, a lifetime of it, and I'll just keep it coming."

Down in the pit Codger screamed. It could be described no other way. Muncher had him on his back and was biting him on the belly. Codger was trying to double forward and get hold of Muncher's head, but his tired jaws kept slipping off of the sweaty neck fur. Blood was starting to pump out of Codger's belly.

"Bite him, boy," someone yelled from the bleachers, "tear his ass up son.

Harry noted that every man, woman and child was leaning forward in their seat, straining for a view. Their faces full of lust, like lovers approaching vicious climax. For a few moments they were in that pit and they were the dogs.

Vicarious thrills without the pain.

Codger's leg began to flap.

"Kill him! Kill him!" the crowd began to chant.

Codger had quit moving. Muncher was burrowing his muzzle deeper into the old dog's guts. Preacher called for a pickup. Muncher's owner pried the dog's jaws loose of Codger's guts. Muncher's muzzle looked as if it had been dipped in red ink.

"This sonofabitch is still alive," Muncher's owner said to Codger.

Codger's owner walked over to the dog and said, "You little fucker!" He pulled a Saturday Night Special from his coat pocket and shot Codger twice in the head.

Codger didn't even kick. He just evacuated his bowels right there.

Muncher came over and sniffed Codger's corpse, then, lifting his leg, he took a leak on the dead dog's head. The stream of piss was bright red.

* * *

The ramp was lowered. The dead dog was dragged out and tossed behind the bleachers. Muncher walked up the ramp beside his owner. The little dog strutted like he had just been crowned King of Creation. Codger's owner walked out last.

He was not a happy man. Preacher stayed in the pit. A big man known as Sheriff Jimmy went down the ramp to join him. Sheriff Jimmy had a big pistol on his hip and a toy badge on his chest. The badge looked like the sort of thing that had come in a plastic bag with a capgun and whistle. But it was his sign of office and his word was iron.

A man next to Harry prodded him with the barrel of a shotgun. Walking close behind George, Harry went down the ramp and into the pit. The man with the shotgun went back up. In the bleachers the betting had started again, the little, fat man with the bowler was busy.

Preacher's rattlesnake was still lying serenely about his neck, and the little copperhead had been placed in Preacher's coat pocket. It poked its head out from time to time and looked around.

Harry glanced up. The heads and skulls on the poles-in spite of the fact they were all eyeless, and due to the strong light nothing but bulbous shapes on shafts-seemed to look down, taking as much amusement in the situation as the crowd on the bleachers.

Preacher had his Bible out again. He was reading a verse. "...when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee..."

Harry had no idea what that or the snake had to do with anything. Certainly he could not see the relationship with the pit. These people's minds seemed to click and grind to a different set of internal gears than those on the outside.

The reality of the situation settled on Harry like a heavy, woolen coat. He was about to kill or be killed, right here in this dog-smelling pit, and there was nothing he could do that would change that.

He thought perhaps his life should flash before his eyes or something, but it did not. Maybe he should try to think of something wonderful, a last fine thought of what used to be. First he summoned up the image of his wife. That did nothing for him. Though his wife had once been pretty and bright, he could not remember her that way. The image that came to mind was quite different. A dumpy, lazy woman with constant back pains and her hair pulled up into an eternal topknot of greasy, brown hair. There was never a smile on her face or a word of encouragement for him. He always felt that she expected him to entertain her and that he was not doing a very good job of it. There was not even a moment of sexual ecstasy that he could recall. After their daughter had been born she had given up screwing as a wasted exercise. Why waste energy on sex when she could spend it complaining.

He flipped his mental card file to his daughter. What he saw was an ugly, potato-nosed girl of twelve. She had no personality. Her mother was Miss Congeniality compared to hen Potato Nose spent all of her time pining over thin, blond heartthrobs on television. It wasn't bad enough that they glared at Harry via the tube, they were also pinned to her walls and hiding in magazines she had cast throughout the house.

These were the last thoughts of a man about to face death?

There was just nothing there.

His job had sucked. His wife hadn't.

He clutched at straws. There had been Melva, a fine looking little cheerleader from high school. She had had the brain of a dried black-eyed pea, but God-AllMighty, did she know how to hide a weenie. And there had always been that strange smell about her, like bananas. It was especially strong about her thatch, which was thick enough for a bald eagle to nest in.

But thinking about her didn't provide much pleasure either. She had gotten hit by a drunk in a Mack truck while parked offside of a dark road with that Pulver boy.

Damn that Pulver. At least he had died in ecstasy. Had never known what hit him.

When that Mack went up his ass he probably thought for a split second he was having the greatest orgasm of his life.

Damn that Melva. What had she seen in Pulver anyway?

He was skinny and stupid and had a face like a peanut pattie.

God, he was beat at every turn. Frustrated at every corner. No good thoughts or beautiful visions before the moment of truth. Only blackness, a life of dull, planned movements as consistent and boring as a bran-conscious geriatric's bowel movement. For a moment he thought he might cry.

Sheriff Jimmy took out his revolver. Unlike the badge it was not a toy. "Find your corner, boys."

George turned and strode to one side of the pit, took off his shirt and leaned against the wall. His body shined like wet licorice in the spotlights.

After a moment, Harry made his legs work. He walked to a place opposite George and took off his shirt. He could feel the months of hard work rippling beneath his flesh. His mind was suddenly blank. There wasn't even a god he believed in.

No one to pray to. Nothing to do but the inevitable.

Sheriff Jimmy walked to the middle of the pit. He yelled out for the crowd to shut up.

Silence reigned.

"In this corner," he said, waving the revolver at Harry, "we have Harry Joe Stinton, family man and pretty good feller for an outsider. He's six two and weighs two hundred and thirty-eight pounds, give or take a pound since my bathroom scales ain't exactly on the money. A cheer went up.

"Over here," Sheriff Jimmy said, waving the revolver at George, "standing six four tall and weighing two hundred and forty-two pounds, we got the nigger, present champion of this here sport."

No one cheered. Someone made a loud sound with his mouth that sounded like a fart, the greasy kind that goes on and on and on.

George appeared unfazed. He looked like a statue. He knew who he was and what he was. The Champion Of The Pit.

"First off," Sheriff Jimmy said, "you boys come forward and show your hands."

Harry and George walked to the center of the pit, held out their hands, fingers spread wide apart, so that the crowd could see that they were empty.

"Turn and walk to your corners and don't turn around," Sheriff Jimmy said.

George and Harry did as they were told. Sheriff Jimmy followed Harry and put an arm around his shoulders. "I got four hogs riding on you," he said. "And I'll tell you what, you beat the nigger and I'll do you a favor. Elvira, who works over at the cafe has already agreed. You win and you can have her. How's that sound?"

Harry was too numb with the insanity of it all to answer. Sheriff Jimmy was offering him a piece of ass if he won, as if dus would be greater incentive than coming out of the pit alive. With this bunch there was just no way to anticipate what might come next. Nothing was static.

"She can do more tricks with a six inch dick than a monkey can with a hundred foot of grapevine, boy. When the going gets rough in there, you remember that.

Okay?"

Harry didn't answer. He just looked at the pit wall.

"You ain't gonna get nowhere in life being sullen like that," Sheriff Jimmy said. "Now, you go get him and plow a rut in his black ass.

Sheriff Jimmy grabbed Harry by the shoulders and whirled him around, slapped him hard across the face in the same way the dogs had been slapped. George had been done the same way by the preacher. Now George and Harry were facing one another.

Harry thought George looked like an ebony gargoyle fresh escaped from hell. His bald, bullet-like head gleamed in the harsh lights and his body looked as rough and ragged as stone.

Harry and George raised their hands in classic boxer stance and began to circle one another.

From above someone yelled, "Don't hit the nigger in the head, it'll break your hand. Go for the lips, they got soft lips."

The smell of sweat, dog blood and Old Codger's shit was thick in the air. The lust of the crowd seemed to have an aroma as well. Harry even thought he could smell Preacher's snakes. Once, when a boy, he had been fishing down by the creek bed and had smelled an odor like that, and a water moccasin had wriggled out beneath his legs and splashed in the water. It was as if everything he feared in the world had been put in this pit. The idea of being put deep down in the ground. Irrational people for whom logic did not exist. Rotting skulls on poles about the pit. living skulls attached to hunched-forward bodies that yelled for blood. Snakes. The stench of death-blood and shit. And every white man's fear, racist or not-a big, black man with a lifetime of hatred in his eyes.

The circle tightened. They could almost touch one another now.

Suddenly George's lips began to tremble. His eyes poked out of his head, seemed to be looking at something just behind and to the right of Harry.

"Sss. . . snake!" George screamed.

God, thought Harry, one of Preacher's snakes has escaped. Harry jerked his head for a look.

And George stepped in and knocked him on his ass and kicked him full in the chest. Harry began scuttling along the ground on his hands and knees, George following along kicking him in the ribs. Harry thought he felt something snap inside, a cracked rib maybe. He finally scuttled to his feet and bicycled around the pit. Goddamn, he thought, I fell for the oldest, silliest trick in the book.

Here I am fighting for my life and I fell for it.

"Way to go, stupid fuck!" A voice screamed from the bleachers. "Hey nigger, why don't you try 'hey, your shoe's untied,' he'll go for it."

"Get off the goddamned bicycle," someone else yelled. "Fight."

"You better run," George said. "I catch you I'm gonna punch you so hard in the mouth, gonna knock your fucking teeth out your asshole Harry felt dizzy. His head was like a yo-yo doing the Around the World trick.

Blood ran down his forehead, dribbled off the tip of his nose and gathered on his upper lip. George was closing the gap again.

I'm going to die right here in this pit, thought Harry. I'm going to die just because my truck broke down outside of town and no one knows where I am. That's why I'm going to die. It's as simple as that.

Popcorn rained down on Harry and a tossed cup of ice hit him in the back.

"Wanted to see a fucking foot race," a voice called, "I'd have gone to the fucking racetrack."

"Ten on the nigger," another voice said.

"Five bucks the nigger kills him in five minutes."

When Harry backpedaled past Preacher, the snake man leaned forward and snapped,

"You asshole, I got a sawbuck riding on you.

Preacher was holding the big rattler again. He had the snake gripped just below the head, and he was so upset over how the fight had gone so far, he was unconsciously squeezing the snake in a vice-like grip. The rattler was squirming and twisting and flapping about, but Preacher didn't seem to notice. The snake's forked tongue was outside its mouth and it was really working, slapping about like a thin strip of rubber come loose on a whirling tire. The copperhead in Preacher's pocket was still looking out, as if along with Preacher he might have a bet on the outcome of the fight as well. As Harry danced away the rattler opened its mouth so wide its jaws came unhinged. It looked as if it were trying to yell for help.

* * *

Harry and George came together again in the center of the pit. Fists like black ball bearings slammed the sides of Harry's head. The pit was like a whirlpool, the walls threatening to close in and suck Harry down into oblivion.

Kneeing with all his might, Harry caught George solidly in the groin. George grunted, stumbled back, half-bent over.

The crowd went wild.

Harry brought cupped hands down on George's neck, knocked him to his knees.

Harry used the opportunity to knock out one of the big man's teeth with the toe of his shoe.

He was about to kick him again when George reached up and clutched the crotch of Harry's khakis, taking a crushing grip on Harry's testicles.

"Got you by the balls," George growled.

Harry bellowed and began to hammer wildly on top of George's head with both fists. He realized with horror that George was pulling him forward. By God, George was going to bite him on the balls.

Jerking up his knee he caught George in the nose and broke his grip. He bounded free, skipped and whipped about the pit like an Indian dancing for rain.

He skipped and whooped by Preacher. Preacher's rattler had quit twisting. It hung loosely from Preacher's tight fist. Its eyes were bulging out of its head like the humped backs of grub worms. Its mouth was closed and its forked tongue hung limply from the edge of it.

The copperhead was still watching the show from the safety of Preacher's pocket, its tongue zipping out from time to time to taste the air. The little snake didn't seem to have a care in the world.

George was on his feet again, and Harry could tell that already he was feeling better. Feeling good enough to make Harry feel real bad.

Preacher abruptly realized that his rattler had gone limp.

"No, God no!" he cried. He stretched the huge rattler between his hands. "Baby, baby," he bawled, "breathe for me, Sapphire, breathe for me." Preacher shook the snake viciously, trying to jar some life into h, but the snake did not move.

The pain in Harry's groin had subsided and he could think again. George was moving in on him, and there just didn't seem any reason to run. George would catch him, and when he did, it would just be worse because he would be even more tired from all that running. It had to be done. The mating dance was over, now all that was left was the intercourse of violence.

A black fist turned the flesh and cartilage of Harry's nose into smouldering putty. Harry ducked his head and caught another blow to the chin. The stars he had not been able to see above him because of the lights, he could now see below him, spinning constellations on the floor of the pit.

It came to him again, the fact that he was going to die right here without one good, last thought. But then maybe there was one. He envisioned his wife, dumpy and sullen and denying him sex. George became her and she became George and Harry did what he had wanted to do for so long, he hit her in the mouth. Not once, but twice and a third time. He battered her nose and he pounded her ribs.

And By God, but she could hit back. He felt something crack in the center of his chest and his left cheekbone collapsed into his face. But Harry did not stop battering her. He looped and punched and pounded her dumpy face until h was George's black face and George's black face turned back to her face and he thought of her now on the bed, naked, on her back, battered, and he was naked and mounted her, and the blows of his fists were the sexual thrusts of his cock and he was pounding her until-George screamed. He had fallen to his knees. His right eye was hanging out on the tendons. One of Harry's straight rights had struck George's cheekbone with such power it had shattered it and pressured the eye out of its socket.

Blood ran down Harry's knuckles. Some of it was George's. Much of it was his own. His knuckle bones showed through the rent flesh of his hands, but they did not hurt. They were past hurting.

George wobbled to his feet. The two men stood facing one another, neither moving. The crowd was silent. The only sound in the pit was the harsh breathing of the two fighters, and Preacher who had stretched Sapphire out on the ground on her back and was trying to blow air into her mouth. Occasionally he'd lift his head and say in tearful supplication, "Breathe for me, Sapphire, breathe for me."

Each time Preacher blew a blast into the snake, its white underbelly would swell and then settle down, like a leaky balloon that just wouldn't hold air.

George and Harry came together. Softly. They had their arms on each other's shoulders and they leaned against one another, breathed each other's breath.

Above, the silence of the crowd was broken when a heckler yelled "Start some music, the fuckers want to dance."

"It's nothing personal," George said.

"Not at all," Harry said.

They managed to separate, reluctantly, like two lovers who had just copulated to the greatest orgasm of their lives.

George bent slightly and put up his hands. The eye dangling on his cheek looked like some kind of tentacled creature trying to crawl up and into George's socket. Harry knew that he would have to work on that eye.

Preacher screamed. Harry afforded him a sideways glance. Sapphire was awake. And now she was dangling from Preacher's face. She had bitten through his top lip and was hung there by her fangs. Preacher was saying something about the power to tread on serpents and stumbling about the pit. Finally his back struck the pit wall and he slid down to his butt and just sat there, legs sticking out in front of him, Sapphire dangling off his lip like some sort of malignant growth.

Gradually, building momentum, the snake began to thrash.

Harry and George met again in the center of the pit. A second wind had washed in on them and they were ready. Harry hurt wonderfully. He was no longer afraid.

Both men were smiling, showing the teeth they had left. They began to hit each other.

Harry worked on the eye. Twice he felt it beneath his fists, a grape-like thing that cushioned his knuckles and made them wet. Harry's entire body felt on fir~twin fires, ecstasy and pain.

George and Harry collapsed together, held each other, waltzed about.

"You done good," George said, "make it quick."

The black man's legs went out from under him and he fell to his knees, his head between. Harry took the man's head in his hands and kneed him in the face with all his might. George went limp. Harry grasped George's chin and the back of his head and gave a violent twist. The neck bone snapped and George fell back, dead.

The copperhead, which had been poking its head out of Preacher's pocket, took this moment to slither away into a crack in the pit's wall.

Out of nowhere came weakness. Harry fell to his knees. He touched George's ruined face with his fingers.

Suddenly hands had him. The ramp was lowered. The crowd cheered. Preacher-Sapphire dislodged from his lip--came forward to help Sheriff Jimmy with him.

They lifted him up.

Harry looked at Preacher. His lip was greenish. His head looked like a sunswollen watermelon, yet, he seemed well enough. Sapphire was wrapped around his neck again. They were still buddies. The snake looked tired. Harry no longer felt afraid of it. He reached out and touched its head. It did not try to bite him. He felt its feathery tongue brush his bloody hand.

They carried him up the ramp and the crowd took him, lifted him up high above their heads. He could see the moon and the stars now. For some odd reason they did not look familiar Even the nature of the sky seemed different.

He turned and looked down. The terriers were being herded into the pit. They ran down the ramp like rats. Below, he could hear them begin to feed, to fight for choice morsels. But there were so many dogs, and they were so hungry, this only went on for a few minutes. After a while they came back up the ramp followed by Sheriff Jimmy closing a big lock-bladed knife and by Preacher who held George's head in his outstretched hands. George's eyes were gone. Little of the face remained. Only that slick, bald pate had been left undamaged by the terriers.

A pole came out of the crowd and the head was pushed onto its sharpened end and the pole was dropped into a deep hole in the ground. The pole, like a long neck, rocked its trophy for a moment, then went still. Dirt was kicked into the hole and George joined the others, all those beautiful, wonderful heads and skulls.

They began to carry Harry away. Tomorrow he would have Elvira, who could do more tricks with a six inch dick than a monkey could with a hundred foot of grapevine, then he would heal and a new outsider would come through and they would train together and then they would mate in blood and sweat in the depths of the pit.

The crowd was moving toward the forest rail, toward town. The smell of pines was sweet in the air. And as they carried him away, Harry turned his head so he could look back and see the pit, its maw closing in shadow as the lights were cut, and just before the last one went out Harry saw the heads on the poles, and dead center of his vision, was the shiny, bald pate of his good friend George.

BY BIZARRE HANDS

When the traveling preacher heard about the Widow Case and her retarded girl, he set out in his black Dodge to get over there before Halloween night Preacher Judd, as he called himself-though his name was really Billy Fred William--had this thing for retarded girls, due to the fact that his sister had been simple-headed, and his mama always said it was a shame she was probably going to burn in hell like a pan of biscuits forgot in the oven, just on account of not having a full set of brains.

This was a thing he had thought on considerable, and this considerable thinking made it so he couldn't pass up the idea of baptizing and giving some Godtraining to female retards. It was something he wanted to do in the worst way, though he had to admit there wasn't any burning desire in him to do the same for boys or men or women that were half-wits, but due to his sister having been one, he certainly had this thing for girl simples.

And he had this thing for Halloween, because that was the night the Lord took his sister to hell, and he might have taken her to glory had she had any bible4earning or God-sense. But she didn't have a drop, and it was partly his own fault, because he knew about God and could sing some hymns pretty good. But he'd never turned a word of benediction or gospel music in her direction. Not one word. Nor had his mama, and his papa wasn't around to do squat.

The old man ran off with a bucktoothed laundry woman that used to go house to house taking in wash and bringing it back the next day, but when she took in their wash, she took in Papa too, and she never brought either of them back. And if that wasn't bad enough, the laundry contained everything they had in the way of decent clothes, including a couple of pairs of nice dress pants and some pinstriped shirts like niggers wear to funerals. This left him with one old pair of faded overalls that he used to wear to slop the hogs before the critters killed and ate Granny and they had to get rid of them because they didn't want to eat nothing that had eaten somebody they knew. So, it wasn't bad enough Papa ran off with a beaver-toothed wash woman and his sister was a drooling retard, he now had only the one pair of ugly, old overalls to wear to school, and this gave the other kids three things to tease him about, and they never missed a chance to do it. Well, four things. He was kind of ugly too.

It got tiresome.

* * *

Preacher Judd could remember nights waking up with his sister crawled up in the bed alongside him, lying on her back, eyes wide open, her face bathed in cool moonlight, picking her nose and eating what she found, while he rested on one elbow and tried to figure out why she was that way.

He finally gave up figuring, decided that she ought to have some fun, and he could have some fun too. Come Halloween, he got him a bar of soap for marking up windows and a few rocks for knocking out some, and he made his sister and himself ghost-suits out of old sheets in which he cut mouth and eye holes.

This was her fifteenth year and she had never been trick-or-treating. He had designs that she should go this time, and they did, and later after they'd done it, he walked her back home, and later yet, they found her out back of the house in her ghost-suit, only the sheet had turned red because her head was bashed in with something and she had bled out like an ankle-hung hog. And someone had turned her trick-or-treat sack-the handle of which was still clutched in her fat grip-inside out and taken every bit of candy she'd gotten from the neighbors.

The sheriff came out, pulled up the sheet and saw that she was naked under it, and he looked her over and said that she looked raped to him, and that she had been killed by bizarre hands.

Bizarre hands never did make sense to Preacher Judd, but he loved the sound of it, and never did let it slip away, and when he would tell about his poor sister, naked under the sheets, her brains smashed out and her trick-or-treat bag turned inside out, he'd never miss ending the story with the sheriff's line about her having died by bizarre hands.

It had a kind of ring to it.

* * *

He parked his Dodge by the roadside, got out and walked up to the Widow Case's, sipping on a Frosty Root Been But even though it was late October, the Southern sun was as hot as Satan's ass and the root beer was anything but frosty.

Preacher Judd was decked out in his black suit, white shin and black loafers with black and white checked socks, and he had on his black hat, which was short-brimmed and made him look, he thought, exactly like a traveling preacher ought to look.

Widow Case was out at the well, cranking a bucket of water, and nearby, running hell out of a hill of ants with a stick she was waggling, was the retarded girl, and Preacher Judd thought she looked remarkably like his sister.

He came up, took off his hat and held it over his chest as though he were pressing his heart into proper place, and smiled at the widow with all his goldbacked teeth.

Widow Case put one hand on a bony hip, used the other to prop the bucket of water on the well-curbing. She looked like a shaved weasel, Preacher Judd thought, though her ankles weren't shaved a bit and were perfectly weasel-like.

The hair there was thick and black enough to be mistaken for thin socks at a distance.

"Reckon you've come far enough," she said. "You look like one of them Jehovah Witnesses or such, or one of them kind that run around with snakes in their teeth and hop to nigger music."

"No ma'm, I don't hop to nothing, and last snake I seen I run over with my can

"You here to take up money for missionaries to give to them starving African niggers? If you are, forget it. I don't give to the niggers around here, sure ain't giving to no hungry foreign niggers that can't even speak English."

"Ain't collecting money for nobody. Not even myself."

"Well, I ain't seen you around here before, and I don't know you from white rice. You might be one of them mash murderers for all I know."

"No ma'm, I ain't a mash murderer, and I ain't from around here. I'm from East Texas."

She gave him a hard look. "Lots of niggers there."

"Place is rotten with them. Can't throw a dog tick without you've hit a burrhead in the noggin'. That's one of the reasons I'm traveling through here, so I can talk to white folks about God. Talking to niggers is like," and he lifted a hand to point, "talking to that well-curbing there, only that well-curbing is smarter and a lot less likely to sass, since it ain't expecting no civil rights or a chance to crowd up with our young' ns in schools. It knows its place and it stays there, and that's something for that well-curbing, if it ain't nothing for niggers."

"Amen."

Preacher Judd was feeling pretty good now. He could see she was starting to eat out of his hand. He put on his hat and looked at the girl. She was on her elbows now, her head down and her butt up. The dress she was wearing was way too short and had broken open in back from her having outgrown it. Her panties were dirtstained and there was gravel, like little BBs hanging off of them. He thought she had legs that looked strong enough to wrap around an alligator's neck and choke it to death.

"Cindereller there," the widow said, noticing he was watching, "ain't gonna have to worry about going to school with niggers. She ain't got the sense of a nigger. She ain't got no sense at all. A dead rabbit knows more than she knows.

All she does is play around all day, eat bugs and such and drool. In case you haven't noticed, she's simple."

* * *

"Yes ma'm, I noticed. Had a sister the same way. She got killed on a Halloween night, was raped and murdered and had her trick-or-treat candy stolen, and it was done, the sheriff said, by bizarre hands."

"No kiddin'?"

Preacher Judd held up a hand. "No kiddin'. She went on to hell, I reckon, 'cause she didn't have any God talk in her. And retard or not, she deserved some so she wouldn't have to cook for eternity. I mean, think on it. How hot it must be down there, her boiling in her own sweat, and she didn't do nothing, and it's mostly my fault 'cause I didn't teach her a thing about The Lord Jesus and his daddy, God."

Widow Case thought that over. "Took her Halloween candy too, huh?"

"Whole kit and kaboodle. Rape, murder and candy theft, one fatal swoop. That's why I hate to see a young'n like yours who 'night not have no Word of God in her. . Is she without training?"

"She ain't even toilet trained. You couldn't perch her on the outdoor convenience if she was sick and her manage to hit the bole. She can't do nothing that don't make a mess. You can't teach her a thing. Half the time she don't even know her name." As if to prove this, Widow Case called, "Cindereller."

Cinderella had one eye against the ant ill now and was trying to look down the hole. Her butt was way up and she was rocking forward on her knees.

"See," said Widow Case, throwing up her hands. "She's worse than any little ole baby, and it ain't no easy row to hoe with her here and me not having a man around to do the heavy work."

"I can see that . . . By the way, call me Preacher Judd . . . And can I help you tote that bucket up to the house there?"

"Well now," said Widow Case, looking all the more like a weasel, "I'd appreciate that kindly."

* * *

He got the bucket and they walked up to the house. Cinderella followed, and pretty soon she was circling around him like she was a shark closing in for the kill, the circles each time getting a mite smaller. She did this by running with her back bent and her knuckles almost touching the ground. Ropes of saliva dripped out of her mouth.

Watching her, Preacher Judd got a sort of warm feeling all over. She certainly reminded him of his sister. Only she had liked to scoop up dirt, dog mess and stuff as she ran, and toss it at him. It wasn't a thing he thought he'd missed until just that moment, but now the truth was out and he felt a little tearyeyed. He half-hoped Cinderella would pick up something and throw it on him.

The house was a big, drafty thing circled by a wide flower bed that didn't look to have been worked in years. A narrow porch ran half-way around it, and the front porch had man4all windows on either side of the door.

Inside, Preacher Judd hung his hat on one of the foil wrapped rabbit ears perched on top of an old Sylvania TV set, and followed the widow and her child into the kitchen.

The kitchen had big iron frying pans hanging on wall pegs, and there was a framed embroidery that read GOD WATCHES OVER THIS HOUSE. It had been faded by sunlight coming through the window over the sink.

Preacher Judd sat the bucket on the ice box-the old sort that used real ice-then they all went back to the living room. Widow Case told him to sit down and asked him if he'd like some iced tea.

"Yes, this bottle of Frosty ain't so good." He took the bottle out of his coat pocket and gave it to her.

Widow Case held it up and squinted at the little line of liquid in the bottom.

"You gonna want this?"

"No, ma'm, just pour what's left out and you can have the deposit." He took his Bible from his other pocket and opened it. "You don't mind if I try and read a verse or two to your Cindy, do you?"

"You make an effort on that while I fix us some tea. And I'll bring some things for ham sandwiches, too."

"That would be right nice. I could use a bite."

Widow Case went to the kitchen and Preacher Judd smiled at Cinderella. "You know tonight's Halloween, Cindy?"

Cinderella pulled up her dress, picked a stray ant off her knee and ate it.

"Halloween is my favorite time of the year," he continued. "That may be strange for a preacher to say, considering it's a devil thing, but I've always loved it.

It just does something to my blood. It's like a tonic for me, you know?"

She didn't know. Cinderella went over to the TV and turned it on.

Preacher Judd got up, turned it off. "Let's don't run the Sylvania right now, baby child," he said. "Let's you and me talk about God."

Cinderella squatted down in front of the set, not seeming to notice it had been cut off. She watched the dark screen like the White Rabbit considering a plunge down the rabbit hole.

Glancing out the window, Preacher Judd saw that the sun looked like a dripped cherry snowcone melting into the clay road that led out to Highway 80, and already the tumble bug of night was rolling in blue-black and heavy. A feeling of frustration went over him, because he knew he was losing time and he knew what he had to do.

Opening his Bible, he read a verse and Cinderella didn't so much as look up until he finished and said a prayer and ended it with "Amen."

"Uhman," she said suddenly.

Preacher Judd jumped with surprise, slammed the Bible shut and dunked it in his pocket. "Well, well now," he said with delight, "that does it. She's got some Bible training."

Widow Case came in with the tray of fixing. "What's that?"

"She said some of a prayer," Preacher Judd said. "That cinches it. God don't expect much from retards, and that ought to do for keeping her from burning in hell." He practically skipped over to the woman and her tray, stuck two fingers in a glass of tea, whirled and sprinkled the drops on Cinderella's head.

Cinderella held out a hand as if checking for rain.

Preacher Judd bellowed out, "I pronounce you baptized. In the name of God, The Son, and The Holy Ghost. Amen."

"Well, I'll swan," the widow said. "That there tea works for baptizing?" She sat the tray on the coffee table.

"It ain't the tea water, it's what's said and who says it that makes it take...

Consider that gal legal baptized . . . Now, she ought to have some fun too, don't you think? Not having a full head of brains don't mean she shouldn't have some fun."

"She likes what she does with them ants," Widow Case said.

"I know, but I'm talking about something special. It's Halloween. Time for young folks to have fun, even if they are retards. In fact, retards like it better than anyone else. They love this stuff. A thing my sister enjoyed was dressing up like a ghost."

"Ghost?" Widow Case was seated on the couch, making the sandwiches. She had a big butcher knife and she was using it to spread mustard on bread and cut ham slices.

"We took this old sheet, you see, cut some mouth and eye holes in it, then we wore them and went trick-or-treating."

"I don't know that I've got an old sheet. And there ain't a house close enough for trick-or-treatin' at."

"I could take her around in my car. That would be fun, I think. I'd like to see her have fun, wouldn't you? She'd be real scary too under that sheet, big as she is and liking to run stooped down with her knuckles dragging.

To make his point, lie bent forward, humped his back, let his hands dangle and made a face he thought was an imitation of Cinderella.

"She would be scary, I admit that," Widow Case said. "Though that sheet over her head would take some away from it. Sometimes she scares me when I don't got my mind on her, you know? Like if I'm napping in there on the bed, and I sorta open my eyes, and there she is, looking at me like she looks at them ants. I declare, she looks like she'd like to take a stick and whirl it around on me."

"You need a sheet, a white one, for a ghost-snit."

"Now maybe it would be nice for Cindereller to go out and have some fun." She finished making the sandwiches and stood up. "I'll see what I can find."

"Good, good," Preacher Judd said rubbing his hands together. "You can let me make the outfit. I'm real good at it."

While Widow Case went to look for a sheet, Preacher Judd ate one of the sandwiches, took one and handed it down to Cinderella. Cinderella promptly took the bread off of it, ate the meat, and laid the mustard sides down on her knees.

When the meat was chewed, she took to the mustard bread, cramming it into her mouth and smacking her lips loudly.

"Is that good, sugar?" Preacher Judd asked.

Cinderella smiled some mustard bread at him, and he couldn't help but think the mustard looked a lot like baby shit, and he had to turn his head away.

"This do?" Widow Case said, coming into the room with a slightly yellowed sheet and a pair of scissors.

"That's the thing," Preacher Judd said, taking a swig from his ice tea. He set the tea down and called to Cinderella."

"Come on, sugar, let's you and me go in the bedroom there and get you fixed up and surprise your mama."

It took a hit of coaxing, but he finally got her up and took her into the bedroom with the sheet and scissors. He half-closed the bedroom door and called out to the widow, "You're going to like this."

After a moment, Widow Case heard the scissors snipping away and Cinderella grunting like a hog to trough. When the scissor sound stopped, she heard Preacher Judd talking in a low voice, trying to coach Cinderella on something, but as she wanted it to be a surprise, she quit trying to hear. She went over to the couch and fiddled with a sandwich, but she didn't eat it. As soon as she'd gotten out of eyesight of Preacher Judd, she'd upended the last of his root beer and it was as bad as he said. It sort of made her stomach sick and didn't encourage her to add any food to it.

Suddenly the bedroom door was knocked back, and Cinderella, having a big time of it, charged into the room with her arms held out in front of her yelling,

"Woooo, woooo, goats."

Widow Case let out a laugh. Cinderella ran around the room yelling, "Woooo, woooo, goats," until she tripped over the coffee table and sent the sandwich makings and herself flying.

Preacher Judd, who'd followed her in after a second, went over and helped her up. The Widow Case, who had curled up on the couch in natural defense against the flying food and retarded girl, now uncurled when she saw something dangling on Preacher Judd's arm. She knew what it was, but she asked anyway. "What's that?"

"One of yer piller cases. For a trick-or-treat sack."

"Oh." Widow Case said stiffly, and she went to straightening up the coffee table and picking the ham and makings off the floor.

* * *

Preacher Judd saw that the sun was no longer visible. He walked over to a window and looked out. The tumble bug of night was even more blue-black now and the moon was out, big as a dinner plate, and looking like it had gravy stains on it.

"I think we've got to go now," he said. "We'll be back in a few hours, just long enough to run the houses around here."

"Whoa, whoa," Widow Case said. "Trick-or-treatin' I can go for, but I can't let my daughter go off with n6 strange man."

"I ain't strange. I'm a preacher."

"You strike me as an all right fella that wants to do things right, but I still can't let you take my daughter off without me going. People would talk."

Preacher Judd started to sweat. "I'll pay you some money to let me take her on."

Widow Case stared at him. She had moved up close now and he could smell root beer on her breath. Right then he knew what she'd done and he didn't like it any. It wasn't that he'd wanted it, but somehow it seemed dishonest to him that she swigged it without asking him. He thought she was going to pour it out. He started to say as much when she spoke up.

"I don't like the sound of that none, you offering me money.

"I just want her for the night," he said, pulling Cinderella close to him.

"She'd have fun."

"I don't like the sound of that no better. Maybe you ain't as right thinking as I thought."

Widow Case took a step back and reached the butcher knife off the table and pushed it at him. "I reckon you better just let go of her and run on out to that car of yours and take your own self trick-or-treatin'. And without my piller case.

"No ma'm, can't do that. I've come for Cindy and that's the thing God expects of me, and I'm going to do it. I got to do it. I didn't do my sister right and she's burning in hell. I'm doing Cindy right. She said some of a prayer and she's baptized. Anything happened to her, wouldn't be on my conscience.

Widow Case trembled a bit. Cinderella lifted up her ghost-suit with her free hand to look at herself, and Widow Case saw that she was naked as a jay-bird underneath.

"You let go of her arm right now, you pervert. And drop that piller case . . .

Toss it on the couch would be better. It's clean."

He didn't do either.

Widow Case's teeth went together like a bear trap and made about as much noise, and she slashed at him with the knife.

He stepped back out of the way and let go of Cinderella, who suddenly let out a screech, broke and ran, started around the room yelling, "Wooooo, wooooo, goats."

Preacher Judd hadn't moved quick enough, and the knife had cut through the pillow case, his coat and shirt sleeve, but hadn't broke the skin.

When Widow Case saw the slashed pillow case fall to the floor, a fire went through her. The same fire that went through Preacher Judd when he realize his J.C. Penney's suit coat which had cost him, with the pants, $39.95 on sale, was ruined.

They started circling one another, arms outstretched like wrestlers ready for the runtogether, and Widow Case had the advantage on account of having the knife.

But she fell for Preacher Judd holding up his left hand and wiggling two fingers like mule ears, and while she was looking at that, he hit her with a right cross and floored her. Her head hit the coffee table and the ham and fixings flew up again.

Preacher Judd jumped on top of her and held her knife hand down with one of his, while he picked up the ham with the other and hit her in the face with it, but the ham was so greasy it kept sliding off and he couldn't get a good blow in.

Finally he tossed the ham down and started wrestling the knife away from her with both hands while she chewed on one of his forearms until he screamed.

Cinderella was still running about, going "Wooooo, wooooo, goats," and when she ran by the Sylvania, her arm hit the foil-wrapped rabbit ears and sent them flying.

Preacher Judd finally got the knife away from Widow Case, cutting his hand slightly in the process, and that made him mad. He stabbed her in the back as she rolled out from under him and tried to run off on all fours. He got on top of her again, knocking her flat, and he tried to pull the knife out. He pulled and tugged, but it wouldn't come free. She was as strong as a cow and was crawling across the floor and pulling him along as he hung tight to the thick, wooden butcher knife handle. Blood was boiling all over the place.

Out of the corner of his eye, Preacher Judd saw that his retard was going wild, flapping around in her ghost-suit like a fat dove, bouncing off walls and tumbling over furniture. She wasn't making the ghost sounds now. She knew something was up and she didn't like it.

"Now, now," he called to her as Widow Case dragged him across the floor, yelling all the while, "Bloody murder, I'm being kilt, bloody murder, bloody murder!"

"Shut up, goddamnit!" he yelled. Then, reflecting on his words, he turned his face heavenward. "Forgive me my language, God." Then he said sweetly to Cinderella, who was in complete bouncing distress, "Take it easy, honey. Ain't nothing wrong, not a thing."

"Oh Lordy mercy, I'm being kilt!" Widow Case yelled.

"Die, you stupid old cow."

But she didn't die. He couldn't believe it, but she was starting to stand. The knife he was clinging to pulled him to his feet, and when she was up, she whipped an elbow around, whacked him in the ribs and sent him flying.

About that time, Cinderella broke through a window, tumbled onto the porch, over the edge and into the empty flower bed.

Preacher Judd got up and ran at Widow Case, hitting her just above the knees and knocking her down, cracking her head a loud one on the Sylvania, but it still didn't send her out. She was strong enough to grab him by the throat with both hands and throttle him.

As she did, he turned his head slightly away from her digging fingers, and through the broken window he could see his retarded ghost. She was doing a kind Elf two step, first to the left, then to the right, going, "Unhhh, unhhh," and it reminded Preacher Judd of one of them dances sinners do in them places with lots of blinking lights and girls up on pedestals doing lashes with their hips.

He made a fist and hit the widow a couple of times, and she let go of him and rolled away. She got up, staggered a second, then started running toward the kitchen, the knife still in her back, only deeper from having fallen on it.

He ran after her and she staggered into the hall, her hands hitting out and knocking one of the big iron frying pans off its peg and down on her head. It made a loud BONG, and Widow Case went down.

Preacher Judd let out a sigh. He was glad for that. He was tired. He grabbed up the pan and whammed her a few times, then, still carrying the pan, he found his hat in the living room and went out on the porch to look for Cinderella.

She wasn't in sight.

He ran out in the front yard calling her, and saw her making the rear corner of the house, running wildly, hands close to the ground, her butt flashing in the moonlight every time the sheet popped up. She was heading for the woods out back.

He ran after her, but she made the woods well ahead of him. He followed in, but didn't see her. "Cindy," he called. "It's me. Ole Preacher Judd. I come to read you some Bible verses. You'd like that wouldn't you? Then he commenced to coo like he was talking to a baby, but still Cinderella did not appear.

* * *

He trucked around through the woods with his frying pan for half an hour, but didn't see a sign of her. For a half-wit, she was a good hider.

Preacher Judd was covered in sweat and the night was growing slightly cool and the old Halloween moon was climbing to the stars. He felt like just giving up.

He sat down on the ground and started to cry.

Nothing ever seemed to work out right. That night he'd taken his sister out hadn't gone fully right. They'd gotten the candy and he'd brought her home, but later, when he tried to get her in bed with him for a little bit of the thing animals do without sin, she wouldn't go for it, and she always had before. Now she was uppity over having a ghost-suit and going trick-or-treating. Worse yet, her wearing that sheet with nothing under it did something for him. He didn't know what it was, but the idea of it made him kind of crazy.

But he couldn't talk or bribe her into a thing. She ran out back and he ran after her and tackled her, and when he started doing to her what he wanted to do, out beneath the Halloween moon, underneath the apple tree, she started screaming. She could scream real loud, and he'd had to choke her some and beat her in the head with a rock. After that, he felt he should make like some kind of theft was at the bottom of it all, so he took all her Halloween candy.

He was sick thinking back on that night. Her dying without no God-training made him feel lousy. And he couldn't get those Tootsie Rolls out of his mind. There must have been three dozen of them. Later he got so sick from eating them all in one sitting that to this day he couldn't stand the smell of chocolate.

He was thinking on these misfortunes when he saw through the limbs and brush a white sheet go by.

Preacher Judd poked his head up and saw Cinderella running down a little path going, "Wooooo, wooooo, goats."

She had already forgotten about him and had the ghost thing on her mind.

He got up and crept after her with his frying pan. Pretty soon she disappeared over a dip in the trail and he followed her down.

She was sitting at the bottom of the trail between two pines, and ahead of her was a clear lake with the moon shining its face in the water. Across the water the trees thinned, and he could see the glow of light from a house. She was looking at those lights and the big moon in the water and was saying over and over, "Oh, priddy, priddy."

He walked up behind her and said. "It sure is, sugar." and he hit her in the head with the pan. It gave a real solid ring, kind of like the clap of a sweet church bell. He figured that one shot to the bean was sufficient, since it was a good overhand lick, but she was still sitting up and he didn't want to be no slacker about things, so he hit her a couple more times, and by the second time, her head didn't give a ring, just sort of a dull thump, like he was hitting a thick, rubber bag full of mud.

She fell over on what was left of her head and her butt cocked up in the air, exposed as the sheet fell down her back. He took a long look at it, but found he wasn't interested in doing what animals do without sin anymore. All that hitting on the Widow Case and Cinderella had tuckered him out.

He pulled his arm way back, tossed the frying pan with all his might toward the lake. It went in with a soft splash. He turned back toward the house and his car, and when he got out to the road, he cranked up the Dodge and drove away noticing that the Halloween sky was looking blacker. It was because the moon had slipped behind some dark clouds. He thought it looked like a suffering face behind a veil, and as he drove away from the Case's, he stuck his head out the window for a better look. By the time he made the hill that dipped down toward Highway 80, the clouds had passed along, and he'd come to see it more as a happy jack-o-lantern than a sad face, and he took that as a sign that he had done well.

TIGHT LITTLE STICHES IN A DEADMAN'S BACK

From the Journal of Paul Marder

(Boom!)

That's a little scientist joke, and the proper way to begin this. As for the purpose of my notebook, I'm uncertain. Perhaps to organize my thoughts and not to go insane.

No. Probably so I can read it and feel as if I'm being spoken to. Maybe neither of those reasons. It doesn't matter. I just want to do it, and that is enough.

What's new?

Well, Mr. Journal, after all these years I've taken up martial arts again--or at least the forms and calisthenics of Tae Kwon Do. There is no one to spar with here in the lighthouse, so the forms have to do.

There is Mary, of course, but she keeps all her sparring verbal. And as of late, there is not even that. I long for her to call me a sonofabitch. Anything. Her hatred of me has cured to 100% perfection and she no longer finds it necessary to speak. The tight lines around her eyes and mouth, the emotional heat that radiates from her body like a dreadful cold sore looking for a place to lie down is voice enough for hen She lives only for the moment when she (the cold sore) can attach herself to me with her needles, ink and thread. She lives only for the design on my back.

That's all I live for as well. Mary adds to it nightly and I enjoy the pain. The tattoo is of a great, blue mushroom cloud, and in the cloud, etched ghost-like, is the face of our daughter, Rae. Her lips are drawn tight, eyes are closed and there are stitches deeply pulled to simulate the lashes. When I move fast and hard they rip slightly and Rae cries bloody tears.

That's one reason for the martial arts. The hard practice of them helps me to tear the stitches so my daughter can cry. Tears are the only thing I can give her.

Each night I bare my back eagerly to Mary and her needles. She pokes deep and I moan in pain as she moans in ecstasy and hatred. She adds more color to the design, works with brutal precision to bring Rae's face out in sharper relief.

After ten minutes she tires and will work no more. She puts the tools away and I go to the full4ength mirror on the wall. The lantern on the shelf flickers like a jack-o-lantern in a high wind, but there is enough light for me to look over my shoulder and examine the tattoo. And it is beautiful. Better each night as Rae's face becomes more and more defined.

Rae.

Rae. God, can you forgive me, sweetheart?

But the pain of the needles, wonderful and cleansing as they are, is not enough.

So I go sliding, kicking and punching along the walkway around the lighthouse, feeling Rae's red tears running down my spine, gathering in the waistband of my much-stained canvas pants.

Winded, unable to punch and kick anymore, I walk over to the railing and call down into the dark, "Hungry?"

In response to my voice a chorus of moans rises up to greet me.

Later, I lie on my pallet, hands behind my head, examine the ceiling and try to think of something worthy to write in you, Mr. Journal. So seldom is there anything. Nothing seems truly worthwhile.

Bored of this, I roll on my side and look at the great light that once shone out to the ships, but is now forever snuffed. Then I turn the other direction and look at my wife sleeping on her bunk, her naked ass turned toward me. I try to remember what it was like to make love to her, but it is difficult. I only remember that I miss it. For a long moment I stare at my wife's ass as if it is a mean mouth about to open and reveal teeth. Then I roll on my back again, stare at the ceiling, and continue this routine until daybreak.

* * *

Mornings I greet the flowers, their bright red and yellow blooms bursting from the heads of long-dead bodies that will not rot. The flowers open wide to reveal their little black brains and their feathery feelers, and they lift their blooms upward and moan. I get a wfld pleasure out of this. For one crazed moment I feel like a rock singer appearing before his starry-eyed audience.

When I tire of the game I get the binoculars, Mr. Journal, and examine the eastern plains with them, as if I expect a city to materialize there. The most interesting thing I have seen on those plains is a herd of large lizards thundering north. For a moment, I considered calling Mary to see them, but I didn't. The sound of my voice, the sight of my face, upsets hen She loves only the tattoo and is interested in nothing more.

When I finish looking at the plains, I walk to the other side. To the west, where the ocean was, there is now nothing but miles and miles of cracked, black sea bottom. Its only resemblances to a great body of water are the occasional dust storms that blow out of the west like dark tidal waves and wash the windows black at mid-day. And the creatures. Mostly mutated whales. Monstrously large, sluggish things. Abundant now where once they were near extinction. (Perhaps the whales should form some sort of GREENPEACE organization for humans now. What do you think, Mr. Journal? No need to answer just another one of those little scientist jokes.)

These whales crawl across the sea bottom near the lighthouse from time to time, and if the mood strikes them, they rise on their tails and push their heads near the tower and examine it. I keep expecting one to flop down on us, crushing us like bugs. But no such luck. For some unknown reason the whales never leave the cracked sea bed to venture onto what we formerly called the shore. It's as if they live in invisible water and are bound by it. A racial memory perhaps. Or maybe there's something in that cracked black soil they need. I don't know.

Besides the whales I suppose I should mention I saw a shark once. It was slithering along at a great distance and the tip of its fin was winking in the sunlight. I've also seen some strange, legged fish and some things I could not put a name to. I'll just call them whale food since I saw one of the whales dragging his bottom jaw along the ground one day, scooping up the creatures as they tried to beat a hasty retreat.

Exciting, huh? Well, that's how I spend my day, Mr. Journal. Roaming about the tower with my glasses, coming in to write in you, waiting anxiously for Mary to take hold of that kit and give me the signal. The mere thought of it excites me to erection. I suppose you could call that our sex act together.

* * *

And what was I doing the day they dropped The Big One?

Glad you asked that Mr. Journal, really I am.

I was doing the usual. Up at six, did the shit, shower and shave routine. Had breakfast. Got dressed. Tied my tie. I remember doing the latter, and not very well, in front of the bedroom mirror, and noticing that I had shaved poorly. A hunk of dark beard decorated my chin like a bruise.

Rushing to the bathroom to remedy that, I opened the door as Rae, naked as the day of her birth, was stepping from the tub.

Surprised, she turned to look at me. An arm went over her breasts, and a hand, like a dove settling into a fiery bush, covered her pubic area.

Embarrassed, I closed the door with an "excuse me" and went about my businessunshaved. It was an innocent thing. An accident. Nothing sexual. But when I thing of her now, more often than not, that is the first image that comes to mind. I guess it was the moment I realized my baby had grown into a beautiful woman.

That was also the day she went off to her first day of college and got to see, ever so briefly, the end of the world.

And it was the day the triangle-Mary, Rae and myself-shattered.

* * *

If my first memory of Rae alone is that day, naked in the bathroom, my foremost memory of us as a family is when Rae was six. We used to go to the park and she would ride the merry-go-round, swing, teeter-totter, and finally my back. ("I want to piggy Daddy.") We would gallop about until my legs were rubber, then we would stop at the bench where Mary sat waiting. I would turn my back to the bench so Mary could take Rae down, but always before she did, she would reach around from behind, caressing Rae, pushing her tight against my back, and Mary's hands would touch my chest.

God, but if I could describe those hands. She still has hands like that, after all these years. I feel them fluttering against my back when she works. They are long and sleek and artistic. Naturally soft, like the belly of a baby rabbit.

And when she held Rae and me that way, I felt that no matter what happened in the world, we three could stand against it and conquer.

But now the triangle is broken and the geometry gone away.

So the day Rae went off to college and was fucked into obli4on by the dark, pelvic thrust of the bomb, Mary drove me to work. Me, Paul Marder, big shot with The Crew. One of the finest, brightest young minds in the industry. Always teaching, inventing and improving on our nuclear threat, because, as we often joke, "We cared enough to send only the very best."

When we arrived at the guard booth, I had out my pass, but there was no one to take it. Beyond the chain-link gate there was a wild melee of people running, screaming, falling down.

I got out of the car and ran to the gate. I called out to a man I knew as he ran by. When he turned his eyes were wild and his lips were flecked with foam. "The missiles are flying," he said, then he was gone, running madly.

I jumped in the car, pushed Mary aside and stomped the gas. The Buick leaped into the fence, knocking it asunder. The car spun, slammed into the edge of a building and went dead. I grabbed Mary's hand, pulled her from the car and we ran toward the great elevators.

We made one just in time. There were others running for it as the door closed, and the elevator went down. I still remember the echo of their fists on the metal just as it began to drop. It was like the rapid heartbeat of something dying.

And so the elevator took us to the world of Down Under and we locked it oft. There we were in a five-mile layered city designed not only as a massive office and laboratory, but as an impenetrable shelter. It was our special reward for creating the poisons of war. There was food, water, medical supplies, films, books, you name it. Enough to last two thousand people for a hundred years. Of the two thousand it was designed for, perhaps eleven hundred made it. The others didn't run fast enough from the parking lot or the other buildings, or they were late for work, or maybe they had called in sick.

Perhaps they were the lucky ones. They might have died in their sleep. Or while they were having a morning quickie with the spouse. Or perhaps as they lingered over that last cup of coffee.

Because you see, Mr. Journal, Down Under was no paradise. Before long suicides were epidemic. I considered it myself from time to tune. People slashed their throats, drank acid, took pills. It was not unusual to come out of your cubicle in the morning and find people dangling from pipes and rafters like ripe fruit.

There were also the murders. Most of them performed by a crazed group who lived in the deeper recesses of the unit and called themselves the Slut Faces. From time to time they smeared dung on themselves and ran amok, clubbing me, women, and children born down under, to death. It was rumored they ate human flesh.

We had a police force of sorts, but it didn't do much. It didn't have much sense of authority. Worse, we all viewed ourselves as deserving victims. Except for Mary, we had all helped to blow up the world.

Mary came to hate me. She came to the conclusion I had killed Rae. It was a realization that grew in her like a drip growing and growing until it became a gushing flood of hate. She seldom talked to me. She tacked up a picture of Rae and looked at it most of the time.

Topside she had been an artist, and she took that up again. She rigged a kit of tools and inks and became a tattooist. Everyone came to her for a mark. And though each was different, they all seemed to indicate one thing: I fucked up. I blew up the world. Brand me.

Day in and day out she did her tattoos, having less and less to do with me, pushing herself more and more into this work until she was as skilled with skin and needles as she had been Topside with brush and canvas. And one night, as we lay on our separate pallets, feigning sleep, she said to me, "I just want you to know how much I hate you."

"I know," I said.

"You killed Rae."

"I know."

"You say you killed her, you bastard. Say it."

"I killed her," I said, and meant it.

Next day I asked for my tattoo. I told her of this dream that came to me nightly. There would be darkness, and out of this darkness would come a swirl of glowing clouds, and the clouds would melt into a mushroom shape, and out of that-torpedo-shaped, nose pointing skyward, striding on ridiculous cartoon legswould step The Bomb.

There was a face painted on The Bomb, and it was my face. And suddenly the dream's point of view would change, and I would be looking out of the eyes of that painted face. Before me was my daughter. Naked. Lying on the ground. Her legs wide apart. Her sex glazed like a wet canyon.

And I/The Bomb, would dive into her, pulling those silly feet after me, and she would scream. I could hear it echo as I plunged through her belly, finally driving myself out of the top of her head, then blowing to terminal orgasm. And the dream would end where it began. A mushroom cloud. Darkness.

When I told Mary the dream and asked her to interpret it in her art, she said,

"Bare your back," and that's how the design began. An inch of work at a time--a painful inch. She made sure of that.

Never once did I complain. She'd send the needles home as hard and deep as she could, and though I might moan or cry out, I never asked her to stop. I could feel those fine hands touching my back and I loved it.

The needles. The hands.

The needles. The hands.

* * *

And if that was so much fun, you ask, why did I come Topside?

You ask such probing questions, Mr. Journal. Really you do, and I'm glad you asked that. My telling will be like a laxative, I hope. Maybe if I just let the slut flow I'll wake up tomorrow and feel a lot better about myself.

Sure. And it will be the dawning of a new Pepsi generation as well. It will have all been a bad dream. The alarm clock will ring. I'll get up, have my bowl of Rice Krispies and tie my tie.

Okay, Mr. Journal. The answer. Twenty years or so after we went Down Under, a fistful of us decided it couldn't be any worse Topside than it was below. We made plans to go see. Simple as that. Mary and I even talked a little. We both entertained the crazed belief Rae might have survived. She would be thirtyeight. We might have been hiding below like vermin for no reason. It could be a brave new world up there.

I remember thinking these things, Mr. Journal, and half-believing them.

We outfitted two sixty-foot crafts that were used as part of our transportation system Down Under, plugged in the half-remembered codes that opened the elevators, and drove the vehicles inside. The elevator lasers cut through the debris above them and before long we were Topside. The doors opened to sunlight muted by grey-green clouds and a desert-like landscape. Immediately I knew there was no brave new world over the horizon. It had all gone to hell in a fiery handbasket, and all that was left of man's millions of years of development were a few pathetic humans living Down Under like worms, and a few others crawling Topside like the same.

We cruised about a week and finally came to what had once been the Pacific Ocean. Only there wasn't any water now, just that cracked blackness.

We drove along the shore for another week and finally saw life. A whale. Jacobs immediately got the idea to shoot one and taste its meat.

Using a high-powered rifle he killed it, and he and seven others cut slabs off it, brought the meat back to cook. They invited all of us to eat, but the meat looked greenish and there wasn't much blood and we warned him against it. But Jacobs and the others ate it anyway. As Jacobs said, "It's something to do."

A little later on Jacobs threw up blood and his intestines boiled out of his mouth, and not long after those who had shared the meat had the same thing happen to them. They died crawling on their bellies like gutted dogs. There wasn't a thing we could do for them. We couldn't even bury them. The ground was too hard. We stacked them like cordwood along the shoreline and moved camp down a way, tried to remember how remorse felt.

And that night, while we slept as best we could, the roses came.

* * *

Now, let me admit, Mr. Journal, I do not actually know how the roses survived, but I have an idea. And since you've agreed to hear my story-and even if you haven't, you're going to anyway-I'm going to put logic and fantasy together and hope to arrive at the truth.

These roses lived in the ocean bed, underground, and at night they came out. Up until then they had survived as parasites of reptiles and animals, but a new food had arrived from Down Under. Humans. Their creators actually. Looking at it that way, you might say we were the gods who conceived them, and their partaking of our flesh and blood was but a new version of wine and wafer.

I can imagine the pulsating brains pushing up through the sea bottom on thick stalks, extending feathery feelers and tasting the air out there beneath the light of the moon-which through those odd clouds gave the impression of a pusfilled boil-and I can imagine them uprooting and dragging their vines across the ground toward the shore where the corpses lay.

Thick vines sprouted little, thorny vines, and these moved up the bank and touched the corpses. Then, with a lashing motion, the thorns tore into the flesh, and the vines, like snakes, slithered through the wounds and inside.

Secreting a dissolving fluid that turned the innards to the consistency of watery oatmeal, they slurped up the mess, and the vines grew and grew at amazing speed, moved and coiled throughout the bodies, replacing nerves and shaping into the symmetry of the muscles they had devoured, and lastly they pushed up through the necks, into the skulls, ate tongues and eyeballs and sucked up the mousegrey brains like soggy gruel. With an explosion of skull shrapnel, the roses bloomed, their tooth-hard petals expanding into beautiful red and yellow flowers, hunks of human heads dangling from them like shattered watermelon rinds.

In the center of these blooms a fresh, black brain pulsed and feathery feelers once again tasted air for food and breeding grounds. Energy waves from the floral brains shot through the miles and miles of vines that were knotted inside the bodies, and as they had replaced nerves, muscles and vital organs, they made the bodies stand. Then those corpses turned their flowered heads toward the tents where we slept, and the blooming corpses (another little scientist joke there if you're into English idiom, Mr. Journal) walked, eager to add the rest of us to their animated bouquet.

I saw my first rose-head while I was taking a leak.

I had left the tent and gone down by the shore line to relieve myself, when I caught sight of it out of the corner of my eye. Because of the bloom I first thought it was Susan Myers. She wore a thick, wooly Afro that surrounded her head like a lion's mane, and the shape of the thing struck me as her silhouette.

But when I zipped and turned, it wasn't an Afro. It was a flower blooming out of Jacobs. I recognized him by his clothes and the hunk of his face that hung off one of the petals like a worn-out hat on a peg.

In the center of the blood-red flower was a pulsating sack, and all around it little wormy things squirmed. Directly below the brain was a thin proboscis. It extended toward me like an erect penis. At its tip, just inside the opening, were a number of large thorns.

A sound like a moan came out of that proboscis, and I stumbled back. Jacobs' body quivered briefly, as if he had been besieged by a sudden chill, and ripping through his flesh and clothes, from neck to foot, was a mass of thorny, wagging vines that shot out to five feet in length.

With an almost invisible motion, they waved from west to east, slashed my clothes, tore my hide, knocked my feet out from beneath me. It was like being hit by a cat-o-nine-tails.

Dazed, I rolled onto my hands and knees, bear-walked away from it. The vines whipped against my back and butt, cut deep.

Every time I got to my feet, they tripped me. The thorns not only cut, they burned like hot ice picks. I finally twisted away from a net of vines, slammed through one last shoot, and made a break for it.

Without realizing it, I was running back to the tent. My body felt as if I had been lying on a bed of nails and razor blades. My forearm hurt something terrible where I had used it to lash the thorns away from me. I glanced down at it as I ran. It was covered in blood. A strand of vine about two feet in length was coiled around it like a garter snake. A thorn had torn a deep wound in my arm, and the vine was sliding an end into the wound.

Screaming, I held my forearm in front of me like I had just discovered it. The flesh, where the vine had entered, rippled and made a bulge that looked like a junkie's favorite vein. The pain was nauseating. I snatched at the vine, ripped it free. The thorns turned against me like fishhooks.

The pain was so much I fell to my knees, but I had the vine out of me. It squirmed in my hand, and I felt a thorn gouge my palm. I threw the vine into the dark. Then I was up and running for the tent again.

The roses must have been at work for quite some time before I saw Jacobs, because when I broke back into camp yelling, I saw Susan, Ralph, Casey and some others, and already their heads were blooming, skulls cracking away like broken model kits.

Jane Calloway was facing a rose-possessed corpse, and the dead body had its hands on her shoulders, and the vines were jetting out of the corpse, weaving around her like a web, tearing, sliding inside her, breaking off. The proboscis poked into her mouth and extended down her throat, forced her head back. The scream she started came out a gurgle.

I tried to help her, but when I got close, the vines whipped at me and I had to jump back. I looked for something to grab, to hit the damn thing with, but there was nothing. When next I looked at Jane, vines were stabbing out of her eyes and her tongue, now nothing more than lava-thick blood, was dripping out of her mouth onto her breasts, which like the rest of her body, were riddled with stabbing vines.

I ran away then. There was nothing I could do for Jane. I saw others embraced by corpse hands and tangles of vines, but now my only thought was Mary. Our tent was to the rear of the campsite, and I ran there as fast as I could.

She was lumbering out of our tent when I arrived. The sound of screams had awakened her. When she saw me running she froze. By the time I got to her, two vine-riddled corpses were coming up on the tent from the left side. Grabbing her hand I half-pulled, half-dragged her away from there. I got to one of the vehicles and pushed her inside.

* * *

I locked the doors just as Jacobs, Susan, Jane, and others appeared at the windshield, leaning over the rocket-nose hood, the feelers around the brain sacks vibrating like streamers in a high wind. Hands slid greasily down the windshield. Vines flopped and scratched and cracked against it like thin bicycle chains.

I got the vehicle started, stomped the accelerator, and the rose-heads went flying. One of them, Jacobs, bounced over the hood and splattered into a spray of flesh, ichor and petals.

I had never driven the vehicle, so my maneuvering was rusty. But it didn't matter. There wasn't exactly a traffic rush to worry about.

After an hour or so, I turned to look at Mary. She was staring at me, her eyes like the twin barrels of a double-barreled shotgun. They seemed to say, "More of your doing," and in a way she was right. I drove on.

Daybreak we came to the lighthouse. I don't know how it survived. One of those quirks. Even the glass was uubroken. It looked like a great stone finger shooting us the bird.

The vehicle's tank was near empty, so I assumed here was as good a place to stop as any. At least there was shelter, something we could fortify. Going on until the vehicle was empty of fuel didn't make much sense. There wouldn't be any more fill-ups, and there might not be any more shelter like this.

Mary and I (in our usual silence) unloaded the supplies from the vehicle and put them in the lighthouse. There was enough food, water, chemicals for the chemical toilet, odds and ends, extra clothes, to last us a year. There were also some guns. A Colt .45 revolver, two twelve-gauge shotguns and a .38, and enough shells to fight a small war.

When everything was unloaded, I found some old furniture downstairs, and using tools from the vehicle, tried to barricade the bottom door and the one at the top of the stairs. When I finished, I thought of a line from a story I had once read, a line that always disturbed me. It went something like, "Now we're shut in for the night."

Days. Nights. All the same. Shut in with one another, our memories and the fine tattoo.

A few days later I spotted the roses. It was as if they had smelled us out. And maybe they had. From a distance, through the binoculars, they reminded me of old women in bright sun hats.

It took them the rest of the day to reach the lighthouse, and they immediately surrounded it, and when I appeared at the railing they would lift their heads and moan.

And that, Mr. Journal, brings us up to now.

* * *

I thought I had written myself out, Mr. Journal. Told the only part of my life story I would ever tell, but now I'm back. You can't keep a good world destroyer down.

I saw my daughter last night and she's been dead for years. But I saw her, I did, naked, smiling at me, calling to ride piggyback.

Here's what happened.

It was cold last night. Must be getting along winter. I had rolled off my pallet onto the cold floor Maybe that's what brought me awake. The cold. Or maybe it was just gut instinct.

It had been a particularly wonderful night with the tattoo. The face had been made so clear it seemed to stand out from my back. It had finally become more defined than the mushroom cloud. The needles went in hard and deep, but I've had them in me so much now I barely feel the pain. After looking in the mirror at the beauty of the design, I went to bed happy, or as happy as I can get.

During the night the eyes ripped open. The stitches came out and I didn't know it until I tried to rise from the cold, stone floor and my back puckered against it where the blood had dried.

I pulled myself free and got up. It was dark, but we had a good moonspill that night and I went to the mirror to look. It was bright enough that I could see Rae's reflection clearly, the color of her face, the color of the cloud. The stitches had fallen away and now the wounds were spread wide, and inside the wounds were eyes. Oh God, Rae's blue eyes. Her month smiled at me and her teeth were very white.

Oh, I hear you, Mr. Journal. I hear what you're saying. And I thought of that. My first impression was that I was about six bricks shy a load, gone around the old bend. But I know better now. You see, I lit a candle and held it over my shoulder, and with the candle and the moonlight, I could see even more clearly. It was Rae all right, not just a tattoo.

I looked over at my wife on the bunk, her hack to me, as always. She had not moved.

I turned back to the reflection. I could hardly see the outline of myself, just Rae's face smiling out of that cloud.

"Rae," I whispered, "is that you?"

"Come on, Daddy," said the mouth in the mirror, "that's a stupid question. Of course, it's me."

"But. . . You're. . . you're. . ."

"Dead?"

"Yes... Did... did it hurt much?"

She cackled so loudly the mirror shook. I could feel the hairs on my neck rising. I thought for sure Mary would wake up, but she slept on.

"It was instantaneous, Daddy, and even then, it was the greatest pain imaginable. Let me show you how it hurt."

The candle blew out and I dropped it. I didn't need it anyway. The mirror grew bright and Rae's smile went from ear to ear-literally-and the flesh on her bones seemed like crepe paper before a powerful fan, and that fan blew the hair off her head, the skin off her skull and melted those beautiful, blue eyes and those shiny white teeth of hers to a putrescent goo the color and consistency of fresh bird shit. Then there was only the skull, and it heaved in half and flew backwards into the dark world of the mirror and there was no reflection now, only the hurtling fragments of a life that once was and was now nothing more than swirling cosmic dust.

I closed my eyes and looked away.

"Daddy?"

I opened them, looked over my shoulder into the mirror. There was Rae again, smiling out of my back.

"Darling," I said, "I'm so sorry."

"So are we," she said, and there were faces floating past her in the mirror Teenagers, children, men and women, babies, little embryos swirling around her head like planets around the sun. I closed my eyes again, but I could not keep them closed. When I opened them the multitudes of swirling dead, and those who had never had a chance to live, were gone. Only Rae was there.

"Come close to the mirror, Daddy."

I backed up to it. I backed until the hot wounds that were Rae's eyes touched the cold glass and the wounds became hotter and hotter and Rae called out, "Ride me piggy, Daddy," and then I felt her weight on my back, not the weight of a six-year-old child or a teenage girl, but a great weight, like the world was on my shoulders and bearing down.

Leaping away from the mirror I went hopping and whooping about the room, same as I used to in the park. Around and around I went, and as I did, I glanced in the mirror. Astride me was Rae, lithe and naked, her red hair fanning around her as I spun. And when I whirled by the mirror again, I saw that she was six years old. Another spin and there was a skeleton with red hair, one hand held high, the jaws open and yelling, "Ride 'em, cowboy."

"How?" I managed, still bucking and leaping, giving Rae the ride of her life.

She bent to my ear and I could feel her warm breath. "You want to know how I'm here, Daddy-dear? I'm here because you created me. Once you laid between Mother's legs and thrust me into existence, the two of you, with all the love there was in you. This time you thrust me into existence with your guilt and Mother's hate . Her thrusting needles, your arching back. And now I've come back for one last ride, Daddy-o. Ride, you bastard, ride."

All the while I had been spinning, and now as I glimpsed the mirror, I saw wall to wall faces, weaving in, weaving out, like smiling stars, and all those smiles opened wide and words came out in chorus, "Where were you when they dropped The Big One?"

Each time I spun and saw the mirror again, it was a new scene. Great flaming winds scorching across the world, babies turning to fleshy jello, heaps of charred bones, brains boiling out of the heads of men and women like backed-up toilets overflowing, The Almighty, Glory Hallelujah, Ours Is Bigger Than Yours Bomb hurtling forward, the mirror going mushroom white, then clear, and me, spinning, Rae pressed tight against my back, melting like butter on a griddle, evaporating into the eye wounds on my back, and finally me alone, collapsing to the floor beneath the weight of the world.

* * *

Mary never awoke.

The vines outsmarted me.

A single strand found a crack downstairs somewhere and wound up the steps and slipped beneath the door that led into the tower. Mary's bunk was not far from the door, and in the night, while I slept and later while I spun in front of the mirror and lay on the floor before it, it made its way to Mary's bunk, up between her legs, and entered her sex effortlessly.

I suppose I should give the vine credit for doing what I had not been able to do in years, Mr. Journal, and that's enter Mary. Oh God, that's a funny one, Mr.

Journal. Real funny. Another little scientist joke. Let's make that a mad scientist joke, what say? Who but a madman would play with the lives of human beings by constantly trying to build the bigger and better boom machine?

So what of Rae, you ask?

I'll tell you. She is inside me. My back feels the weight. She twists in my guts like a corkscrew. I went to the mirror a moment ago, and the tattoo no longer looks like it did. They eyes have turned to crusty sores and the entire face looks like a scab. It's as if the bile that made up my soul, the unthinking, nearsightedness, the guilt that I am, has festered from inside and spoiled the picture with pustule bumps, knots and scabs.

To put it in layman's terms, Mr. Journal, my back is infected. Infected with what I am. A blind, senseless fool.

The wife?

Ah, the wife. God, how I loved that woman. I have not really touched her in years, merely felt those wonderful hands on my back as she jabbed the needles home, but I never stopped loving her. It was not a love that glowed anymore, but it was there, though hers for me was long gone and wasted.

This morning when I got up from the floor, the weight of Rae and the world on my back, I saw the vine coming up from beneath the door and stretching over to her.

I yelled her name. She did not move. I ran to her and saw it was too late.

Before I could put a hand on her, I saw her flesh ripple and bump up, like a den of mice were nesting under a quilt. The vines were at work. (Out goes the old guts, in goes the new vines.)

There was nothing I could do for her.

I made a torch out of a chair leg and old quilt, set fire to it, burned the vine from between her legs, watched it retreat, smoking, under the door. Then I got a board, nailed it along the bottom, hoping it would keep others out for at least a little while. I got one of the twelve-gauges and loaded it. It's on the desk beside me, Mr. Journal, but even I know I'll never use it. It was just something to do, as Jacobs said when he killed and ate the whale. Something to do.

I can hardly write anymore. My back and shoulders hurt so bad. It's the weight of Rae and the world.

* * *

I've just come back from the mirror and there is very little left of the tattoo.

Some blue and black ink, a touch of red that was Rae's hair. It looks like an abstract painting now. Collapsed design, running colors. It's real swollen. I look like the hunchback of Notre Dame.

What am I going to do, Mr. Journal?

Well, as always, I'm glad you asked that. You see, I've thought this out.

I could throw Mary's body over the railing before it blooms. I could do that.

Then I could doctor my back. It might even heal, though I doubt it. Rae wouldn't let that happen, I can tell you now. And I don't blame her. I'm on her side. I'm just a walking dead man and have been for years.

I could put the shotgun under my chin and work the trigger with my toes, or maybe push it with the very pen I'm using to create you, Mr. Journal. Wouldn't that be neat? Blow my brains to the ceiling and sprinkle you with my blood.

But as I said, I loaded the gun because it was something to do. I'd never use it on myself or Mary.

You see, I want Mary. I want her to hold Rae and me one last time like she used to in the park. And she can. There's a way.

I've drawn all the curtains and made curtains out of blankets for those spots where there aren't any. It'll be sunup soon and I don't want that kind of light in here. I'm writing this by candlelight and it gives the entire room a warm glow. I wish I had wine. I want the atmosphere to be just right.

Over on Mary's bunk she's starting to twitch. Her neck is swollen where the vines have congested and are writhing toward their favorite morsel, the brain.

Pretty soon the rose will bloom (I hope she's one of the bright yellow ones ' yellow was her favorite color and she wore it well) and Mary will come for me.

When she does, I'll stand with my naked back to her. The vines will whip out and cut me before she reaches me, but I can stand it. I'm used to pain. I'll pretend the thorns are Mary's needles. I'll stand that way until she folds her dead arms around me and her body pushes up against the wound she made in my back, the wound that is our daughter Rae. She'll hold me so the vines and the proboscis can do their work. And while she holds me, I'll grab her fine hands and push them against my chest, and it will be we three again, standing against the world, and I'll close my eyes and delight in her soft, soft hands one last time.

HELL THROUGH A WINDSHIELD

We are drive-in mutants.

We are not like other people.

We are sick.

We are disgusting.

We believe in blood.

In breasts.

And in beasts.

We believe in Kung Fu City.

If life had a vomit meter.

We'd be off the scale.

As long as one single drive-in remains On the planet Earth.

We will party like jungle animals.

We will boogie till we puke.

Heads will roll.

The drive-in will never die.

Amen.

THE DRIVE-IN OATH

The drive-in theater may have been born in New Jersey, but it had the good sense to come to Texas to live. Throughout the fifties and sixties it thrived here like a fungus on teenage lusts and families enticed by the legendary "Dollar Night" or "Two Dollars A Carload".

And even now--though some say the drive-in has seen its heyday in the more populated areas, you can drive on in there any night of the week-particularly Special Nights and Saturday-and witness a sight that sometimes makes the one on the screen boring on comparison.

You'll see lawn chairs planted in the backs of pickups, or next to speakers, with cowboys and cowgirls planted in the chairs, beer cans growing out of their fists, and there'll be the sputterings of barbecue pits and the aromas of cooking meats rising up in billows of smoke that slowly melts into the clear Texas sky.

Sometimes there'll be folks with tape decks whining away, even as the movie flickers across the three-story screen and their neighbors struggle to hear the crackling speaker dialogue over ZZ Top doing "The Tube Snake Boogie." There'll be lovers sprawled out on blankets spread between two speaker posts, going at it so hot and heavy they ought to just go on and charge admission. And there's plenty of action in the cars too. En route to the concession stand a discerning eye can spot the white moons of un-Levied butts rising and falling to a steady, rocking rhythm just barely contained by well-greased shocks and four-ply tires.

What you're witnessing is a bizarre subculture in action. One that may in fact be riding the crest of a new wave.

Or to put it another way: Drive-ins are crazy, but they sure are fun.

* * *

The drive-in theater is over fifty years old, having been spawned on Camden, New Jersey June 6th, 1933 by a true visionary--Richard Milton Hollingshead.

Camden, as you may know, was the last home of Walt Whitman, and when one considers it was the death place of so prestigious an American poet, it is only fitting that it be the birthplace of such a poetic and all-American institution as the drive-in theater Or as my dad used to call them, "the outdoor picture show."

Once there was over 4,000 drive-ins in the United States, now there are about

3,000, and according to some experts, they are dropping off fast. However, in Texas there is a re-emergence and new interest in the passion pits of old. They have become nearly as sacred as the armadillo.

The LoneStarState alone has some 209 outdoor theaters in operation, and many of these are multi-screen jobs with different movies running concurrently alongside one another. Not long ago, Gordon McLendon, "The Drive-in Business King," erected the 145 in Houston, a drive-in capable of holding up to three thousand automobiles. In fact, it claims to be the biggest drive-in in existence.

* * *

Why does the drive-in thrive in Texas when it's falling off elsewhere?

Three reasons:

(1) Climate. Generally speaking, Texas has a pretty comfortable climate year round.

(2) A car culture. Texas is the champion state for automobile registration, and Texans have this thing about their cars.

The automobile has replaced the horse not only as a mode of transportation, but as a source of mythology. If the Texan of old was supposedly half-human and half-horse, the modern Texan is half-human and half-automobile. Try and separate a Texan from his car, or mass transit that sucker against his will, and you're likely to end up kissing his grillwork at sixty-five miles an hour.

(3) Joe Bob Briggs.

* * *

Okay, start the background music. Softly please, a humming version of "The Eyes of Texas." And will all true Texans please remove your hats while we have 5 short discussion of Joe Bob Briggs, The Patron Saint of Texas Drive-Ins, He Who Drives Behind The Speaker Rows, and columnist for The Dallas Times Herald. In fact, his column, "Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-in," is the most popular feature in the paper. As it should be, because Joe Bob--who may be the pseudonym for the Herald's regular film critic John Bloom-don't talk no bullcorn, and he don't bother with "hardtop" movie reviews. He's purely a drive-in kind of guy, and boy does he have style.

Here's an example, part of a review for The Evil Dead: "Five teenagers become Spam-in-a-cabin when they head for the woods and start turning into flesh-eating zombies. Asks a lot of moral questions, like 'If your girlfriend turns zombie on you, what do you do? Carve her into itty-bitty pieces or look the other way?'

One girl gets raped by the woods. Not in the woods. By the woods. The only way to kill zombies:

Total dismemberment. This one could make Saw eligible for the Disney Channel."

Single-handedly, with that wild column of his-which not only reports on movies, but on the good times and bad times of Joe Bob himself-he has given the drive-in a new mystique. Or to be more exact, made the non-drive-in goers aware of it, and reminded the rest of us just how much fun the outdoor picture show can be.

Joe Bob's popularity has even birthed a yearly Drive-in Movie Festival--somewhat sacrilegiously held indoors this year-that has been attended in the past by such guests as Roger Corman, King Of The B's, and this year by "Big Steve," known to some as Stephen King. (If you movie watchers don't recognize the name, he's a writer-feller) "Big Steve" was given the solemn honor of leading off the 1984 ceremonies with Joe Bob's "drive-in oath" and arrived wearing his JOE BOB BRIGGS IS A PERSONAL FRIEND OF MINE T-shirt.

The festival has also sported such features as The Custom Car Rally, Ralph the Diving Pig (sure hate I missed the boy's act), the stars of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Miss Custom Body of 1983, "unofficial custom bodies" and Joe Bob his own self. And last, but certainly not least, along with this chic gathering, a number of new movies like Bloodsuckers From Outer Space and Future-Kill made their world premieres.

What more could you ask from Joe Bob?

Kill the music. Hats on.

* * *

The drive-ins I grew up with went by a number of names: THE APACHE, THE rim PINES, THE RIVERROAD being a few examples. And though they varied somewhat in appearance, basically they were large lots filled with speaker posts--many of which were minus their speakers, due to absent-minded patrons driving off while they were still hooked to their windows, or vandals--a concession stand, a screen at least three stories high (sometimes six), a swing, see-saw and merry go-round up front for the kiddies, all this surrounded by an ugly six-foot moon shimmering tin fence.

They all had the same bad food at the concessions. Hot dogs that tasted like rubber hoses covered in watery mustard, popcorn indistinguishable from the cardboard containers that held it, drinks that were mostly water and ice, and candy so old the worms inside were dead either of old age or sugar diabetes.

And they all came with the same restroom. It was as if THE APACHE, RIVERROAD and TWIN PINES were equipped with warping devices that activated the moment you stepped behind the wooden "modesty fence." Suddenly, at the speed of thought, you were whisked away to a concrete bunker with floors either so tacky your shoes stuck to it like cat hairs to honey, or so flooded in water you needed skis to make it to the urinals or the john, the latter of which was forever doorless, the hinges hanging like frayed tendons. And both of these public conveniences were invariably stuffed full of floating cigarette butts, candy wrappers and used prophylactics.

Rather than take my life into my own hands in these rather seedy enclosures, I often took my chances battling constipation or urinating into a Coke cup and pouring the prize out the window. The idea of standing over one of those odoriferous urinals--and there was always this item of crayoned wisdom above them: REMEMBER, CRABS CAN POLE VAULT--and having some ugly, fuzzy, multi-legged and ravenous leap out on me was forever foremost in my mind. Nor did I find those initialed and graffiti-carved seats-when there were seats at all-the more inviting. I figured that no matter how precariously I might perch myself, some nameless horror from the pits of sewerdom would find access to that part of my anatomy I most prized.

In spite of these unpleasantries, come Saturday night, a bunch of us guys--the ones who couldn't get dates--would cruise over there, stopping a quarter mile outside the place to stuff one member of our party m the trunk, this always the fellow who had the least money to pool toward entrance fees, having blown it on beer, Playboy magazines and prophylactics that would certainly rot in his wallet. Then we would drive up to the pay booth and promptly be asked, "Got anybody in the trunk?"

Obviously we were a suspicious looking lot, but we never admitted to a body in the trunk, and for the same reason we were never forced to open up. After we had emphatically denied that we would even consider it, and the ticket seller had eyed us over for a while, trying to break our resolve, he would take our money and we would drive inside.

My Plymouth Savoy was rigged so that the man in the trunk could push the back seat from the inside, and it would fold down, allowing our unthrifty, and generally greasy, contortionist to join our party.

That Savoy, what a car, what a drive-in machine. What a death trap. It took a two man crew to drive it. The gas pedal always stuck to the floor, and when you came whizzing up to a red light you had to jerk your foot off the gas, go for the brake and yell "Pedal." Then your copilot would dive for the floorboards, grab the pedal and yank it up just in time to keep us from plowing broadside into an unsuspecting motorist. However, that folding back seat made the sticking pedal seem like a minor liability, and the Savoy was a popular auto with the drive-in set.

The drive-in gave me many firsts. The first sexual action I ever witnessed was there, and I don't mean on the screen. At the APACHE the front row was somewhat on an incline, and if the car in front of you was parked just right, and you were lying on the roof of your car, any activity going on in the back seat of the front row car was quite visible to you, providing it was a moonlit night and the movie playing was a particularly bright one.

The first sexual activity that included me, also occurred at a drive-in, but that is a personal matter, and enough said.

The first truly vicious fight I ever saw was at the RIVERROAD A fellow wearing a cowboy hat got into some kind of a shindig with a hatless fellow right in front of my Savoy. I've no idea what started the fight, but it was a good one, matched only by a live Championship Wrestling match at the Cottonbowl.

Whatever the beef, the fellow with the hat was the sharper of the two, as he had him a three foot length of two-by-four, and all the other fellow had was a bag of popcorn. Even as the zombies of The Night of the Living Dead shuffled across the screen, The Hat laid a lick on Hatless's noggin that sounded like a beaver's tail slapping water. Popcorn flew and the fight was on.

The Hat got Hatless by the lapel and proceeded to knock knots on his head faster than you could count them, and though Hatless was game as all-get-out, he couldn't fight worth a damn. His arms flew over The Hat's shoulders and slapped his back like useless whips of spaghetti, and all the while he just kept making The Hat madder by calling him names and making rude accusations about the man's family tree and what members of it did to one another when the lights were out.

For a while there, The Hat was as busy as the lead in a samurai movie, but finally the rhythm of his blows--originally akin to a Ginger Baker drum solo-died down, and this indicated to me that he was getting tired, and had I been Hatless, that would have been my cue to scream sharply once, then flop at The Hat's feet like a dying fish, and finally pretend to go belly up right there in the lot. But his boy either had the I.Q. of a can of green beans, or was in such a near-comatose state from the beating, he didn't have the good sense to shut up. In fact his language became so vivid, The Hat found renewed strength and delivered his blows in such close proximity that the sound of wood to skull resembled the angry rattling of a diamond back snake.

Finally, Hatless tried to wrestle The Hat to the ground and then went tumbling over my hood, shamelessly knocking loose my prized hood ornament, a large, inflight swan that lit up when the lights were on, and ripping off half of The Hat's cowboy shirt in the process.

A bunch of drive-in personnel showed up then and tried to separate the boys.

That's when the chili really hit the fan. There were bodies flying all over that lot as relatives and friends of the original brawlers suddenly dealt themselves in. One guy got crazy and ripped a speaker and wire smooth off a post and went at anyone and everybody with it. And he was good too. Way he whipped that baby about made Bruce Lee and his nunchukas look like a third grade carnival act.

While this went on, a fellow in the car to the right of us, oblivious to the action on the lot, wrapped up in Night of the Living Dead, and probably polluted on Thunderbird wine, was yelling in favor of the zombie, "Eat 'em, eat 'em!"

Finally the fight moved on down the lot and eventually dissipated. About half an hour later I looked down the row and saw Hatless crawling out from under a white Cadillac festooned with enough curb feelers to make it look like a centipede. He sort of went on his hands and knees for a few yards, rose to a squatting run, and disappeared into a winding maze of automobiles. Them drive-in folks, what kidders.

* * *

The drive-in is also the source for my darkest fantasy--I refrain from calling it a nightmare, because after all these years it has become quite familiar, a sort of grim friend. For years now I've been waiting for this particular dream to continue, take up a new installment, but it always ends on the same enigmatic notes.

Picture this: a crisp summer night in Texas. A line of cars winding from the pay booth of a drive-in out to the highway, then alongside it for a quarter mile or better Horns are honking, children are shouting, mosquitoes are buzzing. I'm in a pickup with two friends who we'll call Dave and Bob. Bob is driving. On the rack behind us is a twelve gauge shotgun and a baseball bat, "a badass persuader." A camper is attached to the truck bed, and in the camper we've got lawn chairs, coolers of soft drinks and beer, enough junk food to send a hypoglycemic to the stars.

What a night this is. Dusk to Dawn features, two dollars a carload. Great movies like The Tool Box Murders, Night of the Living Dead, Day of the Dead, Zombies and I Dismember Mama.

We finally inch our way past the pay booth and dart inside. It's a magnificent drive-in, like the 145, big enough for 3,000 cars or better Empty paper cups, popcorn boxes, chili and mustard-stained hot dog wrappers blow gently across the lot like paper tumbleweeds. And there, standing stark-white against a jet-black sky is a portal into another dimension; the six story screen.

We settle back on a place near the front, about five rows back. Out come the lawn chairs, the coolers and the eats. Before the first flick sputters on and Cameron Mitchell opens that ominous box of tools, we're through an economy size bag of "tater" chips, a quart of Coke and a half a sack of chocolate cookies.

The movie starts, time is lost as we become absorbed in the horrifyingly campy delights of Tool Box. We get to the part where Mitchell is about to use the industrial nailer on a young lady he's been watching shower, and suddenly--there is a light, so red and bright the images on the screen fade. Looking up, we see a great, crimson comet hurtling towards us. Collision with the drive-in is imminent Or so it seems, then, abruptly the comet smiles. Just splits down the middle to show a mouth full of grinning, jagged teeth not too unlike a power saw blade. It seems that instead of going out of life with a bang, we may go out with a crunch. The mouth gets wider, and the comet surprises us by whipping up, dragging behind it a fiery tail that momentarily blinds us.

When the crimson washes from our eyeballs and we look around, all is as before.

At first glance anyway. Because closer observation reveals that everything outside the drive-in, the highway, the trees, the tops of houses and buildings that had been visible above the surrounding tin fence, are gone. There is only blackness, and we're talking BLACKNESS here, the kind of dark that makes fudge pudding look pale. It's as if the drive-in has been ripped up by the roots and miraculously stashed in limbo somewhere. But if so, we are not injured in any way, and the electricity still works. There are lights from the concession stand, and the projector continues to throw the image of Tool Box on the screen.

About this time a guy in a station wagon, fat wife beside him, three kids in the back, panics, guns the car to life and darts for the EXIT. His lights do not penetrate the blackness, and as the car hits it, inch by inch it is consumed by the void. A moment later nothing.

A cowboy with a hatful of toothpicks and feathers gets out of his pickup and goes over there. He stands on the tire-burst spears, extends his arm . . . And never in the history of motion pictures or real life have I heard such a scream.

He flops back, his arm gone from the hand to elbow. He rolls on the ground. By the time we get over there the rest of his arm is collapsing, as if bone and tissue have gone to mush. His hat settles down on a floppy mess that a moment before was his head. His whole body folds in and oozes out of his clothes in what looks like sloppy vomit. I carefully reach out and take hold of one of his boots, upend it, a loathsome mess pours out and strikes the ground with a plopping sound.

We are trapped in the drive-in.

Time goes by, no one knows how much. It's like the Edgar Rice Burroughs stories about Pellucidar. Without the sun or moon to judge by, time does not exist.

Watches don't help either. They've all stopped. We sleep when sleepy, eat when hungry. And the movies flicker on. No one even suggests cutting them off. Their light and those of the concession stand are the only lights, and should we extinguish them, we might be lost forever in a void to match the one outside of the drive-in fence.

At first people are great. The concession folks bring out food. Those of us who have brought food, share it. Everyone is fed.

But as time passes, people are not so great. The concession stand people lock up and post guards. My friends and I are down to our last kernels of popcorn and we're drinking the ice and water slush left in the coolers. The place smells of human waste, as the restrooms have ceased to function altogether. Gangs are forming, even cults based on the movies. There is a Zombie Cult that stumbles and staggers in religious mockery of the "dead" on the screen. And with the lack of food an acute problem, they have taken to human sacrifice and cannibalism.

Bob takes down the shotgun. I take down the baseball bat. Dave has taken to wearing a hunting knife he got out of the glove box.

Rape and murder are wholesale, and even if you've a mind to, there's not much you can do about it. You've got to protect your little stretch of ground, your automobile, your universe. But against our will we are forced into the role of saviours when a young girl runs against our truck while fleeing her mother, father and older brother. Bob jerks her inside the truck, holds the family-who are a part of the Zombie Cult and run as if they are cursed with a case of the rickets--at bay with the shotgun. They start to explain that as the youngest member of the family, it's only right that she give herself up to them to provide sustenance. A chill runs up my hack. Not so much because it is a horrible thing they suggest, but because I too am hungry, and for a moment they seem to make good sense.

Hunger devours the family's common sense, and the father leaps forward. The shotgun rocks against Bob's shoulder and the man goes down, hit in the head, the way you have to kill zombies. Then the mother is on me, teeth and nails. I swing the bat and down she goes, thrashing at my feet like a headless chicken.

Trembling, I hold the bat before me. It is caked with blood and brains. I fall back against the truck and throw up. On the screen the zombies are feasting on bodies from an exploded pickup.

Rough for the home team. Time creeps by. We are weak. No food. No water. We find ourselves looking at the rotting corpses outside our pickup far too long. We catch the young girl eating their remains, but we do nothing. Somehow, it doesn't seem so bad. In fact, it looks inviting. Food right outside the truck, on the ground, ready for the taking.

But when it seems we are going to join her, there is a red light in the sky. The comet is back, and once again it swoops down, collision looks unavoidable, it smiles with its jagged teeth, peels up and whips its bright tail. And when the glow burns away from our eyes, it is daylight and there is a world outside the drive-in.

A sort of normalcy returns. Engines are tried. Batteries have been unaffected by the wait. Automobiles start up and begin moving toward the EXIT in single file, as if nothing has ever happened.

Outside, the highway we come to is the same, except the yellow line has faded and the concrete has buckled in spots. But nothing else is the same. On either side of the highway is a great, dark jungle. It looks like something out of a lost world movie.

As we drive along--we're about the fifth automobile in line--we see something move up ahead, to the right. A massive shape steps out of the foliage and onto the highway. It is a Tyrannosaurus Rex covered in bat-like parasites, their wings opening and closing slowly, like contented butterflies sipping nectar from a flower.

The dinosaur does nothing. It gives our line of metal bugs the once over, crosses the highway and is enveloped by the jungle again.

* * *

The caravan starts up once more. We drive onward into this prehistoric world split by a highway out of our memories.

I'm riding shotgun and I glance in the wing-mirror on my side. In it I can see the drive-in screen, and though the last movie should still be running, I can't make out any movement there. It looks like nothing more than an oversized slice of Wonder Bread.

Fade out.

That's the dream. And even now when I go to a drive-in, be it the beat up LUMBERJACK here with its cheap, tin screen, or anywhere else, I find myself occasionally glancing at the night sky, momentarily fearing that out of the depths of space there will come a great, red comet that will smile at me with a mouthful of sawblade teeth and whip its flaming tail.

* * *

Postscript:

The part of this article dealing with my continuing dream, eventually became my novel, The Drive-In: A B Movie with Blood and Popcorn, and later led to a sequel, The Drive-In 2: Not Just One of Them Sequels, and a third is in the mill, due whenever I get around to finishing it.

As to another matter, I have to reveal how poor a prophet I was concerning matters pertaining to the drive-in.

Almost immediately after I wrote my article, Joe Bob Briggs (John Bloom), was fired from The Dallas Times Herald. This was due to a scathing bit of inspired satire he wrote in his column. Satire that was taken literally, and led to him branching out on his own to become even more popular and successful than ever before, not only column-wise, but in books, and as a film-host. He also got a few bit acting parts out of it. So, sometimes, there is justice.

But for the drive-in, alas, there was no justice. Not even in Texas.

It wasn't making a comeback after all. It was merely screaming a death scream so loud I thought it was the voice of triumph. Video and cable gave it the coup de grace, and I have not driven past a drive-in m years that isn't closed or has been turned into some other enterprise, like THE REDLAND DRIVE-IN near me. It tried to hang on by showing porno movies, then finally, just said "the hell with it," and became a metal scrap yard. Probably best. It lost the spirit of the drive-in long before it ceased being one.

THE LUMBERJACK, formerly down the road from me, is also gone, and a new jail stan4s on the spot where many a lover got their first dose of wet romance, or perhaps their first dose of clap. Where once cars rocked, cons now pull their meat come late at night, or spend their time trying to figure on that big jail break.

The pole and sign that once held the humble LUMBERJACK drive-in marquee is still there, but instead of reading Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Night of the Living Dead, it announces that this is the local jail, and buddy, ain't nothing show'n.

Kida sad, really.

But hey, the spirit of the drive-in is still with us. Even if it is in video boxes, or weekends at festivals celebrating the drive-in.

Joe Bob was right. "The drive-in will never die." Not really.

So, rent a low-budget gem. Turn out the lights. Get some popcorn. Get your best girl or guy, and one of you sit on the left side of the couch like you would if you were in the car, and the other, well, slide on over there close, and when you get to the slow part, like where the scientist is talking some bull about how the Z-ray works, maybe you could neck a little or do something a little more ambitious. Because, hell, even if you are indoors, if you've got the right movie on the tube, got the right state of mind about you, you're at the goddamned drive-in.

Enjoy.

And remember, when it comes to prophecy, Nostradamus, I'm not.

SIX-FINGER JACK

Jack had six fingers. That's how Big O, the big, fat, white, straw-hatted son of a bitch, was supposed to know he was dead. Maybe by some real weird luck a guy could kill some other black man with six fingers, cut off his hand, and bring it in and claim it belonged to Jack, but not likely. So he put the word out that whoever killed Jack and cut off his paw and brought it back was gonna get $100,000 and a lot of goodwill.

I went out there after Jack just like a lot of other fellas, plus one woman I knew of, Lean Mama Tootin', who was known for shotgun shootin' and ice-pick work.

But the thing I had on them was I was screwing Jack's old lady. Jack didn't know it, of course. Jack was a bad dude, and it wouldn't have been smart to let him know my bucket was in his well. Nope. Wouldn't have been smart for me, or for Jack's old lady. If he'd known that before he had to make a run for it, might have been good to not sleep, 'cause he might show up and be most unpleasant. I can be unpleasant too, but I prefer when I'm on the stalk, not when I'm being stalked. It sets the dynamics all different.

You see, I'm a philosophical kind of guy.

Thing was, though, I'd been laying the pipeline to his lady for about six weeks, because Jack had been on the run ever since he'd tried to muscle in on Big O's whores and take over that business, found out he couldn't. That wasn't enough, he took up with Big O's old lady like it didn't matter none, but it did. Rumor was Big O put the old lady under about three feet of concrete out by his lake-boat stalls, buried her in the hole while she was alive, hands tied behind her back, staring up at that concrete mixer truck dripping out the goo, right on top of her naked self.

Jack hears this little tidbit of information, he quit fooling around and made with the jackrabbit, took off lickety-split, so fast he almost left a vapor trail. It's one thing to fight one man, or two, but to fight a whole organization, not so easy. Especially if that organization belongs to Big O.

Loodie, Jack's personal woman, was a hot flash number who liked to have her ashes hauled, and me, I'm a tall, lean fellow with a good smile and a willing attitude. Loodie was ready to lose Jack because he had a bad temper and a bit of a smell. He was short on baths and long on cologne. Smellgood juice on top of his stinky smell, she said, created a kind of funk that would make a skunk roll over dead and cause a wild hyena to leave the body where it lay.

She, on the other hand, was like sweet, wet sin dipped in coffee and sugar with a dash of cinnamon; God's own mistress with a surly attitude, which goes to show even He likes a little bit of the devil now and then.

She'd been asked about Jack by them who wanted to know. Bad folks with guns, and a need for dough. But she lied, said she didn't know where he was. Everyone believed her because she talked so bad about Jack. Said stuff about his habits, about how he beat her, how bad he was in bed, and how he stunk. It was convincing stuff to everyone.

But me.

I knew that woman was a liar, because I knew her whole family, and they was the sort, like my daddy used to say, would rather climb a tree and lie than stand on the ground and tell the truth and be given free flowers. Lies flowed through their veins as surely as blood.

She told me about Jack one night while we were in bed, right after we had toted the water to the mountain. We're laying there looking at the ceiling, like there's gonna be manna from heaven, watching the defective light from the church across the way flash in and out and bounce along the wall, and she says in that burnt-toast voice of hers, "You split that money, I'll tell you where he is."

"You wanna split it?"

"Naw, I'm thinkin' maybe you could keep half and I could give the other half to the cat."

"You don't got a cat."

"Well, I got another kind of cat, and that cat is one you like to pet."

"You're right there," I said. "Tellin' me where he is, that's okay, but I still got to do the groundwork. Hasslin' with that dude ain't no easy matter, that's what I'm tryin' to tell you. So, me doin' what I'm gonna have to do, that's gonna be dangerous as trying to play with a daddy lion's balls. So, that makes me worth more than half, and you less than half."

"You're gonna shoot him when he ain't lookin', and you know it."

"I still got to take the chance."

She reached over to the nightstand, nabbed up a pack, shook out a cigarette, lit it with a cheap lighter, took a deep drag, coughed out a puff, said, "Split, or nothin'."

"Hell, honey, you know I'm funnin'," I said. "I'll split it right in half with you."

I was lying through my teeth. She may have figured such, but she figured with me she at least had a possibility, even if it was as thin as the edge of playing card.

She said, "He's done gone deep into East Texas. He's over in Gladewater. Drove there in his big black Cadillac that he had a chop shop turn blue."

"So he drove over in a blue Caddy, not a black one," I said. "I mean, if it was black, and he had it painted blue, it ain't black no more. It's blue."

"Aren't you one for the details, and at a time like this," she said, and rubbed my leg with her foot. "But technically, baby, you are so correct."

That night Loodie laid me out a map written in pencil on a brown paper sack, made me swear I was gonna split the money with her again. I told her what she wanted to hear. Next morning, I started over to Gladewater.

Jack was actually in a place outside of the town, along the Sabine River, back in the bottom land where the woods was still thick, down a little trail that wound around and around, to a cabin Loodie said was about the size of a postage stamp, provided the stamp had been scissor-trimmed.

I oiled my automatic, put on gloves, went to the store and bought a hatchet, cruised out early, made Gladewater in about an hour and fifteen, glided over the Sabine River bridge. I took a gander at the water, which was dirty brown and up high on account of rain. I had grown up along that river, over near a place called Big Sandy. It was a place of hot sand and tall pines and no opportunity.

It wasn't a world I missed none.

I stopped at a little diner in Gladewater and had me a hamburger. There was a little white girl behind the counter with hair blond as sunlight, and we made some goo-goo eyes at one another. Had I not been on a mission, I might have found out when she got off work, seen if me and her could get a drink and find a motel and try and make the beast with two backs.

Instead, I finished up, got me a tall Styrofoam cup of coffee to go. I drove over to a food store and went in and bought a jar of pickles, a bag of cookies, and a bottle of water. I put the pickles on the floorboard between the backseat and the front; it was a huge jar and it fit snugly. I laid the bag with the cookies and the water on the backseat.

The bottoms weren't far, about twenty minutes, but the roads were kind of tricky, some of them were little more than mud and a suggestion. Others were slick and shiny like snot on a water glass.

I drove carefully and sucked on my coffee. I went down a wide road that became narrow, then took another that wound off into the deeper woods. Drove until I found what I thought was the side road that led to the cabin. It was really a glorified path. Sun-hardened, not very wide, bordered on one side by trees and on the other by marshy land that would suck the shoes off your feet, or bog up a car tire until you had to pull a gun and shoot the engine like a dying horse.

I stopped in the road and held Loodie's hand-drawn map, checked it, looked up. There was a curve went around and between the trees and the marsh. There were tire tracks in it. Pretty fresh. At the bend in the curve was a little wooden bridge with no railings.

So far Loodie's map was on the money.

I finished off my coffee, got out and took a pee behind the car, and watched some big white waterbirds flying over. When I was growing up over in Big Sandy I used to see that kind of thing often, not to mention all manner of wildlife, and for a moment I felt nostalgic. That lasted about as long as it took me to stick my dick back in my pants and zipper up.

I took my hatchet out of the trunk and rested it on the front passenger seat as I got back in the car. I pulled out my automatic and checked it over, popped out the clip and slid it back in. I always liked the sound it made when it snapped into place. I looked at myself in the mirror, like maybe I was going on a date. Thought maybe if things fucked up, it might be the last time I got a good look at myself. I put the car in gear, wheeled around the curve and over the bridge, going at a slow pace, the map on the seat beside me, held in place by the hatchet.

I came to a wide patch, like on the map, and pulled off the road. Someone had dumped their garbage where the spot ended close to the trees. There were broken-up plastic bags spilling cans and paper, and there was an old bald tire leaning against a tree, as if taking a break before rolling on its way.

I got out and walked around the bend, looked down the road. There was a broad pond of water to the left, leaked there by the dirty Sabine. On the right, next to the woods, was a log cabin. Small, but well made and kind of cool looking. Loodie said it was on property Jack's parents had owned. Twenty acres or so. Cabin had a chimney chugging smoke. Out front was a big blue Cadillac Eldorado, the tires and sides splashed with mud. It was parked close to the cabin. I could see through the Cadillac's windows, and they lined up with a window in the cabin. I moved to the side of the road, stepped in behind some trees, and studied the place carefully.

There weren't any wires running to the cabin. There was a kind of lean-to shed off the back. Loodie told me that was where Jack kept the generator that gave the joint electricity. Mostly the cabin was heated by the firewood piled against the shed, and lots of blankets come late at night. Had a gas stove with a nice-sized tank. I could just imagine Jack in there with Loodie, his six fingers on her sweet chocolate skin. It made me want to kill him all the more, even though I knew Loodie was the kind of girl made a minx look virginal. You gave your heart to that woman, she'd eat it.

I went back to the car and got my gun-cleaning goods out of the glove box, took out the clip, and cleaned my pistol and reloaded it. It was unnecessary, because the gun was clean as a model's ass, but I like to be sure.

I patted the hatchet on the seat like it was a dog.

I sat there and waited, thought about what I was gonna do with $100,000. You planned to kill someone and cut off their hand, you had to think about stuff like that, and a lot.

Considering on it, I decided I wasn't gonna get foolish and buy a car. One I had got me around and it looked all right enough. I wasn't gonna spend it on Loodie or some other split tail in a big-time way. I was gonna use it carefully. I might get some new clothes and put some money down on a place instead of renting. Fact was, I might move to Houston.

If I lived close to the bone and picked up the odd bounty job now and again, just stuff I wanted to do, like bits that didn't involve me having to deal with some goon big enough to pull off one of my legs and beat me with it, I could live safer, and better. Could have some stretches where I didn't have to do a damn thing but take it easy, all on account of that $100,000 nest egg.

Course, Jack wasn't gonna bend over and grease up for me. He wasn't like that. He could be a problem.

I got a paperback out of the glove box and read for a while. I couldn't get my mind to stick to it. The sky turned gray. My light was going. I put the paperback in the glove box with the gun-cleaning kit. It started to rain. I watched it splat on the windshield. Thunder knocked at the sky. Lightning licked a crooked path against the clouds and passed away.

I thought about all manner of different ways of pulling this off, and finally came up with something, decided it was good enough, because all I needed was a little edge.

The rain was hard and wild. It made me think Jack wasn't gonna be coming outside. I felt safe enough for the moment. I tilted the seat back and lay there with the gun in my hand, my arm folded across my chest, and dozed for a while with the rain pounding the roof.

It was fresh night when I awoke. I waited about an hour, picked up the hatchet, and got out of the car. It was still raining, and the rain was cold. I pulled my coat tight around me, stuck the hatchet through my belt, and went to the back of the car and unlocked the trunk. I got the jack handle out of there, stuck it in my belt opposite the hatchet, started walking around the curve.

The cabin had a faint light shining through the window, that in turn shone through the lined-up windows of the car. As I walked, I saw a shape, like a huge bullet with arms, move in front of the glass. That size made me lose a step briefly, but I gathered up my courage, kept going.

When I got to the back of the cabin, I carefully climbed on the pile of firewood, made my way to the top of the lean-to. It sloped down off the main roof of the cabin, so it didn't take too much work to get up there, except that the hatchet and tire iron gave me a bit of trouble in my belt, and my gloves made my grip a little slippery.

On top of the cabin, I didn't stand up and walk, but in stead carefully made my way on hands and knees toward the front of the place.

When I got there, I peered over the edge. The cabin door was about three feet below me. I moved over so I was overlooking the Cadillac. A knock on the door wouldn't bring Jack out. Even he was too smart for that, but that Cadillac, he loved it. I pulled out the tire iron, nestled down on the roof, peeking over the edge, cocked my arm back, and threw the iron at the windshield. It made a hell of a crash, cracking the glass so that it looked like a spiderweb, setting off the car alarm.

I pulled my gun and waited. I heard the cabin door open, heard the thumping of Jack's big feet. He came around there mad as a hornet. He was wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He hadn't had time to notice the cold. But the best thing was, it didn't look like he had a gun on him.

I aimed and shot him. I think I hit him somewhere on top of the shoulder, I wasn't sure. But I hit him. He did a kind of bend at the knees, twisted his body, then snapped back into shape and looked up.

"You," he said.

I shot him again, and it had about the same impact. Jack was on the hood of his car, then its roof, and then he jumped. That big bastard could jump, could probably dunk a basketball and grab the rim. He hit with both hands on the edge of the roof, started pulling himself up. I was up now, and I stuck the gun in his face and pulled the trigger.

And let me tell you how the gas went out of me. I had cleaned that gun and cleaned that gun, and now ... it jammed. First time ever. But it was the time that mattered.

Jack lifted himself onto the roof, and then he was on me, snatching the gun away and flinging it into the dark. I couldn't believe it. What the hell was he made of? Even in the wet night, I could see that much of his white shirt had turned dark with blood.

We circled each other for a moment. I tried to decide what to do next, and then he was on me. I remembered the hatchet, but it was too late. We were going back off the roof and onto the lean-to, rolling down. We hit the stacked firewood and it went in all directions and we splattered to the ground.

I lost my breath. Jack kept his. He grabbed me by my coat collar and lifted me and flung me against the side of the lean-to. I hit on my back and came down on my butt.

Jack grabbed up a piece of firewood. It looked to me like that piece of wood had a lot of heft. He came at me. I made myself stand; I pulled the hatchet free. As he came and struck down with the wood, I sidestepped and swung.

The sound the hatchet made as it caught the top of his head was a little like what you might expect if a strong man took hold of a piece of thick cardboard and ripped it.

I hit him so hard his knees bent and hot blood jumped out of his head and hit my face. The hatchet came loose of my hands, stayed in his skull. His knees straightened. I thought: What is this motherfucker, Rasputin?

He grabbed me and started to lift me again. His mouth was partially open and his teeth looked like machinery cogs. The rain was washing the blood on his head down his face in murky rivers. He stunk like roadkill.

And then his expression changed. It seemed as if he had only just realized he had a hatchet in his head. He let go, turned, started walking off, taking hold of the hatchet with both hands, trying to pull it loose. I picked up a piece of firewood and followed after him. I hit him in the back of the head as hard as I could. It was like hitting an elephant in the ass with a twig. He turned and looked at me. The expression on his face was so strange, I almost felt sorry for him.

He went down on one knee, and I hauled back and hit him with the firewood, landing on top of the hatchet. He vibrated, and his neck twisted to one side, and then his head snapped back in line.

He said, "Gonna need some new pigs," and then fell out.

Pigs?

He was laying face forward with the stock of the hatchet holding his head slightly off the ground. I dropped the firewood and rolled him over on his back, which took about as much work as trying to roll his Cadillac. I pulled the hatchet out of his head. I had to put my foot on his neck to do it.

I picked up the firewood I had dropped, placed it on the ground beside him, and stretched his arm out until I had the hand with the six fingers positioned across it. I got down on my knees and lifted the hatchet, hit as hard as I could. It took me three whacks, but I cut the hand loose.

I put the bloody hand in my coat pocket and dug through his pants for his car keys, didn't come across them. I went inside the cabin and found them on the table. I drove the Cadillac to the back where Jack lay, pulled him into the backseat, almost having a hernia in the process. I put the hatchet in there with him.

I drove the El Dorado over close to the pond and rolled all the windows down and put it in neutral. I got out of the car, went to the back of it, and started shoving. My feet slipped in the mud, but I finally gained traction. The car went forward and slipped into the water, but the back end of it hung on the bank.

Damn.

I pushed and I pushed, and finally I got it moving, and the car went in, and with the windows down, it sunk pretty fast.

I went back to the cabin and looked around. I found some candles, turned off the light, then switched off the generator. I went back inside and lit three of the big fat candles and stuck them in drinking glasses and watched them burn for a moment. I went over to the stove and turned on the gas, letting it run a few seconds while I looked around the cabin. Nothing there I needed.

I left, closed the door behind me. When the gas filled the room enough, those candles would set the air on fire. The whole place would blow. I don't know exactly why I did it, except maybe I just didn't like Jack. Didn't like that he had a Cadillac and a cabin and some land, and for a while there, he had Loodie. Because of all that, I had done all I could to him. I even had his six-fingered hand in my pocket.

By the time I got back to the car, I was feeling weak. Jack had worked me over pretty good, and now that the adrenaline was starting to ease out of me, I was feeling it. I took off my jacket and opened the jar of pickles in the floorboard, pulled out a few of them, and threw them away. I ate one, and drank from my bottle of water and had some cookies.

I took Jack's hand and put it in the big pickle jar. I sat in the front seat, and was overcome with nausea. I didn't know if it was the pickle or what I had done, or both. I opened the car door and threw up. I felt cold and damp from the rain, so I started the car and turned on the heater. Then I cranked back my seat and closed my eyes. I had to rest before I left, had to. All of me seemed to be running out through the soles of my feet.

I slept until the cabin blew. The sound of the gas generator and stove going up with a one-two boom snapped me awake.

* * *

I got out of the car and walked around the curve. The cabin was nothing more than a square, dark shape inside an envelope of flames. The fire wavered up high and grew narrow at the top like a cone. It crackled like someone wadding up cellophane.

I doubted, out here, that anyone heard the explosion, and no one could see the flames. Wet as it was, I figured the fire wouldn't go any farther than the cabin. By morning, even with the rain still coming down, that place would be smoked down to the mineral rights.

I drove out of there, and pretty soon the heater was too hot and I turned it off. It was as if my body went up in flames, like the cabin. I rolled down the window and let in some cool air. I felt strange; not good, not bad. I had bounty hunted for years, and I'd done a bit of head whopping before, but this was my first murder.

I had really hated Jack and I'd hardly known him.

It was the woman that made me hate him. The woman I was gonna cheat out of some money. But $100,000 is a whole lot of money, honey.

When I got home, the automatic garage opener lifted the door, and I wheeled in and closed the place up. I went inside and took off my clothes and showered carefully and looked in the mirror. There was a mountainous welt on my head. I got some ice and put it in sock and pressed it to my head while I sat on the toilet lid and thought about things. If any thoughts actually came to me, I don't remember them well.

I dressed, bunched up my murder clothes, and put them in a black plastic garbage bag.

In the garage, I removed the pickle jar and cleaned the car. I opened the jar and stared at the hand. It looked like a black crab in there amongst the pickles. I studied it for a long time, until it started to look like $100,000.

I couldn't wait until morning, and after a while, I drove toward Big O's place. Now, you would think a man with the money he's got would live in a mansion, but he didn't. He lived in three double-wide mobile homes lined together with screened-in porches. I had been inside once, when I'd done Big O a very small favor, though never since. But one of those homes was nothing but one big space, no rooms, and it was Big O's lounge. He hung in there with some ladies and bodyguards. He had two main guys. Be Bop Lewis, a skinny white guy who always acted as if someone was sneaking up on him, and a black guy named Lou Boo (keep in mind, I didn't name them) who thought he was way cool and smooth as velvet.

The rain had followed me from the bottomland, on into Tyler, to the outskirts, and on the far side. It was way early morning, and I figured on waking Big O up and dragging his ass out of bed and showing him them six fingers and getting me $100,000, a pat on the head, and hell, he might ask Be Bop to give me a hand job on account of I had done so well.

More I thought about it, more I thought he might not be as happy to see me as I thought. A man like Big O liked his sleep, so I pulled into a motel not too far from his place, the big jar of pickles and one black six-fingered hand beside my bed, the automatic under my pillow.

I dreamed Jack was driving the Cadillac out of that pond. I saw the lights first and then the car. Jack was steering with his nub laid against the wheel, and his face behind the glass was a black mass without eyes or smile or features of any kind.

It was a bad dream and it woke me up. I washed my face, went back to bed, slept this time until late morning. I got up and put back on my same clothes, loaded up my pickle jar, and left out of there. I thought about the axe in Jack's head, his severed hand floating in the pickle jar, and regret moved through me like shit through a goose and was gone.

I drove out to Big O's place.

By the time I arrived at the property, which was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence, and had driven over a cattle guard, I could see there were men in a white pickup coming my way. Two in the front and three in the bed in the back, and they had some heavy-duty fire power. Parked behind them, up by the double-wides, were the cement trucks and dump trucks and backhoes and graders that were part of the business Big O claimed to operate. Construction. But his real business was a bit of this, and a little of that, construction being not much more than the surface paint.

I stopped and rolled down my window and waited. Outside, the rain had burned off and it was an unseasonably hot day, sticky as honey on the fingers.

When they drove up beside my window, the three guys in the bed pointed their weapons at me. The driver was none other than one of the two men I recognized from before. Be Bop. His skin was so pale and thin, I could almost see the skull beneath it.

"Well, now," he said. "I know you."

I agreed he did. I smiled like me and him was best friends. I said, "I got some good news for Big O about Six-Finger Jack."

"Six-Finger Jack, huh," Be Bop said. "Get out of the car."

I got out. Be Bop got out and frisked me. I had nothing sharp or anything full of bullets. He asked if there was anything in the car. I told him no. He had one of the men in the back of the pickup search it anyway. The man came back, said, "Ain't got no gun, just a big jar of pickles."

"Pickles," Be Bop said. "You a man loves pickles?"

"Not exactly," I said.

"Follow us on up," Be Bop said.

We drove up to the trio of double-wides. There had been some work done since I was last here, and there was a frame of boards laid out for a foundation, and over to the side there was a big hole that looked as if it was gonna be a swimming pool.

I got out of the car and leaned on it and looked things over. Be Bop and his men got out of the truck. Be Bop came over.

"He buildin' a house on that foundation?" I asked.

"Naw, he's gonna put an extension on one of the trailers. I think he's gonna put in a poolroom and maybe some gamin' stuff. Swimmin' pool over there. Come on."

I got my jar of pickles out of the backseat, and Be Bop said, "Now wait a minute. Your pickles got to go with you?"

I sat the jar down and screwed off the lid and stepped back. Be Bop looked inside. When he lifted his head, he said, "Well, now."

Next thing I know I'm in the big trailer, the one that's got nothing but the couch, some chairs, and stands for drinks, a TV set about the size of a downtown theater. It's on, and there's sports going. I glance at it and see it's an old basketball game that was played a year back, but they're watching it, Big O and a few of his boys, including Lou Boo, the black guy I've seen before. This time, there aren't any women there.

Be Bop came inside with me, but the rest of the pickup posse didn't. They were still protecting the perimeter. It seemed silly, but truth was, there was lots of people wanted to kill Big O.

No one said a thing to me for a full five minutes. They were waiting for a big score in the game, something they had seen before. When the shot came they all cheered. I thought only Big O sounded sincere.

I didn't look at the game. I couldn't take my eyes off Big O. He wasn't wearing his cowboy hat. His head only had a few hairs left on it, like worms working their way over the face of the moon. His skin was white and lumpy like cold oatmeal. He was wearing a brown pair of stretch overalls. When the fat moved, the material moved with him, which was a good idea, 'cause it looked as if Big O had packed on about a hundred extra pounds since I saw him last.

He was sitting in a motorized scooter, had his tree-trunk legs stretched out in front of him on a leg lift. His stomach flowed up and fell forward and over his sides, like 400 pounds of bagged mercury. I could hear him wheezing across the room. His right foot was missing. There was a nub there, and his stretch pants had been sewn up at the end. On the stand, near his right elbow, was a tall bottle of malt liquor and a greasy box of fried chicken.

His men sat on the couch to his left. The couch was unusually long, and there were six men on it, like pigeons in a row. They all had guns in shoulder holsters. The scene made Big O look like a whale on vacation with a harem of male sucker fish to attend him.

Big O spoke to me, and his voice sounded small coming from that big body. "Been a long time since I seen you last."

I nodded.

"I had a foot then."

I nodded again.

"The diabetes. Had to cut it off. Dr. Jacobs says I need more exercise, but, hey, glandular problems, so what you gonna do? Packs the weight on. But still, I got to go there ever' Thursday mornin'. Next time, he might tell me the other foot's gotta go. But you know, that's not so bad. This chair, it can really get you around. Motorized, you know."

Be Bop, who was still by me, said, "He's got somethin' for you, Big O."

"Chucky," Big O said, "cut off the game."

Chucky was one of the men on the couch, a white guy. He got up and found a remote control and cut off the game. He took it with him back to the couch, sat down.

"Come on up," Big O said.

I carried my jar of pickles up there, got a whiff of him that made my memory of Jack's stink seem mild. Big O smelled like dried urine, sweat, and death. I had to fight my gag reflex.

I sat the jar down and twisted off the lid and reached inside the blood-stained pickle juice and brought out Jack's dripping hand. Big O said, "Give me that."

I gave it to him. He turned it around and around in front of him. Pickle juice dripped off of the hand and into his lap. He started to laugh. His fat vibrated, and then he coughed. "That there is somethin'."

He held the hand up above his head. Well, he lifted it to about shoulder height. Probably the most he had moved in a while. He said, "Boys, do you see this? Do you see the humanity in this?"

I thought: Humanity?

"This hand tried to take my money and stuck its finger up my old lady's ass ... Maybe all six. Look at it now."

His boys all laughed. It was like the best goddamn joke ever told, way they yucked it up.

"Well, now," Big O said, "that motherfucker won't be touchin' nothin', won't be handlin' nobody's money, not even his own, and we got this dude to thank."

Way Big O looked at me then made me a little choked up. I thought there might even be a tear in his eye. "Oh," he said, "I loved that woman. God, I did. But I had to cut her loose. She hadn't fucked around, me and her might have gotten married, and all this," he waved Jack's hand around, "would have been hers to share. But no. She couldn't keep her pants on. It's a sad situation. And though I can't bring her back, this here hand, it gives me some kind of happiness. I want you to know that."

"I'm glad I could have been of assistance," I said.

"That's good. That's good. Put this back in the pickle jar, will you?"

I took the hand and dropped it in the jar.

Big O looked at me, and I looked at him. After a long moment, he said, "Well, thanks."

I said, "You're welcome."

We kept looking at one another. I cleared my throat. Big O shifted a little in his chair. Not much, but a little.

"Seems to me," I said, "there was a bounty on Jack. Some money."

"Oh," Big O said. "That's right, there was."

"He was quite a problem."

"Was he now ... Yeah, well, I can see the knot on your head. You ought to buy that thing its own cap. Somethin' nice."

Everyone on the couch laughed. I laughed too. I said, "Yeah, it's big. And if I had some money, like say, $100,000, I'd maybe put out ten or twenty for a nice designer cap."

I was smiling, waiting for my laugh, but nothing came. I glaced at Be Bop. He was looking off like maybe he heard his mother calling somewhere in the distance.

Big O said, "Now that Jack's dead, I got to tell you, I've sort of lost the fever."

"Lost the fever?" I said.

"He was alive, I was all worked up. Now that he's dead, I got to consider, is he really worth $100,000?"

"Wait a minute, that was the deal. That's the deal you spread all over."

"I've heard those rumors," Big O said.

"Rumors?"

"Oh, you can't believe everything you hear. You just can't."

I stood there stunned.

Big O said, "But I want you to know, I'm grateful. You want a Coke, a beer before you go?"

"No. I want the goddamn money you promised."

That had come out of my mouth like vomit. It surprised even me.

Everyone in the room was silent.

Big O breathed heavy, said, "Here's the deal, friend. You take your jar of pickles, and Jack's six fingers, and you carry them away. 'Cause if you don't, if you want to keep askin' me for money I don't want to pay, your head is gonna be in that jar, but not before I have it shoved up your ass. You savvy?'

It took me a moment, but I said, "Yeah. I savvy."

Lying in bed with Loodie, not being able to do the deed, I said, "I'm gonna get that fat son of a bitch. He promised me money. I fought Jack with a piece of firewood and a hatchet. I fell off a roof. I slept in my car in the cold. I was nearly killed."

"That sucks," Loodie said.

"Sucks? You got snookered too. You was gonna get fifty thousand, now you're gonna get dick."

"Actually, tonight I'm not even gettin' that."

"Sorry, baby. I'm just so mad ... Ever' Thursday mornin', Big O, he goes to an appointment at Dr. Jacobs'. I can get him there."

"He has his men, you know."

"Yeah. But when he goes in the office, maybe he don't. And maybe I check it out this Thursday, find out when he goes in, and next Thursday I maybe go inside and wait on him."

"How would you do that?"

"I'm thinkin' on it, baby."

"I don't think it's such a good idea."

"You lost fifty grand, and so did I, so blowin' a hole in his head is as close as we'll get to satisfaction."

So Thursday morning I'm going in the garage, to go and check things out, and when I get in the car, before I can open up the garage and back out, a head raises up in the backseat, and a gun barrel, like a wet kiss, pushes against the side of my neck.

I can see him in the mirror. It's Lou Boo. He says: "You got to go where I tell you, else I shoot a hole in you."

I said, "Loodie."

"Yeah, she come to us right away."

"Come on, man. I was just mad. I wasn't gonna do nothin'."

"So here it is Thursday mornin', and now you're tellin' me you wasn't goin' nowhere."

"I was gonna go out and get some breakfast. Really."

"Don't believe you."

"Shit," I said.

"Yeah, shit," Lou Boo said.

"How'd you get in here without me knowin'?"

"I'm like a fuckin' ninja ... And the door slides up, you pull it from the bottom."

"Really?"

"Yeah, really."

"Come on, Lou Boo, give a brother a break. You know how it is."

Lou Boo laughed a little. "Ah, man. Don't play the brother card. I'm what you might call one of them social progressives. I don't see color, even if it's the same as mine. Let's go, my man."

It was high morning and cool when we arrived. I drove my car right up to where the pool was dug out, way Lou Boo told me. There was a cement-mixer truck parked nearby for the pool. We stopped, and Lou Boo told me to leave it in neutral. I did. I got out and walked with him to where Big O was sitting in his motorized scooter with Loodie on his lap. His boys were all around him.

Be Bop pointed his finger at me and dropped his thumb. "My man," he said.

When I was standing in front of Big O, he said, "Now, I want you to understand, you wouldn't be here had you not decided to kill me. I can't have that, now can I?"

I didn't say anything.

I looked at Loodie, she shrugged.

"I figured you owed me money," I said.

"Yeah," Big O said. "I know. You see, Loodie, she comes and tells me she's gonna make a deal with you to kill Jack and make you think you made a deal with her. That way, the deal I made was with her, not you. You followin' me on this, swivel dick? Then, you come up with this idea to kill me at the doctor's office. Loodie, she came right to me."

"So," I said, "you're gettin' Loodie out of the deal, and she's gettin' a hundred thousand."

"That sounds about right, yeah," Big O said.

I thought about that. Her straddling that fat bastard on his scooter. I shook my head, glared at her, said, "Damn, girl."

She didn't look right at me.

Big O said, "Loodie, you go on in the house there and amuse yourself. Get a beer or somethin'. Watch a little TV. Do your nails. Whatever." Loodie started walking toward the trailers. When she was inside, Big O said, "Hell, boy. I know how she is, and I know what she is. It's gonna be white gravy on sweet chocolate bread for me. And when I get tired of it, she gonna find a hole out here next to you. I got me all kind of room here. I ain't usin' the lake-boat stalls no more. That's risky. Here is good. Though I'm gonna have to dig another spot for a pool, but that's how it is. Ain't no big thing, really."

"She used me," I said. "She's the one led me to this."

"No doubt, boy. But you got to understand. She come to me and made the deal before you did anything. I got to honor that."

"I could just go on," I said. "I could forget all about it. I was just mad. I wouldn't never bother you. Hell, I can move. I can go out of state."

"I know that," he said. "But I got this rule, and it's simple. You threaten to kill me, I got to have you taken care of. Ain't that my rule, boys?"

There was a lot of agreement.

Lou Boo was last. He said, "Yep, that's the way you do it, boss."

Big O said, "Lou Boo, put him in the car, will you?"

Lou Boo put the gun to back of my head, said, "Get on your knees."

"Fuck you," I answered, but he hit me hard behind the head. Next thing I know I'm on my knees, and he's got my hands behind my back and has fastened a plastic tie over my wrists.

"Get in the car," Lou Boo said.

I fought him all the way, but Be Bop came out and kicked me in the nuts a couple of times, hard enough I threw up, and then they dragged me to the car and shoved me inside behind the wheel and rolled down the windows and closed the door.

Then they went behind the car and pushed. The car wobbled, then fell, straight down, hit so hard the air bag blew out and knocked the shit out of me. I couldn't move with it the way it was, my hands bound behind my back, the car on its nose, its back wheels against the side of the hole. It looked like I was trying to drive to hell. I was stunned and bleeding. The bag had knocked a tooth out. I heard the sound of a motor above me, a little motor. The scooter.

I could hear Big O up there. "If you hear me, want you to know I'm having one of the boys bring the cement truck around. We're gonna fill this hole with cement, and put, I don't know, a tennis court or somethin' on top of it. But the thing I want you to know is this is what happens when someone fucks with Big O."

"You stink," I said. "And you're fat. And you're ugly."

He couldn't hear me. I was mostly talking into the air bag.

I heard the scooter go away, followed by the sound of a truck and a beeping as it backed up. Next I heard the churning of the cement in the big mixer that was on the back of it. Then the cement slid down and pounded on the roof and started to slide over the windshield. I closed my eyes and held my breath, and then I felt the cold, wet cement touch my elbow as it came through the open window. I thought about some way out, but there was nothing there, and I knew that within moments there wouldn't be anything left for me to think about at all.

BILLIE SUE

About a week before the house next door sold to the young couple, Billie Sue and I broke up. It was painful and my choice. Some stupid argument we'd had, but I tried to tell myself I had made the right decision.

And in the light of day it seemed I had. But come night when the darkness set in and the king size bed was like a great raft on which I floated, I missed Billie Sue. I missed her being next to me, holding her. The comfort she had afforded me had been greater than I imagined, and now that she was gone, I felt empty, as if I had been drained from head to toe and that my body was a husk and nothing more.

But the kids next door changed that. For a time.

I was off for the summer. I teach math during the high school term, and since Billie Sue and I had broken up, I had begun to wish that I had signed on to teach summer school. It would have been some kind of diversion. Something to fill my days with besides thinking of Billie Sue.

About the second day the kids moved in, the boy was out mowing their yard, and I watched him from the window for a while, then made up some lemonade and took it out on the patio and went over and stood by where he was mowing.

He stopped and killed the engine and smiled at me. He was a nice looking kid, if a little bony. He had very blond hair and was shirtless and was just starting to get hair on his chest. It looked like down, and the thought of that made me feel ill at ease, because, bizarrely enough, the down-like hair made me think of Billie Sue, how soft she was, and that in turn made me think of the empty house and the empty bed and the nights that went on and on.

"Hey," the boy said. "You're our neighbor?"

"That's right. Kevin Pierce."

"Jim Howel. Glad to meet you." We shook hands. I judged him to be about twenty. Half my age.

"Come on and meet my wife," he said. "You married?"

"No," I said, but I felt strange saying it. It wasn't that Billie Sue and I were married, but it had seemed like it. The way I felt about her, a marriage license wasn't necessary. But now she was gone, and the fact that we had never officially been hitched meant nothing.

I walked with him to the front door, and about the time we got there, a young woman, his wife, of course, opened the screen and looked out. She wore a tight green halter top that exposed a beautiful brown belly and a belly button that looked as if it had been made for licking. She had on white shorts and thongs. Her black hair was tied back, and some of it had slipped out of the tie and was falling over her forehead and around her ears, and it looked soft and sensual. In fact, she was quite the looker.

It wasn't that her face was all that perfect, but it was soft and filled with big brown eyes, and she had those kind of lips that look as if they've been bruised and swollen. But not too much. Just enough to make you want to put your lips on them, to maybe soothe the pain.

"Oh, hi," she said.

"Hi," I said.

Jim introduced us. Her name was Sharon.

"I've got some lemonade next door, if you two would like to come over and share it," I said. "Just made it."

"Well, yeah," said Jim. "I'd like that. I'm hot as a pistol."

"I guess so," said the girl, and I saw Jim throw her a look. A sort of, hey, don't be rude kind of look. If she saw the look, she gave no sign of it.

As we walked over to my house, I said, "You folks been married long?"

"Not long," James said. "How long, honey?"

"Eighteen months."

"Well, congratulations," I said. "Newlyweds."

We sat out on the patio and drank the lemonade, and James did most of the talking. He wanted to be a lawyer, and Sharon was working at some cafe in town putting him through. He tried to talk like he was really complimenting her, and I think he was, but I could tell Sharon wasn't feeling complimented. There was something about her silence that said a lot. It said, Look what I've got myself into. Married this chatterbox who wants to be a lawyer and can't make a dollar 'cause he's got to study, so I've got to work, and law school isn't any hop, skip and a jump. We're talking years of tips and pinches on the ass, and is this guy worth it anyhow?

She said all that and more without so much as opening her mouth. When we finished off the lemonade, James got up and said he had to finish the lawn.

"I'll sit here a while," Sharon said. "You go on and mow."

Kevin looked at her, then he looked at me and made a smile. "Sure," he said to her: "We'll eat some lunch after a while."

"I ate already," she said. "Get you a sandwich, something out of the box."

"Sure," he said, and went back to mow.

As he went, I noticed his back was red from the sun. I said, "You ought to tell him to get some lotion on. Look at his back."

She swiveled in her chair and looked, turned back to me, said, "He'll find out soon enough he ought to wear lotion. You got anything stronger than lemonade?"

I went in the house, got a couple of beers and a bottle of Jack Daniels, and some glasses. We drank the beers out on the veranda, then, as it turned hotter, we came inside and sat on the couch and drank the whisky. While James' mower droned on, we talked about this and that, but not really about anything. You know what I mean. Just small talk that's so small it's hardly talk.

After about an hour, I finally decided what we were really talking about, and I put my hand out and touched her hand on the couch and she didn't move it. "Maybe you ought to go on back."

"You want me to."

"That's the problem, I don't want you to."

"I just met you."

"I know. That's another reason you ought to go back to your husband."

"He's a boring sonofabitch. You know that. I thought he was all right when we met. Good looking and all, but he's as dull as a cheap china plate, and twice as shallow. I'm nineteen years old. I don't want to work in any goddamn cafe for years while he gets a job where he can wear a suit and get people divorces. I want to get my divorce now."

She slid over and we kissed. She was soft and pliant, and there were things about her that were better than Billie Sue, and for a moment I didn't think of Billie at all. I kissed her for a long time and touched her, and finally the mower stopped.

"Goddamn it," she said. "That figures."

She touched me again, and in the right place. She got up and retied her halter top, which I had just managed to loosen.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I let this get out of hand."

"Hell, I'm the one sorry it didn't get completely out of hand. But it will. We're neighbors."

I tried to avoid Sharon after that, and managed to do so for a couple days. I even thought about trying to patch things up with Billie Sue, but just couldn't. My goddamn pride.

On the fourth night after they'd moved in, I woke up to the sound of dishes breaking. I got out of bed and went into the living room and looked out the window at my neighbor's house, the source of the noise. It was Sharon yelling and tossing things that had awakened me. The yelling went on for a time. I got a beer out of the box and sat down with a chair pulled up at the window and watched. There was a light on in their living room window, and now and then their shadows would go across the light, then move away.

Finally I heard the front door slam, and Kevin went out, got in their car and drove away. He hadn't so much as departed when Sharon came out of the house and started across the yard toward my place.

I moved the chair back to its position and sat down on the couch and waited. She knocked on the door. Hard. I let her knock for a while, then I got up and answered the door. I was in my underwear when I answered, but of course, I didn't care. She was in a short black nightie, no shoes, and she didn't care either.

I let her in. She said, "We had a fight. I hope the sonofabitch doesn't come back."

She took hold of me then, and we kissed, and then we made our way to the bedroom, and it was sweet, the way she loved me, and finally, near morning, we fell asleep.

When I awoke it was to Kevin's voice. In our haste, we had left the front door open, and I guess he'd seen the writing on the wall all along, and now he was in the house, standing over the bed yelling.

Sharon sat up in bed, and the sheet fell off her naked breast and she yelled back. I sat up amazed, more than embarrassed. I had to learn to lock my doors, no matter what.

This yelling went on for a time, lots of cussing, then Kevin grabbed her by the wrist and jerked her out of the bed and onto the floor.

I jumped up then and hit him, hit him hard enough to knock him down. He sat up and opened his mouth and a tooth fell out.

"Oh my God, Kevin," Sharon said. She slid across the floor and took his head in her hands and kissed his cheek. "Oh, baby, are you all right?"

"Yeah, I'm all right," he said.

I couldn't believe it. "What the hell?" I said.

"You didn't have to hit him," Sharon said. "You're older, stronger. You hurt him."

I started to argue, but by that time Kevin was up and Sharon had her arm around him. She said, "I'm sorry, baby, I'm so sorry. Let's go home."

Sharon pulled on her nightie, and away they went. I picked up the panties she'd left and put them over my head, trying to look as foolish as I felt. They smelled good though.

Dumb asshole, I said to myself. How many times have they done this? There are strange people in this world. Some get their kicks from wearing leather, being tied down and pissed on, you name it, but this pair has a simpler method of courtship. They fight with each other, break up, then Sharon flirts and sleeps around until James discovers her, then they yell at each other and he forgives her, and he's all excited to think she's been in bed with another man, and she's all excited to have been there, and they're both turned on and happy.

Whatever. I didn't want any part of it.

That night I decided to make up with Billie Sue. I got my shovel out of the garage and went out and dug her up from under the rose bushes. I got her out of there and brushed the dirt off and carried her inside. I washed her yellow body off in the sink. I fondled her bill and told her I was sorry. I was so sorry I began to cry. I just couldn't help myself. I told her I'd never bury her in the dirt again.

I filled the bath tub with water and put Billie Sue in there and watched her float. I turned her in the water so that she could watch me undress. I stripped off my clothes slowly and got in the tub with her. She floated and bobbed toward me, and I picked her up and squeezed her and dirt puffed from the noise maker in her beak and the sound she made was not quite a squeak or a quack.

I laughed. I squeezed her hard, the way she likes it, the way she's always liked it since the first time my mother gave her to me when I was a child. I squeezed her many times. I floated her in the tub with me, moved her around my erection, which stuck up out of the water like a stick in a pond, and I knew then what I should have always known. Billie Sue was the love of my life.

Perhaps we were not too unlike that silly couple next door. We fought too. We fought often. We had broken up before. I had buried her under the rose bushes before, though never for this long. But now, holding her, squeezing her hard, listening to her quack, I knew never again. I began to laugh and laugh and laugh at what she was saying. She could be like that when she wanted. So funny. So forgiving.

Oh, Billie Sue. Billie Sue. My little rubber duckie poo.

NAKED ANGEL

Deep in the alley, lit by the beam of the patrolman's flashlight, she looked like a naked angel in midflight, sky-swimming toward a dark heaven.

One arm reached up as if to pull air. Her head was lifted and her shoulder-length blond hair was as solid as a helmet. Her face was smooth and snow white. Her eyes were blue ice. Her body was well shaped. One sweet knee was lifted like she had just pushed off from the earth. There was a birthmark on it that looked like a dog paw. She was frozen in a large block of ice, a thin pool of water spreading out below it. At the bottom of the block, the ice was cut in a serrated manner.

Patrolman Adam Coats pushed his cop hat back on his head and looked at her and moved the light around. He could hear the boy beside him breathing heavily.

"She's so pretty," the boy said. "And she ain't got no clothes on."

Coats looked down at the boy. Ten, twelve at the most, wearing a cap and ragged clothes, shoes that looked as if they were one scuff short of coming apart.

"What's your name, son?" Coats asked.

"Tim," said the boy.

"Whole name."

"Tim Trevor."

"You found her like this? No one else was around?"

"I come through here on my way home."

Coats flicked off the light and turned to talk to the boy in the dark. "It's a dead-end alley."

"There's a ladder."

Coats popped the light on again, poked it in the direction the boy was pointing. There was a wall of red brick there, and, indeed, there was a metal ladder fastened up the side of it, all the way to the top.

"You go across the roof?"

"Yes, sir, there's a ladder on the other side, too, goes down to the street. I come through here and saw her."

"Your parents know you're out this late?"

"Don't have any. My sister takes care of me. She's got to work, though, so, you know--"

"You run around some?"

"Yes, sir."

"You stay with me. I've got to get to a call box, then you got to get home."

____________________

Detective Galloway came down the alley with Coats, who led the way, his flashlight bouncing its beam ahead of them. Coats thought it was pretty odd they were about to look at a lady in ice and they were sweating. It was hot in Los Angeles. The Santa Ana winds were blowing down from the mountains like dog breath. It made everything sticky, made you want to strip out of your clothes, find the ocean, and take a dip.

When they came to the frozen woman, Galloway said, "She's in ice, all right."

"You didn't believe me?"

"I believed you, but I thought you were wrong," Galloway said. "Something crazy as this, I thought maybe you had gone to drinking."

Coats laughed a little.

"Odd birthmark," Galloway said.

Coats nodded. "I couldn't figure if this was murder, vice, or God dropped an ice cube."

"Lot of guys would have liked to have put this baby in their tea," Galloway said.

The ice had begun to melt a little, and the angel had shifted slightly.

Galloway studied the body and said, "She probably didn't climb in that ice all by herself, so I think murder will cover it."

When he finished up his paperwork at the precinct, Coats walked home and up a creaky flight of stairs to his apartment. Apartment. The word did more justice to the place than it deserved. Inside, Coats stripped down to his underwear, and, out of habit, carried his holstered gun with him to the bathroom.

A few years back a doped-up goon had broken into the apartment while Coats lay sleeping on the couch. There was a struggle. The intruder got the gun, and though Coats disarmed him and beat him down with it, he carried it with him from room to room ever since. He did this based on experience and what his ex-wife called trust issues.

Sitting on the toilet, which rocked precariously, Coats thought about the woman. It wasn't his problem. He wasn't a detective. He didn't solve murders. But still, he thought about her through his toilet and through his shower, and he thought about her after he climbed into bed. How in the world had she come to that? And who had thought of such a thing, freezing her body in a block of ice and leaving it in a dark alley? Then there was the paw print. It worried him, like an itchy scar.

It was too hot to sleep. He got up and poured water in a glass and came back and splashed it around on the bedsheet. He opened a couple of windows over the street. It was louder but cooler that way. He lay back down.

And then it hit him.

The dog paw.

He sat up in bed and reached for his pants.

____________________

Downtown at the morgue the night attendant, Bowen, greeted him with a little wave from behind his desk. Bowen was wearing a white smock covered in red splotches that looked like blood but weren't. There was a messy meatball sandwich on a brown paper wrapper in front of him, half eaten. He had a pulp-Western magazine in his hands. He laid it on the desk and showed Coats some teeth.

"Hey, Coats, you got some late hours, don't you? No uniform? You make detective?"

"Not hardly," Coats said, pushing his hat up on his forehead. "I'm off the clock. How's the reading?"

"The cowboys are winning. You got nothing better to do this time of morning than come down to look at the meat?"

"The lady in ice."

Bowen nodded. "Yeah. Damnedest thing ever."

"Kid found her. Came and got me," Coats said, and he gave Bowen the general story.

"How the hell did she get there?" Bowen said. "And why?"

"I knew that," Coats said, "I might be a detective. May I see the body?"

Bowen slipped out from behind the desk and Coats followed. They went through another set of double doors and into a room lined with big drawers in the wall. The air had a tang of disinfectant about it. Bowen stopped at a drawer with the number 28 on it and rolled it out.

"Me and another guy, we had to chop her out with ice picks. They could have set her out front on the sidewalk and it would have melted quick enough. Even a back room with a drain. But no, they had us get her out right away. I got a sore arm from all that chopping."

"That's the excuse you use," Coats said. "But I bet the sore arm is from something else."

"Oh, that's funny," Bowen said, and patted the sheet-covered body on the head. The sheet was damp. Where her head and breasts and pubic area and feet pushed against it there were dark spots.

Bowen pulled down the sheet, said, "Only time I get to see something like that and she's dead. That don't seem right."

Coats looked at her face, so serene. "Roll it on back," he said.

Bowen pulled the sheet down below her knees. Coats looked at the birthmark. The dog paw. It had struck a chord when he saw it, but he didn't know what it was right then. Now he was certain.

"Looks like a puppy with a muddy foot stepped on her," Bowen said.

"Got an identity on her yet?" Coats asked.

"Not yet."

"Then I can help you out. Her name is Megdaline Jackson, unless she got married, changed her last name. She's somewhere around twenty-four."

"You know her?"

"When she was a kid, kind of," Coats said. "It was her older sister I knew. That birthmark, where I had seen it, came to me after I got home. Her sister had a much smaller one like it, higher up on the leg. It threw me because I knew she wasn't the older sister, Ali. Too young. But then I remembered the kid, and that she'd be about twenty-four now. She was just a snot-nosed little brat then, but it makes sense she would have inherited that mark same as Ali."

"Considering you seem to have done some leg work in the past, that saves some leg work of another kind."

"That ice block," Coats said. "Seen anything like it?"

"Nope. Closest thing to it was we had a couple of naked dead babes in alleys lately. But not in blocks of ice."

"All right," Coats said. "That'll do."

Bowen pulled the sheet back, said, "Okay I turn in who this is, now that you've identified her?"

Coats studied the girl's pale, smooth face. "Sure. Any idea how she died?"

"No wounds on her that I can see, but we got to cut her up a bit to know more."

"Let me know what you find?"

"Sure," Bowen said. "But that five dollars I owe you for poker--"

"Forget about it."

____________________

Coats drove to an all-night diner and had coffee and breakfast about the time the sun was crawling up. He bought a paper off the rack in the diner, sat in a booth, and read it and drank more coffee until it was firm daylight; by that time he had drank enough so he thought he could feel his hair crawling across his scalp. He drove over where Ali lived.

Last time he had seen Ali she had lived in a nice part of town on a quiet street in a tall house with a lot of fine trees out front. The house was still there and so were the trees, but the trees were tired this morning, crinkled, and darkened by the hot Santa Ana winds.

Coats parked at the curb and strolled up the long walk. The air was stiff, so much so you could have buttered it like toast. Coats looked at his pocket watch. It was still pretty early, but he leaned on the doorbell anyway. After a long time a big man in a too-tight jacket came and answered the door. He looked like he could tie a knot in a fire poker, eat it, and crap it out straight.

Coats reached in his pants pocket, pulled out his patrol badge, and showed it to him. The big man looked at it like he had just seen something foul, went away, and after what seemed like enough time for a crippled mouse to have built a nest the size of the Taj Mahal, he came back.

Coats made it about three feet inside the door with his hat in his hand before the big man said, "You got to wait right there."

"All right," Coats said.

"Right there and don't go nowhere else."

"Wouldn't think of it."

The big man nodded, walked off, and the wait was started all over again. The crippled mouse was probably halfway into a more ambitious project bythe time Ali showed up. She was wearing white silk pajamas and her blond hair looked like stirred honey. She had on white house slippers. She was so gorgeous for a moment Coats thought he might weep.

"I'll be damned," she said, and smiled. "You."

"Yeah," Coats said. "Me."

She came over smiling and took his hand and led him along the corridor until they came to a room with a table and chairs. He put his hat on the table. They sat in chairs next to one another and she reached out and clung to his hand.

"That's some butler you got," Coats said.

"Warren. He's butler, bodyguard, and makes a hell of a martini. He said it was the police."

"It is the police," Coats said. He took out his badge and showed it to her.

"So you did become a cop," she said. "Always said you wanted to."

She reached up and touched his face. "I should have stuck with you. Look at you, you look great."

"So do you," he said.

She touched her hair. "I'm a mess."

"I've seen you messy before."

"So you have, and fresh out of bed, too."

"I saw you while you were in bed," he said.

She didn't look directly at him when she said, "You know my husband, Harris, died, don't you?"

"Old as he was when you married him," Coats said, "I didn't expect him to outlive you. Of course, he had a lot of young friends and they liked you, too."

"Don't talk that way, baby," she said.

As he thought back on it all, bitterness churned inside Coats for a moment, then settled. They had had something together, but there had been one major holdup. His bank account was lower than a snake's belly, and the best he wanted out of life was to be a cop. The old man she married was well-heeled and well connected to some rich people and a lot of bad people; he knew a lot of young men with money, too, and Ali, she saw it as an all-around win, no matter how those people made their money.

In the end, looks like they both got what they wanted.

"This isn't a personal call, Ali," Coats said. "It's about Meg."

And then he told her.

When he finished telling her, Ali looked stunned for a long moment, got up, walked around the table as if she were searching for something, then sat back down. She crossed her legs. A slipper fell off. She got up again, but Coats reached up and took her hand and gently pulled her back to the chair.

"I'm sorry," Coats said.

"You're sure?" she asked.

"The dog paw, like you have."

"Oh," she said. "Oh."

They sat for a long time, Coats holding her hand, telling her about the block of ice, the boy finding it.

"Any idea who might have wanted her dead?" Coats asked.

"She had slipped a little," Ali said. "That's all I know."

"Slipped?"

"Guess it was my fault. I tried to help her, but I didn't know how. I married Harris and I had money, and I gave her a lot of it, but it didn't help. It wasn't money she needed, but what she needed I didn't know how to give. The only thing I ever taught her was how to make the best of an opportunity."

Coats looked around the room and had to agree about Ali knowing about opportunity. The joint wasn't quite as fancy as the queen of England's place, but it would damn sure do.

"I couldn't replace Mother and Father," she said. "Them dying while she was so young. I didn't know what to do."

"You can't blame yourself," Coats said. "You weren't much more than a kid."

"I think I can blame myself," she said. "And I will."

Coats patted her hand. "Anyone have something against her?"

"She had gotten into dope, and she had gotten into the life," Ali said. "I tried to pull her out, but she wasn't coming. I might as well have been tugging on an elephant's trunk, trying to drag the beast uphill. She just wouldn't come out."

"By the life, you mean prostitute?" Phillip asked.

Tears leaked out of Ali's eyes. She nodded.

"Where'd she do her work?"

"I couldn't say," she said. "She was high-dollar, that's all I know."

Coats comforted her some more. When he was ready to leave, he picked up his hat and she walked him to the door, clutching his arm like a life preserver, her head on his shoulder.

"I can't believe it, and I can," she said. "Does that make any sense?"

"Sure," he said.

"You got married, I heard."

"Yeah," he said. "It was great. For about six days."

When Coats opened the front door the hot wind wrapped around them like a blanket. Coats put on his hat.

"It's just awful out there," Ali said.

When he stepped down the first step, Ali said, "You could come back and stay here, you know. There's plenty of room. You could stay as long as you like. You could stay forever."

He turned and looked at her. He looked at the house. It was one hell of a place and she was one hell of a woman. But it was too much of either one.

"I don't think so, Ali."

____________________

The upscale part didn't tell Coats much about Meg's work habits. She could have worked anywhere. The only thing it told him is she gave sexual favors to people with money. Coats didn't like to think it, but she and Ali weren't really all that different. It's just that Ali made her deal the legal way.

On the way back to his apartment, Coats drove by the now-defunct Polar Bear Ice Company. It was just another reminder of what he had found in the alley, and it made his head hurt. He drove a little farther and an idea hit him. He turned around and went back.

He parked out front of the ice company in a no-parking zone and walked around back. There was a chain through the sliding back door and there were boards over the windows. The boards over one of the windows were easy to pull loose, and Coats did just that. He crawled inside and looked around.

Before today, last time he had seen Ali was through the prism of a polar bear made of ice. She had decided he was a bad prospect, and started seeing Old Man Harris from way uptown. He heard she was at a party and he went over to see her, thinking maybe he'd make a scene; went inside like he belonged there. And then it hit him. Everyone there had an air about them that spoke of privilege and entitlement. They were everything he was not. Suddenly, what he was wearing, what he had thought was a nice-enough jacket, nice-enough shoes, felt like rags and animal hides. He saw Ali across the way, her head thrown back, and above the music from the orchestra in the background he heard her laugh. A deep chortle of pleasure that went with the music and the light. She was laughing with a man who wasn't the man she married. She was laughing with Johnny Ditto; a gangster, drug seller, and prostitute wrangler. He was known for handling the best girls, high-end stuff. Johnny was tall, dark, and handsome, splendid in a powder-blue suit with hair that was afraid to do anything but lay down tight and hold its part.

Coats stepped aside so that he was between them and a table mounted with a big ice sculpture of a polar bear on an ice floe. Below the ice was a ring of shrimp, tight up against the sawlike cut at the bottom. Through the sculpture he could see Ali, made jagged by the cuts and imperfections in the carving. He lowered his head, feeling as out of place as a goat at the ballet. He slipped out quick. Until today, it was the last time he had seen Ali.

What he realized now was that the sawlike cut at the bottom of the ice that night was locked in his head, and it was the same jagged cut he had seen on the ice block in the alley. And that polar bear on the table--was that the ice company's emblem? It made sense, connected up like bees and honey.

Coats walked around and found a room in the back with a bed and camera and some pull-down backdrops. He toured all over, came to the ice freezers with faucets and hoses and frames for shaping the ice. One of the frames was about the size of the big block of ice in the alley. The kind of block an ice sculptor might chop into a polar bear, or use to house a cold, dead angel.

Coats drove along Sunset, and for a moment he thought he was being followed, but the car, a big blue sedan, turned right, and he decided against it.

Downtown he stopped at the morgue to see Bowen.

"What we got is her belly was full of water, and so were her lungs," Bowen said.

"So she drowned?" Coats asked.

"Yeah, but the way her throat looks, I think someone ran a hose into her mouth, pumped her up. Figure they squirted it in her nose, too. Unpleasant business."

"When did she die?" Coats asked.

"The ice throws that off. It's hard to know body temperature to figure how long she was laying there, messes up rigor--" He stopped in midsentence.

Coats was nodding all the time Bowen was talking.

"Oh, I get it," Bowen said. "That was the point. Harder to know when she died, harder to break an alibi someone might use. They could kill her and walk away, and the ice melts, body's found, it doesn't show signs of being dead as long. They could kill her, one, two, three days before and keep her frozen, drop her off when they wanted."

"If the boy hadn't gone through the alley, she'd just be a dead prostitute," Coats said.

"It kind of figures now," Bowen said. "We found, let me see, three other girls in the past week in alleys. All of them stripped and lying on the bricks. One of them, she was in a pool of water. It wasn't urine. We couldn't figure it. Now it makes sense. She melted out of her block."

"I think they may have killed them all at the same time," Coats said. "Kept them frozen, put them out when they wanted to, made it look like a string of nut murders. But this time the ice didn't melt soon enough before she was found."

"And all this means...what?"

"I'll get back to you on it," Coats said.

____________________

At the Hall of Records a snooty woman with her hair in knot so tight it pulled her cheeks up under her ears showed Coats where he could look up what he wanted. What he wanted was to know who owned the Polar Bear Ice Company. When he saw who it was, his stomach ached.

He went home and called in sick for his shift, took off all his clothes, sprinkled the bed with water, and lay there with the window open listening to traffic. The sunlight went deep pink and hit the buildings across the way, made them look as if they were being set on fire by celestial arsonists. He thought about what he had found out at the Hall of Records and decided it didn't necessarily mean anything, but he could never quite come to the conclusion that it meant nothing. He was thinking about what he should do, how he should go about it all. He eventually decided whatever it was, tomorrow was soon enough, after he got some rest.

In the middle of the night he came awake to a click like someone snapping a knife blade open. He slogged out of his dreams and got up and picked his gun off the nightstand. Naked as a jaybird, he walked into the kitchen and looked at the front door, which is where the snicking sound was coming from. Someone was working the lock.

The door slipped open a crack and when it did, Coats lifted his pistol. Then the door went wider. Framed by the outside streetlights was a woman.

"Come on in," Coats said.

"It's me, Ali," the woman said.

"All right," he said.

She came in and closed the door and they stood in the dark. Coats said, "You always work men's locks at night?"

"I was going to surprise you."

"I thought you might be someone else," he said, and turned on a small light over the kitchen sink. She looked at him and smiled.

"Who would you be expecting?"

"Oh, someone about Warren's size. Maybe drove you over in a big blue sedan. Maybe he's standing out there right now with a lock pick in his hand."

"I didn't know you liked Warren that much," she said.

"I don't like Warren at all."

"It's just me," she said. "Don't be silly." She smiled and looked Coats over good. "I certainly like your lack of dress, though a hat and tie might spruce it some."

"Your husband, he never owned the Polar Bear Ice Company."

"What?" she said.

"That means you didn't inherit it."

"Make some sense, baby," she said. "I didn't come here to talk ice. I came to see you and make some heat."

"That's all right," Coats said. "It's plenty hot enough."

"I don't know," Ali said. "I'm starting to feel a little chilly."

"You own the Polar Bear Ice Company. You bought it. And it's not out of business. It's just closed off and secret and the only time they make ice now they put someone in it. And you got a partner. Johnny Ditto. He's on the books with you, honey. That doesn't bode well. He's not what you'd call your stand-up businessman."

"In business, you have all kinds of partners. You can't know them all. Is that a gun?"

"It is," Coats said. "You know what I think, Ali? I think you're just what you've always been, only more so. Your sister, you were running her with your high-end stable. You were her madam, her and the other girls. Somewhere along the line, you and her, you got sideways, and you had to have her wings clipped."

"Me? That's ridiculous."

"You got a good act," Coats said. "I believed it. That walking around the table bit, that was good. And I didn't tell you my address. So how'd you come here?"

"I know people who know people," she said.

"At the ice house, I found a camera, and I figure that's where some special pictures were made; reels for smokers. But I also got to figure a girl like Meg, she might have made a film for one of the owners. Someone like Johnny Ditto, a little keepsake for him to take home and watch on lonely nights. But she decided maybe to keep the film, take it out of the private realm. I think she may have made other films, her and some of the other girls. Maybe not just for Johnny. But films for big-name guys who wanted to watch themselves do the deed with some fine-looking babe. Only the babes kept the films. Threatened blackmail. Asked for money. Johnny might not have cared who saw him do what. But some of the clients you and him were servicing, they might have been more worried. You couldn't have that. So you had to have the films and you had to get rid of any girls in on the scheme. They had to pay. Even your sister had to pay."

"Don't be silly," Ali said. "She was my sister. I wouldn't hurt her."

"But you might let someone else do it for you."

Ali's face changed. She looked older. She looked tougher. It was like the devil had surfaced under her skin.

"You're too damn smart for your own good," she said. "It's wasn't exactly like that, but you're near enough you get the Kewpie doll."

"I got to take you in," Coats said.

She said, "Warren."

Even though Coats expected it, he was still surprised. He thought Warren would have to open the door. But he came through it. The door blew off the hinges like it had been hit by cannon shot and Warren came speeding through the gap. He rushed straight at Coats. Coats brought his gun up and fired, but it didn't stop Warren. Warren hit him and knocked him back over the table and into the wall. It made cabinet doors fly open and it made dishes fly out; they popped and shattered on the floor.

Coats lay on the floor with Warren on top of him, choking him with both hands. Coats's vision crawled with black dots and there was a drumbeat in his head. He tried to get his feet stuck up in Warren's belly to push him back, but Warren was too close. Coats felt around for the gun, but couldn't find it.

Then he saw Ali, leaning over them, looking down at him. She had his gun in her hand.

"I got nothing against you," she said. "It isn't personal. But business is business, and it's what runs the world. You finish up here, Warren. Make it look like a robbery. Mess things up some more."

Warren didn't seem to be listening. He was concentrating on choking the life out of Coats. Ali wandered off, sat in a chair at the table, and coiled one leg over the other.

"You are quite the waste, baby," she said.

Coats pushed his shoulders up. It helped a little, lessened the choke. There were fewer black dots. He glanced sideways, saw a broken cup from the cabinet. He snatched it up and dragged it hard across the side of Warren's neck. Warren yelled and sat up. One hand flew to his neck, the other still clutched Coats's throat. Blood crept through Warren's fingers, leaked onto the floor.

Coats smashed what was left of the cup into Warren's nose and rolled him off. There was a shot. Coats felt a bit of a pinch in his side. He scuttled his feet underneath him and rushed at Ali. She was coming out of the chair, pointing the gun. Coats dropped down and the gun barked and his ears rang. He kept coming. She tried to fire again, but he had her wrist now and was shoving her into the wall. When he did he lost his grip on her, but she lost the gun. It went sailing across the room. He struck her with a hard right to the side of the head. She dropped like a brick and didn't move.

A big hand grabbed Coats's shoulder and jerked him backward. He went tumbling across the floor. When he looked up, Warren was looking at him. He had one hand to his cut neck. His nose was flat and bloody. His teeth were bared and there was a look in his eye that made Coats feel weak, as if from a blow. Warren trudged forward a couple of steps. Coats lifted his fists, ready to fight. He figured he might as well be bear hunting with a switch.

Warren's face changed. He had a look that reminded Coats of a man who's forgotten his money. Warren swallowed, then coughed. Blood flew out of his mouth. He pulled his hand away from his neck and blood squirted high and wide. Warren looked at his bloody hand as if it had been replaced with a catcher's mitt. Coats saw now that the first shot he had fired had hit Warren in the side. The big galoot hadn't even noticed.

Warren sat down on the floor and tried to put his hand against his neck again, but he was too weak. It kept sliding off.

"Damn it," Warren said. Blood gurgled out of his mouth. He carefully stretched himself out on the floor and made a sound like someone trying to swallow a pineapple. Then he didn't move again. He was as dead as last year's Christmas.

Coats went over and looked at Ali. She was breathing heavily, and she had a blue knot on the side of her head, but that was the worst of it. When he stood up, he went weak. The hole in his side was dripping big time. He leaned against a chair for a moment, got it together.

Outside, through the doorway, he saw lights. The shots had been heard and someone had called. Pretty soon, cops would be coming up the stairs. He grinned, thought maybe it would look better all-around if he could at least put on his pants.

NOT FROM DETROIT

Outside it was cold and wet and windy. The storm rattled the shack, slid like razor blades through the window, door and wall cracks, but it wasn't enough to make any difference to the couple. Sitting before the crumbling fireplace in their creaking rocking chairs, shawls across their knees, fingers entwined, they were warm.

A bucket behind them near the kitchen sink collected water dripping from a hole in the roof. The drops had long since passed the noisy stage of sounding like steel bolts falling on tin, and were now gentle plops.

The old couple were husband and wife; had been for over fifty years. They were comfortable with one another and seldom spoke. Mostly they rocked and looked at the fire as it flickered shadows across the room.

Finally Margie spoke. "Alex," she said. "I hope I die before you."

Alex stopped rocking. "Did you say what I thought you did?"

"I said, I hope I die before you." She wouldn't look at him, just the fire. "It's selfish, I know, but I hope I do. I don't want to live on with you gone. It would be like cutting out my heart and making me walk around. Like one of them zombies."

"There are the children," he said. "If I died, they'd take you in."

"I'd just be in the way. I love them, but I don't want to do that. They got their own lives. I'd just as soon die before you. That would make things simple."

"Not simple for me," Alex said. "I don't want you to die before me. So how about that? We're both selfish, aren't we?"

She smiled thinly. "Well, it ain't a thing to talk about before bedtime, but it's been on my mind, and I had to get it out."

"Been thinking on it too, honey. Only natural we would. We ain't spring chickens anymore."

"You're healthy as a horse, Alex Brooks. Mechanic work you did all your life kept you strong. Me, I got the bursitis and the miseries and I'm tired all the time. Got the old age bad."

Alex started rocking again. They stared into the fire. "We're going to go together, hon," he said. "I feel it. That's the way it ought to be for folks like us."

"I wonder if I'll see him coming. Death, I mean."

"What?"

"My grandma used to tell me she seen him the night her daddy died."

"You've never told me this."

"Ain't a subject I like. But grandma said this man in a black buggy slowed down out front of their house, cracked his whip three times, and her daddy was gone in instants. And she said she'd heard her grandfather tell how he had seen Death when he was a boy. Told her it was early morning and he was up, about to start his chores, and when he went outside he seen this man dressed in black walk by the house and stop out front. He was carrying a stick over his shoulder with a checkered bundle tied to it, and he looked at the house and snapped his fingers three times. A moment later they found my great-grandfather's brother, who had been sick with the smallpox, dead in bed."

"Stories, hon. Stories. Don't get yourself worked up over a bunch of old tall tales. Here, I'll heat us some milk."

Alex stood, laid the shawl in the chair, went over to put milk in a pan and heat it. As he did, he turned to watch Margie's back. She was still staring into the fire, only she wasn't rocking. She was just watching the blaze, and Alex knew, thinking about dying.

After the milk they went to bed, and soon Margie was asleep, snoring like a busted chainsaw. Alex found he could not rest. It was partly due to the storm, it had picked up in intensity. But it was mostly because of what Margie had said about dying. It made him feel lonesome.

Like her, he wasn't so much afraid of dying, as he was of being left alone. She had been his heartbeat for fifty years, and without her, he would only be going through motions of life, not living.

God, he prayed silently. When we go, let us go together.

He turned to look at Margie. Her face looked unlined and strangely young. He was glad she could turn off most anything with sleep. He, on the other hand, could not.

Maybe I'm just hungry.

He slid out of bed, pulled on his pants, shirt and houseshoes; those silly things with the rabbit face and ears his granddaughter had bought him. He padded silently to the kitchen. It was not only the kitchen, it served as den, living room and dining room. The house was only three rooms and a closet, and one of the rooms was a small bathroom. It was times like this that Alex thought he could have done better by Margie. Gotten her a bigger house, for one thing. It was the same house where they had raised their kids, the babies sleeping in a crib here in the kitchen.

He sighed. No matter how hard he had worked, he seemed to stay in the same place. A poor place.

He went to the refrigerator and took out a half-gallon of milk, drank directly from the carton.

He put the carton back and watched the water drip into the bucket. It made him mad to see it. He had let the little house turn into a shack since he retired, and there was no real excuse for it. Surely, he wasn't that tired. It was a wonder Margie didn't complain more.

Well, there was nothing to do about it tonight. But he vowed that when dry weather came, he wouldn't forget about it this time. He'd get up there and fix that damn leak.

Quietly, he rummaged a pan from under the cabinet. He'd have to empty the bucket now if he didn't want it to run over before morning. He ran a little water into the pan before substituting it for the bucket so the drops wouldn't sound so loud.

He opened the front door, went out on the porch, carrying the bucket. He looked out at his mud-pie yard and his old, red wrecker, his white logo on the side of the door faded with time: ALEX BROOKS WRECKING AND MECHANIC SERVICE.

Tonight, looking at the old warhorse, he felt sadder than ever. He missed using it the way it was meant to be used. For work. Now it was nothing more than transportation. Before he retired, his tools and hands made a living. Now nothing. Picking up a Social Security check was all that was left.

Leaning over the edge of the porch, he poured the water into the bare and empty flower bed. When he lifted his head and looked at his yard again, and beyond Highway 59, he saw a light. Headlights, actually, looking fuzzy in the rain, like filmed-over amber eyes. They were way out there on the highway, coming from the South, winding their way toward him, moving fast.

Alex thought that whoever was driving that crate was crazy. Cruising like that on bone-dry highways with plenty of sunshine would have been dangerous, but in this weather, they were asking for a crackup.

As the car neared, he could see it was long, black and strangely-shaped. He'd never seen anything like it, and he knew cars fairly well. This didn't look like something off the assembly line from Detroit. It had to be foreign.

Miraculously, the car slowed without so much as a quiver or a screech of brakes and tires. In fact, Alex could not even hear its motor, just the faint whispering of rubber on wet cement.

The car came even of the house just as lightning flashed, and in that instant, Alex got a good look at the driver, or at least the shape of the driver outlined in the flash, and he saw that it was a man with a cigar in his mouth and a bowler hat on his head. And the head was turning toward the house.

The lightning flash died, and now there was only the dark shape of the car and the red tip of the cigar jutting at the house. Alex felt stalactites of ice dripping down from the roof of his skull, extended through his body and out the soles of his feet.

The driver hit down on his horn; three sharp blasts that pricked at Alex's mind.

Honk. (visions of blooming roses, withering going black)

Honk. (funerals remembered, loved ones in boxes, going down)

Honk. (worms crawling through rotten flesh)

Then came a silence louder than the horn blasts. The car picked up speed again. Alex watched as its taillights winked away in the blackness. The chill became less chill. The stalactites in his brain and mind melted away.

But as he stood there, Margie's words of earlier that evening came at him in a rush: "Seen Death once . . . buggy slowed down out front . . . cracked his whip three times. . . man looked at the house, snapped his fingers three times . . . found dead a moment later . . ."

Alex's throat felt as if a pine knot had lodged there. The bucket slipped from his fingers, clattered on the porch and rolled into the flowerbed. He turned into the house and walked briskly toward the bedroom,

(Can't be, just a wives tale)

his hands vibrating with fear,

(Just a crazy coincidence)

his stomach churning.

Margie wasn't snoring.

Alex grabbed her shoulder, shook her.

Nothing.

He rolled her on her back and screamed her name.

Nothing.

"Oh, baby. No."

He felt for her pulse.

None.

He put an ear to her chest, listening for a heartbeat (the other half of his life bongos), and there was none.

Quiet. Perfectly quiet.

"You can't. . ." Alex said. "You can't . . . we're supposed to go together . . . got to be that way."

And then it came to him. He had seen Death drive by, had seen him heading on down the highway.

He came to his feet, snatched his coat from the back of the chair, raced toward the front door. "You won't have her," he said aloud. "You won't."

Grabbing the wrecker keys from the nail beside the door, he leaped to the porch and dashed out into the cold and the rain.

A moment later he was heading down the highway, driving fast and crazy in pursuit of the strange car.

The wrecker was old and not built for speed, but since he kept it well tuned and it had new tires, it ran well over the wet highway. Alex kept pushing the pedal gradually until it met the floor. Faster and faster and faster.

After an hour, he saw Death.

Not the man himself but the license plate. Personalized and clear in his headlights.

It read:

DEATH/EXEMPT.

The wrecker and the strange black car were the only ones on the road. Alex closed in on him, honked his horn. Death tootled back (not the same horn sound he had given in front of Alex's house), stuck his arm out the window and waved the wrecker around.

Alex went, and when he was alongside the car, he turned his head to look at Death. He could still not see him clearly, but he could make out the shape of his bowler, and when Death turned to look at him, he could see the glowing tip of the cigar, like a bloody bullet wound.

Alex whipped hard right into the car, and Death swerved to the right, then back onto the road. Alex rammed again. The black car's tires hit roadside gravel and Alex swung closer, preventing it from returning to the highway. He rammed yet another time, and the car went into the grass alongside the road, skidded and went sailing down an embankment and into a tree.

Alex braked carefully, backed off the road and got out of the wrecker. He reached a small pipe wrench and a big crescent wrench out from under the seat, slipped the pipe wrench into his coat pocket for insurance, then went charging down the embankment waving the crescent.

Death opened his door and stepped out. The rain had subsided and the moon was peeking through the clouds like a shy child through gossamer curtains. Its light hit Death's round, pink face and made it look like a waxed pomegranate. His cigar hung from his mouth by a tobacco strand.

Glancing up the embankment, he saw an old, but strong-looking black man brandishing a wrench and wearing bunny slippers, charging down at him.

Spitting out the ruined cigar, Death stepped forward, grabbed Alex's wrist and forearm, twisted. The old man went up and over, the wrench went flying from his hand. Alex came down hard on his back, the breath bursting out of him in spurts.

Death leaned over Alex. Up close, Alex could see that the pink face was slightly pocked and that some of the pinkness was due to makeup. That was rich. Death was vain about his appearance. He was wearing a black T-shirt, pants and sneakers, and of course his derby, which had neither been stirred by the wreck or by the ju-jitsu maneuver.

"What's with you, man?" Death asked.

Alex wheezed, tried to catch his breath. "You . . . can't . . . have . . . her."

"Who? What are you talking about?"

"Don't play . . . dumb with me." Alex raised up on one elbow, his wind returning. "You're Death and you took my Margie's soul."

Death straightened. "So you know who I am. All right. But what of it? I'm only doing my job."

"It ain't her time."

"My list says it is, and my list is never wrong."

Alex felt something hard pressing against his hip, realized what it was. The pipe wrench. Even the throw Death had put on him had not hurled it from his coat pocket. It had lodged there and the pocket had shifted beneath his hip, making his old bones hurt all the worse.

Alex made as to roll over, freed the pocket beneath him, shot his hand inside and produced the pipe wrench. He hurled it at Death, struck him just below the brim of the bowler and sent him stumbling back. This time the bowler fell off. Death's forehead was bleeding.

Before Death could collect himself, Alex was up and rushing. He used his head as a battering ram and struck Death in the stomach, knocking him to the ground. He put both knees on Death's arms, pinning them, clenched his throat with his strong, old hands.

"I ain't never hurt nobody before," Alex said. "Don't want to now. I didn't want to hit you with that wrench, but you give Margie back."

Death's eyes showed no expression at first, but slowly a light seemed to go on behind them. He easily pulled his arms out from under Alex's knees, reached up, took hold of the old man's wrist and pulled the hands away from his throat.

"You old rascal," Death said. "You outsmarted me."

Death flopped Alex over on his side, then stood up to once more lord over the man. Grinning, he turned, stooped to recover his bowler, but he never laid a hand on it.

Alex moved like a crab, scissored his legs and caught Death above and behind the knees, twisted, brought him down on his face.

Death raised up on his palms and crawled from behind Alex's legs like a snake, effortlessly. This time he grabbed the hat and put it on his head and stood up. He watched Alex carefully.

"I don't frighten you much, do I?" Death asked.

Alex noted that the wound on Death's forehead had vanished. There wasn't even a drop of blood. "No," Alex said. "You don't frighten me much. I just want my Margie back."

"All right," Death said.

Alex sat bolt upright.

"What?"

"I said, all right. For a time. Not many have outsmarted me, pinned me to the ground. I give you credit, and you've got courage. I like that. I'll give her back. For a time. Come here."

Death walked over to the car that was not from Detroit. Alex got to his feet and followed. Death took the keys out of the ignition, moved to the trunk, worked the key in the lock. It popped up with a hiss.

Inside were stacks and stacks of match boxes. Death moved his hand over them, like a careful man selecting a special vegetable at the supermarket. His fingers came to rest on a matchbox that looked to Alex no different than the others.

Death handed Alex the matchbox. "Her soul's in here, old man. You stand over her bed, open the box. Okay?"

"That's it?"

"That's it. Now get out of here before I change my mind. And remember, I'm giving her back to you. But just for a while."

Alex started away, holding the matchbox carefully. As he walked past Death's car, he saw the dents he had knocked in the side with his wrecker were popping out. He turned to look at Death, who was closing the trunk.

"Don't suppose you'll need a tow out of here?"

Death smiled thinly. "Not hardly."

* * *

Alex stood over their bed; the bed where they had loved, slept, talked and dreamed. He stood there with the matchbox in his hand, his eyes on Margie's cold face. He ever so gently eased the box open. A small flash of blue light, like Peter Pan's friend Tinker Bell, rushed out of it and hit Margie's lips. She made a sharp inhaling sound and her chest rose. Her eyes came open. She turned and looked at Alex and smiled.

"My lands, Alex. What are you doing there, and half-dressed? What you been up to . . . is that a matchbox?"

Alex tried to speak, but he found he could not. All he could do was grin.

"Have you gone nuts?" she asked.

"Maybe a little." He sat down on the bed and took her hand. "I love you Margie."

"And I love you . . . you been drinking?"

"No."

Then came the overwhelming sound of Death's horn. One harsh blast that shook the house, and the headbeams shone brightly through the window and the cracks and lit up the shack like a cheap nightclub act.

"Who in the world?" Margie asked.

"Him. But he said . . . stay here."

Alex got his shotgun out of the closet. He went out on the porch. Death's car was pointed toward the house, and the head-beams seemed to hold Alex, like a fly in butter.

Death was standing on the bottom porch step, waiting.

Alex pointed the shotgun at him. "You git. You gave her back. You gave your word."

"And I kept it. But I said for a while."

"That wasn't any time at all."

"It was all I could give. My present."

"Short time like that's worse than no time at all."

"Be good about it, Alex. Let her go. I got records and they have to be kept. I'm going to take her anyway, you understand that?"

"Not tonight, you ain't." Alex pulled back the hammers on the shotgun. "Not tomorrow night neither. Not anytime soon."

"That gun won't do you any good, Alex. You know that. You can't stop Death. I can stand here and snap my fingers three times, or click my tongue, or go back to the car and honk my horn, and she's as good as mine. But I'm trying to reason with you, Alex. You're a brave man. I did you a favor because you bested me. I didn't want to just take her back without telling you. That's why I came here to talk. But she's got to go. Now."

Alex lowered the shotgun. "Can't. . . can't you take me in her place? You can do that can't you?"

"I . . . I don't know. It's highly irregular."

"Yeah, you can do that. Take me. Leave Margie."

"Well, I suppose."

The screen door creaked open and Margie stood there in her housecoat. "You're forgetting, Alex, I don't want to be left alone."

"Go in the house, Margie," Alex said.

"I know who this is. I heard you talking, Mr. Death, I don't want you taking my Alex. I'm the one you came for, I ought to have the right to go."

There was a pause, no one speaking. Then Alex said, "Take both of us. You can do that, can't you? I know I'm on that list of yours, and pretty high up. Man my age couldn't have too many years left. You can take me a little before my time, can't you? Well, can't you?"

Margie and Alex sat in their rocking chairs, their shawls over their knees. There was no fire in the fireplace. Behind them the bucket collected water and outside the wind whistled. They held hands. Death stood in front of them. He was holding a King Edward cigar box.

"You're sure of this?" Death asked. "You don't both have to go."

Alex looked at Margie, then back at Death.

"We're sure," he said. "Do it."

Death nodded. He opened the cigar box and held it out on one palm. He used his free hand to snap his fingers.

Once. (the wind picked up, howled)

Twice. (the rain beat like drumsticks on the roof)

Three times. (lightning ripped and thunder roared)

"And in you go," Death said.

A little blue light came out of the couple's mouths and jetted into the cigar box with a thump, and Death closed the lid.

The bodies of Alex and Margie slumped and their heads fell together between the rocking chairs. Their fingers were still entwined.

Death put the box under his arm and went out to the car. The rain beat on his derby hat and the wind sawed at his bare arms and T-shirt. He didn't seem to mind.

Opening the trunk, he started to put the box inside, then hesitated.

He closed the trunk.

"Damn," he said, "if I'm not getting to be a sentimental old fool."

He opened the box. Two blue lights rose out of it, elongated, touched ground. They took on the shape of Alex and Margie. They glowed against the night.

"Want to ride up front?" Death asked.

"That would be nice," Margie said.

"Yes, nice," Alex said.

Death opened the door and Alex and Margie slid inside. Death climbed in behind the wheel. He checked the clipboard dangling from the dash. There was a woman in a Tyler hospital, dying of brain damage. That would be his next stop.

He put the clipboard down and started the car that was not from Detroit.

"Sounds well-tuned," Alex said.

"I try to keep it that way," Death said.

They drove out of there then, and as they went, Death broke into song. "Row, row row your boat, gently down the stream," and Margie and Alex chimed in with, "Merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream."

Off they went down the highway, the taillights fading, the song dying, the black metal of the car melting into the fabric of night, and then there was only the whispery sound of good tires on wet cement and finally not even that. Just the blowing sound of the wind and the rain.

BOOTY AND THE BEAST

"Where do you keep the sugar?" Mulroy said, as he pulled open cabinet doors and scrounged about.

"Go to hell," Standers said.

"That's no way to talk," Mulroy said. "I'm a guest in your house. A guest isn't supposed to be treated that way. All I asked was where's the sugar?"

"And I said go to hell. And you're not a guest."

Mulroy, who was standing in the kitchen part of the mobile home, stopped and stared at Standers in the living room. He had tied Standers's hands together and stretched them out so he could loop the remainder of the lamp cord around a doorknob. He had removed Standers's boots and tied his feet with a sheet, wrapped them several times. The door Standers was bound to was the front door of the trailer and it was open. Standers was tied so that he was sitting with his back against the door, his arms stretched and strained above him. Mulroy thought he ought to have done it a little neater, a little less painful, then he got to thinking about what he was going to do and decided it didn't matter, and if it did, tough.

"You got any syrup or honey?"

This time Standers didn't answer at all.

Mulroy neatly closed the cabinet doors and checked the refrigerator. He found a large plastic see-through bear nearly full of syrup. He squeezed the bear and shot some of the syrup on his finger and tasted it. Maple.

"This'll do. You know, I had time, I'd fix me up some pancakes and use this. I taste this, it makes me think pancakes. They got like an I-Hop in town?"

Standers didn't answer.

Mulroy strolled over to Standers and set the plastic bear on the floor and took off his cowboy hat and nice Western jacket. He tossed the hat on the couch and carefully hung his jacket on the back of a chair. The pistol in the holster under his arm dangled like a malignancy.

Mulroy took a moment to look out the open door at the sun-parched grass and the fire ant hills in the yard. Here was a bad place for a mobile home. For a house. For anything. No neighbors. No trees, just lots of land with stumps. Mulroy figured the trees had been cut down for pulp money. Mulroy knew that's what he'd have done.

Because there were no trees, the mobile home was hot, even with the air conditioner going. And having the front door open didn't help much, way it was sucking out what cool air there was.

Mulroy watched as a mockingbird lit in the grass. It appeared on the verge of heat stroke. It made one sad sound, then went silent. Way, way out, Mulroy could hear cars on the highway, beyond the thin line of pine trees.

Mulroy reached down and unbuckled Standers's pants. He tugged down the pants and underwear, exposing Standers. He got hold of the bear and squeezed some of the syrup onto Standers's privates.

Standers said, "Whatcha doin', fixin' breakfast?"

"Oh ho," Mulroy said. "I am cut to the quick. Listen here. No use talkin' tough. This isn't personal. It's business. I'm going to do what I got to do, so you might as well not take it personal. I don't have anything against you."

"Yeah, well, great. I feel a hell of a lot better."

Mulroy eased down to Standers's feet, where his toes were exposed. He put the syrup on Standers's toes. He squirted some on Standers's head.

Mulroy went outside then. The mockingbird flew away. Mulroy walked around and looked at the fire ant hills. Fire ants were a bitch. They were tenacious bastards, and when they stung you, it was some kind of sting. There were some people so allergic to the little critters, one bite would make them go toes up. And if there were enough of them, and they were biting on you, it could be GoodbyeCity no matter if you were allergic or not. It was nasty poison.

Mulroy reached in his back pocket, pulled out a half-used sack of Red Man, opened it, pinched some out and put it in his mouth. He chewed a while, then spit on one of the ant hills. Agitated ants boiled out of the hill and spread in his direction. He walked off a ways and used the toe of his boot to stir up another hill, then another. He squirted syrup from the bear on one of the hills and ran a thin, dribbling stream of syrup back to the mobile home, up the steps, across the floor and directed the stream across Standers's thigh and onto his love apples. He said, "A fire ant hurts worse than a regular ant, but it isn't any different when it comes to sweets. He likes them. They like them. There're thousands of ants out there. Maybe millions. Who the hell knows. I mean, how you gonna count mad ants, way they're running around?"

For the first time since Mulroy first surprised Standers -- pretending to be a Bible salesman, then giving him an overhand right, followed by a left uppercut to the chin -- he saw true concern on Standers's face.

Mulroy said, "They hurt they bite you on the arm, leg, foot, something like that. But they get on your general, crawl between your toes, where it's soft, or nip your face around the lips, eyes and nose, it's some kind of painful. Or so I figure. You can tell me in a minute."

Suddenly, Mulroy cocked his head. He heard a car coming along the long road that wound up to the trailer. He went and looked out the door, came back, sat down on the couch and chewed his tobacco.

A few moments later the car parked behind Mulroy's car. A door slammed, a young slim woman in a short tight dress with hair the color of fire ants came through the door and looked first at Mulroy, then Standers. She pivoted on her high heels and waved her little handbag at Standers, said, "Hey, honey. What's that on your schlong?"

"Syrup," Mulroy said, got up, pushed past the woman and spat a stream of tobacco into the yard.

"Bitch," Standers said.

"The biggest," she said. Then to Mulroy: "Syrup on his tallywhacker?"

Mulroy stood in the doorway and nodded toward the yard. "The ants."

The woman looked outside, said, "I get it. Very imaginative." She eye'd the plastic bear where Mulroy had placed it on the arm of the couch. "Oh, that little bear is the cutest."

"You like it," Mulroy said. "Take it with you." Then to Standers he said, "You think maybe now you want to talk to us?"

Standers considered, decided either way he was screwed. He didn't tell, he was going to suffer, then die. Maybe he told what they wanted, he'd just die. He could make that part of the deal, and hope they kept their side of the bargain. Not that there was any reason they should. Still, Mulroy, he might do it. As for Babe, he couldn't trust her any kind of way.

Nonetheless, looking at her now, she was certainly beautiful. And his worms-eye view right up her dress was exceptional, considering Babe didn't wear panties and was a natural redhead.

"I was you," Mulroy said, "I'd start talking. Where's the loot?"

Standers took a deep breath. If he'd only kept his mouth shut, hadn't tried to impress Babe, he wouldn't be in this mess.

During World War II his dad had been assigned to guard Nazi treasure in Germany. His dad had confiscated a portion of the treasure, millions of dollars worth, and shipped it home to East Texas. A number of religious icons had been included in the theft, like a decorated box that was supposed to contain a hair from the Virgin Mary's head.

Standers's father had seen all this as spoils of war, not theft. When he returned home, much of the treasure was split up between relatives or sold. After the war the Germans had raised a stink and the U.S. government ended up making Standers's dad return what was left. The Germans offered to pay his father a price for it to keep things mellow. A flat million, a fraction of what it was worth.

Divided among family members, that million was long gone. But there was something else. Standers's Dad hadn't given up all the treasure. There were still a few unreturned items; gold bars and the so-called hair of the Virgin Mary.

Early last year the Germans raised yet another stink about items still missing. It had been in the papers and Standers's family had been named, and since he was the last of his family line, it was assumed he might know where this treasure was. Reporters came out. He told them he didn't know anything about any treasure. He laughed about how if he had treasure he wouldn't be living in a trailer in a cow pasture. The reporters believed him, or so it seemed from the way it read in the papers.

A month later he met Babe, in a store parking lot. She was changing a tire and just couldn't handle it, and would he help her. He had, and while he did the work he got to look up the line of her leg and find out she wore nothing underneath the short dresses she preferred. And she knew how to talk him up and lead him on. She was a silver-tongued, long-legged slut with heaven between her legs. He should have known better.

One night, after making love, Babe mentioned the stuff in the papers, and Standers, still high on flesh friction, feeling like a big man, admitted he had a large share of the money socked away in a foreign bank, and the rest, some gold bars, and the box containing the hair from the Virgin Mary, hidden away here in East Texas.

The relationship continued, but Standers began to worry when Babe kept coming back to the booty. She wanted to know where it was. She didn't ask straight out; she danced around matters; he didn't talk. He'd been stupid enough, no use compounding the matter. She was after the money, and not him, and he felt like a jackass. He doubled up on the sex for a while, then sent her away.

This morning, posing as a Bible salesman, Mulroy had shown up, clocked him, tied him up, introduced himself and tried to get him to tell the whereabouts of the loot. When Babe came through the door, it all clicked in place.

"I got a question," Standers said.

"So do we," Mulroy said. "Where's the spoils? We don't even want the money you got in a foreign bank. . . . Well, we want it, but that might be too much trouble. We'll settle for the other. What did you tell Babe it was? Gold bars and a cunt hair off the Virgin Mary?"

"I just want to know," Standers continued, "were you and Babe working together from the start?"

Mulroy laughed. "She was on her own, but when she couldn't get what she wanted from you, she needed someone to provide some muscle."

"So you're just another one she's conned," Standers said.

"No," Mulroy said, "you were conned. I'm a business partner. I'm not up for being conned. You wouldn't do that to me, would you, Babe?"

Babe smiled.

"Yeah, well, I guess you would," Mulroy said. "But I ain't gonna let you. You see, I know she's on the con. Knew it from the start. You didn't. Conning the marks is what I do for a living."

"It was all bullshit," Standers said. "I just told her that to sound big. She gets you in bed, she makes your dick think it's the president. I was tryin' to keep that pussy comin', is all. I had money, you think I'd be living like this?"

"If you were smart, you would," Mulroy said.

"I'm not smart," Standers said. "I sell cars. And that's it."

"Man," Mulroy said, "you tell that so good I almost believe it. Almost. Shit, I bet you could sell me an old Ford with a flat tire and missing transmission. Almost. . . hey, let's do it like this. You give the location of the stuff, and we let you go, and we even send you a little of the money. You know, ten thousand dollars. Isn't much, but it beats what you might get. I think that's a pretty good deal, all things considered."

"Yeah, I'll wait at the mail box for the ten thousand," Standers said.

"That's a pretty hard one to believe, isn't it?" Mulroy said. "But you can't blame me for tryin'. Hell, I got to go to the can. Watch him, Babe."

When Mulroy left the room, Standers said, "Nice, deal, huh? You and him get the loot, split it fifty-fifty."

Babe didn't say anything. She went over and sat on the couch.

"I can do you a better deal than he can," Standers said. "Get rid of him, and I'll show you the loot and split it fifty-fifty."

"What's better about that?" Babe said.

"I know where it is," Standers said. "It'd go real easy."

"I got time to go less easy, I want to take it," she said.

"Yeah," Standers said. "But why take it? Sooner you get it, sooner we spend it."

Mulroy came back into the room. Babe picked the plastic bear off the couch arm and went over to the refrigerator and opened it. She put the bear inside and got out a soft drink and pulled the tab on the can. "Man, I'm hungry," she said, then swigged the drink.

"What?" Mulroy said.

"Hungry," Babe said. "You know. I'd like to eat. You hungry?"

"Yeah," Mulroy said. "I was thinking about pancakes, but I kinda got other things on my mind here. We finish this, we'll eat. Besides, there's food here."

"Yeah, you want to eat this slop?" Babe said. "Go get us a pizza."

"A pizza?" Mulroy said. "You want I should get a _pizza_? We're fixin' to torture a guy with fire ants, maybe cut him up a little, set him on fire, whatever comes to mind that's fun, and you want me to drive out and get a fuckin' pizza? Honey, you need to stop lettin' men dick you in the ear. It's startin' to mess up your brain. Drink your soda pop."

"Canadian bacon, and none of those little fishies," Babe said. "Lots of cheese, and get the thick chewy crust."

"You got to be out of your beautiful red head."

"It'll take a while anyway," Babe said. "I don't think a couple of ant bites'll make him cave. And I'd rather not get tacky with cuttin' and burnin', we can avoid it. Whatever we do, it'll take some time, and I don't want to do it on an empty stomach. I'm tellin' you, I'm seriously and grown-up hungry here."

"You don't know fire ants, Baby," Mulroy said. "It ain't gonna take long at all."

"It's like, what, fifteen minutes into town?" Babe said, sipping her drink. "I could use a pizza. That's what I want. What's the big deal?"

Mulroy scratched the back of his neck, looked out the doorway. The ants were at the steps, following the trail of syrup.

"They'll be on him before I get back," he said.

"So," Babe said, "I've heard a grown man scream before. He tells me somethin', you get back, we'll go, eat the pizza on the way."

Mulroy used a finger to clear the tobacco out of his cheek. He flipped it into the yard. He said, "All right. I guess I could eat." Mulroy put on his coat and hat and smiled at Babe and went out.

When Mulroy's car was way out on the drive, near the highway, Babe opened her purse and took out a small .38 and pointed it at Standers. "I figure this will make you a more balanced kind of partner. You remember that. You mess with me, I'll shoot your dick off."

"All right," Standers said.

Babe put the revolver in her other hand, got a flick blade knife out of her purse, used it to cut the sheets around Standers's ankles. She cut the lamp cord off his wrist.

Standers stood, and without pulling his pants up, hopped to the sink. He got the hand towel off the rack and wet it and used it to clean the syrup off his privates, his feet and head. He pulled up his pants, got his socks, sat on the couch and put his boots back on.

"We got to hurry," Babe said. "Mulroy, he's got a temper. I seen him shoot a dog once for peeing on one of his hub caps."

"Let me get my car keys," Standers said.

"We'll take my car," she said. "You'll drive."

They went outside and she gave him the keys and they drove off.

* * *

As they drove onto the highway, Mulroy, who was parked behind a swathe of trees, poked a new wad of tobacco into his mouth and massaged it with his teeth.

Babe had sold out immediately, like he thought she would. Doing it this way, having them lead him to the treasure was a hell of a lot better than sitting around in a hot trailer watching fire ants crawl on a man's balls. And this way he didn't have to watch his back all the time. That Babe, what a kidder. She was so greedy, she thought he'd fall for that lame pizza gag. She'd been winning too long; she wasn't thinking enough moves ahead anymore.

Mulroy rode well back of them, putting his car behind other cars when he could. He figured his other advantage was they weren't expecting him. He thought about the treasure and what he could do with it while he drove.

Until Babe came along, he had been a private detective, doing nickel and dime divorces out of Tyler; taking pictures of people doing the naked horizontal mambo. It wasn't a lot of fun. And the little cons he pulled on the side, clever as they were, were bullshit money, hand to mouth.

He made the score he wanted from all this, he'd go down to Mexico, buy him a place with a pool, rent some women. One for each day of the week, and each one with a different sexual skill, and maybe a couple who could cook. He was damn sure tired of his own cooking. He wanted to eat a lot and get fat and lay around and poke the senoritas. This all fell through, he thought he might try and be an evangelist or some kind of politician or a lawman with a regular check.

Standers drove for a couple of hours, through three or four towns, and Mulroy followed. Eventually, Standers pulled off the highway, onto a blacktop. Mulroy gave him time to get ahead, then took the road too. With no cars to put between them and himself, Mulroy cruised along careful like. Finally he saw Standers way up ahead on a straight stretch. Standers veered off the road and into the woods.

Mulroy pulled to the side of the road and waited a minute, then followed. The road in the woods was a narrow dirt one, and Mulroy had only gone a little ways when he stopped his car and got out and started walking. He had a hunch the road was a short one, and he didn't want to surprise them too early.

Standers drove down the road until it dead-ended at some woods and a load of trash someone had dumped. He got out and Babe got out. Babe was still holding her gun.

"You're tellin' me it's hidden under the trash?" she said. "You better not be jackin' with me, honey."

"It's not under the trash. Come on."

They went into the woods and walked along awhile, came to an old white house with a bad roof. It was surrounded by vines and trees and the porch was falling down.

"You keep a treasure here?" she said.

Standers went up on the porch, got a key out of his pocket and unlocked the door. Inside, pigeons fluttered and went out holes in the windows and the roof. A snake darted into a hole in the floor. There were spiders and spider webs everywhere. The floor was dotted with rat turds.

Standers went carefully across the floor and into a bedroom. Babe followed, holding her revolver at the ready. The room was better kept than the rest of the house. She could see where boards had been replaced in the floor. The ceiling was good here. There were no windows, just plyboard over the spots where they ought to be. There was a dust-covered desk, a bed with ratty covers, and an armchair covered in a faded flower print.

Standers got down on his hands and knees, reached under the bed and tugged diligently at a large suitcase.

"It's under the bed?" Babe said.

Standers opened the suitcase. There was a crowbar in it. He got the crowbar out. Babe said, "Watch yourself. I don't want you should try and hit me. It could mess up my makeup."

Standers carried the crowbar to the closet, opened it. The closet was sound. There was a groove in the floor. Standers fitted the end of the crowbar into the groove and lifted. The flooring came up. Standers pulled the trap door out of the closet and put it on the floor.

Babe came over for a look, careful to keep an eye on Standers and a tight grip on the gun. Where the floor had been was a large metal-lined box. Standers opened the box so she could see what was inside.

What she saw inside made her breath snap out. Gold bars and a shiny wooden box about the size of a box of cigars.

"That's what's got the hair in it?" she asked.

"That's what they say. Inside is another box with some glass in it. You can look through the glass and see the hair. Box was made by the Catholic Church to hold the hair. For all I know it's an armpit hair off one of the Popes. Who's to say? But it's worth money."

"How much money?"

"It depends on who you're dealing with. A million. Two to three million. Twenty-five million."

"Let's deal with that last guy."

"The fence won't give money like that. We could sell the gold bars, use that to finance a trip to Germany. There're people there would pay plenty for the box."

"A goddamn hair," Babe said. "Can you picture that?"

"Yeah, I can picture that." Babe and Standers turned as Mulroy spoke, stepped into the room cocking his revolver with one hand, pushing his hat back with the other.

Mulroy said, "Put the gun down, Babe, or I part your hair about two inches above your nose."

Babe smiled at him, lowered her gun. "See," she said. "I got him to take me here, no trouble. Now we can take the treasure."

Mulroy smiled. "You are some kind of kidder. I never thought you'd let me have fifty percent anyway. I was gonna do you in from the start. Same as you were with me. Drop the gun, Babe."

Babe dropped the revolver. "You got me all wrong," she said.

"No I don't," Mulroy said.

"I guess you didn't go for pizza," Standers said.

"No, but I tell you what," Mulroy said. "I'm pretty hungry right now, so let's get this over with. I'll make it short and sweet. A bullet through the head for you, Standers. A couple more just to make sure you aren't gonna be some kind of living cabbage. As for you, Babe. There's a bed here, and I figure I might as well get all the treasure I can get. Look at it this way. It's the last nice thing you can do for anybody, so you might as well make it nice. If nothing else, be selfish and enjoy it."

"Well," Standers said, looking down at Babe's revolver on the floor. "You might as well take the gun."

Standers stepped out from behind Babe and kicked her gun toward Mulroy, and no sooner had he done that, than he threw the crowbar.

Mulroy looked down at the revolver sliding his way, then looked up. As he did, the crowbar hit him directly on the bridge of the nose and dropped him. He fell unconscious with his back against the wall.

Soon as Mulroy fell, Babe reached for her revolver. Standers kicked her legs out from under her, but she scuttled like a crab and got hold of it and shot in Standers's direction. The shot missed, but it stopped Standers.

Babe got up, pulled her dress down and smiled. "Looks like I'm ahead."

She turned suddenly and shot the unconscious Mulroy behind the ear. Mulroy's hat, which had maintained its position on his head, came off as he nodded forward. A wad of tobacco rolled over his lip and landed in his lap. Blood ran down his cheek and onto his nice Western coat.

Babe smiled again, spoke to Standers. "Now I just got you. And I need you to carry those bars out of here."

Standers said. "Why should I help?"

"Cause I'll let you go."

Standers snorted.

"All right then, because I'll shoot you in the knees and leave you here if you don't. That way, you go slow. Help me, I'll make it quick."

"Damn, that's a tough choice."

"Let's you and me finish up in a way you don't have to suffer, babycakes."

Standers nodded, said, "You promise to make it quick?"

"Honey, it'll happen so fast you won't know it happened."

"I can't take the strain," Standers said. He pointed to the room adjacent to the bedroom. "There's a wheelbarrow in there. It's the way I haul stuff out. I get that, we can make a few trips, get it over with. I don't like to think about dying for a long time. Let's just get it done."

"Fine with me," Babe said.

Standers started toward the other room. Babe said, "Hold on."

She bent down and got Mulroy's gun. Now she had one in either hand. She waved Standers back against the wall and peeked in the room he had indicated. There was a wheelbarrow in there.

"All right, let's do it," she said.

Standers stepped quickly inside, and as Babe started to enter the room, he said sharply, "Don't step there!"

Babe held her foot in mid-air, and Standers slapped her closest gun arm down and grabbed it, slid behind her and pinned her other arm. He slid his hands down and took the guns from her. He used his knee to shove her forward. She stumbled and the floor cracked and she went through and spun and there was another crack, but it wasn't the floor. She screamed and moaned something awful. After a moment, she stopped bellowing and turned to Standers, she opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

Standers said, "What's the matter? Kind of run out of lies? There ain't nothing you can say would interest me. It's just a shame to have to kill a good-lookin' piece like you."

"Please," she said, but Standers shot her in the face with Mulroy's gun and she fell backwards, her broken leg still in the gap in the floor. Her other leg flew up and came down and her heel hit the floor with a slap. Her dress hiked up and exposed her privates.

"Not a bad way to remember you," Standers said. "It's the only part of you that wasn't a cheat."

Standers took the box containing the hair out of the closet, put the closet back in shape, got the wheelbarrow and used it to haul Babe, her purse, and the guns out of there and through the woods to a pond his relatives had built fifty years ago.

He dumped Babe beside the pond, went back for Mulroy and dumped him beside her. He got Mulroy's car keys out of his pocket and Babe's keys out of her purse.

Standers walked back to Babe's car and drove it to the edge of the pond, rolled down the windows a little, put her and Mulroy in the back seat with her purse and the guns, then he put the car in neutral. He pushed it off in the water. It was a deep, dirty pond. The car went down quick.

Standers waited at the shack until almost dark, then took the box containing the hair, walked back, found Mulroy's car and drove it out of there. He stopped the car beside a dirt road about a mile from his house and wiped it clean with a handkerchief he found in the front seat. He got the box out of the car and walked back to his trailer.

It was dark when he got there. The door was still open. He went inside, locked up and set the box with the hair on the counter beside the sink. He opened the box and took out the smaller box and studied the hair through the smeary glass.

He thought to himself: What if this is the Virgin Mary's hair? It could even be an ass hair, but if it's the Virgin Mary's . . . well, it's the Virgin Mary's. And what if it's a dog hair? It'll still sell for the same. It was time to get rid of it. He would book a flight to Germany tomorrow, search out the right people, sell it, sock what he got from it away in his foreign bank account, come back and fence the gold bars and sell all his land, except for the chunk with the house and pond on it. He'd fill the pond in himself with a rented back hole and dozer, plant some trees on top of it, let it set while he lived abroad.

Simple, but a good plan, he thought.

Standers drank a glass of water and took the box and lay down on the couch snuggling it. He was exhausted. Fear of death did that to a fella. He closed his eyes and went to sleep immediately.

A short time later he awoke in pain. His whole body ached. He leaped up, dropping the box. He began to slap at his legs and chest, tear at his clothes.

Jesus. The fire ants! His entire body was covered with the bastards.

Standers felt queezy. My God, he thought. I'm having a reaction. I'm allergic to the little shits.

He got his pants and underwear peeled down to his ankles, but he couldn't get them over his boots. He began to hop about the room. He hit the light switch and saw the ants all over the place. They had followed the stream of syrup, and then they had found him on the couch and gone after him.

Standers screamed and slapped, hopped over and grabbed the box from the floor and jerked open the front door. He held the box in one hand and tugged at his pants with the other, but as he was going down the steps, he tripped, fell forward and landed on his head and lay there with his head and knees holding him up. He tried to stand, but couldn't. He realized he had broken his neck, and from the waist down he was paralyzed.

Oh God, he thought. The ants. Then he thought. Well, at least I can't feel them, but he found he could feel them on his face. His face still had sensation.

It's temporary, the paralysis will pass, he told himself, but it didn't. The ants began to climb into his hair and swarm over his lips. He batted at them with his eyelashes and blew at them with his mouth, but it didn't do any good. They swarmed him. He tried to scream, but with his neck bent the way it was, his throat constricted somewhat, he couldn't make a good noise. And when he opened his mouth the furious little ants swarmed in and bit his tongue, which swelled instantly.

Oh Jesus, he thought. Jesus and the Virgin Mary.

But Jesus wasn't listening. Neither was the Virgin Mary.

The night grew darker and the ants grew more intense, but Standers was dead long before morning.

* * *

About ten A.M. a car drove up in Standers's drive and a fat man in a cheap blue suit with a suitcase full of bibles got out; a real bible salesman with a craving for drink.

The bible salesman, whose name was Bill Longstreet, had his mind on business. He needed to sell a couple of moderate-priced bibles so he could get a drink. He'd spent his last money in Beaumont, Texas on a double, and now he needed another.

Longstreet strolled around his car, whistling, trying to put up a happy Christian front. Then he saw Standers in the front yard supported by his head and knees, his ass exposed, his entire body swarming with ants. The corpse was swollen up and spotted with bites. Standers's neck was twisted so that Longstreet could see the right side of his face, and his right eye was nothing more than an ant cavern, and the lips were eaten away and the nostrils were a tunnel for the ants. They were coming in one side, and going out the other.

Longstreet dropped his sample case, staggered back to his car, climbed on the hood and just sat there and looked for a long time.

Finally, he got over it. He looked about and saw no one other than the dead man. The door to the trailer was open. Longstreet got off the car. Watching for ants, he went as close as he had courage and yelled toward the open door a few times.

No one came out.

Longstreet licked his lips, eased over to Standers and moving quickly, stomping his feet, he reached in Standers's back pocket and pulled out his wallet.

Longstreet rushed back to his car and got up on the hood. He looked in the wallet. There were two ten dollar bills and a couple of ones. He took the money, folded it neatly and put it in his coat pocket. He tossed the wallet back at Standers, got down off the car and got his case and put it on the back seat. He got behind the wheel, was about to drive off, when he saw the little box near Standers's swollen hand.

Longstreet sat for a moment, then got out, ran over, grabbed the box, and ran back to the car, beating the ants off as he went. He got behind the wheel, opened the box and found another box with a little crude glass window fashioned into it. There was something small and dark and squiggly behind the glass. He wondered what it was.

He knew a junk store bought stuff like this. He might get a couple bucks from the lady who ran it. He tossed it in the back seat, cranked up the car and drove into town and had a drink.

He had two drinks. Then three. It was nearly dark by the time he came out of the bar and wobbled out to his car. He started it up and drove out onto the highway right in front of a speeding semi.

The truck hit Longstreet's car and turned it into a horseshoe and sent it spinning across the road, into a telephone pole. The car ricocheted off the pole, back onto the road and the semi, which was slamming hard on its brakes, clipped it again. This time Longstreet and his car went through a barbed wire fence and spun about in a pasture and stopped near a startled bull.

The bull looked in the open car window and sniffed and went away. The semi driver parked and got out and ran over and looked in the window himself.

Longstreet's brains were all over the car and his face had lost a lot of definition. His mouth was dripping bloody teeth. He had fallen with his head against an open bible. Later, when he was hauled off, the bible had to go with him. Blood had plastered it to the side of his head, and when the ambulance arrived, the blood had clotted and the bible was even better attached; way it was on there, you would have thought it was some kind of bizarre growth Longstreet had been born with. Doctors at the hospital wouldn't mess with it. What was the point. Fucker was dead and they didn't know him.

At the funeral home they hosed his head down with warm water and yanked the bible off his face and threw it away.

Later on, well after the funeral, Longstreet's widow inherited what was left of Longstreet's car, which she gave to the junkyard. She burned the bibles and all of Longstreet's clothes. The box with the little box in it she opened and examined. She couldn't figure what was behind the glass. She used a screw driver to get the glass off, tweezers to pinch out the hair.

She held the hair in the light, twisted it this way and that. She couldn't make out what it was. A bug leg, maybe. She tossed the hair in the commode and flushed it. She put the little box in the big box and threw it in the trash.

Later yet, she collected quite a bit of insurance money from Longstreet's death. She bought herself a new car and some see-through panties and used the rest to finance her lover's plans to open a used car lot in downtown Beaumont, but it didn't work out. He used the money to finance himself and she never saw him again.

STEPPIN' OUT, SUMMER, '68

Buddy drank another swig of beer and when he brought the bottle down he said to Jake and Wilson, "I could sure use some pussy."

"We could all use some," Wilson said, "problem is we don't never get any."

"That's the way I see it too," Jake said.

"You don't get any," Buddy said. "I get plenty, you can count on that."

"Uh huh," Wilson said. "You talk pussy plenty good, but I don't ever see you with a date. I ain't never even seen you walking a dog, let alone a girl. You don't even have a car, so how you gonna get with a girl?"

"That's the way I see it too," Jake said.

"You see what you want," Buddy said. "I'm gonna be getting me a Chevy soon. I got my eye on one."

"Yeah?" Wilson said. "What one?"

"Drew Carrington's old crate."

"Shit," Wilson said, "that motherfucker caught on fire at a streetlight and he run it off in the creek."

"They got it out," Buddy said.

"They say them flames jumped twenty feet out from under the hood before he run it off in there," Jake said.

"Water put the fire out," Buddy said.

"Uh huh," Wilson said, "after the motor blowed up through the hood. They found that motherfucker in a tree out back of old Maud Page's place. One of the pistons fell out of it and hit her on the head while she was picking up apples. She was in the hospital three days."

"Yeah," Jake said. "And I hear Carrington's in Dallas now, never got better from the accident. Near drowned and some of the engine blew back into the car and hit him in the nuts, castrated him, fucked up his legs. He can't walk. He's on a wheeled board or something, got some retard that pulls him around."

"Them's just stories," Buddy said. "Motor's still in the car. Carrington got him a job in Dallas as a mechanic. He didn't get hurt at all. Old Woman Page didn't get hit by no piston either. It missed her by a foot. Scared her so bad she had a little stroke. That's why she was in the hospital."

"You seen the motor?" Wilson asked. "Tell me you've seen it."

"No," Buddy said, "but I've heard about it from good sources, and they say it can be fixed."

"Jack it up and drive another car under it," Wilson said, "it'll be all right."

"That's the way I see it too," Jake said.

"Listen to you two," Buddy said. "You know it all. You're real operators. I'll tell you morons one thing, I line up a little of the hole that winks and stinks, like I'm doing tonight, you won't get none of it."

Wilson and Jake shuffled and eyed each other. An unspoken, but clear message passed between them. They had never known Buddy to actually get any, or anyone else to know of him getting any, but he had a couple of years on them, and he might have gotten some, way he talked about it, and they damn sure knew they weren't getting any, and if there was a chance of it, things had to be patched up.

"Car like that," Wilson said, "if you worked hard enough, you might get it to run. Some new pistons or something . . . what you got lined up for tonight?"

Buddy's face put on some importance. "I know a gal likes to do the circle, you know what I mean?"

Wilson hated to admit it, but he didn't. "The circle?"

"Pull the train," Buddy said. "Do the team. You know, fuck a bunch a guys, one after the other."

"Oh," Wilson said.

"I knew that," Jake said.

"Yeah," Wilson said. "Yeah sure you did." Then to Buddy: "When you gonna see this gal?"

Buddy, still important, took a swig of beer and pursed his lips and studied the afternoon sky. "Figured I'd walk on over there little after dark. It's a mile or so."

"Say she likes to do more than one guy?" Wilson asked.

"Way I hear it," Buddy said, "she'll do 'em till they ain't able to do. My cousin, Butch, he told me about her."

Butch.

The magic word. Wilson and Jake eyed each other again. There could be something in this after all. Butch was twenty, had a fast car, could play a little bit on the harmonica, bought his own beer, cussed in front of adults, and most importantly, he had been seen with women.

Buddy continued. "Her name's Sally. Butch said she cost five dollars. He's done her a few times. Got her name off a bathroom wall."

"She costs?" Wilson asked.

"Think some gal's going to do us all without some money for it?" Buddy said.

Again, an unspoken signal passed between Wilson and Jake. There could be truth in that.

"Butch gave me her address, said her pimp sits on the front porch and you go right up and negotiate with him. Says you talk right, he might take four."

"I don't know," Wilson said. "I ain't never paid for it."

"Me neither," said Jake.

"Ain't neither one of you ever had any at all, let alone paid for it," Buddy said.

Once more, Wilson and Jake were struck with the hard and painful facts.

Buddy looked at their faces and smiled. He took another sip of beer. "Well, you bring your five dollars, and I reckon you can tag along with me. Come by the house about dark and we'll walk over together."

"Yeah, well, all right," Wilson said. "I wish we had a car."

"Keep wishing," Buddy said. "You boys hang with me, we'll all be riding in Carrington's old Chevy before long. I've got some prospects."

It was just about dark when Wilson and Jake got over to Buddy's neighborhood, which was a long street with four houses on it widely spaced. Buddy's house was the ugliest of the four. It looked ready to nod off its concrete blocks at any moment and go crashing into the unkempt yard and die in a heap of rotting lumber and squeaking nails. Great strips of graying Sherwin Williams flat-white paint hung from it in patches, giving it the appearance of having a skin disease. The roof was tin and loved the sun and pulled it in and held it so that the interior basked in a sort of slow simmer until well after sundown. Even now, late in the day, a rush of heat came off the roof and rippled down the street like the last results of a nuclear wind.

Wilson and Jake came up on the house from the side, not wanting to go to the door. Buddy's mother was a grumpy old bitch in a brown bathrobe and bunny rabbit slippers with an ear missing on the left foot. No one had ever seen her wearing anything else, except now and then she added a shower cap to her uniform, and no one had ever seen her, with or without the shower cap, except through the screen-wire door. She wasn't thought to leave the house. She played radio contests and had to be near the radio at strategic times throughout the day so she could phone if she knew the answer to something. She claimed to be listening for household tips, but no one had ever seen her apply any. She also watched her daughter's soap operas, though she never owned up to it. She always pretended to be reading, kept a Reader's Digest cracked so she could look over it and see the TV.

She wasn't friendly either. Times Wilson and Jake had come over before, she'd met them at the screen door and wouldn't let them in. She wouldn't even talk to them. She'd call back to Buddy inside, "Hey, those hoodlum friends of yours are here."

Neither Wilson or Jake could see any sort of relationship developing between them and Buddy's mother, and they had stopped trying. They hung around outside the house under the open windows until Buddy came out. There were always interesting things to hear while they waited. Wilson told Jake it was educational.

This time, as before, they sidled up close to the house where they could hear. The television was on. A laugh track drifted out to them. That meant Buddy's sister LuWanda was in there watching. If it wasn't on, it meant she was asleep. Like her mother, she was drawing a check. Back problems plagued the family. Except for Buddy's pa. His back was good. He was in prison for sticking up a liquor store. What little check he was getting for making license plates probably didn't amount to much.

Now they could hear Buddy's mother. Her voice had a quality that made you think of someone trying to talk while fatally injured; like she was lying under an overturned refrigerator, or had been thrown free of a car and had hit a tree.

"LuWanda, turn that thing down. You know I got bad feet."

"You don't listen none with your feet, Mama," LuWanda said. Her voice was kind of slow and lazy, faintly squeaky, as if hoisted from her throat by a hand-over pulley.

"No," Buddy's mother said. "But I got to get up on my old tired feet and come in here and tell you to turn it down."

"I can hear you yelling from the bedroom good enough when your radio ain't too high."

"But you still don't turn it down."

"I turn it down anymore, I won't be able to hear it."

"Your old tired mother, she ought to get some respect."

"You get about half my check," LuWanda said, "ain't that enough? I'm gonna get out of here when I have the baby."

"Yeah, and I bet that's some baby, way you lay up with anything's got pants."

"I hardly never leave the house to get the chance," LuWanda said. "It was pa done it before he tried to knock over that liquor store."

"Watch your mouth, young lady. I know you let them in through the windows. I'll be glad to see you go, way you lie around here an' watch that old TV. You ought to do something educational. Read the Reader's Digest like I do. There's tips for living in those, and you could sure profit some."

"Could be something to that all right," LuWanda said. "Pa read the Reader's Digest and he's over in Huntsville. I bet he likes there better than here. I bet he has a better time come night."

"Don't you start that again, young lady."

"Way he told me," LuWanda said, "I was always better with him than you was."

"I'm putting my hands right over my ears at those lies. I won't hear them."

"He sure had him a thrust, didn't he Mama?"

"Ooooh, you . . . you little shit, if I should say such a thing. You'll get yours in hell, sister."

"I been getting plenty of hell here."

Wilson leaned against the house under the window and whispered to Jake. "Where the hell's Buddy?"

This was answered by Buddy's mother's shrill voice. "Buddy, you are not going out of this house wearing them nigger shoes."

"Oh, Mama," Buddy said, "these ain't nigger shoes. I bought these over at K-Woolens."

"That's right where the niggers buy their things," she said.

"Ah, Mama," Buddy said.

"Don't you Mama me. You march right back in there and take off them shoes and put on something else. And get you a pair of pants that don't fit so tight people can tell which side it's on."

A moment later, a window down from Wilson and Jake went up slowly. A hand holding a pair of shoes stuck out. The hand dropped the shoes and disappeared.

Then the screen door slammed and Wilson and Jake edged around to the corner of the house for a peek. It was Buddy coming out, and his mother's voice came after him, "Don't you come back to this house with a disease, you hear?"

"Ah, Mama," Buddy said.

Buddy was dressed in a long-sleeved paisley shirt with the sleeves rolled up so tight over his biceps they bulged as if actually full of muscle. He had on a pair of striped bell-bottoms and tennis shoes. His hair was combed high and hard and it lifted up on one side; it looked as if an oily squirrel were clinging precariously to the side of his head.

When Buddy saw Wilson and Jake peeking around the corner of the house, his chest got full and he walked off the porch with a cool step. His mother yelled from inside the house, "And don't walk like you got a corncob up you."

That cramped Buddy's style a little, but he sneered and went around the corner of the house trying to look like a man who knew things.

"Guess you boys are ready to stretch a little meat," Buddy said. He paused to locate an almost flat half-pack of Camels in his back pocket. He pulled a cigarette out and got a match from his shirt pocket and grinned and held his hand by his cheek and popped the match with his thumb. It sparked and he lit the cigarette and puffed. "Those things with filters, they're for sissies."

"Give us one of those," Wilson said.

"Yeah, well, all right, but this is it," Buddy said. "Only pack I got till I collect some money owed me."

Wilson and Jake stuck smokes in their faces and Buddy snapped another match and lit them up. Wilson and Jake coughed some smoke clouds.

"Sshhhh," Buddy said. "The old lady'll hear you."

They went around to the back window where Buddy had dropped the shoes and Buddy picked them up and took off the ones he had on and slipped on the others. They were smooth and dark and made of alligator hide. Their toes were pointed. Buddy wet his thumb and removed a speck of dirt from one of them. He put his tennis shoes under the house, brought a fruit jar of clear liquid out from there.

"Hooch," Buddy said, and winked. "Bought it off Old Man Hoyt."

"Hoyt?" Wilson said. "He sells hooch?"

"Makes it himself," Buddy said. "Get you a quart for five dollars. Got five dollars and hell sell to bottle babies."

Buddy saw Wilson eyeing his shoes appreciatively.

"Mama don't like me wearing these," he said. "I have to sneak them out."

"They're cool," Jake said. "I wish I had me a pair like 'em."

"You got to know where to shop," Buddy said.

* * *

As they walked, the night became rich and cool and the moon went up and it was bright with a fuzzy ring around it. Crickets chirped. The streets they came to were little more than clay, but there were more houses than in Buddy's neighborhood, and they were in better shape. Some of the yards were mowed. The lights were on in the houses along the street, and the three of them could hear televisions talking from inside houses as they walked.

They finished off the street and turned onto another that was bordered by deep woods. They crossed a narrow wooden bridge that went over Mud Creek. They stopped and leaned on the bridge railing and watched the dark water in the moonlight. Wilson remembered when he was ten and out shooting birds with a BB gun, he had seen a dead squirrel in the water, floating out from under the bridge, face down, as if it were snorkeling. He had watched it sail on down the creek and out of sight. He had popped at it and all around it with his BB gun for as long as the gun had the distance. The memory made him nostalgic for his youth and he tried to remember what he had done with his old Daisy air rifle. Then it came to him that his dad had probably pawned it. He did that sort of thing now and then, when he fell off the wagon. Suddenly a lot of missing items over the years began to come together. He'd have to get him some kind of trunk with a lock on it and nail it to the floor or something. It wasn't nailed down, it and everything in it might end up at the pawn shop for strangers to paw over.

They walked on and finally came to a long street with houses at the end of it, and the lights there seemed less bright and the windows the lights came out of much smaller.

"That last house before the street crosses," Buddy said, "that's the one we want."

Wilson and Jake looked where Buddy was pointing. The house was dark except for a smudgy porch light and a sick yellow glow that shone from behind a thick curtain. Someone was sitting on the front porch doing something with their hands. They couldn't tell anything about the person or about what the person was doing. From that distance the figure could have been whittling or masturbating.

"Ain't that nigger town on the other side of the street?" Jake said. "This gal we're after, she a nigger? I don't know I'm ready to fuck a nigger. I heard my old man say to a friend of his that Mammy Clewson will give a hand job for a dollar and a half. I might go that from a nigger, but I don't know about putting it in one."

"House we want is on this side of the street, before nigger town," Buddy said. "That's a full four foot difference. She ain't a nigger. She's white trash."

"Well . . . all right," Jake said. "That's different."

"Everybody take a drink," Buddy said, and he unscrewed the lid on the fruit jar and took a jolt. "Wheee. Straight from the horse."

Buddy passed the jar to Wilson, and Wilson drank and nearly threw it up. "Goddamn," he said. "Goddamn. He must run that stuff through a radiator hose or something."

Jake took a turn, shivered as if in the early throes of an epileptic fit. He gave the jar back to Buddy. Buddy screwed the lid on and they walked on down the street, stopped opposite the house they wanted and looked at the man on the front porch, for they could clearly see now it was a man. He was old and toothless and he was shelling peas from a big paper sack into a little white wash pan.

"That's the pimp," Buddy whispered. He opened up the jar and took a sip and closed it and gave it to Wilson to hold. "Give me your money."

They gave him their five dollars.

"I'll go across and make the arrangements," Buddy said. "When I signal, come on over. The pimp might prefer we go in the house one at a time. Maybe you can sit on the porch. I don't know yet."

The three smiled at each other. The passion was building.

Buddy straightened his shoulders, pulled his pants up, and went across the street. He called a howdy to the man on the porch.

"Who the hell are you?" the old man said. It sounded as if his tongue got in the way of his words.

Buddy went boldly up to the house and stood at the porch steps. Wilson and Jake could hear him from where they stood, shuffling their feet and sipping from the jar. He said, "We come to buy a little pussy. I hear you're the man to supply it."

"What's that?" the old man said, and he stood up. When he did, it was obvious he had a problem with his balls. The right side of his pants looked to have a baby's head in it.

"I was him," Jake whispered to Wilson, "I'd save up my share of that pussy money and get me a truss."

"What is that now?" the old man was going on. "What is that you're saying, you little shit?"

"Well now," Buddy said, cocking a foot on the bottom step of the porch like someone who meant business, "I'm not asking for free. I've got fifteen dollars here. It's five a piece, ain't it? We're not asking for anything fancy. We just want to lay a little pipe."

A pale light went on inside the house and a plump, blond girl appeared at the screen door. She didn't open it. She stood there looking out.

"Boy, what in hell are you talking about?" the old man said. "You got the wrong house."

"No one here named Sally?" Buddy asked.

The old man turned his head toward the screen and looked at the plump girl.

"I don't know him, Papa," she said. "Honest."

"You sonofabitch," the old man said to Buddy, and he waddled down the step and swung an upward blow that hit Buddy under the chin and flicked his squirrel-looking hair-do out of shape, sent him hurtling into the front yard. The old man got a palm under his oversized balls and went after Buddy, walking like he had something heavy tied to one leg. Buddy twisted around to run and the old man kicked out and caught him one in the seat of the pants, knocked him stumbling into the street.

"You little bastard," the old man yelled, "don't you come sniffing around here after my daughter again, or I'll cut your nuts off."

Then the old man saw Wilson and Jake across the street. Jake, unable to stop himself, nervously lifted a hand and waved.

"Git on out of here, or I'll let Blackie out," the old man said. "He'll tear your asses up."

Buddy came on across the street, trying to step casually, but moving briskly just the same. "I'm gonna get that fucking Butch," he said.

The old man found a rock in the yard and threw it at them. It whizzed by Buddy's ear and he and Jake and Wilson stepped away lively.

Behind them they heard a screen door slam and the plump girl whined something and there was a whapping sound, like a fan belt come loose on a big truck, then they heard the plump girl yelling for mercy and the old man cried "Slut" once, and they were out of there, across the street, into the black side of town.

They walked along a while, then Jake said, "I guess we could find Mammy Clewson."

"Oh, shut up," Buddy said. "Here's your five dollars back. Here's both your five dollars back. The both of you can get her to do it for you till your money runs out."

"I was just kidding," Jake said.

"Well don't," Buddy said. "That Butch, I catch him, right in the kisser, man. I don't care how big and mean he is. Right in the kisser."

They walked along the street and turned left up another. "Let's get out of boogie town," Buddy said. "All these niggers around here, it makes me nervous."

When they were well up the street and there were no houses, they turned down a short dirt street with a bridge in the middle of it that went over the Sabine river. It wasn't a big bridge because the river was narrow there. Off to the right was a wide pasture. To the left a church. They crossed into the church back yard. There were a couple of wooden pews setting out there under an oak. Buddy went over to one and sat down.

"I thought you wanted to get away from the boogies?" Wilson said.

"Naw," Buddy said. "This is all right. This is fine. I'd like for a nigger to start something. I would. That old man back there hadn't been so old and had his balls fucked up like that, I'd have kicked his ass."

"We wondered what was holding you back," Wilson said.

Buddy looked at Wilson, didn't see any signs of sarcasm.

"Yeah, well, that was it. Give me the jar. There's some other women I know about. We might try something later on, we feel like it."

But a cloud of unspoken resignation, as far as pussy was concerned, had passed over them, and they labored beneath its darkness with their fruit jar of hooch. They sat and passed the jar around and the night got better and brighter. Behind them, off in the woods, they could hear the Sabine river running along. Now and then a car would go down or up the street, cross over the bridge with a rumble, and pass out of sight beyond the church, or if heading in the other direction, out of sight behind trees.

Buddy began to see the night's fiasco as funny. He mellowed. "That Butch, he's something, ain't he? Some joke, huh?"

"It was pretty funny," Jake said, "seeing that old man and his balls coming down the porch after you. That thing was any more ruptured, he'd need a wheelbarrow to get from room to room. Shit, I bet he couldn't have turned no dog on us. He'd had one in there, it'd have barked."

"Maybe he calls Sally Blackie," Wilson said. "Man, we're better off she didn't take money. You see that face. She could scare crows."

"Shit," Buddy said, sniffing at the jar of hooch. "I think Hoyt puts hair oil in this. Don't that smell like Vitalis to you?"

He held it under Wilson's nose, then Jake's.

"It does," Wilson said. "Right now, I wouldn't care if it smelled like sewer. Give me another swig."

"No," Buddy said, standing up, wobbling, holding the partially-filled jar in front of him. "Could be we've discovered a hair tonic we could sell. Buy it from Hoyt for five, sell it to guys to put on their heads for ten. We could go into business with Old Man Hoyt. Make a fortune."

Buddy poured some hooch into his palm and rubbed it into his hair, fanning his struggling squirrel-do into greater disarray. He gave the jar to Jake, got out his comb and sculptured his hair with it. Hooch ran down from his hairline and along his nose and cheeks. "See that," he said, holding out his arms as if he were styling. "Shit holds like glue."

Buddy seemed an incredible wit suddenly. They all laughed. Buddy got his cigarettes and shook one out for each of them. They lipped them. They smiled at one another. They were great friends. This was a magnificent and important moment in their lives. This night would live in memory forever.

Buddy produced a match, held it close to his cheek like always, smiled and flicked it with his thumb. The flaming head of the match jumped into his hair and lit the alcohol Buddy had combed into it. His hair flared up, and a circle of fire, like a halo for the devil, wound its way around his scalp and licked at his face and caught the hooch there on fire. Buddy screamed and bolted berserkly into a pew, tumbled over it and came up running. He looked like the Human Torch on a mission.

Wilson and Jake were stunned. They watched him run a goodly distance, circle, run back, hit the turned-over pew again and go down.

Wilson yelled, "Put his head out!"

Jake reflexively tossed the contents of the fruit jar at Buddy's head, realizing his mistake a moment too late. But it was like when he waved at Sally's pa. He couldn't help himself.

Buddy did a short tumble, came up still burning; in fact, he appeared to be more on fire than before. He ran straight at Wilson and Jake, his tongue out and flapping flames.

Wilson and Jake stepped aside and Buddy went between them, sprinted across the church yard toward the street.

"Throw dirt on his head!" Wilson said, Jake threw down the jar and they went after him, watching for dirt they could toss.

Buddy was fast for someone on fire. He reached the street well ahead of Wilson and Jake and any discovery of available dirt. But he didn't cross the street fast enough to beat the dump truck. Its headlights hit him first, then the left side of the bumper clipped him on the leg and he did a high complete flip, his blazing head resembling some sort of wheeled fireworks display. He landed on the bridge railing on the far side of the street with a crack of bone and a barking noise. With a burst of flames around his head, he fell off the bridge and into the water below.

The dump truck locked up its brakes and skidded.

Wilson and Jake stopped running. They stood looking at the spot where Buddy had gone over, paralyzed with disbelief.

The dump truck driver, a slim white man in overalls and a cap, got out of the truck and stopped at the rear of it, looked at where Buddy had gone over, looked up and down the street. He didn't seem to notice Wilson and Jake. He walked briskly back to the truck, got in, gunned the motor. The truck went away fast, took a right on the next street hard enough that the tires protested like a cat with its tail in a crack. It backfired once, then there was only the distant sound of the motor and gears being rapidly shifted.

"Sonofabitch!" Wilson yelled.

He and Jake ran to the street, paused, looked both ways in case of more dump trucks, and crossed. They glanced over the railing.

Buddy lay with his lower body on the bank. His left leg was twisted so that his shoe pointed in the wrong direction. His dark, crisp head was in the water. He was straining his neck to lift his blackened, eyeless face out of the water; white wisps of smoke swirled up from it and carried with it the smell of barbecued meat. His body shifted. He let out a groan.

"Goddamn," Wilson said. "He's alive. Let's get him."

But at that moment there was splashing in the water. A log came sailing down the river, directly at Buddy's head. The log opened its mouth and grabbed Buddy by the head and jerked him off the shore. A noise like walnuts being cracked and a muffled scream drifted up to Wilson and Jake.

"An alligator," Jake said, and noted vaguely how closely its skin and Buddy's shoes matched.

Wilson darted around the railing, slid down the incline to the water's edge. Jake followed. They ran alongside the bank.

The water turned extremely shallow, and they could see the shadowy shape of the gator as it waddled forward, following the path of the river, still holding Buddy by the head. Buddy stuck out of the side of its mouth like a curmudgeon's cigar. His arms were flapping and so was his good leg.

Wilson and Jake paused running and tried to get their breath. After some deep inhalations, Wilson said, "Gets in the deep water, it's all over." He grabbed up an old fence post that had washed onto the bank and began running again, yelling at the gator as he went. Jake looked about, but didn't see anything to hit with. He ran after Wilson.

The gator, panicked by the noisy pursuit, crawled out of the shallows and went into the high grass of a connecting pasture, ducking under the bottom strand of a barbwire fence. The wire caught one of Buddy's flailing arms and ripped a flap of flesh from it six inches long. Once on the other side of the wire his good leg kicked up and the fine shine on his alligator shoes flashed once in the moonlight and fell down.

Wilson went through the barbwire and after the gator with his fence post. The gator was making good time, pushing Buddy before it, leaving a trail of mashed grass behind it. Wilson could see its tail weaving in the moonlight. Its stink trailed behind it like fumes from a busted muffler.

Wilson put the fence post on his shoulder and ran as hard as he could, managed to close in. Behind him came Jake, huffing and puffing.

Wilson got alongside the gator and hit him in the tail with the fence post. The gator's tail whipped out and caught Wilson's ankles and knocked his feet from under him. He came down hard on his butt and lost the fence post.

Jake grabbed up the post and broke right as the gator turned in that direction. He caught the beast sideways and brought the post down on its head, and when it hit, Buddy's blood jumped out of the gator's mouth and landed in the grass and on Jake's shoes. In the moonlight it was the color of cough syrup.

Jake went wild. He began to hit the gator brutally, running alongside it, following its every twist and turn. He swung the fence post mechanically, slamming the gator in the head. Behind him Wilson was saying, "You're hurting Buddy, you're hurting Buddy," but Jake couldn't stop, the frenzy was on him. Gator blood was flying, bursting out of the top of the reptile's head. Still, it held to Buddy, not giving up an inch of head. Buddy wasn't thrashing or kicking anymore. His legs slithered along in the grass as the gator ran; he looked like one of those dummies they throw off cliffs in old cowboy movies.

Wilson caught up, started kicking the gator in the side. The gator started rolling and thrashing, and Jake and Wilson hopped like rabbits and yelled. Finally the gator quit rolling. It quit crawling. Its sides heaved.

Jake continued to pound it with the post and Wilson continued to kick it. Eventually its sides quit swelling. Jake kept hitting it with the post until he staggered back and fell down in the grass exhausted. He sat there looking at the gator and Buddy. The gator trembled suddenly and spewed gator shit into the grass. It didn't move again.

After a few minutes, Wilson said, "I don't think Buddy's alive."

Just then, Buddy's body twitched.

"Hey, hey, you see that?" Jake said.

Wilson was touched with wisdom. "He's alive, the gator might be too."

Wilson got on his knees about six feet from the gator's mouth and bent over to see if he could see Buddy in there. All he could see were the gator's rubbery lips and the sides of its teeth and a little of Buddy's head shredded between them, like gray cheese on a grater. He could smell both the sour smell of the gator and the stink of burnt meat.

"I don't know if he's alive or not," Wilson said. "Maybe if we could get him out of its mouth, we could tell more."

Jake tried to wedge the fence post into the gator's mouth, but that didn't work. It was as if the great jaw was locked with a key.

They watched carefully, but Buddy didn't show any more signs of life.

"I know," Wilson said. "We'll carry him and the gator up to the road, find a house and get some help."

* * *

The gator was long and heavy. The best they could do was get hold of its tail and pull it and Buddy along. Jake managed this with the fence post under his arm. He didn't trust the gator and wouldn't give it up.

They went across an acre of grass and came to a barbwire fence that bordered the street where Buddy had been hit by the dump truck. The bridge was in sight.

They let go of the gator and climbed through the wire. Jake used the fence post to lift up the bottom strand, and Wilson got hold of the gator's tail and tugged the beast under, along with Buddy.

Pulling the gator and Buddy alongside the road, they watched for house lights. They went past the church on the opposite side of the road and turned left where the dump truck had turned right and backfired. They went alongside the street there, occasionally allowing the gator and Buddy to weave over into the street itself. It was hard work steering a gator and its lunch.

They finally came to a row of houses. The first one had an old Ford pickup parked out beside it and lots of junk piled in the yard. Lawn mowers, oily rope, overturned freezers, wheels, fishing reels and line, bicycle parts, and a busted commode. A tarp had been pulled half-heartedly over a tall stack of old shop creepers. There was a light on behind one window. The rest of the houses were dark.

Jake and Wilson let go of the gator in the front yard, and Wilson went up on the porch, knocked on the door, stepped off the porch and waited.

Briefly thereafter, the door opened a crack and a man called out, "Who's out there? Don't you know it's bedtime?"

"We seen your light on," Wilson said.

"I was in the shitter. You trying to sell me a brush or a book or something this time of night, I won't be in no good temper about it. I'm not through shitting either."

"We got a man hurt here," Wilson said. "A gator bit him."

There was a long moment of quiet. "What you want me to do? I don't know nothin' about no gator bites. I don't even know who you are. You might be with the Ku Kluxers."

"He's . . . he's kind of hung up with the gator," Wilson said.

"Just a minute," said the voice.

Moments later a short, fat black man came out. He was shirtless and barefooted, wearing overalls with the straps off his shoulders, dangling at his waist. He had a ball bat in his hand. He came down the steps and looked at Wilson and Jake carefully, as if expecting them to spring. "You stand away from me with that fence post, hear?" he said. Jake took a step back and this seemed to satisfy the man. He took a look at the gator and Buddy.

He went back up the porch and reached inside the door and turned on the porch light. A child's face stuck through the crack in the door, said, "What's out there, papa?"

"You get your ass in that house, or I'll kick it," the black man said. The face disappeared.

The black man came off the porch again, looked at the gator and Buddy again, walked around them a couple of times, poked the gator with the ball bat, poked Buddy too.

He looked at Jake and Wilson. "Shit," he said. "You peckerwoods is crazy. That motherfucker's dead. He's dead enough for two men. He's deader than I ever seen anybody."

"He caught on fire," Jake offered suddenly, "and we tried to put his head out, and he got hit by a truck, knocked in the river, and the gator got him . . . We seen him twitch a little a while back . . . The fella, Buddy, not the gator, I mean."

"Them's nerves," the black man said. "You better dig a hole for this man-jack, skin that ole gator out and sell his hide. They bring a right smart price sometimes. You could probably get something for them shoes too, ifn they clean up good."

"We need you to help us load him up into your pickup and take him home," Jake said.

"You ain't putting that motherfucker in my pickup;" the black man said. "I don't want no doings with you honkey motherfuckers. They'll be claiming I sicked that gator on him."

"That's silly," Wilson said. "You're acting like a fool."

"Uh-huh," said the black man, "and I'm gonna go on acting like one here in my house."

He went briskly up the porch steps, closed the door and turned out the light. A latch was thrown.

Wilson began to yell. He used the word nigger indiscriminately. He ran up on the porch and pounded on the door. He cussed a lot.

Doors of houses down the way opened up and people moved onto their front porches like shadows, looked at where the noise was coming from.

Jake, standing there in the yard with his fence post, looked like a man with a gun. The gator and Buddy could have been the body of their neighbor. The shadows watched Jake and listened to Wilson yell a moment, then went back inside.

"Goddamn you," Wilson yelled. "Come on out of there so I can whip your ass, you hear me? I'll whip your black ass."

"You come on in here, cocksucker," came the black man's voice from the other side of the door. "Come on in, you think you can. You do, you'll be trying to shit you some twelve gauge shot, that's what you'll be trying to do."

At mention of the twelve gauge, Wilson felt a certain calm descend on him. He began to acquire perspective. "We're leaving," he said to the door. "Right now." He backed off the porch. He spoke softly so only Jake could hear: "Boogie motherfucker."

"What we gonna do now?" Jake said. He sounded tired. All the juice had gone out of him.

"I reckon," Wilson said, "we got to get Buddy and the gator on over to his house."

"I don't think we can carry him that far," Jake said. "My back is hurting already."

Wilson looked at the junk beside the house. "Wait a minute." He went over to the junk pile and got three shop creepers out from under the tarp and found some hanks of rope. He used the rope to tie the creepers together, end to end. When he looked up, Jake was standing beside him, still holding the fence post. "You go on and stay by Buddy," Wilson said. "Turn your back too long, them niggers will be all over them shoes."

Jake went back to his former position.

Wilson collected several short pieces of rope and a twist of wire and tied them together and hooked the results to one of the creepers and used it as a handle. He pulled his contraption around front by Buddy and the gator. "Help me put 'em on there," he said.

They lifted the gator onto the creepers. He fit with only his tail overlapping. Buddy hung to the side, off the creepers, causing them to tilt.

"That won't work," Jake said.

"Well, here now," Wilson said, and he got Buddy by the legs and turned him. The head and neck were real flexible, like they were made of chewing gum. He was able to lay Buddy straight out in front of the gator. "Now we can pull the gator down a bit, drag all of its tail. That way we got 'em both on there."

When they got the gator and Buddy arranged, Wilson doubled the rope and began pulling. At first it was slow going, but after a moment they got out in the road and the creepers gained momentum and squeaked right along. Jake used his fence post to punch at the edges of the creepers when they swung out of line.

An ancient, one-eyed Cocker Spaniel with a foot missing came out and sat at the edge of the road and watched them pass. He barked once when the alligator's tail dragged by in the dirt behind the creepers, then he went and got under a porch.

They squeaked on until they passed the house where Sally lived. They stopped across from it for a breather and to listen. They didn't hear anyone screaming and they didn't hear any beatings going on.

They started up again, kept at it until they came to Buddy's street. It was deadly quiet, and the moon had been lost behind a cloud and everything was dark.

At Buddy's house, the silver light of the TV strobed behind the living room curtains. Wilson and Jake stopped on the far side of the street and squatted beside the creepers and considered their situation.

Wilson got in Buddy's back pocket and pulled the smokes out and found that though the package was damp from the water, a couple of cigarettes were dry enough to smoke. He gave one to Jake and took the other for himself. He got a match from Buddy's shirt pocket and struck it on a creeper, but it was too damp to light.

"Here," Jake said, and produced a lighter. "I stole this from my old man in case I ever got any cigarettes. It works most of the time." Jake clicked it repeatedly and finally it sparked well enough to light. They lit up.

"We knock on the door, his mom is gonna be mad," Jake said. "Us bringing home Buddy and an alligator, and Buddy wearing them shoes."

"Yeah," Wilson said. "You know, she don't know he went off with us. We could put him in the yard. Maybe she'll think the gator attacked him there."

"What for," Jake said, "them shoes? He recognized his aunt or something?" He began laughing at his own joke, but if Wilson got it he didn't give a sign. He seemed to be thinking. Jake quit laughing, scratched his head and looked off down the street. He tried to smoke his cigarette in a manful manner.

"Gators come up in yards and eat dogs now and then," Wilson said after a long silence. "We could leave him, and if his Mama don't believe a gator jumped him, that'll be all right. The figuring of it will be a town mystery. Nobody would ever know what happened. Those niggers won't be talking. And if they do, they don't know us from anybody else anyway. We all look alike to them."

"I was Buddy," Jake said, "that's the way I'd want it if I had a couple friends involved."

"Yeah, well," Wilson said, "I don't know I really liked him so much."

Jake thought about that. "He was all right. I bet he wasn't going to get that Chevy though."

"If he did," Wilson said, "there wouldn't have been no motor in it, I can promise you that. And I bet he never got any pussy neither."

They pulled the creepers across the road and tipped gator and Buddy onto the ground in front of the porch steps.

"That'll have to do," Wilson whispered.

Wilson crept up on the porch and over to the window, looked through a crack in the curtain and into the living room. Buddy's sister lay on the couch asleep, her mouth open, her huge belly bobbing up and down as she breathed. A half-destroyed bag of Cheetos lay beside the couch. The TV light flickered over her like saintly fire.

Jake came up on the porch and took a look.

"Maybe if she lost some pounds and fixed her hair different," he said.

"Maybe if she was somebody else," Wilson said.

They sat on the porch steps in the dark and finished smoking their cigarettes, watching the faint glow of the television through the curtain, listening to the tinny sound of a late night talk show.

When Jake finished his smoke, he pulled the alligator shoes off Buddy and checked them against the soles of his own shoes. "I think these dudes will fit me. We can't leave 'em on him. His Mama sees them, she might not consent to bury him."

He and Wilson left out of there then, pulling the creepers after them.

Not far down the road, they pushed the creepers off in a ditch and continued, Jake carrying the shoes under his arm. "These are all right," he said. "I might can get some pussy wearing these kind of shoes. My Mama don't care if I wear things like this."

"Hell, she don't care if you cut your head off," Wilson said.

"That's the way I see it," Jake said.

INCIDENT ON AND OFF A MOUNTAIN ROAD

When Ellen came to the moonlit mountain curve, her thoughts, which had been adrift with her problems, grounded, and she was suddenly aware that she was driving much too fast. The sign said CURVE: 30 MPH, and she was doing fifty.

She knew too that slamming on the brakes was the wrong move, so she optioned to keep her speed and fight the curve and make it, and she thought she could.

The moonlight was strong, so visibility was high, and she knew her Chevy was in good shape, easy to handle, and she was a good driver.

But as she negotiated the curve a blue Buick seemed to grow out of the ground in front of her. It was parked on the shoulder of the road, at the peak of the curve, its nose sticking out a foot too far, its rear end against the moon-wet, silver railing that separated the curve from a mountainous plunge.

Had she been going an appropriate speed, missing the Buick wouldn't have been a problem, but at her speed she was swinging too far right, directly in line with it, and was forced, after all, to use her brakes. When she did, the back wheels slid and the brakes groaned and the front of the Chevy hit the Buick, and there was a sound like an explosion and then for a dizzy instant she felt as if she were in the tumblers of a dryer.

Through the windshield came: Moonlight. Blackness. Moonlight.

One high bounce and a tight roll, and the Chevy came to rest upright with the engine dead, the right side flush against the railing. Another inch of jump or greater impact against the rail, and the Chevy would have gone over.

Ellen felt a sharp pain in her leg and reached down to discover that during the tumble she had banged it against something, probably the gear shift, and had ripped her stocking and her flesh. Blood was trickling into her shoe. Probing her leg cautiously with the tips of her fingers, she determined the wound wasn't bad and that all other body parts were operative.

She unfastened her seat belt, and as a matter of habit, located her purse and slipped its strap over her shoulder. She got out of the Chevy feeling wobbly, eased around front of it and saw the hood and bumper and roof were crumpled. A wisp of radiator steam hissed from beneath the wadded hood, rose into the moonlight and dissolved.

She turned her attentions to the Buick. Its tail end was now turned to her, and as she edged alongside it, she saw the front left side had been badly damaged. Fearful of what she might see, she glanced inside.

The moonlight shone through the rear windshield bright as a spotlight and revealed no one, but the back seat was slick with something dark and wet and there was plenty of it. A foul scent seeped out of a partially rolled down back window. It was a hot coppery smell that gnawed at her nostrils and ached her stomach.

God, someone had been hurt. Maybe thrown free of the car, or perhaps they had gotten out and crawled off. But when? She and the Chevy had been airborne for only a moment, and she had gotten out of the vehicle instants after it ceased to roll. Surely she would have seen someone get out of the Buick, and if they had been thrown free by the collision, wouldn't at least one of the Buick's doors be open? If it had whipped back and closed, it seemed unlikely that it would be locked, and all the doors of the Buick were locked, and all the glass was intact, and only on her side was it rolled down, and only a crack. Enough for the smell of the blood to escape, not enough for a person to slip through unless they were thin and flexible as a feather.

On the other side of the Buick, on the ground, between the back door and the railing, there were drag marks and a thick swath of blood, and another swath on the top of the railing; it glowed there in the moonlight as if it were molasses laced with radioactivity.

Ellen moved cautiously to the railing and peered over.

No one lay mangled and bleeding and oozing their guts. The ground was not as precarious there as she expected it. It was pebbly and sloped out gradually and there was a trail going down it. The trail twisted slightly and as it deepened the foliage grew denser on either side of it. Finally it curlicued its way into the dark thicket of a forest below, and from the forest, hot on the wind, came the strong turpentine tang of pines and something less fresh and not as easily identifiable.

Now she saw someone moving down there, floating up from the forest like an apparition; a white face split by silver -- braces, perhaps. She could tell from the way this someone moved that it was a man. She watched as he climbed the trail and came within examination range. He seemed to be surveying her as carefully as she was surveying him.

Could this be the driver of the Buick?

As he came nearer Ellen discovered she could not identify the expression he wore. It was neither joy or anger or fear or exhaustion or pain. It was somehow all and none of these.

When he was ten feet away, still looking up, that same odd expression on his face, she could hear him breathing. He was breathing with exertion, but not to the extent she thought him tired or injured. It was the sound of someone who had been about busy work.

She yelled down, "Are you injured?"

He turned his head quizzically, like a dog trying to make sense of a command, and it occurred to Ellen that he might be knocked about in the head enough to be disoriented.

"I'm the one who ran into your car," she said. "Are you all right?"

His expression changed then, and it was most certainly identifiable this time. He was surprised and angry. He came up the trail quickly, took hold of the top railing, his fingers going into the blood there, and vaulted over and onto the gravel.

Ellen stepped back out of his way and watched him from a distance. The guy made her nervous. Even close up, he looked like some kind of spook.

He eyed her briefly, glanced at the Chevy, turned to look at the Buick.

"It was my fault," Ellen said.

He didn't reply, but returned his attention to her and continued to cock his head in that curious dog sort of way.

Ellen noticed that one of his shirt sleeves was stained with blood, and that there was blood on the knees of his pants, but he didn't act as if he were hurt in any way. He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out something and made a move with his wrist. Out flicked a lock-blade knife. The thin edge of it sucked up the moonlight and spat it out in a silver spray that fanned wide when he held it before him and jiggled it like a man working a stubborn key into a lock. He advanced toward her, and as he came, his lips split and pulled back at the corners, exposing, not braces, but metal-capped teeth that matched the sparkle of his blade.

It occurred to her that she could bolt for the Chevy, but in the same mental flash of lightning, it occurred to her she wouldn't make it.

Ellen threw herself over the railing, and as she leapt, she saw out of the corner of her eye, the knife slashing the place she had occupied, catching moonbeams and throwing them away. Then the blade was out of her view and she hit on her stomach and skidded onto the narrow trail, slid downward, feet first. The gravel and roots tore at the front of her dress and ripped through her nylons and gouged her flesh. She cried out in pain and her sliding gained speed. Lifting her chin, she saw that the man was climbing over the railing and coming after her at a stumbling run, the knife held before him like a wand.

Her sliding stopped, and she pushed off with her hands to make it start again, not knowing if this was the thing to do or not, since the trail inclined sharply on her right side, and should she skid only slightly in that direction, she could hurtle off into blackness. But somehow she kept slithering along the trail and even spun around a corner and stopped with her head facing downward, her purse practically in her teeth.

She got up then, without looking back, and began to run into the woods, the purse beating at her side. She moved as far away from the trail as she could, fighting limbs that conspired to hit her across the face or hold her, vines and bushes that tried to tie her feet or trip her.

Behind her, she could hear the man coming after her, breathing heavily now, not really winded, but hurrying. For the first time in months, she was grateful for Bruce and his survivalist insanity. His passion to be in shape and for her to be in shape with him was paying off. All that jogging had given her the lungs of an ox and strengthened her legs and ankles. A line from one of Bruce's survivalist books came to her: Do _the unexpected_.

She found a trail amongst the pines, and followed it, then, abruptly broke from it and went back into the thicket. It was harder going, but she assumed her pursuer would expect her to follow a trail.

The pines became so thick she got down on her hands and knees and began to crawl. It was easier to get through that way. After a moment, she stopped scuttling and eased her back against one of the pines and sat and listened. She felt reasonably well hidden, as the boughs of the pines grew low and drooped to the ground. She took several deep breaths, holding each for a long moment. Gradually, she began breathing normally. Above her, from the direction of the trail, she could hear the man running, coming nearer. She held her breath.

The running paused a couple of times, and she could imagine the man, his strange, pale face turning from side to side, as he tried to determine what had happened to her. The sound of running started again and the man moved on down the trail.

Ellen considered easing out and starting back up the trail, making her way to her car and driving off. Damaged as it was, she felt it would still run, but she was reluctant to leave her hiding place and step into the moonlight. Still, it seemed a better plan than waiting. If she didn't do something, the man could always go back topside himself and wait for her. The woods, covering acres and acres of land below and beyond, would take her days to get through, and without food and water and knowledge of the geography, she might never make it, could end up going in circles for days.

Bruce and his survivalist credos came back to her. She remembered something he had said to one of his self-defense classes, a bunch of rednecks hoping and praying for a commie take-over so they could show their stuff. He had told them: "Utilize what's at hand. Size up what you have with you and how it can be put to use."

All right, she thought. All right, Brucey, you sonofabitch. I'll see what's at hand.

One thing she knew she had for sure was a little flashlight. It wasn't much, but it would serve for her to check out the contents of her purse. She located it easily, and without withdrawing it from her purse, turned it on and held the open purse close to her face to see what was inside. Before she actually found it, she thought of her nail file kit. Besides the little bottle of nail polish remover, there was an emery board and two metal files. The files were the ticket. They might serve as weapons; they weren't much, but they were something.

She also carried a very small pair of nail scissors, independent of the kit, the points of the scissors being less than a quarter inch. That wouldn't be worth much, but she took note of it and mentally catalogued it.

She found the nail kit, turned off the flash and removed one of the files and returned the rest of the kit to her purse. She held the file tightly, made a little jabbing motion with it. It seemed so light and thin and insignificant.

She had been absently carrying her purse on one shoulder, and now to make sure she didn't lose it, she placed the strap over her neck and slid her arm through.

Clenching the nail file, she moved on hands and knees beneath the pine boughs and poked her head out into the clearing of the trail. She glanced down it first, and there, not ten yards from her, looking up the trail, holding his knife by his side, was the man. The moonlight lay cold on his face and the shadows of the wind-blown boughs fell across him and wavered. It seemed as if she were leaning over a pool and staring down into the water and seeing him at the bottom of it, or perhaps his reflection on the face of the pool.

She realized instantly that he had gone down the trail a ways, became suspicious of her ability to disappear so quickly, and had turned to judge where she might have gone. And, as if in answer to the question, she had poked her head into view.

They remained frozen for a moment, then the man took a step up the trail, and just as he began to run, Ellen went backwards into the pines on her hands and knees.

She had gone less than ten feet when she ran up against a thick limb that lay close to the ground and was preventing her passage. She got down on her belly and squirmed beneath it, and as she was pulling her head under, she saw Moon Face crawling into the thicket, making good time; time made better, when he lunged suddenly and covered half the space between them, the knife missing her by fractions.

Ellen jerked back and felt her feet falling away from her. She let go of the file and grabbed out for the limb and it bent way back and down with her weight. It lowered her enough for her feet to touch ground. Relieved, she realized she had fallen into a wash made by erosion, not off the edge of the mountain.

Above her, gathered in shadows and stray strands of moonlight that showed through the pine boughs, was the man. His metal-tipped teeth caught a moonbeam and twinkled. He placed a hand on the limb she held, as if to lower himself, and she let go of it.

The limb whispered away from her and hit him full in the face and knocked him back.

Ellen didn't bother to scrutinize the damage. Turning, she saw that the wash ended in a slope and that the slope was thick with trees growing out like great, feathered spears thrown into the side of the mountain.

She started down, letting the slant carry her, grasping limbs and tree trunks to slow her descent and keep her balance. She could hear the man climbing down and pursuing her, but she didn't bother to turn and look. Below she could see the incline was becoming steeper, and if she continued, it would be almost straight up and down with nothing but the trees for support, and to move from one to the other, she would have to drop, chimpanzee-like, from limb to limb. Not a pleasant thought.

Her only consolation was that the trees to her right, veering back up the mountain, were thick as cancer cells. She took off in that direction, going wide, and began plodding upwards again, trying to regain the concealment of the forest.

She chanced a look behind her before entering the pines, and saw that the man, who she had come to think of as Moon Face, was some distance away.

Weaving through a mass of trees, she integrated herself into the forest, and as she went the limbs began to grow closer to the ground and the trees became so thick they twisted together like pipe cleaners. She got down on her hands and knees and crawled between limbs and around tree trunks and tried to lose herself among them.

To follow her, Moon Face had to do the same thing, and at first she heard him behind her, but after a while, there were only the sounds she was making.

She paused and listened.

Nothing.

Glancing the way she had come, she saw the intertwining limbs she had crawled under mixed with penetrating moonbeams, heard the short bursts of her breath and the beating of her heart, but detected no evidence of Moon Face. She decided the head start she had, all the weaving she had done, the cover of the pines, had confused him, at least temporarily.

It occurred to her that if she had stopped to listen, he might have done the same, and she wondered if he could hear the pounding of her heart. She took a deep breath and held it and let it out slowly through her nose, did it again. She was breathing more normally now, and her heart, though still hammering furiously, felt as if it were back inside her chest where it belonged.

Easing her back against a tree trunk, she sat and listened, watching for that strange face, fearing it might abruptly burst through the limbs and brush, grinning its horrible teeth, or worse, that he might come up behind her, reach around the tree trunk with his knife and finish her in a bloody instant.

She checked and saw that she still had her purse. She opened it and got hold of the file kit by feel and removed the last file, determined to make better use of it than the first. She had no qualms about using it, knew she would, but what good would it do? The man was obviously stronger than she, and crazy as the pattern in a scratch quilt.

Once again, she thought of Bruce. What would he have done in this situation? He would certainly have been the man for the job. He would have relished it. Would probably have challenged old Moon Face to a one on one at the edge of the mountain, and even with a nail file, would have been confident that he could take him.

Ellen thought about how much she hated Bruce, and even now, shed of him, that hatred burned bright. How had she gotten mixed up with that dumb, macho bastard in the first place? He had seemed enticing at first. So powerful. Confident. Capable. The survivalist stuff had always seemed a little nutty, but at first no more nutty than an obsession with golf or a strong belief in astrology. Perhaps had she known how serious he was about it, she wouldn't have been attracted to him in the first place.

No. It wouldn't have mattered. She had been captivated by him, by his looks and build and power. She had nothing but her own libido and stupidity to blame. And worse yet, when things turned sour, she had stayed and let them sour even more. There had been good moments, but they were quickly eclipsed by Bruce's determination to be ready for the Big Day, as he referred to it. He knew it was coming, if he was somewhat vague on who was bringing it. But someone would start a war of some sort, a nuclear war, a war in the streets, and only the rugged individualist, well-armed and well-trained and strong of body and will, would survive beyond the initial attack. Those survivors would then carry out guerrilla warfare, hit and run operations, and eventually win back the country from . . . whoever. And if not win it back, at least have some kind of life free of dictatorship.

It was silly. It was every little boy's fantasy. Living by your wits with gun and knife. And owning a woman. She had been the woman. At first Bruce had been kind enough, treated her with respect. He was obviously on the male chauvinist side, but originally it had seemed harmless enough, kind of Old World charming. But when he moved them to the mountains, that charm had turned to domination, and the small crack in his mental state widened until it was a deep, dark gulf.

She was there to keep house and to warm his bed, and any opinions she had contrary to his own were stupid. He read survivalist books constantly and quoted passages to her and suggested she look the books over, be ready to stand tall against the oncoming aggressors.

By the time he had gone completely over the edge, living like a mountain man, ordering her about, his eyes roving from side to side, suspicious of her every move, expecting to hear on his shortwave at any moment World War Three had started, or that race riots were overrunning the U.S., or that a shiny probe packed with extraterrestrial invaders brandishing ray guns had landed on the White House lawn, she was trapped in his cabin in the mountains, with him holding the keys to her Chevy and his jeep.

For a time she feared he would become paranoid enough to imagine she was one of the "bad guys" and put a .357 round through her chest. But now she was free of him, escaped from all that . . . only to be threatened by another man; a moon-faced, silver-toothed monster with a knife.

She returned once again to the question, what would Bruce do, outside of challenging Moon Face in hand to hand combat? Sneaking past him would be the best bet, making it back to the Chevy. To do that Bruce would have used guerrilla techniques. "Take advantage of what's at hand," he always said.

Well, she had looked to see what was at hand, and that turned out to be a couple of fingernail files, one of them lost up the mountain.

Then maybe she wasn't thinking about this in the right way. She might not be able to outfight Moon Face, but perhaps she could outthink him. She had outthought Bruce, and he had considered himself a master of strategy and preparation.

She tried to put herself in Moon Face's head. What was he thinking? For the moment he saw her as his prey, a frightened animal on the run. He might be more cautious because of that trick with the limb, but he'd most likely chalk that one up to accident -- which it was for the most part. . . but what if the prey turned on him?

There was a sudden cracking sound, and Ellen crawled a few feet in the direction of the noise, gently moved aside a limb. Some distance away, discerned faintly through a tangle of limbs, she saw light and detected movement, and knew it was Moon Face. The cracking sound must have been him stepping on a limb.

He was standing with his head bent, looking at the ground, flashing a little pocket flashlight, obviously examining the drag path she had made with her hands and knees when she entered into the pine thicket.

She watched as his shape and the light bobbed and twisted through the limbs and tree trunks, coming nearer. She wanted to run, but didn't know where to.

"All right," she thought. "All right. Take it easy. Think."

She made a quick decision. Removed the scissors from her purse, took off her shoes and slipped off her panty hose and put her shoes on again.

She quickly snipped three long strips of nylon from her damaged panty hose and knotted them together, using the sailor knots Bruce had taught her. She cut more thin strips from the hose -- all the while listening for Moon Face's approach -- and used all but one of them to fasten her fingernail file, point out, securely to the tapered end of one of the small, flexible pine limbs, then she tied one end of the long nylon strip she had made around the limb, just below the file, and crawled backwards, pulling the limb with her, bending it deep. When she had it back as far as she could manage, she took a death grip on the nylon strip, and using it to keep the limb's position taut, crawled around the trunk of a small pine and curved the nylon strip about it and made a loop knot at the base of a sapling that crossed her knee-drag trail. She used her last strip of nylon to fasten to the loop of the knot, and carefully stretched the remaining length across the trail and tied it to another sapling. If it worked correctly, when he came crawling through the thicket, following her, his hands or knees would hit the strip, pull the loop free, and the limb would fly forward, the file stabbing him, in an eye if she were lucky.

Pausing to look through the boughs again, she saw that Moon Face was on his hands and knees, moving through the thick foliage toward her. Only moments were left.

She shoved pine needles over the strip and moved away on her belly, sliding under the cocked sapling, no longer concerned that she might make noise, in fact hoping noise would bring Moon Face quickly.

Following the upward slope of the hill, she crawled until the trees became thin again and she could stand. She cut two long strips of nylon from her hose with the scissors, and stretched them between two trees about ankle high.

That one would make him mad if it caught him, but the next one would be the corker.

She went up the path, used the rest of the nylon to tie between two saplings, then grabbed hold of a thin, short limb and yanked at it until it cracked, worked it free so there was a point made from the break. She snapped that over her knee to form a point at the opposite end. She made a quick mental measurement, jammed one end of the stick into the soft ground, leaving a point facing up.

At that moment came evidence her first snare had worked -- a loud swishing sound as the limb popped forward and a cry of pain. This was followed by a howl as Moon Face crawled out of the thicket and onto the trail. He stood slowly, one hand to his face. He glared up at her, removed his hand. The file had struck him in the cheek; it was covered with blood. Moon Face pointed his blood-covered hand at her and let out an accusing shriek so horrible she retreated rapidly up the trail. Behind her, she could hear Moon Face running.

The trail curved upward and turned abruptly. She followed the curve a ways, looked back as Moon Face tripped over her first strip and hit the ground, came up madder, charged even more violently up the path. But the second strip got him and he fell forward, throwing his hands out. The spike in the trail hit him low in the throat.

She stood transfixed at the top of the trail as he did a pushup and came to one knee and put a hand to his throat. Even from a distance, and with only the moonlight to show it to her, she could see that the wound was dreadful.

Good.

Moon Face looked up, stabbed her with a look, started to rise. Ellen turned and ran. As she made the turns in the trail, the going improved and she theorized that she was rushing up the trail she had originally come down.

This hopeful notion was dispelled when the pines thinned and the trail dropped, then leveled off, then tapered into nothing. Before she could slow up, she discovered she was on a sort of peninsula that jutted out from the mountain and resembled an irregular-shaped diving board from which you could leap off into night-black eternity.

In place of the pines on the sides of the trail were numerous scarecrows on poles, and out on the very tip of the peninsula, somewhat dispelling the diving board image, was a shack made of sticks and mud and brambles.

After pausing to suck in some deep breaths, Ellen discovered on closer examination that it wasn't scarecrows bordering her path after all. It was people.

Dead people. She could smell them.

There were at least a dozen on either side, placed upright on poles, their feet touching the ground, their knees slightly bent. They were all fully clothed, and in various states of deterioration. Holes had been poked through the backs of their heads to correspond with the hollow sockets of their eyes, and the moonlight came through the holes and shined through the sockets, and Ellen noted, with a warm sort of horror, that one wore a white sun dress and pink, plastic shoes, and through its head she could see stars. On the corpse's finger was a wedding ring, and the finger had grown thin and withered and the ring was trapped there by knuckle bone alone.

The man next to her was fresher. He too was eyeless and holes had been drilled through the back of his skull, but he still wore glasses and was fleshy. There was a pen and pencil set in his coat pocket. He wore only one shoe.

There was a skeleton in overalls, a wilting cigar stuck between his teeth. A fresh UPS man with his cap at a jaunty angle, the moon through his head, and a clipboard tied to his hand with string. His legs had been positioned in such a way it seemed as if he was walking. A housewife with a crumpled, nearly disintegrated grocery bag under her arm, the contents having long fallen through the worn, wet bottom to heap at her feet in a mass of colorless boxes and broken glass. A withered corpse in a ballerina's tutu and slippers, rotting grapefruits tied to her chest with cord to simulate breasts, her legs arranged in such a way she seemed in mid-dance, up on her toes, about to leap or whirl.

The real horror was the children. One pathetic little boy's corpse, still full of flesh and with only his drilled eyes to show death, had been arranged in such a way that a teddy bear drooped from the crook of his elbow. A toy metal tractor and a plastic truck were at his feet.

There was a little girl wearing a red, rubber clown nose and a propeller beenie. A green plastic purse hung from her shoulder by a strap and a doll's legs had been taped to her palm with black electrician's tape. The doll hung upside down, holes drilled through its plastic head so that it matched its owner.

Things began to click. Ellen understood what Moon Face had been doing down here in the first place. He hadn't been in the Buick when she struck it. He was disposing of a body. He was a murderer who brought his victims here and set them up on either side of the pathway, parodying the way they were in life, cutting out their eyes and punching through the backs of their heads to let the world in.

Ellen realized numbly that time was slipping away, and Moon Face was coming, and she had to find the trail up to her car. But when she turned to run, she froze.

Thirty feet away, where the trail met the last of the pines, squatting dead center in it, arms on his knees, one hand loosely holding the knife, was Moon Face. He looked calm, almost happy, in spite of the fact a large swath of dried blood was on his cheek and the wound in his throat was making a faint whistling sound as air escaped it.

He appeared to be gloating, savoring the moment when he would set his knife to work on her eyes, the gray matter behind them, the bone of her skull.

A vision of her corpse propped up next to the child with the teddy bear, or perhaps the skeletal ballerina, came to mind; she could see herself hanging there, the light of the moon falling through her empty head, melting into the path.

Then she felt anger. It boiled inside her. She determined she was not going to allow Moon Face his prize easily. He'd earn it.

Another line from Bruce's books came to her.

Consider your alternatives.

She did, in a flash. And they were grim. She could try charging past Moon Face, or pretend to, then dart into the pines. But it seemed unlikely she could make the trees before he overtook her. She could try going over the side of the trail and climbing down, but it was much too steep there, and she'd fall immediately. She could make for the shack and try and find something she could fight with. The last idea struck her as the correct one, the one Bruce would have pursued. What was his quote? "If you can't effect an escape, fall back and fight with what's available to you."

She hurried to the hut, glancing behind her from time to time to check on Moon Face. He hadn't moved. He was observing her calmly, as if he had all the time in the world.

When she was about to go through the doorless entry way, she looked back at him one last time. He was in the same spot, watching, the knife held limply against his leg. She knew he thought he had her right where he wanted her, and that's exactly what she wanted him to think. A surprise attack was the only chance she had. She just hoped she could find something to surprise him with.

She hastened inside and let out an involuntary rasp of breath.

The place stank, and for good reason. In the center of the little hut was a folding card table and some chairs, and seated in one of the chairs was a woman, the flesh rotting and dripping off her skull like candle wax, her eyes empty and holes in the back of her head. Her arm was resting on the table and her hand was clamped around an open bottle of whiskey. Beside her, also without eyes, suspended in a standing position by wires connected to the roof, was a man. He was a fresh kill. Big, dressed in khaki pants and shirt and work shoes. In one hand a doubled belt was taped, and wires were attached in such a way that his arm was drawn back as if ready to strike. Wires were secured to his lips and pulled tight behind his head so that he was smiling in a ghoulish way. Foil gum wrappers were fixed to his teeth, and the moonlight gleaming through the opening at the top of the hut fell on them and made them resemble Moon Face's metal-tipped choppers.

Ellen felt queasy, but fought the sensation down. She had more to worry about than corpses. She had to prevent herself from becoming one.

She gave the place a quick pan. To her left was a rust-framed roll-away bed with a thin, dirty mattress, and against the far wall was a baby crib, and next to that a camper stove with a small frying pan on it.

She glanced quickly out the door of the hut and saw that Moon Face had moved onto the stretch of trail bordered by the bodies. He was walking very slowly, looking up now and then as if to appreciate the stars.

Her heart pumped another beat.

She moved about the hut, looking for a weapon.

The frying pan.

She grabbed it, and as she did, she saw what was in the crib. What belonged there. A baby. But dead. A few months old. Its skin thin as plastic and stretched tight over pathetic, little rib bones. Eyes gone, holes through its head. Burnt match stubs between blackened toes. It wore a diaper and the stink of feces wafted from it and into her nostrils. A rattle lay at the foot of the crib.

A horrible realization rushed through her. The baby had been alive when taken by this mad man, and it had died here, starved and tortured. She gripped the frying pan with such intensity her hand cramped.

Her foot touched something.

She looked down. Large bones were heaped there -- discarded Mommies and Daddies, for it now occurred to her that was who the corpses represented.

Something gleamed amongst the bones. A gold cigarette lighter.

Through the doorway of the hut she saw Moon Face was halfway down the trail. He had paused to nonchantly adjust the UPS man's clipboard. The geek had made his own community here, his own family, people he could deal with -- dead people -- and it was obvious he intended for her to be part of his creation.

Ellen considered attacking straight-on with the frying pan when Moon Face came through the doorway, but so far he had proven strong enough to take a file in the cheek and a stick in the throat, and despite the severity of the latter wound, he had kept on coming. Chances were he was strong enough to handle her and her frying pan.

A back-up plan was necessary. Another one of Bruce's pronouncements. She recalled a college friend, Carol, who used to use her bikini panties to launch projectiles at a teddy bear propped on a chair. This graduated to an apple on the bear's head. Eventually, Ellen and her dorm sisters got into the act. Fresh panties with tight elastic and marbles for ammunition were ever ready in a box by the door, the bear and an apple were in constant position. In time, Ellen became the best shot of all. But that was ten years ago. Expertise was long gone, even the occasional shot now and then was no longer taken . . . still . . .

Ellen replaced the frying pan on the stove, hiked up her dress and pulled her bikini panties down and stepped out of them and picked up the lighter.

She put the lighter in the crotch of the panties and stuck her fingers into the leg loops to form a fork and took hold of the lighter through the panties and pulled it back, assured herself the elastic was strong enough to launch the projectile.

All right. That was a start.

She removed her purse, so Moon Face couldn't grab it and snare her, and tossed it aside. She grabbed the whiskey bottle from the corpse's hand and turned and smashed the bottom of it against the cook stove. Whiskey and glass flew. The result was a jagged weapon she could lunge with. She placed the broken bottle on the stove next to the frying pan.

Outside, Moon Face was strolling toward the hut, like a shy teenager about to call on his date.

There were only moments left. She glanced around the room, hoping insanely at the last second she would find some escape route, but there was none.

Sweat dripped from her forehead and ran into her eye and she blinked it out and half-drew back the panty sling with its golden projectile. She knew her makeshift weapon wasn't powerful enough to do much damage, but it might give her a moment of distraction, a chance to attack him with the bottle. If she went at him straight on with it, she felt certain he would disarm her and make short work of her, but if she could get him off guard . . .

She lowered her arms, kept her makeshift slingshot in front of her, ready to be cocked and shot.

Moon Face came through the door, ducking as he did, a sour sweat smell entering with him. His neck wound whistled at her like a teapot about to boil. She saw then that he was bigger than she first thought. Tall and broad-shouldered and strong.

He looked at her and there was that peculiar expression again. The moonlight from the hole in the roof hit his eyes and teeth, and it was as if that light was his source of energy. He filled his chest with air and seemed to stand a full two inches taller. He looked at the woman's corpse in the chair, the man's corpse supported on wires, glanced at the playpen.

He smiled at Ellen, squeaked more than spoke, "Bubba's home, Sissie."

I'm not Sissie yet, thought Ellen. Not yet.

Moon Face started to move around the card table and Ellen let out a blood-curdling scream that caused him to bob his head high like a rabbit surprised by headlights. Ellen jerked up the panties and pulled them back and let loose the lighter. It shot out of the panties and fell to the center of the card table with a clunk.

Moon Face looked down at it.

Ellen was temporarily gripped with paralysis, then she stepped forward and kicked the card table as hard as she could. It went into Moon Face, hitting him waist high, startling, but not hurting him.

Now! thought Ellen, grabbing her weapons. Now!

She rushed him, the broken bottle in one hand, the frying pan in the other. She slashed out with the bottle and it struck him in the center of the face and he let out a scream and the glass fractured and a splash of blood burst from him and in that same instant Ellen saw that his nose was cut half in two and she felt a tremendous throb in her hand. The bottle had broken in her palm and cut her.

She ignored the pain and as Moon Face bellowed and lashed out with the knife, cutting the front of her dress but not her flesh, she brought the frying pan around and caught him on the elbow, and the knife went soaring across the room and behind the roll-away bed.

Moon Face froze, glanced in the direction the knife had taken. He seemed empty and confused without it.

Ellen swung the pan again. Moon Face caught her wrist and jerked her around and she lost the pan and was sent hurtling toward the bed, where she collapsed on the mattress. The bed slid down and smashed through the thin wall of sticks and a foot of the bed stuck out into blackness and the great drop below. The bed tottered slightly, and Ellen rolled off of it, directly into the legs of Moon Face. As his knees bent, and he reached for her, she rolled backwards and went under the bed and her hand came to rest on the knife. She grabbed it, rolled back toward Moon Face's feet, reached out quickly and brought the knife down on one of his shoes and drove it in as hard as she could.

A bellow from Moon Face. His foot leaped back and it took the knife with it. Moon Face screamed, "Sissie! You're hurting me!"

Moon Face reached down and pulled the knife out, and Ellen saw his foot come forward, and then he was grabbing the bed and effortlessly jerking it off of her and back, smashing it into the crib, causing the child to topple out of it and roll across the floor, the rattle clattering behind it. He grabbed Ellen by the back of her dress and jerked her up and spun her around to face him, clutched her throat in one hand and held the knife close to her face with the other, as if for inspection; the blade caught the moonlight and winked.

Beyond the knife, she saw his face, pathetic and pained and white. His breath, sharp as the knife, practically wilted her. His neck wound whistled softly. The remnants of his nose dangled wet and red against his upper lip and cheek and his teeth grinned a moon-lit, metal good-bye.

It was all over, and she knew it, but then Bruce's words came back to her in a rush. "When it looks as if you're defeated, and there's nothing left, try anything."

She twisted and jabbed out at his eyes with her fingers and caught him solid enough that he thrust her away and stumbled backwards. But only for an instant. He bolted forward, and Ellen stooped and grabbed the dead child by the ankle and struck Moon Face with it as if it were a club. Once in the face, once in the mid-section. The rotting child burst into a spray of desiccated flesh and innards and she hurled the leg at Moon Face and then she was circling around the roll-away bed, trying to make the door. Moon Face, at the other end of the bed, saw this, and when she moved for the door, he lunged in that direction, causing her to jump back to the end of the bed. Smiling, he returned to his end, waited for her next attempt.

She lurched for the door again, and Moon Face deep-stepped that way, and when she jerked back, Moon Face jerked back too, but this time Ellen bent and grabbed the end of the bed and hurled herself against it. The bed hit Moon Face in the knees, and as he fell, the bed rolled over him and he let go of the knife and tried to put out his hands to stop the bed's momentum. The impetus of the roll-away carried him across the short length of the dirt floor and his head hit the far wall and the sticks cracked and hurtled out into blackness, and Moon Face followed and the bed followed him, then caught on the edge of the drop and the wheels buried up in the dirt and hung there.

Ellen had shoved so hard she fell face down, and when she looked up, she saw the bed was dangling, shaking, the mattress slipping loose, about to glide off into nothingness.

Moon Face's hands flicked into sight, clawing at the sides of the bed's frame. Ellen gasped. He was going to make it up. The bed's wheels were going to hold.

She pulled a knee under her, cocking herself, then sprang forward, thrusting both palms savagely against the bed. The wheels popped free and the roll-away shot out into the dark emptiness.

Ellen scooted forward on her knees and looked over the edge. There was blackness, a glimpse of the mattress falling free, and a pale object, like a white-washed planet with a great vein of silver in it, jetting through the cold expanse of space. Then the mattress and the face were gone and there was just the darkness and a distant sound like a water balloon exploding.

Ellen sat back and took a breather. When she felt strong again and felt certain her heart wouldn't tear through her chest, she stood up and looked around the room. She thought a long time about what she saw.

She found her purse and panties, went out of the hut and up the trail, and after a few wrong turns, she found the proper trail that wound its way up the mountain side to where her car was parked. When she climbed over the railing, she was exhausted.

Everything was as it was. She wondered if anyone had seen the cars, if anyone had stopped, then decided it didn't matter. There was no one here now, and that's what was important.

She took the keys from her purse and tried the engine. It turned over. That was a relief.

She killed the engine, got out and went around and opened the trunk of the Chevy and looked down at Bruce's body. His face looked like one big bruise, his lips were as large as sausages. It made her happy to look at him.

A new energy came to her. She got him under the arms and pulled him out and managed him over to the rail and grabbed his legs and flipped him over the railing and onto the trail. She got one of his hands and started pulling him down the path, letting the momentum help her. She felt good. She felt strong. First Bruce had tried to dominate her, had threatened her, had thought she was weak because she was a woman, and one night, after slapping her, after raping her, while he slept a drunken sleep, she had pulled the blankets up tight around him and looped rope over and under the bed and used the knots he had taught her, and secured him.

Then she took a stick of stove wood and had beat him until she was so weak she fell to her knees. She hadn't meant to kill him, just punish him for slapping her around, but when she got started she couldn't stop until she was too worn out to go on, and when she was finished, she discovered he was dead.

That didn't disturb her much. The thing then was to get rid of the body somewhere, drive on back to the city and say he had abandoned her and not come back. It was weak, but all she had.

Until now.

After several stops for breath, a chance to lie on her back and look up at the stars, Ellen managed Bruce to the hut and got her arms under his and got him seated in one of the empty chairs. She straightened things up as best as she could. She put the larger pieces of the baby back in the crib. She picked Moon Face's knife up off the floor and looked at it and looked at Bruce, his eyes wide open, the moonlight from the roof striking them, showing them to be dull as scratched glass.

Bending over his face, she went to work on his eyes. When she finished with them, she pushed his head forward and used the blade like a drill. She worked until the holes satisfied her. Now if the police found the Buick up there and came down the trail to investigate, and found the trail leading here, saw what was in the shack, Bruce would fit in with the rest of Moon Face's victims. The police would probably conclude Moon Face, sleeping here with his "family," had put his bed too close to the cliff and it had broken through the thin wall and he had tumbled to his death.

She liked it.

She held Bruce's chin, lifted it, examined her work.

"You can be Uncle Brucey," she said, and gave Bruce a pat on the shoulder. "Thanks for all your advice and help, Uncle Brucey. It's what got me through." She gave him another pat.

She found a shirt -- possibly Moon Face's, possibly a victim's -- on the opposite side of the shack, next to a little box of Harlequin Romances, and she used it to wipe the knife, pan, all she had touched, clean of her prints, then she went out of there, back up to her car.

MY DEAD DOG, BOBBY

My dead dog, Bobby, doesn't do tricks anymore. In fact, to look that sucker in the eye I either have to get down on my knees and put my head to the ground or prop him up with a stick.

I've thought of nailing his head to the shed out back, that way maybe the ants won't be so bad. But as my Old Man says, "ants can climb." So, maybe that isn't such a good idea after all.

He was such a good dog, though, and I hate to see him rot away. But I'm also tired of carrying him around with me in a sack, lugging him into the freezer morning and night.

One thing though. Getting killed broke him from chasing cars, which is how he got mashed in the first place. Now, to get him to play with cars, I have to go out to the edge of the Interstate and throw him and his sack at them, and when he gets caught under the tires and bounced up, I have to use my foot to push on one end of him to make the other end fill up with guts again. I get so I really kind of hate to look in the sack at the end of the day, and I have to admit giving him his good night kiss on the lips is not nearly as fun as it used to be. He has a smell and the teeth that have been smashed through his snout are sharp and stick out every which way and sometimes cut my face.

I'm going to take Bobby down to the lake again tomorrow. If you tie him to a blowed-up inner tube he floats. It's not a bad way to cool off from a hot day, and it also drowns the ants and maggots and such.

I know it does. We kept my little brother in pretty good shape for six months that way. It wasn't until we started nailing him to the shed out back that he got to looking ragged. It wasn't the ants crawling up there and getting him, it was the damn nails. We ran out of good places to drive them after his ears came off, and we had to use longer and longer nails to put through his head and neck and the like. Pulling the nails out everyday with the hammer claw didn't do him any good either.

My Old Man said that if he had it do over, he wouldn't have hit my brother so hard with that chair. But he said that about my little sister too when he kicked her head in. She didn't keep long, by the way. We didn't know as many tricks then as we do now.

Well, I hope I can get Bobby back in this sack. He's starting to swell and come apart on me. I'm sort of ready to get him packed away so I can get home and see Mom. I always look at her for a few minutes before I put Bobby in the freezer with her.

TRAINS NOT TAKEN

Dappled sunlight danced on the eastern side of the train. The boughs of the great cherry trees reached out along the tracks and almost touched the cars, but not quite; they had purposely been trimmed to fall short of that.

James Butler Hickok wondered how far the rows of cherry trees went. He leaned against the window of the Pullman car and tried to look down the track. The speed of the train, the shadows of the trees and the illness of his eyesight did not make the attempt very successful. But the dark line that filled his vision went on and on and on.

Leaning back, he felt more than just a bit awed. He was actually seeing the famous Japanese cherry trees of the Western Plains; one of the Great Cherry Roads that stretched along the tracks from mid-continent to the Black Hills of the Dakotas.

Turning, he glanced at his wife. She was sleeping, her attractive, sharp-boned face marred by the pout of her mouth and the tight lines around her eyes. That look was a perpetual item she had cultivated in the last few years, and it stayed in plate both awake or asleep. Once her face held nothing but laughter, vision and hope, but now it hurt him to look at her.

For a while he turned his atttention back to the trees, allowing the rhythmic beat of the tracks, the overhead hiss of the fire line and the shadows of the limbs to pleasantly massage his mind into white oblivion.

After a while, he opened his eyes, noted that his wife had left her seat. Gone back to the sleeping car, most likely. He did not hasten to join her. He took out his pocket watch and looked at it. He had been asleep just under an hour. Both he and Mary Jane had had their breakfast early, and had decided to sit in the parlor car and watch the people pass. But they had proved disinterested in their fellow passengers and in each other, and had both fallen asleep.

Well, he did not blame her for going back to bed, though she spent a lot of time there these days. He was, and had been all morning, sorry company.

A big man with blonde goatee and mustache came down the aisle, spotted the empty seat next to Hickok and sat down. He produced a pipe and a leather pouch of tobacco, held it hopefully. "Could I trouble you for a light, sir?"

Hickok found a lucifer and lit the pipe while the man puffed.

"Thank you," the man said. "Name's Cody. Bill Cody."

"Jim Hickok."

They shook hands.

"Your first trip to the Dakotas?" Cody asked.

Hickok nodded.

"Beautiful country, Jim, beautiful. The Japanese may have been a pain in the neck in their time, but they sure know how to make a garden spot of the world. White men couldn't have grown sagebrush or tree moss in the places they've beautified."

"Quite true," Hickok said. He got out the makings and rolled himself a smoke. He did this slowly, with precision, as if the anticipation and preparation were greater than the final event. When he had rolled the cigarette to his satisfaction, he put a lucifer to it and glanced out the window. A small, attractive stone shrine, nestled among the cherry trees, whizzed past his vision.

Glancing back at Cody, Hickok said, "I take it this is not your first trip?"

"Oh no, no. I'm in politics. Something of an ambassador, guess you'd say. Necessary that I make a lot of trips this way. Cementing relationships with the Japanese, you know. To pat myself on the back a bit, friend, I'm responsible for the cherry road being expanded into the area of the U.S. Sort of a diplomatic gesture I arranged with the Japanese."

"Do you believe there will be more war?"

"Uncertain. But with the Sioux and the Cheyenne forming up again, I figure the yellows and the whites are going to be pretty busy with the reds. Especially after last week."

"Last week?"

"You haven't heard?"

Hickok shook his head.

"The Sioux and some Cheyenne under Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull wiped out General Custer and the Japanese General Miyamoto Yoshu."

"The whole command?"

"To the man. U.S. Cavalry and Samurai alike."

"My God!"

"Terrible. But I think it's the last rise for the red man, and not to sound ghoulish, friend, but I believe this will further cement Japanese and American relationships. A good thing, considering a number of miners in Cherrywood, both white and yellow have found gold. In a case like that, it's good to have a common enemy."

"I didn't know that either."

"Soon the whole continent will know, and there will be a scrambling to Cherrywood the likes you've never seen."

Hickok rubbed his eyes. Blast the things. His sight was good in the dark or in shadowed areas, but direct sunlight stabbed them like needles.

At the moment Hickok uncovered his eyes and glanced toward the shadowed comfort of the aisle, a slightly overweight woman came down it tugging on the ear of a little boy in short pants. "John Luther Jones," she said, "I've told you time and again to leave the Engineer alone. Not to ask so many questions." She pulled the boy on.

Cody looked at Hickok, said softly: "I've never seen a little boy that loves trains as much as that one. He's always trying to go up front and his mother is on him all the time. She must have whipped his little butt three times yesterday. Actually, I don't think the Engineer minds the boy."

Hickok started to smile, but his attention was drawn to an attractive woman who was following not far behind mother and son. In Dime Novels she would have been classified "a vision." Health lived on her heart-shaped face as surely as ill-content lived on that of his wife. Her hair was wheat-ripe yellow and her eyes were as green as the leaves of a spring-fresh tree. She was sleek in blue and white calico with a thick, black Japanese cloth belt gathered about her slim waist. All the joy of the world was in her motion, and Hickok did not want to look at her and compare her to his wife, but he did not want to lose sight of her either, and it was with near embarrassment that he turned his head and watched her pass until the joyful swing of her hips waved him goodbye, passing out of sight into the next car of the train.

When Hickok settled back in his seat, feeling somewhat worn under the collar, he noted that Cody was smiling at him.

"Kind of catches the eye, does she not?" Cody said. "My wife, Louisa, noticed me noticing the young thing yesterday, and she has since developed the irritating habit of waving her new Japanese fan in front of my face 'accidently', when she passes."

"You've seen her a lot?"

"Believe she has a sleeping car above the next parlor car. I think about that sleeping car a bunch. Every man on this train that's seen her, probably thinks about that sleeping car a bunch."

"Probably so."

"You single?"

"No."

"Ah, something of a pain sometimes, is it not? Well, friend, must get back to the wife, least she think I'm chasing the sweet, young thing. And if the Old Woman were not on this trip, I just might be."

Cody got up, and with a handshake and a politician wave, strode up the aisle and was gone.

Hickok turned to look out the window again, squinting somewhat to comfort his eyes. He actually saw little. His vision was turned inward. He thought about the girl. He had been more than a bit infatuated with her looks. For the first time in his life, infidelity truly crossed his mind.

Not since he had married Mary Jane and become a clerk, had he actually thought of trespassing on their marriage agreement. But as of late the mere sight of her was like a wound with salt in it.

After rolling and smoking another cigarette, Hickok rose and walked back toward his sleeping car, imagining that it was not his pinch-faced wife he was returning to, but the blonde girl and her sexual heaven. He imagined that she was a young girl on her first solo outing. Going out West to meet the man of her dreams. Probably had a father who worked as a military officer at the fort outside of Cherrywood, and now that Japanese and American relations had solidified considerably, she had been called to join him. Perhaps the woman with the child was her mother and the boy her brother.

He carried on this pretty fantasy until he reached the sleeping car and found his cabin. When he went inside, he found that Mary Jane was still sleeping.

She lay tossed out on the bunk with her arm thrown across her eyes. Her sour, puckering lips had not lost their bitterness. They projected upwards like the mouth of an active volcano about to spew. She had taken off her clothes and laid them neatly over the back of a chair, and her somewhat angular body was visible because the sheet she had pulled over herself had fallen half off and lay draped only over her right leg and the edge of the bunk. Hickok noted that the glass decanter of whiskey on the little table was less than half full. As of this morning only a drink or two had been missing. She had taken more than enough to fall comfortably back to sleep again, another habit of near recent vintage.

He let his eyes roam over her, looking for something that would stir old feelings -- not sexual but loving. Her dark hair curled around her neck. Her shoulders, sharp as Army sabres, were her next most obvious feature. The light through the windows made the little freckles on her alabaster skin look like some sort of pox. The waist and hips that used to excite him still looked wasp-thin, but the sensuality and lividness of her flesh had disappeared. She was just thin from not eating enough. Whiskey was now often her breakfast, lunch and supper.

A tinge of sadness crept into Hickok as he looked at this angry, alcoholic lady with a life and a husband that had not lived up to her romantic and wealthy dreams. In the last two years she had lost her hope and her heart, and the bottle had become her life-blood. Her faith in him had died, along with the little-girl look in her once-bright eyes.

Well, he had had his dreams too. Some of them a bit wild perhaps, but they had dreamed him through the dullness of a Kansas clerkery that had paid the dues of the flesh but not of the mind.

Pouring himself a shot from the decanter, he sat on the wall bench and looked at his wife some more. When he got tired of that, he put his hand on the bench, but found a book instead of wood. He picked it up and looked at it. It was titled: Down the Whiskey River Blue, by Edward Zane Carroll Judson.

Hickok placed his drink beside him and thumbed through the book. It did not do much for him. As were all of Judson's novels, it was a sensitive and overly-poetic portrayal of life in our times. It was in a word, boring. Or perhaps he did not like it because his wife liked it so much. Or because she made certain that he knew the Dime Novels he read by Sam Clemens and the verse by Walt Whitman were trash and doggerel. She was the sensitive one, she said. She stuck to Judson and poets like John Wallace Crawford and Cincinnatus Hiner.

Well, she could have them.

Hickok put the book down and glanced at his wife. This trip had not worked out. They had designed it to remold what had been lost, but no effort had been expended on her part that he could see. He tried to feel guilty, conclude that he too had not pushed the matter, but that simply was not true. She had turned him into bad company with her sourness. When they had started out he had mined for their old love like a frantic prospector looking for color in a vein he knew was long mined out.

Finishing his drink, and placing the book behind his head for a pillow, Hickok threw his feet up on the long bench and stretched out, long-fingered hands meshed over his eyes. He found the weight of his discontent was more able than Morpheus to bring sleep.

____________________

When he awoke, it was because his wife was running a finger along the edge of his cheek, tracing his jawbone with it. He looked up into her smiling face, and for a moment he thought he had dreamed all the bad times and that things were fine and as they should be; imagined that time had not put a weight on their marriage and that it was shortly after their wedding when they were very much on fire with each other. But the rumble of the train assured him that this was not the case, and that time had indeed passed. The moment of their marriage was far behind.

Mary Jane smiled at him, and for a moment the smile held all of her lost hopes and dreams. He smiled back at her. At that moment he wished deeply that they had had children. But it had never worked. One of them had a flaw and no children came from their couplings.

She bent to kiss him and it was a warm kiss that tingled him all over. In that moment he wanted nothing but their marriage and for it to be good. He even forgot the young girl he had seen while talking to Cody.

They did not make love, though he hoped they would. But she kissed him deeply several times and said that after bath and dinner they would go to bed. It would be like old times. When they often performed the ceremony of pleasure.

After the Cherokee porter had filled their tub with water, and after she had bathed and he had bathed in the dregs of her bath and they had toweled themselves dry, they laughed while they dressed. He kissed her and she kissed him back, their bodies pushed together in familiar ritual, but the ritual was not consummated. Mary Jane would have nothing of that. "After dinner," she said. "Like old times."

"Like old times," he said.

Arm in arm they went to the dining car, dressed to the hilt and smiling. They paid their dollar and were conducted to their table where they were offered a drink to begin the meal. As if to suggest hope for later, he denied one, but Mary Jane did not follow his lead. She had one, then another.

When she was on her third drink and dinner was in the process of being served, the blonde girl with the sunshine smile came in and sat not three tables down from them. She sat with the matronly woman and the little boy who loved trains. He found he could not take his eyes off the young lovely.

"Are you thinking about something?" Mary Jane asked.

"No, not really. Mind was wandering," he said. He smiled at her and saw that her eyes were a trifle shiny with drunkenness.

They ate in near silence and Mary Jane drank two more whiskies.

____________________

When they went back to the cabin, she was leaning on him and his heart had fallen. He knew the signs.

They went into their cabin and he hoped she was not as far along in drunkenness as he thought. She kissed him and made movements against his body with hers. He felt desire.

She went to the bed and undressed, and he undressed by the bench seat and placed his clothes there. He turned down the lamp and climbed into bed with her.

She had fallen asleep. Her breath came out in alcoholic snores. There would be no love-making tonight.

He lay there for a while and thought of nothing. Then he got up, dressed, went into the cars to look for some diversion, a poker game perhaps.

____________________

No poker game to be found and no face offered any friendly summons to him. He found a place to sit in the parlor car where the overhead lamp was turned down and there was no one sitting nearby. He got out the makings, rolled himself a smoke, and was putting a lucifer to it when Cody fell into the seat across from him. Cody had his pipe like before. "You'd think I'd have found some lucifers of my own by now, wouldn't you?"

Hickok thought just that, but he offered his still burning light to Cody. Cody bent forward and puffed flame into his packed pipe. When it was lit he sat back and said, "I thought you had turned in early. I saw you leave the dining car."

"I didn't see you."

"You were not looking in my direction. I was nearby."

Hickok understood what Cody was implying, but he did not acknowledge. He smoked his cigarette furiously.

"She is quite lovely," Cody said.

"I guess I made a fool out of myself looking at her. She is half my age."

"I meant your wife, but yes, the girl is a beauty. And she has a way with her eyes, don't you think?"

Hickok grunted agreement. He felt like a school boy who had been caught looking up the teacher's dress.

"I was looking too," Cody said cheerfully. "You see, I don't care for my wife much. You?"

"I want to, but she is not making it easy. We're like two trains on different tracks. We pass close enough to wave, but never close enough to touch."

"My God, friend, but you are a poet."

"I didn't mean to be."

"Well, mean to. I could use a bit of color and poetry in my life."

"An ambassador is more colorful than a clerk."

"An ambassador is little more than a clerk who travels. Maybe it's not so bad, but I just don't feel tailored to it."

"Then we are both cut from the wrong cloth, Cody."

Hickok finished his cigarette and looked out into the night. The shapes of the cherry trees flew by, looked like multi-armed men waving gentle goodbyes.

"It seems I have done nothing with my life," Hickok said after a while, and he did not look at Cody when he said it. He continued to watch the night and the trees. "Today when you told me about Custer and Yoshu, I did not feel sadness. Surprise, but not sadness. Now I know why. I envy them. Not their death, but their glory. A hundred years from now, probably more, they will be remembered. I will be forgotten a month after my passing -- if it takes that long."

Cody reached over and opened a window. The wind felt cool and comfortable. He tapped his pipe on the outside of the train. Sparks flew from it and blew down the length of the cars like fireflies in a blizzard. Cody left the window open, returned his pipe to his pocket.

"You know," Cody said, "I wanted to go out West during the Japanese Wars: the time the Japanese were trying to push down into Colorado on account of the gold we'd found there, and on account of we'd taken the place away from them back when it was part of New Japan. I was young then and I should have gone. I wanted to be a soldier. I might have been a great scout, or a buffalo hunter had my life gone different then."

"Do you sometimes wonder that your dreams are your real life, Cody? That if you hope for them enough they become solid? Maybe our dreams are our trains not taken."

"Come again."

"Our possible futures. The things we might have done had we just edged our lives another way."

"I hadn't thought much about it actually, but I like the sound of it."

"Will you laugh if I tell you my dream?"

"How could I? I've just told you mine."

"I dream that I'm a gunman -- and with these light-sensitive eyes that's a joke. But that's what I am. One of those long-haired shootists like in the Dime Novels, or that real life fellow Wild Jack McCall. I even dream of lying face down on a card table, my pistol career ended by some skulking knave who didn't have the guts to face me and so shot me from behind. It's a good dream, even with the death, because I am remembered, like those soldiers who died at the Little Big Horn. It's such a strong dream I like to believe that it is actually happening somewhere, and that I am that man that I would rather be."

"I think I understand you, friend. I even envy Morse and these damn trains; him and his telegraph and 'pulsating energy'. Those discoveries will make him live forever. Every time a message is flashed across the country or a train bullets along on the crackling power of its fire line, it's like thousands of people crying his name."

"Sometimes -- a lot of the time -- I just wish that for once I could live a dream."

They sat in silence. The night and the shadowed limbs of the cherry trees fled by, occasionally mixed with the staggered light of the moon and the stars.

Finally Cody said, "To bed. Cherrywood is an early stop." He opened his pocket watch and looked at it. "Less than four hours. The wife will awake and call out the Cavalry if I'm not there."

As Cody stood, Hickok said, "I have something for you." He handed Cody a handful of lucifers.

Cody smiled. "Next time we meet, friend, perhaps I will have my own." As he stepped into the aisle he said, "I've enjoyed our little talk."

"So have I," Hickok said. "I don't feel any happier, but I feel less lonesome."

"Maybe that's the best we can do."

Hickok went back to his cabin but did not try to be overly quiet. There was no need. Mary Jane, when drunk, slept like an anvil.

He slipped out of his clothes and crawled into bed. Lay there feeling the warmth of his wife's shoulder and hip; smelling the alcoholic aroma of her breath. He could remember a time when they could not crawl into bed together without touching and expressing their love. Now he did not want to touch her and he did not want to be touched by her. He could not remember the last time she had bothered to tell him she loved him, and he could not remember the last time he had said it and it was not partly a lie.

Earlier, before dinner, the old good times had been recalled and for a few moments he adored her. Now he lay beside her feeling anger. Anger because she would not try. Or could not try. Anger because he was always the one to try, the one to apologize, even when he felt he was not wrong. Trains on a different track going opposite directions, passing fast in the night, going nowhere really. That was them.

Closing his eyes, he fell asleep instantly and dreamed of the blonde lovely in blue and white calico with a thick black Japanese belt. He dreamed of her without the calico, lying here beside him white-skinned and soft and passionate and all the things his wife was not.

And when the dream ended, so did his sleep. He got up and dressed and went out to the parlor car. It was empty and dark. He sat and smoked a cigarette. When that was through he opened a window, felt and smelled the wind. It was a fine night. A lover's night.

Then he sensed the train was slowing.

Cherrywood already?

No, it was still too early for that. What gave here?

In the car down from the one in which he sat, a lamp was suddenly lit, and there appeared beside it the chiseled face of the Cherokee porter. Behind him, bags against their legs, were three people: the matronly lady, the boy who loved trains and the beautiful blonde woman.

The train continued to slow. Stopped.

By God, he thought, they are getting off.

Hickok got out his little, crumpled train schedule and pressed it out on his knee. He struck a lucifer and held it down behind the seat so that he could read. After that he got out his pocket watch and held it next to the flame. Two-fifteen. The time on his watch and that on the schedule matched. This was a scheduled stop -- the little town and fort outside of Cherrywood. He had been right in his day dreaming. The girl was going here.

Hickok pushed the schedule into his pocket and dropped the dead lucifer on the floor. Even from where he sat, he could see the blonde girl. As always, she was smiling. The porter was enjoying the smile and he was giving her one back.

The train began to stop.

For a moment, Hickok imagined that he too was getting off here and that the blonde woman was his sweetheart or better yet, would be. They would meet in the railway station and strike up some talk, and she would be one of those new modern women who did not mind a man buying her a drink in public. But she would not be like his wife. She would drink for taste and not effect.

They would fall instantly in love, and on occasion they would walk in the moonlight down by these tracks, stand beneath the cherry trees and watch the trains run by. And afterwards they would lie down beneath the trees and make love with shadows and starlight as their canopy. When it was over, and they were tired of satisfaction, they would walk arm in arm back towards the town, or the fort, all depending.

The dream floated away as the blonde girl moved down the steps and out of the train. Hickok watched as the porter handed down their bags. He wished he could still see the young girl, but to do that he would have to put his head out the window, and he was old enough that he did not want to appear foolish.

Goodbye, Little Pretty, he thought. I will think and dream of you often.

Suddenly he realized that his cheeks were wet with tears. God, but he was unhappy and lonely. He wondered if behind her smiles the young girl might be lonely too.

He stood and walked toward the light even as the porter reached to turn it out.

"Excuse me," Hickok said to the man. "I'd like to get off here."

The porter blinked. "Yes sir, but the schedule only calls for three."

"I have a ticket for Cherrywood, but I've changed my mind, I'd like to get off here."

"As you wish, sir." The porter turned up the lamp. "Best hurry, the train's starting. Watch your step. Uh, any luggage?"

"None."

Briskly, Hickok stepped down the steps and into the night. The three he had followed were gone. He strained his eyes and saw between a path of cherry trees that they were walking toward the lights of the rail station.

He turned back to the train. The porter had turned out the light and was no longer visible. The train sang its song. On the roof he saw a ripple of blue-white fulmination jump along the metal fire line. Then the train made a sound like a boiling tea pot and began to move.

For a moment he thought of his wife lying there in their cabin. He thought of her waking in Cherrywood and not finding him there. He did not know what she would do, nor did he know what he would do.

Perhaps the blonde girl would have nothing to do with him. Or maybe, he thought suddenly, she is married or has a sweetheart already.

No matter. It was the ambition of her that had lifted him out of the old funeral pyre, and like a phoenix fresh from the flames, he intended to stretch his wings and soar.

The train gained momentum, lashed shadows by him. He turned his back on it and looked through the cherrywood path. The three had reached the rail station and had gone inside.

Straightening his collar and buttoning his jacket, he walked toward the station and the pretty blonde girl with a face like a hopeful heart.

DOG, CAT, AND BABY

Dog did not like baby. For that matter, Dog did not like Cat. But Cat had claws -- sharp claws.

Dog had always gotten attention. Pat on head. "Here, boy, here's a treat. Nice dog. Good dog. Shake hands. Speak! Sit. Nice dog."

Now there was Baby.

Cat had not been problem, really.

Cat was liked, not loved by family. They petted Cat sometimes. Fed her. Did not mistreat her. But they not love her. Not way they loved Dog -- before Baby.

Damn little pink thing that cried.

Baby got "Oooohs and Ahhhs." When Dog tried to get close to Masters, they say, "Get back, boy. Not now."

When would be now?

Dog never see now. Always Baby get now. Dog get nothing. Sometimes they so busy with Baby it be all day before dog get fed. Dog never get treats anymore. Could not remember last pat on head or "Good Dog!"

Bad business. Dog not like it.

Dog decide to do something about it.

Kill Baby. Then there be Dog, Cat again. They not love Cat, so things be okay.

Dog thought that over. Wouldn't take much to rip little Baby apart. Baby soft, pink. Would bleed easy.

Baby often put in Jumper which hung between doorway when Master Lady hung wash. Baby be easy to get then.

So Dog waited.

One day Baby put in Jumper and Master Lady go outside to hang out wash. Dog looks at pink thing jumping, thinks about ripping to pieces. Thinks on it long and hard. Thought makes him so happy his mouth drips water. Dog starts toward Baby, making fine moment last.

Baby looks up, sees Dog coming toward it slowly, almost creeping. Baby starts to cry.

But before Dog can reach Baby, Cat jumps.

Cat been hiding behind couch.

Cat goes after Dog, tears Dog's face with teeth, with claws. Dog bleeds, tries to run. Cat goes after him.

Dog turns to bite.

Cat hangs claw in Dog's eye.

Dog yelps, runs.

Cat jumps on Dog's back, biting Dog on top of head.

Dog tries to turn corner into bedroom. Cat, tearing at him with claws, biting with teeth, makes Dog lose balance. Dog running very fast, fast as he can go, hits the edge of doorway, stumbles back, falls over.

Cat gets off Dog.

Dog lies still.

Dog not breathing.

Cat knows Dog is dead. Cat licks blood from claws, from teeth with rough tongue.

Cat has gotten rid of Dog.

Cat turns to look down hall where Baby is screaming.

Now for other one.

Cat begins to creep down hall.

MISTER WEED-EATER

Mr. Job Harold was in living room with his feet on the couch watching Wheel of Fortune when his five-year-old son came inside covered with dirt. "Daddy," said the boy dripping dirt, "there's a man outside want to see you."

Mr, Harold got up and went outside, and there standing at the back of the house next to his wife's flower bed, which was full of dead roses and a desiccated frog, was, just like his boy had said, a man.

It was over a hundred degrees out there, and the man, a skinny sucker in white T-shirt and jeans with a face red as a baboon's ass, a waterfall of inky hair dripping over his forehead and dark glasses, stood with his head cocked like a spaniel listening for trouble. He had a bright-toothed smile that indicated everything he heard struck him as funny.

In his left hand was a new weed-eater, the cutting line coated in greasy green grass the texture of margarita vomit, the price tag dangling proudly from the handle.

In the other hand the man held a blind man's cane, the tip of which had speared an oak leaf. His white T-shirt, stained pollen-yellow under the arms, stuck wetly to his chest and little pot belly tight as plastic wrap on a fish head. He had on dirty white socks with played-out elastic and they had fallen over the tops of his tennis shoes as if in need of rest.

The man was shifting his weight from one leg to the other. Mr. Harold figured he needed to pee and wanted to use the bathroom, and the idea of letting him into the house with a weed-eater and pointing him at the pot didn't appeal to Mr. Harold cause there wasn't any question in Mr. Harold's mind the man was blind as a peach pit, and Mr. Harold figured he got in the bathroom, he was gonna pee from one end of the place to the other trying to hit the commode, and then Mr. Harold knew he'd have to clean it up or explain to his wife when she got home from work how on his day off he let a blind man piss all over their bathroom. Just thinking about all that gave Mr. Harold a headache.

"What can I do for you?" Mr. Harold asked.

"Well, sir," said the blind man in a voice dry as Mrs. Harold's sexual equipment, "I heard your boy playin' over here, and I followed the sound. You see, I'm the groundskeeper next door, and I need a little help. I was wonderin' you could come over and show me if I've missed a few spots?"

Mr. Harold tried not to miss a beat. "You talking about the church over there?"

"Yes, sir. Just got hired. Wouldn't want to look bad on my first day."

Mr. Harold considered this. Cameras could be set in place somewhere. People in trees waiting for him to do something they could record for a TV show. He didn't want to go on record as not helping a blind man, but on the other hand, he didn't want to be caught up in no silliness either.

Finally, he decided it was better to look like a fool and a Samaritan than a cantankerous asshole who wouldn't help a poor blind man cut weeds.

"I reckon I can do that," Mr. Harold said. Then to his five-year-old who'd followed him outside and was sitting in the dirt playing with a plastic truck.

"Son, you stay right here and don't go off."

"Okay, Daddy," the boy said.

The church across the street had been opened in a building about the size of an aircraft hanger. It had once been used as a liquor warehouse, and later it was called Community Storage, but items had a way of disappearing. It was a little too community for its renters, and it went out of business and Sonny Guy, who owned the place, had to pay some kind of fine and turn up with certain items deemed as missing.

This turn of events had depressed Mr. Guy, so he'd gotten religion and opened a church. God wasn't knocking them dead either, so to compensate, Sonny Guy started a Gospel Opry, and to advertise and indicate its location, beginning on their street and on up to the highway, there was a line of huge orange Day-Glo guitars that pointed from highway to Opry.

The guitars didn't pull a lot of people in though, bright as they were. Come Sunday the place was mostly vacant, and when the doors were open on the building back and front, you could hear wind whistling through there like it was blowing through a pipe. A special ticket you could cut out of the newspaper for five dollars off a fifteen dollar buffet of country sausages and sliced cantaloupe hadn't rolled them in either. Sonny and God most definitely needed a more exciting game plan. Something with titties.

Taking the blind man by the elbow, Mr. Harold led him across the little street and into the yard of the church. Well, actually, it was more than a yard. About four acres. On the front acre sat Sonny Guy's house, and out to the right of it was a little music studio he'd built, and over to the left was the metal building that served as the church. The metal was aluminum and very bright and you could feel the heat bouncing off of it like it was an oven with bread baking inside.

Behind the house were three more acres, most of it weeds, and at the back of it all was a chicken wire fence where a big black dog of undetermined breed liked to pace.

When Mr. Harold saw what the blind man had done, he let out his breath. The fella had been all over that four acres, and it wasn't just a patch of weeds now, but it wasn't manicured either. The poor bastard had tried to do the job of a lawn mower with a weed-eater, and he'd mostly succeeded in chopping down the few flowers that grew in the midst of brick-lined beds, and he'd chopped weeds and dried grass here and there, so that the whole place looked as if it were a head of hair mistreated by a drunk barber with an attitude.

At Mr. Harold's feet, he discovered a mole the blind man's shoe had dislodged from a narrow tunnel. The mole had been whipped to death by the weed-eater sling. It looked like a wad of dirty hair dipped in red paint. A lasso loop of guts had been knocked out of its mouth and ants were crawling on it. The blind had slain the blind.

"How's it look?"

"Well," Mr. Harold said, "you missed some spots."

"Yeah, well they hired me cause they wanted to help the handicapped, but I figure it was just as much cause they knew I'd do the job. They had 'em a crippled nigger used to come out and do it, but they said he charged too much and kept making a mess of things."

Mr. Harold had seen the black man mow. He might have been crippled, but he'd had a riding mower and he was fast. He didn't do such a bad job either. He always wore a straw hat pushed up on the back of his head, and when he got off the mower to get on his crutches, he did it with the style of a rodeo star dismounting a show horse. There hadn't been a thing wrong with the black man's work. Mr. Harold figured Sonny Guy wanted to cut a few corners. Switch a crippled nigger for a blind honkey.

"How'd you come to get this job?" Mr. Harold asked. He tried to make the question pleasant, as if he were asking him how his weekend had been.

"References," the blind man said.

"Of course," said Mr. Harold.

"Well, what do I need to touch up? I stayed me a line from the building there, tried to work straight, turn when I got to the fence and come back. I do it mostly straight?"

"You got off a mite. You've missed some pretty good-sized patches."

Mr. Harold, still holding the blind man's elbow, felt the blind man go a little limp with disappointment. "How bad is it?"

"Well . . ."

"Go on and tell me."

"A weed-eater ain't for this much place. You need a mower."

"I'm blind. You can't turn me loose out here with a mower. I'd cut my foot off."

"I'm just saying."

"Well, come on, how bad is it? It look worse than when the nigger did it?"

"I believe so."

"By much?"

"When he did it, you could look out here and tell the place had been mowed. Way it looks now, you might do better just to poison the weeds and hope the grass dies."

The blind man really slumped now, and Mr. Harold wished he'd chosen his words more carefully. It wasn't his intention to insult a blind man on his lawn skills in a hundred degree heat. He began to wish the fella had only wanted to wet on the walls of his bathroom.

"Can't even do a nigger's job," the blind man said.

"It ain't so bad if they're not too picky."

"Shit," said the blind man. "Shit, I didn't have no references. I didn't never have a job before, really. Well, I worked out at the chicken processing plant tossing chicken heads in a metal drum, but I kept missing and tossin' them on this lady worked by me. I just couldn't keep my mind on the drum's location. I think I might actually be more artistic than mechanical. I got one side of the brain works harder, you know?"

"You could just slip off and go home. Leave 'em a note."

"Naw, I can't do that. Besides, I ain't got no way home. They pick me up and brought me here. I come to church last week and they offered me the job, and then they come and got me and brought me here and I made a mess of it. They'll be back later and they won't like it. They ain't gonna give me my five dollars, I can see that and I can't see nothing."

"Hell, man," Mr. Harold said, "that black fella mowed this lawn, you can bet he got more than five dollars."

"You tryin' to say I ain't good as a nigger?"

"I'm not trying to say anything 'cept you're not being paid enough. A guy ought to get five dollars an hour just for standing around in this heat."

"People charge too much these days. Niggers especially will stick you when they can. It's that civil rights business. It's gone to their heads."

"It ain't got nothing to do with what color you are."

"By the hour, I reckon I'm making 'bout what I got processing chicken heads," the blind man said. "Course, they had a damn fine company picnic this time each year."

"Listen here. We'll do what we were gonna do. Check the spots you've missed. I'll lead you around to bad places, and you chop 'em."

"That sounds all right, but I don't want to share my five dollars. I was gonna get me something with that. Little check I get from the government just covers my necessities, you know?"

"You don't owe me anything."

Mr. Harold took the blind man by the elbow and led him around to where the grass was missed or whacked high, which was just about everywhere you looked. After about fifteen minutes, the blind man said he was tired. They went over to the house and leaned on a tree in the front yard. The blind man said, "You seen them shows about those crop circles, in England, I think it is?"

"No," said Mr. Harold.

"Well, they found these circles in the wheat. Just appeared out there. They think it's aliens."

"Oh yeah, I seen about those," Mr. Harold said, suddenly recalling what it was the man was talking about. "There ain't no mystery to that. It's some guys with a stick and a cord. We used to do that in tall weed patches when we were kids. There's nothing to it. Someone's just making jackasses out of folks."

The blind man took a defiant posture. "Not everything like that is a bunch of kids with a string."

"I wasn't saying that."

"For all I know, what's wrong with that patch there's got nothing to do with me and my work. It could have been alien involvement."

"Aliens with weed-eaters?"

"It could be what happened when they landed, their saucers messin' it up like that."

"If they landed, why didn't they land on you? You was out there with the weed-eater. How come nobody saw or heard them?"

"They could have messed up the yard while I was coming to get you."

"Kind of a short visit, wasn't it?"

"You don't know everything, Mister-I-Got-Eyeballs. Those that talk the loudest know less than anybody."

"And them that believe every damn thing they hear are pretty stupid, Mister Weed-Eater. I know what's wrong with you now. You're lazy. It's hot out there and you don't want to be here, so you're trying to make me feel sorry for you and do the job myself, and it ain't gonna work. I don't feel sorry for you cause you're blind. I ain't gonna feel sorry at all. I think you're an asshole."

Mr. Harold went across the road and back to the house and called his son inside. He sat down in front of the TV. Wheel of Fortune wasn't on anymore. Hell, it was a rerun anyway. He changed the channel looking for something worth watching but all that was on was midget wrestling, so he watched a few minutes of that.

Those little guys were fast and entertaining and it was cool inside with the air-conditioner cranked up, so after a couple minutes Mr. Harold got comfortable watching the midgets sling each other around, tumble up together and tie themselves in knots.

However, time eroded Mr. Harold's contentment. He couldn't stop thinking about the blind man out there in the heat. He called to his son and told him to go outside and see if the blind man was still there.

The boy came back a minute later. He said, "He's out there, Daddy. He said you better come on out and help him. He said he ain't gonna talk about crop circles no more."

Mr. Harold thought a moment. You were supposed to help the blind, the hot and the stupid. Besides, the old boy might need someone to pour gas in that weed-eater. He did it himself he was liable to pour it all over his shoes and later get around someone who smoked and wanted to toss a match. An accident might be in the making.

Mr. Harold switched the channel to cartoons and pointed them out to his son. The boy sat down immediately and started watching. Mr. Harold got the boy a glass of Kool-Aid and a stack of chocolate cookies. He went outside to find the blind man.

The blind man was in Mr. Harold's yard. He had the weed-eater on and was holding it above his head whacking at the leaves on Mr. Harold's redbud tree; his wife's favorite tree.

"Hey, now stop that," Mr. Harold said. "Ain't no call to be malicious."

The blind man cut the weed-eater and cocked his head and listened. "That you, Mister-I-Know-There-Ain't-No-Aliens?"

"Now come on. I want to help you. My son said you said you wasn't gonna get into that again."

"Come on over here," said the blind man.

Mr. Harold went over, cautiously. When he was just outside of weed-eater range, he said, "What you want?"

"Do I look all right to you? Besides being blind?"

"Yeah. I guess so. I don't see nothing wrong with you. You found the leaves on that tree good enough."

"Come and look closer."

"Naw, I ain't gonna do it. You just want to get me in range. Hit me with that weed-eater. I'll stay right here. You come at me, I'll move off. You won't be able to find me."

"You saying I can't find you cause I'm blind?"

"Come after me, I'll put stuff in front of you so you trip."

The blind man leaned the weed-eater against his leg. His cane was on a loop over his other hand, and he took hold of it and tapped it against his tennis shoe.

"Yeah, well you could do that," the blind man said, "and I bet you would too. You're like a guy would do things to the handicapped. I'll tell you now, sir, they take roll in heaven, you ain't gonna be on it."

"Listen here. You want some help over there, I'll give it, but I ain't gonna stand here in this heat and take insults. Midget wrestling's on TV and it's cool inside and I might just go back to it."

The blind man's posture straightened with interest. "Midget wrestling? Hell, that's right. It's Saturday. Was it Little Bronco Bill and Low Dozer McGuirk?"

"I think it was. They look alike to me. I don't know one midget from another, though one was a little fatter and had a haircut like he'd got out of the barber chair too soon."

"That's Dozer. He trains on beer and doughnuts. I heard him talk about it on the TV."

"You watch TV?"

"You tryin' to hurt my feelings?"

"No. I mean, it's just, well, you're blind."

"What? I am? I'll be damned! I didn't know that. Glad you was here to tell me."

"I didn't mean no harm."

"Look here, I got ears. I listen to them thumping on that floor and I listen to the announcer. I listen so good I can imagine, kinda, what's goin' on. I 'specially like them little scudders, the midgets. I think maybe on a day I've had enough to eat, I had on some pants weren't too tight, I'd like to get in a ring with one of 'em."

"You always been blind? I mean, was you born that way?"

"Naw. Got bleach in my eyes. My mama told me a nigger done it to me when I was a baby, but it was my daddy. I know that now. Mama had a bad eye herself, then the cancer got her good one. She says she sees out of her bad eye way you'd see if you seen something through a Coke bottle with dirt on the bottom."

Mr. Harold didn't really want to hear about the blind man's family history. He groped for a fresh conversation handle. Before he could get hold of one, the blind man said, "Let's go to your place and watch some of that wrestlin' and cool off, then you can come out with me and show me them places I missed."

Mr. Harold didn't like the direction this conversation was taking. "I don't know," he said. "Won't the preacher be back in a bit and want his yard cut?"

"You want to know the truth?" the blind man said, "I don't care. You're right. Five dollars ain't any wages. Them little things I wanted with that five dollars I couldn't get no how."

Mr. Harold's mind raced. "Yeah, but five dollars is five dollars, and you could put it toward something. You know, save it up till you got some more. They're planning on making you a permanent groundskeeper, aren't they? A little time, a raise could be in order."

"This here's kinda a trial run. They can always get the crippled nigger back."

Mr. Harold checked his watch. There probably wasn't more than twenty minutes left of the wrestling program, so he took a flyer. "Well, all right. We'll finish up the wrestling show, then come back and do the work. You ain't gonna hit me with that weed-eater if I try to guide you into the house, are you?"

"Naw, I ain't mad no more. I get like that sometimes. It's just my way."

Mr. Harold led him into the house and onto the couch and talked the boy out of the cartoons, which wasn't hard; it was some kind of stuff the boy hated. The blind man had him crank the audio on the TV up a notch and sat sideways on the couch with his weed-eater and cane, taking up all the room and leaving Mr. Harold nowhere to sit. Dirt and chopped grass dripped off of the blind man's shoes and onto the couch.

Mr. Harold finally sat on the floor beside his boy and tried to get the boy to give him a cookie, but his son didn't play that way. Mr. Harold had to get his own Kool-Aid and cookies, and he got the blind man some too.

The blind man took the Kool-Aid and cookies and didn't say thanks or kiss my ass. Just stretched out there on the couch listening, shaking from side to side, cheering the wrestlers on. He was obviously on Low Dozer McGuirk's side, and Mr. Harold figured it was primarily because he'd heard Dozer trained on beer and doughnuts. That struck Mr. Harold as a thing the blind man would latch onto and love. That and crop circles and flying saucers.

When the blind man finished up his cookies and Kool-Aid, he put Mr. Harold to work getting more, and when Mr. Harold came back with them, his son and the blind man were chatting about the wrestling match. The blind man was giving the boy some insights into the wrestling game and was trying to get the boy to try a hold on him so he could show how easily he could work out of it.

Mr. Harold nixed that plan, and the blind man ate his next plate of cookies and Kool-Aid, and somehow the wrestling show moved into an after show talk session on wrestling. When Mr. Harold looked at his watch nearly an hour had passed.

"We ought to get back over there and finish up," Mr. Harold said.

"Naw," said the blind man, "not just yet. This talk show stuff is good. This is where I get most of my tips."

"Well, all right, but when this is over, we're out of here."

But they weren't. The talk show wrapped up, the Beverly Hillbillies came on, then Green Acres, then Gilligan's Island. The blind man and Mr. Harold's son laughed their way through the first two, and damn near killed themselves with humor when Gilligan's Island was on.

Mr. Harold learned the Professor and Ginger were the blind man's favorites on Gilligan's, and he liked the pig, Arnold, on Green Acres. No one was a particular favorite on the Beverly Hillbillies, however.

"Ain't this stuff good?" the blind man said. "They don't make 'em like this anymore."

"I prefer educational programming myself," Mr. Harold said, though the last educational program he'd watched was a PBS special on lobsters. He'd watched it because he was sick as a dog and lying on the couch and his wife had put the remote across the room and he didn't feel good enough to get up and get hold of it.

In his feverish delirium he remembered the lobster special as pretty good cause it had come across a little like a science fiction movie. But that lobster special, as viewed through feverish eyes, had been the closest Mr. Harold had ever gotten to educational TV.

The sickness, the remote lying across the room, had caused him to miss what he'd really wanted to see that day, and even now, on occasion, he thought of what he had missed with a certain pang of regret; a special on how young women were chosen to wear swim suits in special issues of sports magazines. He kept hoping it was a show that would play in rerun.

"My back's hurtin' from sitting on the floor," Mr. Harold said, but the blind man didn't move his feet so Mr. Harold could have a place on the couch. He offered a pointer, though.

"Sit on the floor, you got to hold your back straight, just like you was in a wooden chair, otherwise you'll really tighten them muscles up close to your butt."

When Gilligan's was wrapped up, Mr. Harold impulsively cut the television and got hold of the blind man and started pulling him up. "We got to go to work now. I'm gonna help you, it has to be now. I got plans for the rest of the day."

"Ah, Daddy, he was gonna show me a couple wrestling holds," the boy said.

"Not today," Mr. Harold said, tugging on the blind man, and suddenly the blind man moved and was behind him and had him wrestled to the floor. Mr. Harold tried to move, but couldn't. His arm was twisted behind his back and he was lying face down and the blind man was on top of him pressing a knee into his spine.

"Wow!" said the boy. "Neat!"

"Not bad for a blind fella," said the blind man. "I told you I get my tips from that show."

"All right, all right, let me go," said Mr. Harold.

"Squeal like a pig for me," said the blind man.

"Now wait just a goddamned minute," Mr. Harold said.

The blind man pressed his knee harder into Mr. Harold's spine. "Squeal like a pig for me. Come on."

Mr. Harold made a squeaking noise.

"That ain't no squeal," said the blind man. "Squeal!"

The boy got down by Mr. Harold's face. "Come on, Dad," he said. "Squeal."

"Big pig squeal," said the blind man. "Big pig! Big pig! Big pig!"

Mr. Harold squealed. The blind man didn't let go.

"Say calf rope," said the blind man.

"All right, all right. Calf rope! Calf rope! Now let me up."

The blind man eased his knee off Mr. Harold's spine and let go of the arm lock. He stood up and said to the boy, "It's mostly in the hips."

"Wow!" said the boy, "You made Dad squeal like a pig."

Mr. Harold, red faced, got up. He said, "Come on, right now."

"I need my weed-eater," said the blind man.

The boy got both the weed-eater and the cane for the blind man. The blind man said to the boy as they went outside, "Remember, it's in the hips."

Mr. Harold and the blind man went over to the church property and started in on some spots with the weed-eater. In spite of the fact Mr. Harold found himself doing most of the weed-eating, the blind man just clinging to this elbow and being pulled around like he was a side car, it wasn't five minutes before the blind man wanted some shade and a drink of water.

Mr. Harold was trying to talk him out of it when Sonny Guy and his family drove up in a club cab Dodge pickup.

The pickup was black and shiny and looked as if it had just come off the showroom floor. Mr. Harold knew Sonny Guy's money for such things had come from Mrs. Guy's insurance before she was Mrs. Guy. Her first husband had gotten kicked to death by a maniac escaped from the nut-house; kicked until they couldn't tell if he was a man or a jelly doughnut that had gotten run over by a truck.

When that insurance money came due, Sonny Guy, a man who had antennas for such things, showed up and began to woo her. They were married pretty quick, and the money from the insurance settlement had bought the house, the aircraft hanger church, the Day-Glo guitar signs, and the pickup. Mr. Harold wondered if there was any money left. He figured they might be pretty well run through it by now.

"Is that the Guys?" the blind man asked as the pickup engine was cut.

"Yeah," said Mr. Harold.

"Maybe we ought to look busy."

"I don't reckon it matters now."

Sonny got out of the pickup and waddled over to the edge of the property and looked at the mauled grass and weeds. He walked over to the aircraft hanger church and took it all in from that angle with his hands on his ample hips. He stuck his fingers under his overall straps and walked alongside the fence with the big black dog running behind it, barking, grabbing at the chicken wire with his teeth.

The minister's wife stood by the pickup. She had a bun of colorless hair stacked on her head. The stack had the general shape of some kind of tropical ant-hill that might house millions of angry ants. Way she was built, that hair and all, it looked as if the hill had been precariously built on top of a small round rock supported by an irregular-shaped one, the bottom rock wearing a print dress and a pair of black flat-heeled shoes.

The two dumpling kids, one boy, and one girl, leaned against the truck's bumper as if they had just felt the effect of some relaxing drug. They both wore jeans, tennis shoes and Disney T-shirts with the Magic Kingdom in the background. Mr. Harold couldn't help but note the whole family had upturned noses, like pigs. It wasn't something that could be ignored.

Sonny Guy shook his head and walked across the lot and over to the blind man. "You sure messed this up. It's gonna cost me more'n I'd have paid you to get it fixed. That crippled nigger never done nothing like this. He run over a sprinkler head once, but that was it. And he paid for it." Sonny turned his attention to Mr. Harold. "You have anything to do with this?"

"I was just tryin' to help," Mr. Harold said.

"I was doin' all right until he come over," said the blind man. "He started tellin' me how I was messin' up and all and got me nervous, and sure enough, I began to lose my place and my concentration. You can see the results."

"You'd have minded your own business," Sonny said to Mr. Harold, "the man woulda done all right, but you're one of those thinks a handicap can't do some jobs."

"The man's blind," said Mr. Harold. "He can't see to cut grass. Not four acres with a weed-eater. Any moron can see that."

The Reverend Sonny Guy had a pretty fast right hand for a fat man. He caught Mr. Harold a good one over the left eye and staggered him.

The blind man stepped aside so they'd have plenty of room, and Sonny set to punching Mr. Harold quite regularly. It seemed like something the two of them were made for. Sonny to throw punches and Mr. Harold to absorb them.

When Mr. Harold woke up, he was lying on his back in the grass and the shadow of the blind man lay like a slat across him.

"Where is he?" asked Mr. Harold, feeling hot and sick to his stomach.

"When he knocked you down and you didn't get up, he went in the house with his wife," said the blind man. "I think he was thirsty. He told me he wasn't giving me no five dollars. Actually, he said he wasn't giving me jackshit. And him a minister. The kids are still out here though, they're looking at their watches, I think. They had a bet on how long it'd be before you got up. I heard them talking."

Mr. Harold sat up and glanced toward the Dodge club cab. The blind man was right. The kids were still leaning against the truck. When Mr. Harold looked at them, the boy, who was glancing at his watch, lifted one eye and raised his hand quickly and pulled it down, said, "Yesss!" The little girl looked pouty. The little boy said, "This time you blow me."

They went in the house. Mr. Harold stood up. The blind man gave him the weed-eater for support. He said, "Sonny says the crippled nigger will be back next week. I can't believe it. Scooped by a nigger. A crippled nigger."

Mr. Harold pursed his lips and tried to recall a couple of calming Bible verses. When he felt somewhat relaxed, he said, "Why'd you tell him it was my fault?"

"I figured you could handle yourself," the blind man said.

Mr. Harold rubbed one of the knots Sonny had knocked on his head. He considered homicide, but knew there wasn't any future in it. He said, "Tell you what. I'll give you a ride home."

"We could watch some more TV?"

"Nope," said Mr. Harold, probing a split in his lip. "I've got other plans."

Mr. Harold got his son and the three of them drove over to where the blind man said he lived. It was a lot on the far side of town, outside the city limits. It was bordered on either side by trees. It was a trailer lot, scraped down to the red clay. There were a few anemic grass patches here and there and it had a couple of lawn ornaments out front. A cow and a pig with tails that hooked up to hoses and spun around and around and worked as lawn sprinklers.

Behind the sprinklers a heap of wood and metal smoked pleasantly in the sunlight.

They got out of the car and Mr. Harold's son said, "Holy shit."

"Let me ask you something," said Mr. Harold to the blind man. "Your place got a cow and a pig lawn ornament? Kind that sprinkles the yard?"

The blind man appeared nervous. He sniffed the air. He said, "Is the cow one of those spotted kind?"

"A Holstein?" asked Mr. Harold. "My guess is the pig is a Yorkshire."

"That's them."

"Well, I reckon we're at your place all right, but it's burned down."

"Oh, shit," said the blind man. "I left the beans on."

"They're done now," said the boy.

The blind man sat down in the dirt and began to cry. It was a serious cry. A cat walking along the edge of the woods behind the remains of the trailer stopped to watch in amazement. The cat seemed surprised that any one thing could make such noise.

"Was they pinto beans?" the boy asked.

The blind man sputtered and sobbed and his chest heaved. Mr. Harold went and got the pig sprinkler and turned it on so that the water from its tail splattered on the pile of smoking rubble. When he felt that was going good, he got the cow working. He thought about calling the fire department, but that seemed kind of silly. About all they could do was come out and stir what was left with a stick.

"Is it all gone?" asked the blind man.

"The cow's all right," said Mr. Harold, "but the pig was a little too close to the fire, there's a little paint bubbled up on one of his legs."

Now the blind man really began to cry. "I damn near had it paid for. It wasn't no double-wide, but it was mine."

They stayed that way momentarily, the blind man crying, the water hissing onto the trailer's remains, then the blind man said, "Did the dogs get out?"

Mr. Harold gave the question some deep consideration. "My guess would be no."

"Then I don't guess there's any hope for the parakeet neither," said the blind man.

Reluctantly, Mr. Harold loaded the blind man back in the car with his son, and started home.

It wasn't the way Mr. Harold had hoped the day would turn out. He had been trying to do nothing more than a good deed, and now he couldn't get rid of the blind man. He wondered if this kind of shit ever happened to Jesus. He was always doing good stuff in the Bible. Mr. Harold wondered if he'd ever had an incident misfire on him, something that hadn't been reported in the Testaments.

Once, when Mr. Harold was about eleven, he'd experienced a similar incident, only he hadn't been trying to be a good Samaritan. Still, it was one of those times where you go in with one thing certain and it turns on you.

During recess he'd gotten in a fight with a little kid he thought would be easy to take. He punched the kid when he wasn't looking, and that little dude dropped and got hold of his knee with his arms and wrapped both his legs around him, positioned himself so that his bottom was on Mr. Harold's shoe.

Mr. Harold couldn't shake him. He dragged him across the school yard and even walked him into a puddle of water, but the kid stuck. Mr. Harold got a pretty good sized stick and hit the kid over the head with it, but that hadn't changed conditions. A dog tick couldn't have been fastened any tighter. He had to go back to class with the kid on his leg, pulling that little rascal after him wherever he went, like he had an anvil tied to his foot.

The teacher couldn't get the kid to let go either. They finally had to go to the principal's office and get the principal and the football coach to pry him off, and even they had to work at it. The coach said he'd once wrestled a madman with a butcher knife, and he'd rather do that again than try and get that kid off someone's leg.

The blind man was kind of like that kid. You couldn't lose the sonofabitch.

Near the house, Mr. Harold glanced at his watch and noted it was time for his wife to be home. He was overcome with deep concerns. He'd just thought the blind man pissing on his bathroom wall would be a problem, now he had greater worries. He actually had the gentleman in tow, bringing him to the house at supper time. Mr. Harold pulled over at a station and got some gas and bought the boy and the blind man a Coke. The blind man seemed to have gotten over the loss of his trailer. Sadness for its contents, the dogs and the parakeet, failed to plague him.

While the boy and the blind man sat on the curb, Mr. Harold went around to a pay booth and called home. On the third ring his wife answered.

"Where in the world are you?" she said.

"I'm out here at a filling station. I got someone with me."

"You better have Marvin with you."

"I do, but I ain't talking about the boy. I got a blind man with me."

"You mean he can't see?"

"Not a lick. He's got a weed-eater. He's the groundskeeper next door. I tried to take him home but his trailer burned up with his dogs and bird in it, and I ain't got no place to take him but home for supper."

A moment of silence passed as Mrs. Harold considered. "Ain't there some kinda home you can put him in?"

"I can't think of any. I suppose I could tie a sign around his neck said 'Blind Man' and leave him on someone's step with his weed-eater."

"Well, that wouldn't be fair to whoever lived in that house, just pushing problems on someone else."

Mr. Harold was nervous. Mrs. Harold seemed awfully polite. Usually she got mad over the littlest thing. He was trying to figure if it was a trap when he realized that something about all this was bound to appeal to her religious nature. She went to church a lot. She read the Baptist Standard and watched a couple of Sunday afternoon TV shows with preaching in them. Blind people were loved by Baptists. Them and cripples. They got mentioned in the Bible a lot. Jesus had a special affection for them. Well, he liked lepers too, but Mr. Harold figured that was where even Mrs. Harold's dedicated Baptist beliefs might falter.

A loophole presented itself to Mr. Harold. He said, "I figure it's our Christian charity to take this fella in, honey. He can't see and he's lost his job and his trailer burned down with his pets in it."

"Well, I reckon you ought to bring him on over then. We'll feed him and I'll call around and see what my ladies' charities can do. It'll be my project. Wendy Lee is goin' around gettin' folks to pick up trash on a section of the highway, but I figure helping out a blind man would be Christian. Jesus helped blind people, but I don't never remember him picking up any trash."

When Mr. Harold loaded his son and the blind man back into the car, he was a happier man. He wasn't in trouble. Mrs. Harold thought taking in the blind man was her idea. He figured he could put up with the bastard another couple hours, then he'd find him a place to stay. Some homeless shelter with a cot and some hot soup if he wanted it. Maybe some preaching and breakfast before he had to hit the road.

At the house, Mrs. Harold met them at the door. Her little round body practically bounced. She found the blind man's hand and shook it. She told him how sorry she was, and he dropped his head and looked sad and thanked her. When they were inside, he said, "Is that cornbread I smell?"

"Yes it is," Mrs. Harold said, "and it won't be no time till it's ready. And we're having pinto beans with it. The beans were cooked yesterday and just need heating. They taste best when they've set a night."

"That's what burned his trailer down," the boy said. "He was cooking some pinto beans and forget 'em."

"Oh my," said Mrs. Harold, "I hope the beans won't bring back sad memories."

"No ma'am, them was limas I was cookin'."

"There was dogs in there and a parakeet," said the boy. "They got burned up too. There wasn't nothing left but some burnt wood and a piece of a couch and an old bird cage."

"I have some insurance papers in a deposit box downtown," the blind man said. "I could probably get me a couple of double-wides and have enough left over for a vacation with the money I'll get. I could get me some dogs and a bird easy enough too. I could even name them the same names as the ones burned up."

They sat and visited for a while in the living room while the cornbread cooked and the beans warmed up. The blind man and Mrs. Harold talked about religion. The blind man knew her favorite gospel tunes and sang a couple of them. Not too good, Mr. Harold thought, but Mrs. Harold seemed almost swoony.

The blind man knew her Sunday preaching programs too, and they talked about a few highlighted TV sermons. They debated the parables in the Bible and ended up discussing important and obscure points in the scripture, discovered the two of them saw things a lot alike when it came to interpretation. They had found dire warnings in Deuteronomy that scholars had overlooked.

Mrs. Harold got so lathered up with enthusiasm, she went into the kitchen and started throwing an apple pie together. Mr. Harold became nervous as soon as the pie pans began to rattle. This wasn't like her: She only cooked a pie to take to relatives after someone died or if it was Christmas or Thanksgiving and more than ten people were coming.

While she cooked, the blind man discussed wrestling holds with Mr. Harold's son. When dinner was ready, the blind man was positioned in Mr. Harold's chair, next to Mrs. Harold. They ate, and the blind man and Mrs. Harold further discussed scripture, and from time to time, the blind man would stop the religious talk long enough to give the boy a synopsis of some wrestling match or another. He had a way of cleverly turning the conversation without seeming to. He wasn't nearly as clever about passing the beans or the cornbread. The apple pie remained strategically guarded by his elbow.

After a while, the topic switched from the Bible and wrestling to the blind man's aches and miseries. He was overcome with them. There wasn't a thing that could be wrong with a person he didn't have.

Mrs. Harold used this conversational opportunity to complain about hip problems, hypoglycemia, overactive thyroids, and out-of-control sweat glands.

The blind man had a tip or two on how to make living with each of Mrs. Harold's complaints more congenial. Mrs. Harold said, "Well, sir, there's just not a thing you don't know something about. From wrestling to medicine."

The blind man nodded. "I try to keep up. I read a lot of braille and listen to the TV and the radio. They criticize the TV, but they shouldn't. I get lots of my education there. I can learn from just about anything or anyone but a nigger."

Mrs. Harold, much to Mr. Harold's chagrin, agreed. This was a side of his wife he had never known. She had opinions and he hadn't known that. Stupid opinions, but opinions.

When Mr. Harold finally left the table, pieless, to hide out in the bathroom, the blind man and Mrs. Harold were discussing a plan for getting all the black folk back to Africa. Something to do with the number of boats necessary and the amount of proper hygiene needed.

And speaking of hygiene, Mr. Harold stood up as his bottom became wet. He had been sitting on the lid of the toilet and dampness had soaked through his pants. The blind man had been in the bathroom last and he'd pissed all over the lowered lid and splattered the wall.

Mr. Harold changed clothes and cleaned up the piss and washed his hands and splashed his face and looked at himself in the mirror. It was still him in there and he was awake.

About ten P.M. Mrs. Harold and the blind man put the boy to bed and the blind man sang the kid a rockabilly song, told him a couple of nigger jokes and one kike joke, and tucked him in.

Mr. Harold went in to see the boy, but he was asleep. The blind man and Mrs. Harold sat on the couch and talked about chicken and dumpling recipes and how to clean squirrels properly for frying. Mr. Harold sat in a chair and listened, hoping for some opening in the conversation into which he could spring. None presented itself.

Finally Mrs. Harold got the blind man some bedclothes and folded out the couch and told him a pleasant good night, touching the blind man's arm as she did. Mr. Harold noted she left her hand there quite a while.

In bed, Mr. Harold, hoping to prove to himself he was still man of the house, rolled over and put his arm around Mrs. Harold's hip. She had gotten dressed and gotten into bed in record time while he was taking a leak, and now she was feigning sleep, but Mr. Harold decided he wasn't going to go for it. He rubbed her ass and tried to work his hand between her legs from behind. He touched what he wanted, but it was as dry as a ditch in the Sahara.

Mrs. Harold pretended to wake up. She was mad. She said he ought to let a woman sleep, and didn't he think about anything else? Mr. Harold admitted that sex was a foremost thought of his, but he knew now nothing he said would matter. Neither humor nor flattery would work. He would not only go pieless this night, he would go assless as well.

Mrs. Harold began to explain how one of her mysterious headaches with back pain had descended on her. Arthritis might be the culprit, she said, though sometimes she suspicioned something more mysterious and deadly. Perhaps something incurable that would eventually involve large leaking sores and a deep coma.

Mr. Harold, frustrated, closed his eyes and tried to go to sleep with a hard-on. He couldn't understand, having had so much experience now, why it was so difficult for him to just forget his boner and go to bed, but it was, as always, a trial.

Finally, after making a trip to the bathroom to work his pistol and plunk its stringy wet bullet into the toilet water, he was able to go back to bed and drift off into an unhappy sleep.

A few hours later he awoke. He heard a noise like girlish laughter. He lay in bed and listened. It was in fact, laughter, and it was coming from the living room. The blind man must have the TV on. But then he recognized the laughter. It hadn't come to him right away, because it had been ages since he had heard it. He reached for Mrs. Harold and she was gone.

He got out of bed and opened the bedroom door and crept quietly down the hall. There was a soft light on in the living room; it was the lamp on the TV muted by a white towel.

On the couch-bed was the blind man, wearing only his underwear and dark glasses. Mrs. Harold was on the bed too. She was wearing her nightie. The blind man was on top of her and they were pressed close. Mrs. Harold's hand sneaked over the blind's man's back and slid into his underwear and cupped his ass.

Mr. Harold let out his breath, and Mrs. Harold turned her head and saw him. She gave a little cry and rolled out from under the blind man. She laughed hysterically. "Why, honey, you're up."

The blind man explained immediately. They had been practicing a wrestling hold, one of the more complicated, and not entirely legal ones, that involved grabbing the back of an opponent's tights. Mrs. Harold admitted, that as of tonight, she had been overcome with a passion for wrestling and was going to watch all the wrestling programs from now on. She thanked the blind man for the wrestling lesson and shook his hand and went past Mr. Harold and back to bed.

Mr. Harold stood looking at the blind man. He was on the couch on all fours looking in Mr. Harold's direction. The muted light from the towel-covered lamp hit the blind man's dark glasses and made them shine like the eyes of a wolf. His bared teeth completed the image.

Mr. Harold went back to bed. Mrs. Harold snuggled close. She wanted to be friendly. She ran her hand over his chest and down his belly and held his equipment, but he was as soft as a sock. She worked him a little and finally he got hard in spite of himself. They rolled together and did what he wanted to do earlier. For the first time in years, Mrs. Harold got off. She came with a squeak and thrust of her hips, and Mr. Harold knew that behind her closed eyes she saw a pale face and dark glasses, not him.

Later, he lay in bed and stared at the ceiling. Mrs. Harold's pussy had been as wet as a fish farm after her encounter with the blind man, wetter than he remembered it in years. What was it about the blind man that excited her? He was a racist cracker asshole who really knew nothing. He didn't have a job. He couldn't even work a weed-eater that good.

Mr. Harold felt fear. What he had here at home wasn't all that good, but he realized now he might lose it, and it was probably the best he could do. Even if his wife's conversation was as dull as the Republican convention and his son was as interesting as needlework, his home life took on a new and desperate importance. Something had to be done.

Next day, Mr. Harold got a break. The blind man made a comment about his love for snow cones. It was made while they were sitting alone in the kitchen. Mrs. Harold was in the shower and the boy was playing Nintendo in the living room. The blind man was rattling on like always. Last night rang no guilty bells for him.

"You know," said Mr. Harold, "I like a good snow cone myself. One of those blue ones."

"Oh yeah, that's coconut," said the blind man.

"What you say you and me go get one?"

"Ain't it gonna be lunch soon? I don't want to spoil my appetite."

"A cone won't spoil nothing. Come on, my treat."

The blind man was a little uncertain, but Mr. Harold could tell the idea of a free snow cone was strong within him. He let Mr. Harold lead him out to the car. Mr. Harold began to tremble with anticipation. He drove toward town, but when he got there, he drove on through.

"I thought you said the stand was close?" said the blind man. "Ain't we been driving a while?"

"Well, it's Sunday, and that one I was thinking of was closed. I know one cross the way stays open seven days a week during the summer."

Mr. Harold drove out into the country. He drove off the main highway and down a red clay road and pulled over to the side near a gap where irresponsibles dumped their garbage. He got out and went around to the blind man's side and took the blind man's arm and led him away from the car toward a pile of garbage. Flies hummed operative notes in the late morning air.

"We're in luck," Mr. Harold said. "Ain't no one here but us."

"Yeah, well it don't smell so good around here. Somethin' dead somewheres?"

"There's a cat hit out there on the highway."

"I'm kinda losin' my appetite for a cone."

"It'll come back soon as you put that cone in your mouth. Besides, we'll eat in the car."

Mr. Harold placed the blind man directly in front of a bag of household garbage. "You stand right here. Tell me what you want and I'll get it."

"I like a strawberry. Double on the juice."

"Strawberry it is."

Mr. Harold walked briskly back to his car, cranked it, and drove by the blind man who cocked his head as the automobile passed. Mr. Harold drove down a ways, turned around and drove back the way he had come. The blind man still stood by the _garbage_ heap, his cane looped over his wrist, only now he was facing the road.

Mr. Harold honked the horn as he drove past.

Just before reaching the city limits, a big black pickup began to make ominous manueuvers. The pickup was behind him and was riding his bumper. Mr. Harold tried to speed up, but that didn't work. He tried slowing down, but the truck nearly ran up his ass. He decided to pull to the side, but the truck wouldn't pass.

Eventually, Mr. Harold coasted to the emergency lane and stopped, but the truck pulled up behind him and two burly men got out. They looked as if the last bath they'd had was during the last rain, probably caught out in it while pulp wooding someone's posted land.

Mr. Harold assumed it was all some dreadful mistake. He got out of the car so they could see he wasn't who they thought he must be. The biggest one walked up to him and grabbed him behind the head with one hand and hit him with the other. The smaller man, smaller because his head seemed undersized, took his turn and hit Mr. Harold. The two men began to work on him. He couldn't fall down because the car held him up, and for some reason he couldn't pass out. These guys weren't as fast as Sonny Guy, and they weren't knocking him out, but they certainly hurt more.

"What kinda fella are you that would leave a blind man beside the road?" said the bigger man just before he busted Mr. Harold a good one in the nose.

Mr. Harold finally hit the ground. The small-headed man kicked him in the balls and the bigger man kicked him in the mouth, knocking out what was left of his front teeth; the man's fist had already stolen the others. When Mr. Harold was close to passing out, the small-headed man bent down and got hold of Mr. Harold's hair and looked him in the eye and said, "We hadn't been throwing out an old stray dog down that road, that fella might have got lost or hurt."

"He's much more resourceful than you think," Mr. Harold said, realizing who they meant, and then the small-headed man hit him a short chopping blow.

"I'm glad we seen him," said the bigger man, "and I'm glad we caught up with you. You just think you've took a beating. We're just getting started."

But at that moment the blind man appeared above Mr. Harold. He had found his way from the truck to the car, directed by the sound of the beating most likely. "No, boys," said the blind man, "that's good enough. I ain't the kind holds a grudge, even 'gainst a man would do what he did. I've had some theology training and done a little Baptist ministering. Holding a grudge ain't my way."

"Well, you're a good one," said the bigger man. "I ain't like that at all. I was blind and I was told I was gonna get a snow cone and a fella put me out at a garbage dump, I'd want that fella dead, or crippled up at the least."

"I understand," said the blind man. "It's hard to believe there's people like this in the world. But if you'll just drive me home, that'll be enough. I'd like to get on the way if it's no inconvenience. I have a little Bible lesson in braille I'd like to study."

They went away and left Mr. Harold lying on the highway beside his car. As they drove by, the pickup tires tossed gravel on him and the exhaust enveloped him like a foul cotton sack.

Mr. Harold got up after five minutes and got inside his car and fell across the seat and lay there. He couldn't move. He spat out a tooth. His balls hurt. His face hurt. For that matter, his kneecaps where they'd kicked him didn't feel all that good either.

After an hour or so, Mr. Harold began to come around. An intense hatred for the blind man boiled up in his stomach. He sat up and started the car and headed home.

When he turned on his road, he was nearly sideswiped by a yellow moving van. It came at him so hard and fast he swerved into a ditch filled with sand and got his right rear tire stuck. He couldn't drive the car out. More he worked at it, the deeper the back tire spun in the sand. He got his jack out of the trunk and cranked up the rear end and put debris under the tire. Bad as he felt, it was quite a job. He finally drove out of there, and off the jack, leaving it lying in the dirt.

When he got to his house, certain in his heart the blind man was inside, he parked next to Mrs. Harold's station wagon. The station wagon was stuffed to the gills with boxes and sacks. He wondered what that was all about, but he didn't wonder too hard. He looked around the yard for a weapon. Out by the side of the house was the blind man's weed-eater. That would do. He figured he caught the blind man a couple of licks with that, he could get him down on the ground and finish him, stun him before the sonofabitch applied a wrestling hold.

He went in the house by the back door with the weed-eater cocked, and was astonished to find the room was empty. The kitchen table and chairs were gone. The cabinet doors were open and all the canned goods were missing. Where the stove had set was a greasy spot. Where the refrigerator had set was a wet spot. A couple of roaches, feeling brave and free to roam, scuttled across the kitchen floor as merry as kids on skates.

The living room was empty too. Not only of people, but furniture and roaches. The rest of the house was the same. Dust motes spun in the light. The front door was open.

Outside, Mr. Harold heard a car door slam. He limped out the front door and saw the station wagon. His wife was behind the wheel, and sitting next to her was the boy, and beside him the blind man, his arm hanging out the open window.

Mr. Harold beckoned to them by waving the weed-eater, but they ignored him. Mrs. Harold backed out of the drive quickly. Mr. Harold could hear the blind man talking to the boy about something or another and the boy was laughing. The station wagon turned onto the road and the car picked up speed. Mr. Harold went slack and leaned on the weed-eater for support.

At the moment before the station wagon passed in front of a line of high shurbs, the blind man turned to look out the window, and Mr. Harold saw his own reflection in the blind man's glasses.

THE FAT MAN AND THE ELEPHANT

The signs were set in relay and went on for miles. The closer you got to the place the bigger they became. They were so enthusiastic in size and brightness of paint it might be thought you were driving to heaven and God had posted a sure route so you wouldn't miss it. They read:

WORLD'S LARGEST GOPHER!

ODDITIES!

SEE THE SNAKES! SEE THE ELEPHANT!

SOUVENIRS!

BUTCH'S HIGHWAY MUSEUM AND EMPORIUM!

But Sonny knew he wasn't driving to heaven. Butch's was far from heaven and he didn't want to see anything but the elephant. He had been to the Museum and Emporium many times, and the first time was enough for the sights -- because there weren't any.

The World's Largest Gopher was six feet tall and inside a fenced-in enclosure. It cost you two dollars on top of the dollar admission fee to get in there and have a peek at it and feel like a jackass. The gopher was a statue, and it wasn't even a good statue. It looked more like a dog standing on its haunches than a gopher. It had a strained, constipated look on its homely face, and one of its two front teeth had been chipped off by a disappointed visitor with a rock.

The snake show wasn't any better. Couple of dead, stuffed rattlers with the rib bones sticking through their taxidermied hides, and one live, but about to go, cottonmouth who didn't have any fangs and looked a lot like a deflated bicycle tire when it was coiled and asleep. Which was most of the time. You couldn't wake the sonofabitch if you beat on the glass with a rubber hose and yelled FIRE!

There were two main souvenirs. One was the armadillo purses, and the other was a miniature statue of the gopher with a little plaque on it that read: I SAW THE WORLD'S LARGEST GOPHER AT HUTCH'S HIGHWAY MUSEUM AND EMPORIUM OFF HIGHWAY 59. And the letters were so crowded on there you had to draw mental slashes between the words. They sold for a dollar fifty apiece and they moved right smart. In fact, Butch made more money on those (75C/ profit per statue) than he did on anything else, except the cold drinks which he marked up a quarter. When you were hot from a long drive and irritated about actually seeing the World's Largest Gopher, you tended to spend money foolishly on soda waters and gopher statues.

Or armadillo purses. The armadillos came from Hank's Armadillo Farm and Hank was the one that killed them and scooped their guts out and made purses from them. He lacquered the bodies and painted them gold and tossed glitter in the paint before it dried. The 'dillos were quite bright and had little zippers fixed into their bellies and a rope handle attached to their necks and tails so you could carry them upside down with their sad, little feet pointing skyward.

Dutch's wife had owned several of the purses. One Fourth of July she and the week's receipts had turned up missing along with one of her 'dillo bags. She and the purse and the receipts were never seen again. Elrod down at the Gull station disappeared too. Astute observers said there was a connection.

But Sonny came to see the elephant, not buy souvenirs or look at dead snakes and statues. The elephant was different from the rest of Butch's stuff. It was special.

It wasn't that it was beautiful, because it wasn't. It was in bad shape. It could hardly even stand up. But the first time Sonny had seen it, he had fallen in love with it. Not in the romantic sense, but in the sense of two great souls encountering one another. Sonny came back time after time to see it when he needed inspiration, which of late, with the money dwindling and his preaching services not bringing in the kind of offerings he thought they should, was quite often.

Sonny wheeled his red Chevy pickup with the GOD LOVES EVEN FOOLS LIKE ME sticker on the back windshield through the gate of Butch's and paid his dollar for admission, plus two dollars to see the elephant.

Butch was sitting at the window of the little ticket house as usual. He was toothless and also wore a greasy, black work cap, though Sonny couldn't figure where the grease came from. He had never known Butch to do any kind of work, let alone something greasy -- unless you counted the serious eating of fried chicken. Butch just sat there in the window of the little house in his zip-up coveralls (summer or winter) and let Levis Garrett snuff drip down his chin while he played with a pencil or watched a fly dive bomb a jelly doughnut. He seldom talked, unless it was to argue about money. He didn't even like to tell you how much admission was. It was like it was some secret you were supposed to know, and when he did finally reveal it, was as if he had given up part of his heart.

Sonny drove his pickup over to the big barn where the elephant stayed, got out and went inside.

Candy, the ancient clean-up nigger, was shoving some dirt around with a push broom, stirring up dust mostly. When Candy saw Sonny wobble in, his eyes lit up.

"Hello there, Mr. Sonny. You done come to see your elephant, ain't you?"

"Yeah, I have," Sonny said.

"That's good, that's good." Candy looked over Sonny's shoulder at the entrance, then glanced at the back of the barn. "That's good, and you right on time too, like you always is."

Candy held out his hand.

Sonny slipped a five into it and Candy folded it carefully and put it in the front pocket of his faded khakis, gave it a pat like a good dog, then swept up the length of the barn. When he got to the open door, he stood there watching, waiting for Mr. Butch to go to lunch, like he did every day at eleven-thirty sharp.

And sure enough, there he went in his black Ford pickup out the gate of Butch's Museum and Emporium. Then came the sound of the truck stopping and the gate being locked. Butch closed the whole thing down every day for lunch rather than leave it open for the nigger to tend. Anyone inside the Emporium at that time was just shit out of luck. They were trapped there until Butch came back from lunch thirty minutes later, unless they wanted to go over the top or ram the gate with their vehicle.

It wasn't a real problem however. Customers seldom showed up mid-day, dead of summer. They didn't seem to want to see the World's Largest Gopher at lunch time.

Which was why Sonny liked to come when he did. He and Candy had an arrangement.

When Candy heard Butch's truck clattering up the highway, he dropped the broom, came back and led Sonny over to the elephant stall.

"He in this one today, Mr. Sonny."

Candy took out a key and unlocked the chainlink gate that led inside the stall and Sonny stepped inside and Candy said what he always said. "I ain't supposed to do this now. You supposed to do all your looking through this gate." Then, without waiting for a reply he closed the gate behind Sonny and leaned on it.

The elephant was lying on its knees and it stirred slightly. Its skin creaked like tight shoes and its breathing was heavy.

"You wants the usual, Mr. Sonny?"

"Does it have to be so hot this time? Ain't it hot enough in here already?"

"It can be anyway you wants it, Mr. Sonny, but if you wants to do it right, it's got to be hot. You know I'm telling the truth now, don't you?"

"Yeah . . . but it's so hot."

"Don't do no good if it ain't, Mr. Sonny. Now we got to get these things done before Mr. Butch comes back. He ain't one for spir'tual things. That Mr. Butch ain't like you and me. He just wants that dollar. You get that stool and sit yourself down, and I'll be back dreckly, Mr. Sonny."

Sonny sat the stool upright and perched his ample butt on it, smelled the elephant shit and studied the old pachyderm. The critter didn't look as if it had a lot of time left, and Sonny wanted to get all the wisdom from it he could.

The elephant's skin was mottled grey and more wrinkled than a bloodhound's. Its tusks had been cut off short years before and they had turned a ripe lemon yellow, except for the jagged tips, and they were the color of dung. Its eyes were skummy and it seldom stood anymore, not even to shit. Therefore, its flanks were caked with it. Flies had collected in the mess like raisins spread thickly on rank chocolate icing. When the old boy made a feeble attempt to slap at them with his tail, they rose up en masse like bad omens.

Candy changed the hay the elephant lay on now and then, but not often enough to rid the stall of the stink. With the heat like it was, and the barn being made of tin and old oak, it clung to the structure and the elephant even when the bedding was fresh and the beast had been hosed down. But that was all right with Sonny. He had come to associate the stench with God.

The elephant was God's special animal -- shit smell and all. God had created the creature in the same way he had created everything else -- with a wave of his majestic hand (Sonny always imagined the hand bejeweled with rings). But God had given the elephant something special -- which seemed fair to Sonny, since he had put the poor creature in the land of crocodiles and niggers -- and that special something was wisdom.

Sonny had learned of this from Candy. He figured since Candy was born of niggers who came from Africa, he knew about elephants. Sonny reasoned that elephant love was just the sort of information niggers would pass down to one another over the years. They probably passed along other stuff that wasn't of importance too, like the best bones for your nose and how to make wooden dishes you could put inside your lips so you could flap them like Donald Duck. But the stuff on the elephants would be the good stuff.

He was even more certain of this when Candy told him on his first visit to see the elephant that the critter was most likely his totem. Candy had taken one look at him and said that. It surprised Sonny a bit that Candy would even consider such things. He seemed like a plain old clean-up nigger to him. In fact, he had hired Candy to work for him before. The sort of work you wanted a nigger to do, hot and dirty. He'd found Candy to be slow and lazy and at the end of the day he had almost denied him the two dollars he'd promised. He could hardly see that he'd earned it. In fact, he'd gotten the distinct impression that Candy was getting uppity in his old age and thought he deserved a white man's wages.

But, lazy or not, Candy did have wisdom -- least when it came to elephants. When Candy told him he thought the elephant was his totem, Sonny asked how he had come by that, and Candy said, "You big and the elephant is big, and you both tough-hided and just wise as Old Methusla. And you can attract them gals just like an ole bull elephant can attract them elephant females, now can't you? Don't lie to Candy now, you know you can."

This was true. All of it. And the only way Candy could have known about it was to know he was like the elephant and the elephant was his totem. And the last thing about attracting the women, well, that was the thing above all that convinced him that the nigger knew his business.

Course, even though he had this ability to attract the women, he had never put it to bad use. That wouldn't be God's way. Some preachers, men of God or not, would have taken advantage of such a gift, but not him. That wouldn't be right.

It did make him wonder about Louise though. Since the Lord had seen fit to give him this gift, why in the world had he ended up with her? What was God's master plan there? She was a right nice Christian woman on the inside, but the outside looked like a four car pileup. She could use some work.

He couldn't remember what it was that had attracted him to her in the first place. He had even gone so far as to look at old pictures of them together to see if she had gotten ugly slowly. But no, she'd always been that way. He finally had to blame his choice on being a drinking man in them days and a sinner. But now, having lost his liquor store business, and having sobered to God's will and gotten a little money (though that was dwindling), he could see her for what she was.

Fat and ugly.

There, he'd thought it clearly. But he did like her. He knew that. There was something so wonderfully Christian about her. She could recite from heart dozens of Bible verses, and he'd heard her give good argument against them that thought white man came from monkey, and a better argument that the nigger did. But he wished God had packaged her a little better. Like in the body of his next-door neighbor's wife for instance. Now there was a Godly piece of work.

It seemed to him, a man like himself, destined for great things in God's arena, ought to at least have a wife who could turn heads toward her instead of away from her. A woman like that could help a man go far.

There wasn't any denying that Louise had been a big help. When he married her she had all that insurance money, most of which they'd used to buy their place and build a church on it. But the settlement was almost run through now, and thinking on it, he couldn't help but think Louise had gotten cheated.

Seemed to him that if your first husband got kicked to death by a wild lunatic that the nut house let out that very afternoon calling him cured, they ought to have to fork up enough money to take care of the man's widow for the rest of her life. And anyone she might remarry, especially if that person had some medical problems, like a trick back, and couldn't get regular work anymore.

Still, they had managed what she had well; had gotten some real mileage out of the four hundred thousand. There was the land and the house and the church and the four hundred red-jacketed, leatherette Bibles that read in gold, gilt letters on the front: THE MASTER'S OWN BAPTIST MINISTRIES INC., SONNY GUY OFFICIATING. And there were some little odds and ends here and there he couldn't quite recall. But he felt certain not a penny had been wasted. Well, maybe those seven thousand bumper stickers they bought that said GO JESUS on them was a mistake. They should have made certain that the people who made them were going to put glue on the backs so they'd stick to something. Most folks just wouldn't go to the trouble to tape them on the bumpers and back glasses of their automobiles, and therefore weren't willing to put out four-fifty per sticker.

But that was all right. Mistakes were to be expected in a big enterprise. Even if it was for God, The Holy Ghost, and The Lord Jesus Crucified.

Yet things weren't going right, least not until he started visiting the elephant. Now he had him some guidance and there was this feeling he had that told him it was all going to pay off. That through this creature of the Lord he was about to learn God's grandiose plan for his future. And when he did learn it, he was going to start seeing those offering plates (a bunch of used hubcaps bought cheap from the wrecking yard) fill up with some serious jack.

Candy came back with the electric heater, extension cord and tarp. He had a paper bag in one back pocket, his harmonica in the other. He looked toward the entrance, just in case Butch should decide for the first time in his life to come back early.

But no Butch.

Candy smiled and opened the stall's gate.

"Here we go, Mr. Sonny, you ready to get right with God and the elephant?"

Sonny took hold of the tarp and pulled it over his head and Candy came in and found places to attach all four corners to the fence near the ground and draped it over the old elephant who squeaked its skin and turned its head ever so slightly and rolled its goo-filled eyes.

"Now you just keep you seat, Mr. Bull Elephant," Candy said, "and we all gonna be happy and ain't none of us gonna get trampled."

Candy stooped back past Sonny on his stool and crawled out from under the tarp and let it fall down Sonny's back to the ground. He got the electric heater and pushed it under the tarp next to Sonny's stool, then he took the extension cord and went around and plugged it into one of the barn's deadly-looking wall sockets. He went back to the tarp and lifted it up and said to Sonny, "You can turn it on now, Mr. Sonny. It's all set up."

Sonny sighed and turned the heater on. The grill work went pink, then red, and the fan in the machine began to whirl, blowing the heat at him.

Candy, who still had his face under the tarp, said. "You got to lean over it now to get the full effects, Mr. Sonny. Get that heat on you good. Get just as hot as a nigger field hand."

"I know," Sonny said. "I remember how to do it."

"I knows you do, Mr. Sonny. You great for remembering, like an elephant. It heating up in there good?"

"Yeah."

"Real hot?"

"Yeah."

"That's good. Make you wonder how anyone wouldn't want to do good and stay out of hell, don't it, Mr. Sonny? I mean it's hotter under here than when I used to work out in that hot sun for folks like you, and I bet when I drop this here tarp it just gonna get hotter, and then that heat and that stink gonna build up in there and things gonna get right for you . . . here's you paper bag."

Candy took the bag out of his back pocket and gave it to Sonny. "Remember now," Candy said, "when you get good and full of that shit-smell and that heat, you put this bag over you face and you start blowing like you trying to push a grapefruit through a straw. That gonna get you right for the ole elephant spirit to get inside you and do some talking at you cause it's gonna be hot as Africa and you gonna be out of breath just like niggers dancing to drums, and that's how it's got to be."

"Ain't I done this enough to know, Candy?"

"Yes suh, you have. Just like to earns my five dollars and see a good man get right with God."

Candy's head disappeared from beneath the tarp and when the tarp hit the ground it went dark in there except for the little red lines of the heater grate, and for a moment all Sonny could see was the lumpy shape of the elephant and the smaller lumps of his own knees. He could hear the elephant's labored breathing and his own labored breathing. Outside, Candy began to play nigger music on the harmonica. It filtered into the hot tent and the notes were fire ants crawling over his skin and under his overalls. The sweat rolled down him like goat berries.

After a moment, Candy began to punctuate the harmonica notes with singing. "Sho gonna hate it when the elephant dies. Hot in here, worse than outside, and I'm sho gonna hate it when the elephant dies." A few notes on the harmonica. "Yes suh, gonna be bad when the pachyderm's dead, ain't gonna have five dollars to buy Coalie's bed." More notes. "Come on brother can you feel the heat. I'm calling to you Jesus, cross my street."

Sonny put the bag over his face and began to blow viciously. He was blowing so hard he thought he would knock the bottom out of the bag, but that didn't happen. He grew dizzy, very dizzy, felt stranger than the times before. The harmonica notes and singing were far away and he felt like a huge hunk of ice cream melting on a hot stone. Then he didn't feel the heat anymore. He was flying. Below him the ribs of the heater were little rivers of molten lava and he was falling toward them from a great height. Then the rivers were gone. There was only darkness and the smell of elephant shit, and finally that went away and he sat on his stool on a sunny landscape covered in tall grass. But he and his stool were taller than the grass, tall as an elephant itself. He could see scrubby trees in the distance and mountains and to the left of him was a blue-green line of jungle from which came the constant and numerous sounds of animals. Birds soared overhead in a sky bluer than a jay's feathers. The air was as fresh as a baby's first breath.

There was a dot in the direction of the mountains and the dot grew and became silver-grey and there was a wink of white on either side of it. The dot became an elephant and the closer it came the more magnificent it looked, its skin tight and grey and its tusks huge and long and porcelain-white. A fire sprang up before the elephant and the grass blazed in a long, hot line from the beast to the stool where Sonny sat. The elephant didn't slow. It kept coming. The fire didn't bother it. The blaze wrapped around its massive legs and licked at its belly like a lover's tongue. Then the elephant stood before him and they were eye to eye; the tusks extended over Sonny's shoulders. The trunk reached out and touched his cheek; it was as soft as a woman's lips.

The smell of elephant shit filled the air and the light went dark and another smell intruded, the smell of burning flesh. Sonny felt pain. He let out a whoop. He had fallen off the stool on top of the heater and the heater had burned his chest above the bib of his overalls.

There was light again. Candy had ripped off the tarp and was pulling him up and sitting him on the stool and righting the electric heater. "Now there, Mr. Sonny, you ain't on fire no more. You get home you get you some shaving cream and put on them burns, that'll make you feel right smart again. Did you have a good trip?"

"Africa again, Candy," Sonny said, the hot day air feeling cool to him after the rancid heat beneath the tarp. "And this time I saw the whole thing. It was all clearer than before and the elephant came all the way up to me."

"Say he did?" Candy said, looking toward the barn door.

"Yeah, and I had a revelation."

"That's good you did, Mr. Sonny. I was afraid you wasn't gonna have it before Mr. Butch come back. You gonna have to get out of here now. You know how Mr. Butch is, 'specially since his wife done run off with that ole 'diller purse and the money that time. Ain't been a fit man to take a shit next to since."

Candy helped Sonny to his feet and guided him out of the stall and leaned him against it.

"A firewalking elephant," Sonny said. "Soon as I seen it, it come to me what it all meant."

"I'm sho glad of that, Mr. Sonny."

Candy looked toward the open door to watch for Butch. He then stepped quickly into the stall, jammed the paper bag in his back pocket and folded up the tarp and put it under his arm and picked the heater up by the handle and carried it out, the cord dragging behind it. He sat the tarp and the heater down and closed the gate and locked it. He looked at the elephant. Except for a slight nodding of its head it looked dead.

Candy got hold of the tarp and the heater again and put them in their place. He had no more than finished when he heard Butch's truck pulling up to the gate. He went over to Sonny and took him by the arm and smiled at him and said, "It sho been a pleasure having you, and the elephant done went and gave you one of them rav'lations too. And the best one yet, you say?"

"It was a sign from God," Sonny said.

"God's big on them signs. He's always sending someone a sign or a bush on fire or a flood or some such thing, ain't he, Mr. Sonny?"

"He's given me a dream to figure on, and in that dream he's done told me some other things he ain't never told any them other preachers."

"That's nice of him, Mr. Sonny. He don't talk to just everyone. It's the elephant connection does it."

Butch drove through the open gate and parked his truck in the usual spot and started for the ticket booth. He had the same forward trudge he always had, like he was pushing against a great wind and not thinking it was worth it.

"The Lord has told me to expand the minds of Baptists," Sonny said.

"That's a job he's given you, Mr. Sonny."

"There is another path from the one we've been taking. Oh, some of the Baptist talk is all right, but God had shown me that firewalking is the correct way to get right with the holy spirit."

"Like walking on coals and stuff?"

"That's what I mean."

"You gonna walk on coals, Mr. Sonny?"

"I am."

"I'd sho like to see that, Mr. Sonny, I really would."

Candy led Sonny out to the pickup and Sonny opened the door and climbed in, visions of firewalking Baptists trucking through his head.

"You gonna do this with no shoes on?" Candy asked, closing the pickup door for Sonny.

"It wouldn't be right to wear shoes. That would be cheating. It wouldn't have a purpose."

"Do you feet a mite better."

Sonny wasn't listening. He found the keys in his overalls and touched the red furrows on his chest that the heater had made. He was proud of them. They were a sign from God. They were like the trenches of fire he would build for his Baptists. He would teach them to walk the trenches and open their hearts and souls and trust their feet to Jesus. And not mind putting a little something extra in the offering plate. People would get so excited he could move those red leatherette Bibles.

"Lord be praised," Sonny said.

"Ain't that the truth," Candy said.

Sonny backed the truck around and drove out of the gate onto the highway. He felt like Moses must have felt when he was chosen to lead the Jews out of the wilderness. But he had been chosen instead to lead the Baptists into a new way of Salvation by forming a firewalking branch of the Baptist church. He smiled and leaned over the steering wheel, letting it touch the hot wounds on his chest. Rows of rich converts somewhere beyond the horizon of his mind stepped briskly through trenches of hot coals, smiling.

THE PHONE WOMAN

Journal Entries

A week to remember . . .

After this, my little white page friend, you shall have greater security, kept under not only lock and key, but you will have a hiding place. If I were truly as smart as I sometimes think I am, I wouldn't write this down. I know better. But, I am compelled.

Compulsion. It comes out of nowhere and owns us all. We put a suit and tie and hat on the primitive part of our brain and call it manners and civilization, but ultimately, it's just a suit and tie and a hat. The primitive brain is still primitive, and it compels, pulses to the same dark beat that made our less civilized ancestors and the primordial ooze before them throb to simple, savage rhythms of sex, death and destruction.

Our nerves call out to us to touch and taste life, and without our suits of civilization, we can do that immediately. Take what we need if we've muscle enough. Will enough. But all dressed up in the trappings of civilization, we're forced to find our thrills vicariously. And eventually, that is not enough. Controlling our impulses that way is like having someone eat your food for you. No taste. No texture. No nourishment. Pitiful business.

Without catering to the needs of our primitive brains, without feeding impulses, trying instead to get what we need through books and films and the lives of the more adventurous, we cease to live. We wither. We bore ourselves and others. We die. And are glad of it.

Whatcha gonna do, huh?

* * *

Saturday morning, June 10th through Saturday 17th:

I haven't written in a while, so I'll cover a few days, beginning with a week ago today.

It was one of those mornings when I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, feeling a little out of sorts, mad at the wife over something I've forgotten and she probably hasn't forgotten, and we grumbled down the hall, into the kitchen, and there's our dog, a Siberian Husky -- my wife always refers to him as a Suburban Husky because of his pampered lifestyle, though any resemblance to where we live and suburbia requires a great deal of faith -- and he's smiling at us, and then we see why he's smiling.

Two reasons:

(1) He's happy to see us. (2) He feels a little guilty.

He has reason to feel guilty. Not far behind him, next to the kitchen table, was a pile of shit. I'm not talking your casual little whoopsie-doo, and I'm not talking your inconvenient pile, and I'm not talking six to eight turds the size of large bananas. I'm talking a certified, pure-dee, goddamn prize-winning SHIT. There were enough dog turds there to shovel out in a pickup truck and dump on the lawn and let dry so you could use them to build an adobe hut big enough to keep your tools in and have room to house your cat in the winter.

And, right beside this sterling deposit, was a lake of piss wide enough and deep enough to go rowing on.

I had visions of a Siberian Husky hat and slippers, or possibly a nice throw rug for the bedroom, a necklace of dog claws and teeth; maybe cut that smile right out of his face and frame it.

But the dog-lover in me took over, and I put him outside in his pen where he cooled his dewclaws for a while. Then I spent about a half-hour cleaning up dog shit while my wife spent the same amount of time keeping our two-year-old son, Kevin, known to me as Fruit of My Loins, out of the shit.

Yep, Oh Great White Page of a Diary, he was up now. It always works that way. In times of greatest stress, in times of greatest need for contemplation or privacy, like when you're trying to get that morning piece off the Old Lady, the kid shows up, and suddenly it's as if you've been deposited inside an ant farm and the ants are crawling and stinging. By the time I finished cleaning up the mess, it was time for breakfast, and I got to tell you, I didn't want anything that looked like link sausage that morning.

So Janet and I ate, hoping that what we smelled while eating was the aroma of disinfectant and not the stench of shit wearing a coat of disinfectant, and we watched the kid spill his milk eighty-lebben times and throw food and drop stuff on the floor, and me and the wife we're fussing at each other more and more, about whatever it was we were mad about that morning -- a little item intensified by our dog's deposits -- and by the time we're through eating our meal, and Janet leaves me with Fruit of My Loins and his View Master and goes out to the laundry room to do what the room is named for -- probably went out there to beat the laundry clean with rocks or bricks, pretending shirts and pants were my head -- I'm beginning to think things couldn't get worse. About that time the earth passes through the tail of a comet or something, some kind of dimensional gate is opened, and the world goes weird.

There's a knock at the door.

At first I thought it was a bird pecking on the glass, it was that soft. Then it came again and I went to the front door and opened it, and there stood a woman about five feet tall wearing a long, wool coat, and untied, flared-at-the-ankles shoes, and a ski cap decorated with a silver pin. The wool ski cap was pulled down so tight over her ears, her face was pale. Keep in mind that it was probably eighty degrees that morning, and the temperature was rising steadily, and she was dressed like she was on her way to plant the flag at the summit of Everest. Her age was hard to guess. Had that kind of face. She could have been twenty-two or forty-two.

She said, "Can I use your phone, mister? I got an important call to make."

Well, I didn't see any ready-to-leap companions hiding in the shrubbery, and I figured if she got out of line I could handle her, so I said, "Yeah, sure. Be my guest," and let her in.

The phone was in the kitchen, on the wall, and I pointed it out to her, and me and Fruit of My Loins went back to doing what we were doing, which was looking at the View Master. We switched from Goofy to Winnie the Pooh, the one about Tigger in the tree, and it was my turn to look at it, and I couldn't help but hear my guest's conversation with her mother was becoming stressful -- I knew it was her mother because she addressed her by that title -- and suddenly Fruit of My Loins yelled, "Wook, Daddy wook."

I turned and "wooked," and what do I see but what appears to be some rare tribal dance, possibly something having originated in higher altitudes where the lack of oxygen to the brain causes wilder abandon with the dance steps. This gal was all over the place. Fred Astaire with a hot coat hanger up his ass couldn't have been any brisker. I've never seen anything like it. Then, in mid-dossey-do, she did a leap like cheerleaders do, one of those things where they kick their legs out to the side, open up like a nutcracker and kick the palms of their hands, then she hit the floor on her ass, spun, and wheeled as if on a swivel into the hallway and went out of sight. Then there came a sound from in there like someone on speed beating the bongos. She hadn't dropped the phone either. The wire was stretched tight around the corner and was vibrating like a big fish was on the line.

I dashed over there and saw she was lying crosswise in the hallway, bamming her head against the wall, clutching at the phone with one hand and pulling her dress up over her waist with the other, and she was making horrible sounds and rolling her eyes, and I immediately thought: this is it, she's gonna die. Then I saw she wasn't dying, just thrashing, and I decided it was an epileptic fit.

I got down and took the phone away from her, took hold of her jaw, got her tongue straight without getting bit, stretched her out on the floor away from the wall, picked up the phone and told her mama, who was still fussing about something or another, that things weren't so good, hung up on her in mid-sentence and called the ambulance.

I ran out to the laundry room, told Janet a strange woman was in our hallway pulling her dress over her head and that an ambulance was coming. Janet, bless her heart, has become quite accustomed to weird events following me around, and she went outside to direct the ambulance, like one of those people at the airport with light sticks.

I went back to the woman and watched her thrash a while, trying to make sure she didn't choke to death, or injure herself, and Fruit of My Loins kept clutching my leg and asking me what was wrong. I didn't know what to tell him.

After what seemed a couple of months and a long holiday, the ambulance showed up with a whoop of siren, and I finally decided the lady was doing as good as she was going to do, so I went outside. On either side of my walk were all these people. It's like Bradbury's story "The Crowd." The one where when there's an accident all these strange people show up out of nowhere and stand around and watch.

I'd never seen but two of these people before in my life, and I've been living in this neighborhood for years.

One lady immediately wanted to go inside and pray for the woman, who she somehow knew, but Janet whispered to me there wasn't enough room for our guest in there, let alone this other woman and her buddy, God, so I didn't let her in.

All the other folks are just a jabbering, and about all sorts of things. One woman said to another, "Mildred, how you been?"

"I been good. They took my kids away from me this morning, though. I hate that. How you been?"

"Them hogs breeding yet?" one man says to another, and the other goes into not only that they're breeding, but he tells how much fun they're having at it.

Then here comes the ambulance boys with a stretcher. One of the guys knew me somehow, and he stopped and said, "You're that writer, aren't you?"

I admitted it.

"I always wanted to write. I got some ideas that'd make a good book and a movie. I'll tell you about 'em. I got good ideas, I just can't write them down. I could tell them to you and you could write them up and we could split the money."

"Could we talk about this later?" I said. "There's a lady in there thrashing in my hallway."

So they went in with the stretcher, and after a few minutes the guy I talked to came out and said, "We can't get her out of there and turned through the door. We may have to take your back door out."

That made no sense to me at all. They brought the stretcher through and now they were telling me they couldn't carry it out. But I was too addled to argue and told them to do what they had to do.

Well, they managed her out of the back door without having to remodel our home after all, and when they came around the edge of the house I heard the guy I'd talked to go, "Ahhh, damn, I'd known it was her I wouldn't have come."

I thought they were going to set her and the stretcher down right there, but they went on out to the ambulance and jerked open the door and tossed her and the stretcher inside like they were tossing a dead body over a cliff. You could hear the stretcher strike the back of the ambulance and bounce forward and slide back again.

I had to ask: "You know her?"

"Dark enough in the house there, I couldn't tell at first. But when we got outside, I seen who it was. She does this all the time, but not over on this side of town in a while. She don't take her medicine on purpose so she'll have fits when she gets stressed, or she fakes them, like this time. Way she gets attention. Sometimes she hangs herself, cuts off her air. Likes the way it feels. Sexual or something. She's damn near died half-dozen times. Between you and me, wish she'd go on and do it and save me some trips."

And the ambulance driver and his assistant were out of there. No lights. No siren.

Well, the two people standing in the yard that we knew were still there when I turned around, but the others, like mythical creatures, were gone, turned to smoke, dissolved, become one with the universe, whatever. The two people we knew, elderly neighbors, said they knew the woman, who by this time, I had come to think of as the Phone Woman.

"She goes around doing that," the old man said. "She stays with her mamma who lives on the other side of town, but they get in fights on account of the girl likes to hang herself sometimes for entertainment. Never quite makes it over the ridge, you know, but gets her mother worked up. They say her mother used to do that too, hang herself, when she was a little girl. She outgrowed it. I guess the girl there . . . you know I don't even know her name . . . must have seen her mamma do that when she was little, and it kind of caught on. She has that 'lepsy stuff too, you know, thrashing around and all, biting on her tongue?"

I said I knew and had seen a demonstration of it this morning.

"Anyway," he continued, "they get in fights and she comes over here and tries to stay with some relatives that live up the street there, but they don't cotton much to her hanging herself to things. She broke down their clothesline post last year. Good thing it was old, or she'd been dead. Wasn't nobody home that time. I hear tell they sometimes go off and leave her there and leave rope and wire and stuff laying around, sort of hoping, you know. But except for that time with the clothesline, she usually does her hanging when someone's around. Or she goes in to use the phone at houses and does what she did here."

"She's nutty as a fruitcake," said the old woman. "She goes back on behind here to where that little trailer park is, knocks on doors where the wetbacks live, about twenty to a can, and they ain't got no phone, and she knows it. She's gotten raped couple times doing that, and it ain't just them Mex's that have got to her. White folks, niggers. She tries to pick who she thinks will do what she wants. She wants to be raped. It's like the hanging. She gets some kind of attention out of it, some kind of loving. Course, I ain't saying she chose you cause you're that kind of person."

I assured her I understood.

The old couple went home then, and another lady came up, and sure enough, I hadn't seen her before either, and she said, "Did that crazy ole girl come over here and ask to use the phone, then fall down on you and flop?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Does that all the time."

Then this woman went around the corner of the house and was gone, and I never saw her again. In fact, with the exception of the elderly neighbors and the Phone Woman, I never saw any of those people again and never knew where they came from. Next day there was a soft knock on the door. It was the Phone Woman again. She asked to use the phone.

I told her we'd had it taken out.

She went away and I saw her several times that day. She'd come up our street about once every half hour, wearing that same coat and hat and those sad shoes, and I guess it must have been a hundred and ten out there. I watched her from the window. In fact, I couldn't get any writing done because I was watching for her. Thinking about her lying there on the floor, pulling her dress up, flopping. I thought too of her hanging herself now and then, like she was some kind of suit on a hanger.

Anyway, the day passed and I tried to forget about her, then the other night, Monday probably, I went out on the porch to smoke one of my rare cigars (about four to six a year), and I saw someone coming down the dark street, and from the way that someone walked, I knew it was her, the Phone Woman.

She went on by the house and stopped down the road a piece and looked up and I looked where she was looking, and "through the trees I could see what she saw. The moon.

We both looked at it a while, and she finally walked on, slow, with her head down, and I put my cigar out well before it was finished and went inside and brushed my teeth and took off my clothes, and tried to go to sleep. Instead, I lay there for a long time and thought about her, walking those dark streets, maybe thinking about her mom, or a lost love, or a phone, or sex in the form of rape because it was some kind of human connection, about hanging herself because it was attention and it gave her a sexual high . . . and then again, maybe I'm full of shit and she wasn't thinking about any of those things.

Then it struck me suddenly, as I lay there in bed beside my wife, in my quiet house, my son sleeping with his teddy bear in the room across the way, that maybe she was the one in touch with the world, with life, and that I was the one gone stale from civilization. Perhaps life had been civilized right out of me.

The times I had truly felt alive, in touch with my nerve centers, were in times of violence or extreme stress.

Where I had grown up, in Mud Creek, violence simmered underneath everyday life like lava cooking beneath a thin crust of earth, ready at any time to explode and spew. I had been in fights, been cut by knives. I once had a job bouncing drunks. I had been a bodyguard in my earlier years, had illegally carried a .38. On one occasion, due to a dispute the day before while protecting my employer, who sometimes dealt with a bad crowd, a man I had insulted and hit with my fists pulled a gun on me, and I had been forced to pull mine. The both of us ended up with guns in our faces, looking into each other's eyes, knowing full well our lives hung by a thread and the snap of a trigger.

I had killed no one, and had avoided being shot. The Mexican stand-off ended with us both backing away and running off, but there had been that moment when I knew it could all be over in a flash. Out of the picture in a blaze of glory. No old folks home for me. No drool running down my chin and some young nurse wiping my ass, thinking how repulsive and old I was, wishing for quitting time so she could roll up with some young stud some place sweet and cozy, open her legs to him with a smile and a sigh, and later a passionate scream, while in the meantime, back at the old folks ranch, I lay in the bed with a dead dick and an oxygen mask strapped to my face.

Something about the Phone Woman had clicked with me. I understood her suddenly. I understood then that the lava that had boiled beneath the civilized facade of my brain was no longer boiling. It might be bubbling way down low, but it wasn't boiling, and the realization of that went all over me and I felt sad, very, very sad. I had dug a grave and crawled into it and was slowly pulling the dirt in after me. I had a home. I had a wife. I had a son. Dirt clods all. Dirt clods filling in my grave while life simmered somewhere down deep and useless within me.

I lay there for a long time with tears on my cheeks before exhaustion took over and I slept in a dark world of dormant passion.

* * *

Couple days went by, and one night after Fruit of My Loins and Janet were in bed, I went out on the front porch to sit and look at the stars and think about what I'm working on -- a novella that isn't going well -- and what do I see but the Phone Woman, coming down the road again, walking past the house, stopping once more to look at the moon.

I didn't go in this time, but sat there waiting, and she went on up the street and turned right and went out of sight. I walked across the yard and went out to the center of the street and watched her back going away from me, mixing into the shadows of the trees and houses along the street, and I followed.

I don't know what I wanted to see, but I wanted to see something, and I found for some reason that I was thinking of her lying there on the floor in my hallway, her dress up, the mound of her sex, as they say in porno novels, pushing up at me. The thought gave me an erection, and I was conscious of how silly this was, how unattractive this woman was to me, how odd she looked, and then another thought came to me: I was a snob. I didn't want to feel sexual towards anyone ugly or smelly in a winter coat in the dead of summer.

But the night was cool and the shadows were thick, and they made me feel all right, romantic maybe, or so I told myself.

I moved through a neighbor's backyard where a dog barked at me a couple of times and shut up. I reached the street across the way and looked for the Phone Woman, but didn't see her.

I took a flyer, and walked on down the street toward the trailer park where those poor illegal aliens were stuffed in like sardines by their unscrupulous employers, and I saw a shadow move among shadows, and then there was a split in the trees that provided the shadows, and I saw her, the Phone Woman. She was standing in a yard under a great oak, and not far from her was a trailer. A pathetic air conditioner hummed in one of its windows.

She stopped and looked up through that split in the trees above, and I knew she was trying to find the moon again, that she had staked out spots that she traveled to at night; spots where she stood and looked at the moon or the stars or the pure and sweet black eternity between them.

Like the time before, I looked up too, took in the moon, and it was beautiful, as gold as if it were a great glob of honey. The wind moved my hair, and it seemed solid and purposeful, like a lover's soft touch, like the beginning of foreplay. I breathed deep and tasted the fragrance of the night, and my lungs felt full and strong and young.

I looked back at the woman and saw she was reaching out her hands to the moon. No, a low limb. She touched it with her fingertips. She raised her other hand, and in it was a short, thick rope. She tossed the rope over the limb and made a loop and pulled it taut to the limb. Then she tied a loop to the other end, quickly expertly, and put that around her neck.

Of course, I knew what she was going to do. But I didn't move. I could have stopped her, I knew, but what was the point? Death was the siren she had called on many a time, and finally, she had heard it sing.

She jumped and pulled her legs under her and the limb took her jump and held her. Her head twisted to the left and she spun about on the rope and the moonlight caught the silver pin on her ski cap and it threw out a cool beacon of silver light, and as she spun, it hit me once, twice, three times.

On the third spin her mouth went wide and her tongue went out and her legs dropped down and hit the ground and she dangled there, unconscious.

I unrooted my feet and walked over there, looking about as I went.

I didn't see anyone. No lights went on in the trailer.

I moved up close to her. Her eyes were open. Her tongue was out. She was swinging a little, her knees were bent and the toes and tops of her silly shoes dragged the ground. I walked around and around her, an erection pushing at my pants. I observed her closely, trying to see what death looked like.

She coughed. A little choking cough. Her eyes shifted toward me. Her chest heaved. She was beginning to breathe. She made a feeble effort to get her feet under her, to raise her hands to the rope around her neck.

She was back from the dead.

I went to her. I took her hands, gently pulled them from her throat, let them go. I looked into her eyes. I saw the moon there. She shifted so that her legs held her weight better. Her hands went to her dress. She pulled it up to her waist. She wore no panties. Her bush was like a nest built between the boughs of a snow-white elm.

I remembered the day she came into the house. Everything since then, leading up to this moment, seemed like a kind of perverse mating ritual. I put my hand to her throat. I took hold of the rope with my other hand and jerked it so that her knees straightened, then I eased behind her, put my forearm against the rope around her throat, and I began to tighten my hold until she made a soft noise, like a virgin taking a man for the first time. She didn't lift her hands. She continued to tug her dress up. She was trembling from lack of oxygen. I pressed myself against her buttocks, moved my hips rhythmically, my hard-on bound by my underwear and pants. I tightened the pressure on her throat.

And choked her.

And choked her.

She gave up what was left of her life with a shiver and a thrusting of her pelvis, and finally she jammed her buttocks back into me and I felt myself ejaculate, thick and hot and rich as shaving foam.

Her hands fell to her side. I loosened the pressure on her throat but clung to her for a while, getting my breath and my strength back. When I felt strong enough, I let her go. She swung out and around on the rope and her knees bent and her head cocked up to stare blindly at the gap in the trees above, at the honey-golden moon.

I left her there and went back to the house and slipped into the bedroom and took off my clothes. I removed my wet underwear carefully and wiped them out with toilet paper and flushed the paper down the toilet. I put the underwear in the clothes hamper. I put on fresh and climbed into bed and rubbed my hands over my wife's buttocks until she moaned and woke up. I rolled her on her stomach and mounted her and made love to her. Hard, violent love, my forearm around her throat, not squeezing, but thinking about the Phone Woman, the sound she had made when I choked her from behind, the way her buttocks had thrust back .into me at the end. I closed my eyes until the sound that Janet made was the sound the Phone Woman made and I could visualize her there in the moonlight, swinging by the rope.

When it was over, I held Janet and she kissed me and joked about my arm around her throat, about how it seemed I had wanted to choke her. We laughed a little. She went to sleep. I let go of her and moved to my side of the bed and looked at the ceiling and thought about the Phone Woman. I tried to feel guilt. I could not. She had wanted it. She had tried for it many times. I had helped her do what she had never been able to manage. And I had felt alive again. Doing something on the edge. Taking a risk.

Well, journal, here's the question: Am I a sociopath?

No. I love my wife. I love my child. I even love my Suburban Husky. I have never hunted and fished, because I thought I didn't like to kill. But there are those who want to die. It is their one moment of life; to totter on the brink between light and darkness, to take the final, dark rush down a corridor of black, hot pain.

So, Oh Great White Pages, should I feel guilt, some inner torment, a fear that I am at heart a cold-blooded murderer?

I think not.

I gave the sweet gift of truly being alive to a woman who wanted someone to participate in her moment of joy. Death ended that, but without the threat of it, her moment would have been nothing. A stage rehearsal for a high-school play in street clothes.

Nor do I feel fear. The law will never suspect me. There's no reason to. The Phone Woman had a record of near suicides. It would never occur to anyone to think she had died by anyone's hand other than her own.

I felt content, in touch again with the lava beneath the primal crust. I have allowed it to boil up and burst through and flow, and now it has gone down once more. But it's no longer a distant memory. It throbs and rolls and laps just below ready to jump and give me life. Are there others out there like me? Or better yet, others for me, like the Phone Woman?

Most certainly.

And now I will recognize them. The Phone Woman has taught me that. She came into my life on a silly morning and brought me adventure, took me away from the grind, and then she brought me more, much, much more. She helped me recognize the fine but perfect line between desire and murder; let me know that there are happy victims and loving executioners.

I will know the happy victims now when I see them, know who needs to be satisfied. I will give them their desire, while they give me mine.

This last part with the Phone Woman happened last night and I am recording it now, while it is fresh, as Janet sleeps. I think of Janet in there and I have a hard time imagining her face. I want her, but I want her to be the Phone Woman, or someone like her.

I can feel the urge rising up in me again. The urge to give someone that tremendous double-edged surge of life and death.

It's like they say about sex. Once you get it, you got to have it on a regular basis. But it isn't sex I want. It's something like it, only sweeter.

I'll wrap this up. I'm tired. Thinking that I'll have to wake Janet and take the edge off my need, imagine that she and I are going to do more than fornicate; that she wants to take that special plunge and that she wants me to shove her.

But she doesn't want that. I'd know. I have to find that in my dreams, when I nestle down into the happy depths of the primitive brain.

At least until I find someone like the Phone Woman, again, that is. Someone with whom I can commit the finest of adultery.

And until that search proves fruitful and I have something special to report, dear diary, I say, good night.

LETTER FROM THE SOUTH, TWO MOONS WEST OF NACOGDOCHES

Dear Hawk:

Your letter stating that you can't believe I'm not a Baptist, due to the fact my morals and yours are so similar, astonishes me. How can you think only Baptists are good people and lead happy lives? You've known me longer than that, even if most of our contact has been through letters and phone calls.

Well, I might ask you the same in reverse. How can you accept such a silly pagan religion? And if you must consider a religion, why not look back to your heritage, instead of taking on a Hebrew mythology.

And how in the world can you believe being a Baptist makes you happier than others?

I'm quite happy, thank you. I mean I have my ups and downs, but from your cards and letters, our occasional phone calls, so do you. Don't we all?

In answering your question about why I don't believe more fully, I might add that I've been a student, if not a scholar, of religions all my life, and I find nothing to recommend the Baptist over any other religion, no matter what the origin. Only the Aztec and their nasty custom of human sacrifice could be worse, and I'll tell you, though it's off the subject, I think the old Chief of this country is crazy as hell to sell them the makings for a nuclear reactor. I don't care what sort of diplomatic gesture it was meant to be. Those heart-cutters get up here on us and it's the last powwow, buddy. With just sticks and stones, practically, they ran the Spaniards off, so I sure don't want to see them with the ability to make the big shitty boom machine, if you know what I mean? They're tougher than us, I admit it. I say let's let our technology be our muscle, and not let those mean pyramid builders have an equalizer, because with their attitude about war and sacrifice, they're going to be a whole hell of a lot more equal than we are.

But that's off the point, as usual.

On to why I'm not a Baptist. Well, first off, let's keep this simple. Consult history text if you don't believe me, though that won't keep you from twisting them around to suit you, or from picking just those that say what you want them to say (I remember our argument before on the civil war with the Japs, and I've got to add, though I shouldn't bring it up again, how you can side at all with those bastards after what they've done to our people on the West Coast is beyond me), so perhaps my asking you to examine historical text isn't sound advice on my part, and you're sure to take it as an insult.

But history does show, Hawk, that John the Baptist was not the only religious nut running around at that time, and it was only fate that gave him the honor (a dubious one in my book) of becoming the "Messiah." I mean a dramatic death like decapitation and having the head put on a silver (does the text actually say silver, I can't remember and am too lazy to check?) platter, and then the fact that the execution was performed at the bidding of a dance-hall floozy of the time, and the head presented to her as a gift, does have a certain element of showboating, and that's just the sort of thing people latch onto. High drama.

It always occurs to me that Jesus of Nazareth, mentioned briefly in your so-called "Holy Book," and I believe he was a cousin or something to John if memory serves me, was as likely a candidate for martyrdom as John. Except for fate, he might well have been the one your congregation worships.

He, however, in spite of his many similarities to John, had the misfortune to suffer less than a martyr's death. He was hit and killed by a runaway donkey cart and knocked up on the curbing with his, how was it put in the book. . . ? Can't remember, but something like "with his flanks exposed." Words to that effect.

I believe it was Jesus' inglorious death, more than anything else, that jockeyed him to a lowly position in the race toward Messiahism (did I make that word up?). He certainly had all the goods John did. Nice fanaticism, pie in the sky, promises of an afterlife, etc. But it seems to be in our natures to prefer bloody, dramatic demises such as decapitation, to a relatively minor death by a runaway donkey cart, the latter casualty being all the more jinxed by the fact that he ended up draped over some curb with his ass exposed, his little deep, brown eye winking at the world.

If we were more open-minded, a religion might have formed where Jesus was worshipped, and instead of the little bleeding-head-on-a-platter medallions many of your congregation wear, they might be adorning themselves with little buttocks with donkey cart tracks across them.

Just a thought. Don't get mad.

The other thing you mention is the Platter of Turin. And I admit to you that it is indeed mysterious and fascinating. But I've never seen nor read anything that convinces me that whatever is making itself manifest on the platter -- and I also admit it does look like a head with a bleeding stump -- is in fact, the likeness of John the Baptist. And even if it is his likeness, and somehow the trauma of his death caused it to be forever captured in the platter, that still does not mean he is the Messiah.

Consider the statue of Custer at the site of The Battle Of The Little Big Horn. Many have reported (and I believe it has been filmed) that it bleeds from the mouth, nose, ears and mouth from time to time. To some, this was interpreted to mean that Custer was a Saint and that the statue could cure illnesses. I know from our letters in the past that you hardly believe Custer a Saint, quite the contrary.

What I'm saying is this: there are many mysteries in the world, Hawk, and there are many interpretations. You need only choose a mystery and an interpretation to suit you.

Well, got to cut this short. Got to get dressed. There's a meeting tonight. They're having another public execution, and it's about time. Bunch of niggers are going to be crucified along Caddo Street and I don't want to miss that. Those stupid black bastards thinking they're good as us makes me ill. I've had my hood and robes starched special for the occasion, and I'm actually getting to light one of the pitch-covered niggers placed at the end to provide light. I also get to lead the local Scout troops in a song. I'm excited.

Oh, almost forgot. If you haven't read about it, we finally got that troublemaker Martin Luther King, and he's the main feature tonight. I know from your letters that you have a sort of begrudging respect for him, and I must admit his guerrilla activities conducted with only twenty-two men throughout the South have been brilliant for his kind. But after tonight he'll plague the South no more.

As I said, wish you could be here, but I know you've got a big pow-wow going up there and I wish I could see it. Like to see your tribe strip the skin off those White Eyes slow and easy. They're worse than our niggers, and I'm only glad the last of them (far as we know) have been eliminated down here.

Another thing just hit me about this Baptist business, and I'll go ahead and get it off my chest. Here we are getting rid of the whites and the niggers, and you and some others have adopted their silly religion. I admit that our own is pretty damned dumb (Great Heap Big Spirit, Ugh), but doesn't that kind of thing, accepting their religion, give the lowlifes a sort of existence through us? Think about it.

Guess while I'm bad mouthing them, might as well admit I'm against the trend that wants to drop all of their ways, as some of them would just be too difficult to adopt. This two moons and two suns bit is just ridiculous. With automobiles that method is no longer correct. What used to be a two day trip is now only a matter of hours. And this switch over from their language to ours, the use of Cherokee writing for all tribes, is going to be a pain. I mean we'll all be speaking our tribal languages, translating the writing to Cherokee and when we all get together how are we going to converse? Which language will we pick? Cherokee for writing, because of their good alphabet, makes sense, but which will be the superior tribal language, and how's it going to go down with folks when one is chosen over all the others?

Oh, to hell with it. This old gal is going to have to get to stepping or she isn't going to have time to get dressed and moving.

Best to you,

Running Fox

BY THE HAIR OF THE HEAD

The lighthouse was grey and brutually weathered, kissed each morning by a cold, salt spray. Perched there among the rocks and sand, it seemed a last, weak sentinel against an encroaching sea; a relentless, pounding surf that had slowly swallowed up the shoreline and deposited it in the all-consuming belly of the ocean.

Once the lighthouse had been bright-colored, candy-striped like a barber's pole, with a high beacon light and a horn that honked out to the ships on the sea. No more. The lighthouse director, the last of a long line of sea watchers, had cashed in the job ten years back when the need died, but the lighthouse was now his and he lived there alone, bunked down nightly to the tune of the wind and the raging sea.

Below he had renovated the bottom of the tower and built rooms, and one of these he had locked away from all persons, from all eyes but his own.

I came there fresh from college to write my novel, dreams of being the new Norman Mailer dancing in my head. I rented in with him, as he needed a boarder to help him pay for the place, for he no longer worked and his pension was as meager as stale bread.

High up in the top was where we lived, a bamboo partition drawn between our cots each night, giving us some semblance of privacy, and dark curtains were pulled round the thick, foggy windows that traveled the tower completely around.

By day the curtains were drawn and the partition was pulled and I sat at my typewriter, and he, Howard Machen, sat with his book and his pipe, swelled the room full of grey smoke the thickness of his beard. Sometimes he rose and went below, but he was always quiet and never disturbed my work.

It was a pleasant life. Agreeable to both of us. Mornings we had coffee outside on the little railed walkway and had a word or two as well, then I went to my work and he to his book, and at dinner we had food and talk and brandies; sometimes one, sometimes two, depending on mood and the content of our chatter.

We sometimes spoke of the lighthouse and he told me of the old days, of how he had shone that light out many times on the sea. Out like a great, bright fishing line to snag the ships and guide them in; let them follow the light in the manner that Theseus followed Ariadne's thread.

"Was fine," he'd say. "That pretty old light flashing out there. Best job I had in all my born days. Just couldn't leave her when she shut down, so I bought her."

"It is beautiful up here, but lonely at times."

"I have my company."

I took that as a compliment, and we tossed off another brandy. Any idea of my writing later I cast aside. I had done four good pages and was content to spit the rest of the day away in talk and dreams.

"You say this was your best job," I said as a way of conversation. "What did you do before this?"

He lifted his head and looked at me over the briar and its smoke. His eyes squinted against the tinge of the tobacco. "A good many things. I was born in Wales. Moved to Ireland with my family, was brought up there, and went to work there. Learned the carpentry trade from my father. Later I was a tailor. I've also been a mason -- note the rooms I built below with my own two hands -- and I've been a boat builder and a ventriloquist in a magician's show."

"A ventriloquist?"

"Correct," he said, and his voice danced around "me and seemed not to come from where he sat.

"Hey, that's good."

"Not so good really. I was never good, just sort of fell into it. I'm worse now. No practice, but I've no urge to take it up again."

"I've an interest in such things."

"Have you now?"

"Yes."

"Ever tried a bit of voice throwing?"

"No. But it interests me. The magic stuff interests me more. You said you worked in a magician's show?"

"That I did. I was the lead-up act."

"Learn any of the magic tricks, being an insider and all?"

"That I did, but that's not something I'm interested in," he said flatly.

"Was the magician you worked for good?"

"Damn good, m'boy. But his wife was better."

"His wife?"

"Marilyn was her name. A beautiful woman." He winked at me. "Claimed to be a witch."

"You don't say?"

"I do, I do. Said her father was a witch and she learned it and inherited it from him."

"Her father?"

"That's right. Not just women can be witches. Men too."

We poured ourselves another and exchanged sloppy grins, hooked elbows, and tossed it down.

"And another to meet the first," the old man said and poured. Then: "Here's to company." We tossed it off.

"She taught me the ventriloquism, you know," the old man said, relighting his pipe.

"Marilyn?"

"Right, Marilyn."

"She seems to have been a rather all-around lady."

"She was at that. And pretty as an Irish morning."

"I thought witches were all old crones, or young crones. Hook noses, warts . . ."

"Not Marilyn. She was a fine-looking woman. Fine bones, agate eyes that clouded in mystery, and hair the color of a fresh-robbed hive."

"Odd she didn't do the magic herself. I mean, if she was the better magician, why was her husband the star attraction?"

"Oh, but she did do magic. Or rather she helped McDonald to look better than he was, and he was some good. But Marilyn was better.

"Those days were different, m'boy. Women weren't the ones to take the initiative, least not openly. Kept to themselves. Was a sad thing. Back then it wasn't thought fittin' for a woman to be about such business. Wasn't ladylike. Oh, she could get sawed in half, or disappear in a wooden crate, priss and look pretty, but take the lead? Not on your life!"

I fumbled myself another brandy. "A pretty witch, huh?"

"Ummmm."

"Had the old pointed hat and broom passed down, so to speak?" My voice was becoming slightly slurred.

"It's not a laughin' matter, m'boy." Machen clenched the pipe in his teeth.

"I've touched a nerve, have I not? I apologize. Too much sauce."

Machen smiled. "Not at all. It's a silly thing, you're right. To hell with it."

"No, no. I'm the one who spoiled the fun. You were telling me she claimed to be the descendant of a long line of witches."

Machen smiled. It did not remind me of other smiles he had worn. This one seemed to come from a borrowed collection.

"Just some silly tattle is all. Don't really know much about it, just worked for her, m'boy." That was the end of that. Standing, he knocked out his pipe on the concrete floor and went to his cot.

For a moment I sat there, the last breath of Machen's pipe still in the air, the brandy still warm in my throat and stomach. I looked at the windows that surrounded the lighthouse, and everywhere I looked was my own ghostly reflection. It was like looking out through the compound eyes of an insect, seeing a multiple image.

I turned out the lights, pulled the curtains and drew the partition between our beds, wrapped myself in my blanket, and soon washed up on the distant shore of a recurring dream. A dream not quite in grasp, but heard like the far, fuzzy cry of a gull out from land.

It had been with me almost since moving into the tower. Sounds, voices . . .

A clunking noise like peg legs on stone . . .

. . . a voice, fading in, fading out . . . Machen's voice, the words not quite clear, but soft and coaxing . . . then solid and firm: "Then be a beast. Have your own way. Look away from me with your mother's eyes."

". . . your fault," came a child's voice, followed by other words that were chopped out by the howl of the sea wind, the roar of the waves.

". . . getting too loud. He'll hear . . ." came Machen's voice.

"Don't care . . . I . . ." lost voices now.

I tried to stir, but then the tube of sleep, nourished by the brandy, came unclogged, and I descended down into richer blackness.

* * *

Was a bright morning full of sun, and no fog for a change. Cool clear out there on the landing, and the sea even seemed to roll in soft and bounce against the rocks and lighthouse like puffy cotton balls blown on the wind.

I was out there with my morning coffee, holding the cup in one hand and grasping the railing with the other. It was a narrow area but safe enough, provided you didn't lean too far out or run along the walk when it was slick with rain. Machen told me of a man who had done just that and found himself plummeting over to be shattered like a dropped melon on the rocks below.

Machen came out with a cup of coffee in one hand, his unlit pipe in the other. He looked haggard this morning, as if a bit of old age had crept upon him in the night, fastened a straw to his face, and sucked out part of his substance.

"Morning," I said.

"Morning." He emptied his cup in one long draft. He balanced the cup on the metal railing and began to pack his pipe.

"Sleep bad?" I asked.

He looked at me, then at his pipe, finished his packing, and put the pouch away in his coat pocket. He took a long match from the same pocket, gave it fire with his thumbnail, lit the pipe. He puffed quite a while before he answered me. "Not too well. Not too well."

"We drank too much."

"We did at that."

I sipped my coffee and looked at the sky, watched a snowy gull dive down and peck at the foam, rise up with a wriggling fish in its beak. It climbed high in the sky, became a speck of froth on the crystal blue.

"I had funny dreams," I said. "I think I've had them all along, since I came here. But last night they were stronger than ever."

"Oh?"

"Thought I heard your voice speaking to someone. Thought I heard steps on the stairs, or more like the plunking of peg legs, like those old sea captains have."

"You don't say?"

"And another voice, a child's."

"That right? Well . . . maybe you did hear me speakin'. I wasn't entirely straight with you last night. I do have quite an interest in the voice throwing, and I practice it from time to time on my dummy. Last night must have been louder than usual, being drunk and all."

"Dummy?"

"My old dummy from the act. Keep it in the room below."

"Could I see it?"

He grimaced. "Maybe another time. It's kind of a private thing with me. Only bring her out when we're alone."

"Her?"

"Right. Name's Caroline, a right smart-looking girl dummy, rosy-cheeked with blonde pigtails."

"Well, maybe someday I can look at her."

"Maybe someday." He stood up, popped the contents of the pipe out over the railing, and started inside. Then he turned: "I talk too much. Pay no mind to an old, crazy man."

Then he was gone, and I was there with a hot cup of coffee, a bright, warm day, and an odd, unexplained chill at the base of my bones.

* * *

Two days later we got on witches again, and I guess it was my fault. We hit the brandy hard that night. I had sold a short story for a goodly sum -- my largest check to date -- and we were celebrating and talking and saying how my fame would be as high as the stars. We got pretty sicky there, and to hear Machen tell it, and to hear me agree -- no matter he hadn't read the story -- I was another Hemingway, Wolfe, and Fitzgerald all balled into one.

"If Marilyn were here," I said thoughtlessly, drunk, "why we could get her to consult her crystal and tell us my literary future."

"Why that's nonsense, she used no crystal."

"No crystal, broom, or pointed hat? No eerie evil deeds for her? A white magician no doubt?"

"Magic is magic, m'boy. And even good intentions can backfire."

"Whatever happened to her, Marilyn I mean?"

"Dead."

"Old age?"

"Died young and beautiful, m'boy. Grief killed her."

"I see," I said, as you'll do to show attentiveness.

Suddenly, it was if the memories were a balloon overloaded with air, about to burst if pressure was not taken off. So, he let loose the pressure and began to talk.

"She took her a lover, Marilyn did. Taught him many a thing, about love, magic, what have you. Lost her husband on account of it, the magician, I mean. Lost respect for herself in time.

"You see, there was this little girl she had, by her lover. A fine-looking sprite, lived until she was three. Had no proper father. He had taken to the sea and had never much entertained the idea of marryin' Marilyn. Keep them stringing was his motto then, damn his eyes. So he left them to fend for themselves."

"What happened to the child?"

"She died. Some childhood disease."

"That's sad," I said, "a little girl gone and having only sipped at life."

"Gone? Oh, no. There's the soul, you know."

I wasn't much of a believer in the soul and I said so.

"Oh, but there is a soul. The body perishes but the soul lives on."

"I've seen no evidence of it."

"But I have," Machen said solemnly. "Marilyn was determined that the girl would live on, if not in her own form, then in another."

"Hogwash!"

Machen looked at me sternly. "Maybe. You see, there is a part of witchcraft that deals with the soul, a part that believes the soul can be trapped and held, kept from escaping this earth and into the beyond. That's why a lot of natives are superstitious about having their picture taken. They believe once their image is captured, through magic, their soul can be contained.

"Voodoo works much the same. It's nothing but another form of witchcraft. Practitioners of that art believe their souls can be held to this earth by means of someone collecting nail parin's or hair from them while they're still alive.

"That's what Marilyn had in mind. When she saw the girl was fadin', she snipped one of the girl's long pigtails and kept it to herself. Cast spells on it while the child lay dyin', and again after life had left the child."

"The soul was supposed to be contained within the hair?"

"That's right. It can be restored, in a sense, to some other object through the hair. It's like those voodoo dolls. A bit of hair or nail parin' is collected from the person you want to control, or if not control, maintain the presence of their soul, and it's sewn into those dolls. That way, when the pins are stuck into the doll, the living suffer, and when they die their soul is trapped in the doll for all eternity, or rather as long as the doll with its hair or nail parin's exists."

"So she preserved the hair so she could make a doll and have the little girl live on, in a sense?"

"Something like that."

"Sounds crazy."

"I suppose."

"And what of the little girl's father?"

"Ah, that sonofabitch! He came home to find the little girl dead and buried and the mother mad. But there was that little gold lock of hair, and knowing Marilyn, he figured her intentions."

"Machen," I said slowly. "It was you, was it not? You were the father?"

"I was."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be. We were both foolish. I was the more foolish. She left her husband for me and I cast her aside. Ignored my own child. I was the fool, a great fool."

"Do you really believe in that stuff about the soul? About the hair and what Marilyn was doing?"

"Better I didn't. A soul once lost from the body would best prefer to be departed I think . . . but love is some times a brutal thing."

We just sat there after that. We drank more. Machen smoked his pipe, and about an hour later we went to bed.

* * *

There were sounds again, gnawing at the edge of my sleep. The sounds that had always been there, but now, since we had talked of Marilyn, I was less able to drift off into blissful slumber. I kept thinking of those crazy things Machen had said. I remembered, too, those voices I had heard, and the fact that Machen was a ventriloquist, and perhaps, not altogether stable.

But those sounds.

I sat up and opened my eyes. They were coming from below. Voices. Machen's first. ". . . not be the death of you, girl, not at all . . . my only reminder of Marilyn . . ."

And then to my horror. "Let me be, Papa. Let it end." The last had been a little girl's voice, but the words had been bitter and wise beyond the youngness of the tone.

I stepped out of bed and into my trousers, crept to the curtain, and loo'ked on Machen's side.

Nothing, just a lonely cot. I wasn't dreaming. I had heard him all right, and the other voice . . . it had to be that Machen, grieved over what he had done in the past, over Marilyn's death, had taken to speaking to himself in the little girl's voice. All that stuff Marilyn had told him about the soul, it had gotten to him, cracked his stability.

I climbed down the cold metal stairs, listening. Below I heard the old, weathered door that led outside slam. Heard the thud of boots going down the outside steps.

I went back up, went to the windows, and pulling back the curtains section by section, finally saw the old man. He was carrying something wrapped in a black cloth and he had a shovel in his hand. I watched as, out there by the shore, he dug a shallow grave and placed the cloth-wrapped object within, placed a rock over it, and left it to the night and the incoming tide.

I pretended to be asleep when he returned, and later, when I felt certain he was well visited by Morpheus, I went downstairs and retrieved the shovel from the tool room. I went out to where I had seen him dig and went to work, first turning over the large stone and shoveling down into the pebbly dirt. Due to the freshness of the hole, it was easy digging.

I found the cloth and what was inside. It made me flinch at first, it looked so real. I thought it was a little rosy-cheeked girl buried alive, for it looked alive . . . but it was a dummy. A ventriloquist's dummy. It had aged badly, as if water had gotten to it. In some ways it looked as if it were rotting from the inside out. My finger went easily and deeply into the wood of one of the legs.

Out of some odd curiosity, I reached up and pushed back the wooden eyelids. There were no wooden painted eyes, just darkness, empty sockets that uncomfortably reminded me of looking down into the black hollows of a human skull. And the hair. On one side of the head was a yellow pigtail, but where the other should have been was a bare spot, as if the hair had been ripped away from the wooden skull.

With a trembling hand I closed the lids down over those empty eyes, put the dirt back in place, the rock, and returned to bed. But I did not sleep well. I dreamed of a grown man talking to a wooden doll and using another voice to answer back, pretending that the doll lived and loved him too.

But the water had gotten to it, and the sight of those rotting legs had snapped him back to reality, dashed his insane hopes of containing a soul by magic, shocked him brutally from foolish dreams.

Dead is dead.

* * *

The next day, Machen was silent and had little to say. I suspected the events of last night weighed on his mind. Our conversation must have returned to him this morning in sober memory, and he, somewhat embarrassed, was reluctant to recall it. He kept to himself down below in the locked room, and I busied myself with my work.

It was night when he came up, and there was a smug look about him, as if he had accomplished some great deed. We spoke a bit, but not of witches, of past times and the sea. Then he pulled back the curtains and looked at the moon rise above the water like a cold fish eye.

"Machen," I said, "maybe I shouldn't say anything, but if you should ever have something bothering you, if you should ever want to talk about it . . . well, feel free to come to me."

We said little more and soon went to bed.

I slept sounder that night, but again I was rousted from my dreams by voices. Machen's voice again, and the poor man speaking in that little child's voice.

"It's a fine home for you," Machen said in his own voice.

"I want no home," came the little girl's voice. "I want to be free."

"You want to stay with me, with the living. You're just not thinking. There's only darkness beyond the veil."

The voices were very clear and loud. I sat up in bed and strained my ears.

"It's where I belong," the little girl's voice again, but it spoke not in a little girl manner. There was only the tone.

"Things have been bad lately," Machen said. "And you're not yourself."

Laughter, horrible little girl laughter.

"I haven't been myself for years."

"Now, Caroline . . . play your piano. You used to play it so well. Why, you haven't touched it in years."

"Play. Play. With these!"

"You're too loud."

"I don't care. Let him hear, let him . . ."

A door closed sharply and the sound died off to a mumble; a word caught here and there was scattered and confused by the throb of the sea.

* * *

Next morning Machen had nothing for me, not even a smile from his borrowed collection. Nothing but coldness, his back, and a frown.

I saw little of him after coffee, and once, from below -- for he stayed down there the whole day through -- I thought I heard him cry in a loud voice. "Have it your way, then," and then there was the sound of a slamming door and some other sort of commotion below.

After a while I looked out at the land and the sea, and down there, striding back and forth, hands behind his back, went Machen, like some great confused penguin contemplating the far shore.

I like to think there was something more than curiosity in what I did next. Like to think I was looking for the source of my friend's agony; looking for some way to help him find peace.

I went downstairs and pulled at the door he kept locked, hoping that, in his anguish, he had forgotten to lock it back. He had not forgotten.

I pressed my ear against the door and listened. Was that crying I heard?

No. I was being susceptible, caught up in Machen's fantasy. It was merely the wind whipping about the tower.

I went back upstairs, had coffee, and wrote not a line.

* * *

So day fell into night, and I could not sleep, but finally got the strange business out of my mind by reading a novel. A rollicking good sea story of daring men and bloody battles, great ships clashing in a merciless sea.

And then, from his side of the curtain, I heard Machen creak off his cot and take to the stairs. One flight below was the door that led to the railing round about the tower, and I heard that open and close.

I rose, folded a small piece of paper into my book for a marker, and pulled back one of the window curtains. I walked around pulling curtains and looking until I could see him below.

He stood with his hands behind his back, looking out at the sea like a stern father keeping an eye on his children. Then, calmly, he mounted the railing and leaped out into the air.

I ran. Not that it mattered, but I ran, out to the railing . . . and looked down. His body looked like a rag doll splayed on the rocks.

There was no question in my mind that he was dead, but slowly I wound my way down the steps . . . and was distracted by the room. The door stood wide open.

I don't know what compelled me to look in, but I was drawn to it. It was a small room with a desk and a lot of shelves filled with books, mostly occult and black magic. There were carpentry tools on the wall, and all manner of needles and devices that might be used by a tailor. The air was filled with an odd odor I could not place, and on Machen's desk, something that was definitely not tobacco smoldered away.

There was another room beyond the one in which I stood. The door to it was cracked open. I pushed it back and stepped inside. It was a little child's room filled thick with toys and such: jack-in-the-boxes, dolls, kid books, and a toy piano. All were covered in dust.

On the bed lay a teddy bear. It was ripped open and the stuffing was pulled out. There was one long strand of hair hanging out of that gutted belly, just one, as if it were the last morsel of a greater whole. It was the color of honey from a fresh-robbed hive. I knew what the smell in the ashtry was now.

I took the hair and put a match to it, just in case.

GODZILLA'S TWELVE STEP PROGRAM

ONE: Honest Work

Godzilla, on his way to work at the foundry, sees a large building that seems to be mostly made of shiny copper and dark, reflecting solar glass. He sees his image in the glass and thinks of the old days, wonders what it would be like to stomp on the building, to blow flames at it, kiss the windows black with his burning breath, then dance rapturously in the smoking debris.

One day at a time, he tells himself. One day at a time.

Godzilla makes himself look at the building hard. He passes it by. He goes to the foundry. He puts on his hard hat. He blows his fiery breath into the great vat full of used car parts, turns the car parts to molten metal. The metal runs through pipes and into new molds for new car parts. Doors. Roofs. Etc.

Godzilla feels some of the tension drain out.

TWO: Recreation

After work Godzilla stays away from downtown. He feels tense. To stop blowing flames after work is difficult. He goes over to the BIG MONSTER RECREATION CENTER.

Gorgo is there. Drunk from oily seawater, as usual. Gorgo talks about the old days. She's like that. Always the old days.

They go out back and use their breath on the debris that is deposited there daily for the center's use. Kong is out back. Drunk as a monkey. He's playing with Barbie dolls. He does that all the time. Finally, he puts the Barbies away in his coat pocket, takes hold of his walker and wobbles past Godzilla and Gorgo.

Gorgo says, "Since the fall he ain't been worth shit. And what's with him and the little plastic broads anyway? Don't he know there're real women in the world?"

Godzilla thinks Gorgo looks at Kong's departing walker-supported ass a little too wistfully. He's sure he sees wetness in Gorgo's eyes.

Godzilla blows some scrap to cinders for recreation, but it doesn't do much for him, as he's been blowing fire all day long and has, at best, merely taken the edge off his compulsions. This isn't even as satisfying as the foundry. He goes home.

THREE: Sex and Destruction

That night there's a monster movie on television. The usual one. Big beasts wrecking havoc on city after city. Crushing pedestrians under foot.

Godzilla examines the bottom of his right foot, looks at the scar there from stomping cars flat. He remembers how it was to have people squish between his toes. He thinks about all of that and changes the channel. He watches twenty minutes of _Mr. Ed_, turns off the TV, masturbates to the images of burning cities and squashing flesh.

Later, deep into the night, he awakens in a cold sweat. He goes to the bathroom and quickly carves crude human figures from bars of soap. He mashes the soap between his toes, closes his eyes and imagines. Tries to remember.

FOUR: Beach Trip and The Big Turtle

Saturday, Godzilla goes to the beach. A drunk monster that looks like a big turtle flies by and bumps Godzilla. The turtle calls Godzilla a name, looking for a fight. Godzilla remembers the turtle is called Gamera.

Gamera is always trouble. No one liked Gamera. The turtle was a real asshole.

Godzilla grits his teeth and holds back the flames. He turns his back and walks along the beach. He mutters a secret mantra given him by his sponsor. The giant turtle follows after, calling him names.

Godzilla packs up his beach stuff and goes home. At his back he hears the turtle, still cussing, still pushing. It's all he can do not to respond to the big dumb bastard. All he can do. He knows the turtle will be in the news tomorrow. He will have destroyed something, or will have been destroyed himself.

Godzilla thinks perhaps he should try and talk to the turtle, get him on the twelve step program. That's what you're supposed to do. Help others. Maybe the turtle could find some peace.

But then, again, you can only help those who help themselves. Godzilla realizes he can not save all the monsters of the world. They have to make these decisions for themselves. But he makes a mental note to go armed with leaflets about the twelve step program from now on.

Later, he calls in to his sponsor. Tells him he's had a bad day. That he wanted to burn buildings and fight the big turtle. Reptilicus tells him it's okay. He's had days like that. Will have days like that once again.

Once a monster, always a monster. But a recovering monster is where it's at. Take it one day at a time. It's the only way to be happy in the world. You can't burn and kill and chew up humans and their creations without paying the price of guilt and multiple artillery wounds.

Godzilla thanks Reptilicus and hangs up. He feels better for a while, but deep down he wonders just how much guilt he really harbors. He thinks maybe it's the artillery and the rocket-firing jets he really hates, not the guilt.

FIVE: Off The Wagon

It happens suddenly. He falls off the wagon. Coming back from work he sees a small doghouse with a sleeping dog sticking halfway out of a doorway. There's no one around. The dog looks old. It's on a chain. Probably miserable anyway. The water dish is empty. The dog is living a worthless life. Chained. Bored. No water.

Godzilla leaps and comes down on the doghouse and squashes dog in all directions. He burns what's left of the doghouse with a blast of his breath. He leaps and spins on tip-toe through the wreckage. Black cinders and cooked dog slip through his toes and remind him of the old days.

He gets away fast. No one has seen him. He feels giddy. He can hardly walk he's so intoxicated. He calls Reptilicus, gets his answering machine. "I'm not in right now. I'm out doing good. But please leave a message, and I'll get right back to you."

The machine beeps. Godzilla says, "Help."

SIX: His Sponsor

The doghouse rolls around in his head all the next day. While at work he thinks of the dog and the way it burned. He thinks of the little house and the way it crumbled. He thinks of the dance he did in the ruins.

The day drags on forever. He thinks maybe when work is through he might find another doghouse, another dog.

On the way home he keeps an eye peeled, but no doghouses or dogs are seen.

When he gets home his answering machine light is blinking. It's a message from Reptilicus. Reptilicus's voice says, "Call me."

Godzilla does. He says, "Reptilicus. Forgive rne, for I have sinned."

SEVEN: Disillusioned. Disappointed.

Reptilicus's talk doesn't help much. Godzilla shreds all the twelve step program leaflets. He wipes his butt on a couple and throws them out the window. He puts the scraps of the others in the sink and sets them on fire with his breath. He burns a coffee table and a chair, and when he's through, feels bad for it. He knows the landlady will expect him to replace them.

He turns on the radio and lies on the bed listening to an Oldies station. After a while, he falls asleep to Martha and the Vandellas singing "Heat Wave."

EIGHT: Unemployed

Godzilla dreams. In it God comes to him, all scaly and blowing fire. He tells Godzilla he's ashamed of him. He says he should do better. Godzilla awakes covered in sweat. No one is in the room.

Godzilla feels guilt. He has faint memories of waking up and going out to destroy part of the city. He really tied one on, but he can't remember everything he did. Maybe he'll read about it in the papers. He notices he smells like charred lumber and melted plastic. There's gooshy stuff between his toes, and something tells him it isn't soap.

He wants to kill himself. He goes to look for his gun, but he's too drunk to find it. He passes out on the floor. He dreams of the devil this time. He looks just like God except he has one eyebrow that goes over both eyes. The devil says he's come for Godzilla.

Godzilla moans and fights. He dreams he gets up and takes pokes at the devil, blows ineffective fire on him.

Godzilla rises late the next morning, hung over. He remembers the dream. He calls into work sick. Sleeps off most of the day. That evening, he reads about himself in the papers. He really did some damage. Smoked a large part of the city. There's a very clear picture of him biting the head off of a woman.

He gets a call from the plant manager that night. The manager's seen the paper. He tells Godzilla he's fired.

NINE: Enticement

Next day some humans show up. They're wearing black suits and white shirts and polished shoes and they've got badges. They've got guns, too. One of them says, "You're a problem. Our government wants to send you back to Japan."

"They hate me there," says Godzilla. "I burned Tokyo down."

"You haven't done so good here either. Lucky that was a colored section of town you burned, or we'd be on your ass. As it is, we've got a job proposition for you."

"What?" Godzilla asks.

"You scratch our back, we'll scratch yours." Then the men tell him what they have in mind.

TEN: Choosing

Godzilla sleeps badly that night. He gets up and plays the monster mash on his little record player. He dances around the room as if he's enjoying himself, but knows he's not. He goes over to the BIG MONSTER RECREATION CENTER. He sees Kong there, on a stool, undressing one of his Barbies, fingering the smooth spot between her legs. He sees that Kong has drawn a crack there, like a vagina. It appears to have been drawn with a blue ink pen. He's feathered the central line with ink-drawn pubic hair. Godzilla thinks he should have got someone to do the work for him. It doesn't look all that natural.

God, he doesn't want to end up like Kong. Completely spaced. Then again, maybe if he had some dolls he could melt, maybe that would serve to relax him.

No. After the real thing, what was a Barbie? Some kind of form of Near Beer. That's what the debris out back was. Near Beer. The foundry. The Twelve Step Program. All of it. Near Beer.

ELEVEN: Working for the Government

Godzilla calls the government assholes. "All right," he says. "I'll do it."

"Good," says the government man. "We thought you would. Check your mail box. The map and instructions are there."

Godzilla goes outside and looks in his box. There's a manila envelope there. Inside are instructions. They say: "Burn all the spots you see on the map. You finish those, we'll find others. No penalties. Just make sure no one escapes. Any rioting starts, you finish them. To the last man, woman and child."

Godzilla unfolds the map. On it are red marks.

Above the red marks are listings:

N-Town. C-Village. W-Trash Enclave. Q-Clutch. Mostly Democrats.

Godzilla thinks about what he can do now. Unbidden. He can burn without guilt. He can stomp without guilt. Not only that, they'll send him a check. He has been hired by his adopted country to clean out the bad spots as they see them.

TWELVE: The Final Step

Godzilla stops near the first place on the list: N-Town. He sees kids playing in the streets. Dogs. Humans looking up at him, wondering what the hell he's doing here.

Godzilla suddenly feels something move inside him. He knows he's being used. He turns around and walks away. He heads toward the government section of town. He starts with the governor's mansion. He goes wild. Artillery is brought out, but it's no use, he's rampaging. Like the old days.

Reptilicus shows up with a megaphone, tries to talk Godzilla down from the top of the Great Monument Building, but Godzilla doesn't listen. He's burning the top of the building off with his breath, moving down, burning some more, moving down, burning some more, all the way to the ground.

Kong shows up and cheers him on. Kong drops his walker and crawls along the road on his belly and reaches a building and pulls himself up and starts climbing. Bullets spark all around the big ape.

Godzilla watches as Kong reaches the summit of the building and clings by one hand and waves the other, which contains a Barbie doll.

Kong puts the Barbie doll between his teeth. He reaches in his coat and brings out a naked Ken doll. Godzilla can see that Kong has made Ken some kind of penis out of silly putty or something. The penis is as big as Ken's leg.

Kong is yelling, "Yeah, that's right. That's right. I'm AC/DC, you sonsofabitches."

Jets appear and swoop down on Kong. The big ape catches a load of rocket right in the teeth. Barbie, teeth and brains decorate the greying sky. Kong falls.

Gorgo comes out of the crowd and bends over the ape, takes him in her arms and cries. Kong's hand slowly opens, revealing Ken, his penis broken off.

The flying turtle shows up and starts trying to steal Godzilla's thunder, but Godzilla isn't having it. He tears the top off the building Kong had mounted and beats Gamera with it. Even the cops and the army cheer over this.

Godzilla beats and beats the turtle, splattering turtle meat all over the place, like an overheated poodle in a microwave. A few quick pedestrians gather up chunks of the turtle meat to take home and cook, cause the rumor is it tastes just like chicken.

Godzilla takes a triple shot of rockets in the chest, staggers, goes down. Tanks gather around him.

Godzilla opens his bloody mouth and laughs. He thinks: If I'd have gotten finished here, then I'd have done the black people too. I'd have gotten the yellow people and the white trash and the homosexuals. I'm an equal opportunity destroyer. To hell with the twelve step program. To hell with humanity.

Then Godzilla dies and makes a mess on the street. Military men tip-toe around the mess and hold their noses.

Later, Gorgo claims Kong's body and leaves.

Reptilicus, being interviewed by television reporters, says, "Zilla was almost there, man. Almost. If he could have completed the program, he'd have been all right. But the pressures of society were too much for him. You can't blame him for what society made of him."

On the way home, Reptilicus thinks about all the excitement. The burning buildings. The gunfire. Just like the old days when he and Zilla and Kong and that goon-ball turtle were young.

Reptilicus thinks of Kong's defiance, waving the Ken doll, the Barbie in his teeth. He thinks of Godzilla, laughing as he died.

Reptilicus finds a lot of old feelings resurfacing. They're hard to fight. He locates a lonesome spot and a dark house and urinates through an open window, then goes home.

DRIVE-IN DATE

The line into the Starlight Drive-In that night was short. Monday nights were like that. Dave and Merle paid their money at the ticket house and Dave drove the Ford to a spot up near the front where there were only a few cars. He parked in a space with no one directly on either side. On the left the first car was four speakers away, on the right, six speakers.

Dave said, "I like to be up close so it all looks bigger than life. You don't mind do you?"

"You ask me that every time," Merle said. "You don't never ask me that when we're driving in, you ask when we're parked."

"You don't like it, we can move."

"No. I like it. I'm just saying, you don't really care if I like it. You just ask."

"Politeness isn't a crime."

"No, but you ought to mean it."

"I said we can move."

"Hell no, stay where you are. I'm just saying when you ask me what I like, you could mean it."

"You're a testy motherfucker tonight. I thought coming to see a monster picture would cheer you up."

"You're the one likes 'em, and that's why you come. It wasn't for me, so don't talk like it was. I don't believe in monsters, so I can't enjoy what I'm seeing. I like something that's real. Cop movie. Things like that."

"I tell you, Merle, there's just no satisfying you, man. You'll feel better when they cut the lot lights and the movie starts. We can get our date then."

"I don't know that makes me feel better."

"You done quit liking pussy?"

"Watch your mouth. I didn't say that. You know I like pussy. I like pussy fine."

"Whoa. Aren't we fussy? Way you talk, you're trying to convince me. Maybe it's butt holes you like."

"Goddamnit, don't start on the butt holes."

Dave laughed and got out a cigarette and lipped it. "I know you did that one ole gal in the butt that night." Dave reached up and tapped the.rearview mirror. "I seen you in the mirror here."

"You didn't see nothing," Merle said.

"I seen you get in her butt hole. I seen that much."

"What the hell you doing watching? It ain't good enough for you by yourself, so you got to watch someone else get theirs?"

"I don't mind watching."

"Yeah, well, I bet you don't. You're like one of those fucking perverts."

Dave snickered, popped his lighter and lit his cigarette. The lot lights went out. The big lights at the top of the drive-in screen went black. Dave rolled down the window and pulled the speaker in and fastened it to the door. He slapped at a mosquito on his neck.

"Won't be long now," Dave said.

"I don't know I feel up to it tonight."

"You don't like this first feature, the second's some kind of mystery. It might be like a cop show."

"I don't mean the movies."

"The girl?"

"Yeah. I'm in a funny mood."

Dave smoked for a moment. "Merle, this is kind of a touchy subject, but you been having trouble, you know, getting a bone to keep, I'll tell you, that happens. It's happened to me. Once."

"I'm not having trouble with my dick, okay?"

"If you are, it's no disgrace. It'll happen to a man from time to time."

"My tool is all right. It works. No problem."

"Then what's the beef?"

"I don't know. It's a mood. I feel like I'm going through a kind of, I don't know, mid-life crisis or something."

"Mood, huh? Let me tell you, when she's stretched out on that back seat, you'll be all right, crisis or no crisis. Hell, get her butt hole if you want it, I don't care."

"Don't start on me."

"Who's starting? I'm telling you, you want her butt hole, her ear, her goddamn nostril, that's your business. Me, I'll stick to the right hole, though."

"Think I don't know a snide remark when you make it?"

"I hope you do, or I wouldn't make it. You don't know I'm making one, what's the fun in making it?" Dave reached over and slapped Merle playfully on the arm. "Lighten up, boy. Let's see a movie, get some pussy. Hey, you feel better if I went and got us some corn and stuff . . . that'd do you better, wouldn't it?"

Merle hesitated. "I guess."

"Back in a jiffy."

Dave got out of the car.

* * *

Fifteen minutes and Dave was back. He had a cardboard box that held two bags of popcorn and some tall drinks. He set the box on top of the car, opened the door then got the box and slid inside. He put the box on the seat between them.

"How much I owe you?" Merle said.

"Not a thing. You get it next time . . . think how much more expensive this would be we had to pay for her to eat too."

"A couple or three dollars. So what? That gonna break us?"

"No, but it's beer money. You think about it."

Merle sat and thought about it.

The big white drive-in screen was turned whiter by the projector light, then there was a flicker and images moved on the screen: Ads for the concession. Coming attractions.

Dave got his popcorn, started eating. He said, "I'm getting kind of horny thinking about her. You see the legs on that bitch?"

"Course I seen the legs. You don't know from legs. A woman's got legs is all you care, and you might not care about that. Couple of stumps would be all the same to you."

"No, I don't care for any stumps. Got to be feet on one end, pussy on the other. That's legs enough. But this one, she's got some good ones. Hell, you're bound to've noticed how good they were."

"I noticed. You saying I'm queer or something? I noticed. I noticed she's got an ankle bracelet on the right leg and she wears about a size ten shoe. Biggest goddamn feet I've ever seen on a woman."

"Now, it comes out. You wanted to pick the date, not me?"

"I never did care for a woman with big feet. You got a good-looking woman all over and you get down to them feet and they look like something goes on either side of a water plane . . . well, it ruins things."

"She ain't ruined. Way she looks, big feet or not, she ain't ruined. Besides, you don't fuck the feet . . . well, maybe you do. Right after the butt hole."

"You gonna push one time too much, Dave. One time too much."

"I'm just kidding, man. Lighten up. You don't ever lighten up. Don't we deserve some fun after working like niggers all day?"

Merle sighed. "You got to use that nigger stuff? I don't like it. It makes you sound ignorant. Will, he's colored and I like him. He's done me all right. Man like that, he don't deserve to be called nigger."

"He's all right at the plant, but you go by his house and ask for a loan."

"I don't want to borrow nothing from him. I'm just saying people ought to get their due, no matter what color they are. Nigger is an ugly word."

"You like boogie better, Martin Luther? How about coon or shine? I was always kind of fond of burrhead or wooly myself."

"There's just no talking to you, is there?"

"Hell, you like niggers so much, next date we set up, we'll make it a nigger. Shit, I'd fuck a nigger. It's all pink on the inside, ain't that what you've heard?"

"You're a bigot is what you are."

"If that means I'm not wanting to buddy up to coons, then, yeah, that's what I am." Dave thumped his cigarette butt out the window. "You got to learn to lighten up, Merle. You don't, you'll die. My uncle, he couldn't never lighten up. Gave him a spastic colon, all that tension. He swelled up until he couldn't wear his pants. Had to get some stretch pants, one of those running suits, just so he could have on clothes. He eventually got so bad they had to go in and operate. You can bet he wishes he didn't do all that worrying now. It didn't get him a thing but sick. He didn't get a better life on account of that worry, now did he? Still lives over in that apartment where he's been living, on account of he got so sick from worry he couldn't work. They're about to throw him out of there, and him a grown man and sixty years old. Lost his good job, his wife -- which he ought to know is a good thing -- and now he's doing little odd shit here and there to make ends meet. Going down to catch the day work truck with the winos and niggers -- excuse me. Afro-Americans, Colored Folks, whatever you prefer.

"Before he got to worrying over nothing, he had him some serious savings and was about ready to put some money down on a couple of acres and a good double wide."

"I was planning on buying me a double wide, that'd make me worry. Them old trailers ain't worth a shit. Comes a tornado, or just a good wind, and you can find those fuckers at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico next to the regular trailers. Tornado will take a double wide easy as any of the others."

Dave shook his head. "You go from one thing to the other, don't you? I know what a tornado can do. It can take a house, too. Your house. That don't matter. I'm not talking about mobile homes here, Merle. I'm talking about living. It's a thing you better attend to. You're forty goddamn years old. Your life's half over . . . I know that's a cold thing to say, but there you have it. It's out of my mouth. I'm forty this next birthday, so I'm not just putting the doom on you. It's a thing ever man's got to face. Getting over the hill. Before I die, I'd like to think I did something fun with my life. It's the little things that count. I want to enjoy things, not worry them away. Hear what I'm saying, Merle?"

"Hard not to, being in the goddamn car with you."

"Look here, way we work, we deserve to lighten up a little. You haul your ashes first. That'll take some edge off."

"Well . . ."

"Naw, go on."

"All right . . . but, one thing . . ."

"What?"

"Don't do me no more butt hole jokes, okay? One friend to another, Dave, no more butt hole jokes."

"It bothers you that bad, okay. Deal."

Merle climbed over the seat and got on his knees in the floorboard. He took hold of the back seat and pulled. It was rigged with a hinge. It folded down. He got on top of the folded-down seat and bent and looked into the exposed trunk. The young woman's face was turned toward him, half of her cheek was hidden by the spare tire. There was a smudge of grease on her nose.

"We should have put a blanket back here," Merle said. "Wrapped her in that. I don't like 'em dirty."

"She's got pants on," Dave said. "You take them off, the part that counts won't be dirty."

"That part's always dirty. They pee and bleed out of it don't they? Hell, hot as it is back here, she's already starting to smell."

"Oh, bullshit." Dave turned and looked over the seat at Merle. "You can't get pleased, can you? She ain't stinking. She didn't even shit her pants when she checked out. And she ain't been dead long enough to smell, and you know it. Quit being so goddamn contrary." Dave turned back around and shook out a cigarette and lit it.

"Blow that out the window, damnit," Merle said. "You know that smoke works my allergies."

Dave shook his head and blew smoke out the window. He turned up the speaker. The ads and commercials were over. The movie was starting.

"And don't be looking back here at me neither," Merle said.

Merle rolled the woman out of the trunk, across the seat, onto the floorboard and up against him. He pushed the seat back into place and got hold of the woman and hoisted her onto the back seat. He pushed her T-shirt up over her breasts. He fondled her breasts. They were big and firm and rubbery-cold. He unfastened her shorts and pulled them over her shoes and ripped her panties apart at one side. He pushed one of her legs onto the floorboard and gripped her hips and pulled her ass down a little, got it cocked to a position he liked. He unfastened and pulled down his jeans and boxer shorts and got on her.

Dave roamed an eye to the rearview mirror, caught sight of Merle's butt bobbing. He grinned and puffed at his cigarette. After a while, he turned his attention to the movie.

* * *

When Merle was finished he looked at the woman's dead eyes. He couldn't see their color in the dark, but he guessed blue. Her hair he could tell was blond.

"How was it?" Dave asked.

"It was pussy. Hand me the flashlight."

Dave reached over and got the light out of the glove box and handed it over the seat. Merle took it. He put it close to the woman's face and turned it on.

"She's got blue eyes," Merle said.

"I noticed that right off when we grabbed her," Dave said. "I thought then you'd like that, being how you are about blue eyes."

Merle turned off the flashlight, handed it to Dave, pulled up his pants and climbed over the seat. On the screen a worm-like monster was coming out of the sand on a beach.

"This flick isn't half bad," Dave said. "It's kind of funny, really. You don't get too good a look at the monster though . . . that all the pussy you gonna get?"

"Maybe some later," Merle said.

"You feeling any better?"

"Some."

"Yeah, well, why don't you eat some popcorn while I get me a little. Want a cigarette? You like a cigarette after sex, don't you?"

"All right."

Dave gave Merle a cigarette, lit it. Merle sucked the smoke in deeply.

"Better?" Dave asked.

"Yeah, I guess."

"Good." Dave thumped his cigarette out the window. "I'm gonna take my turn now. Don't let nothing happen on the movie. Make it wait."

"Sure."

Dave climbed over the seat. Merle tried to watch the movie. After a moment, he quit. He turned and looked out his window. Six speakers down he could see a Chevy rocking.

"Got to be something more to life than this?" Merle said without turning to look at Dave.

"I been telling you," Dave said, "this is life, and you better start enjoying. Get you some orientation before it's too late and it's all over but the dirt in the face . . . talk to me later. Right now this is what I want out of life. Little later, I might want a drink."

Merle shook his head.

Dave lifted the woman's leg and hooked her ankle over the front seat. Merle looked at her foot, the ankle bracelet dangling from it. "I bet that damn foot's more a size eleven than a ten," Merle said. "Probably buys her shoes at the ski shop."

Dave hooked her other ankle over the back seat, on the package shelf. "Like I said, it's not the feet I'm interested in."

Merle shook his head again. He rolled down his window and thumped out some ash and turned his attention to the Chevy again. It was still rocking.

Dave shifted into position in the back seat. The Ford began to rock. The foot next to Merle vibrated, made little dead hops.

From the back seat Dave began to chant: "Give it to me, baby. Give it to me. Am I your Prince, baby? Am I your goddamn King? Take that anaconda, bitch. Take it!"

"For heaven's sake," Merle said.

Five minutes later Dave climbed into the front seat, said, "Damn. Damn good piece."

"You act like she had something to do with it," Merle said.

"Her pussy, ain't it?"

"We're doing all the work. We could cut a hole in the seat back there and get it that good."

"That ain't true. It ain't the hole does it, and it damn sure ain't the personality, it's how they look. That flesh under you. Young. Firm. Try coming in an ugly or fat woman and you'll see what I mean. You'll have some troubles. Or maybe you won't."

"I don't like 'em old or fat."

"Yeah, well, I don't see the live ones like either one of us all that much. The old ones or the fat ones. Face it, we've got no way with live women. And I don't like the courting. I like to know I see one I like, I can have her if I can catch her."

Merle reached over and shoved the woman's foot off the seat. It fell heavily into the floorboard. "I'm tired of looking at that slat. Feet like that, they ought to have paper bags over them."

* * *

When the second feature was over, they drove to Dave's house and parked out back next to the tall board fence. They killed the lights and sat there for a while, watching, listening.

No movement at the neighbors.

"You get the gate," Dave said, 'Til get the meat."

"We could just go on and dump her," Merle said. "We could call it a night."

"It's best to be careful. The law can look at sput now and know who it comes from. We got to clean her up some."

Merle got out and opened the gate and Dave got out and opened the trunk and pulled the woman out by the foot and let her fall on her face to the ground. He reached in and got her shorts and put them in the crook of his arm, then bent and ripped her torn panties the rest of the way off and stuffed them in a pocket of her shorts, and stuffed the shorts into the front of his pants. He got hold of her ankle and dragged her through the gate.

Merle closed the gate as Dave and the corpse came through. "You got to drag her on her face?" he said.

"She don't care," Dave said.

"I know, but I don't like her messed up."

"We're through with her."

"When we let her off, I want her to be, you know, okay."

"She ain't okay now, Merle. She's dead."

"I'm don't want her messed up."

Dave shrugged. He crossed her ankles and flipped her on her back and dragged her over next to the house and let go of her by the water hose. He uncoiled the hose and took the nozzle and inserted it up the woman with a sound like a boot being withdrawn from mud, and turned the water on low.

When he looked up from his work, Merle was coming out of the house with a six-pack of beer. He carried it over to the redwood picnic table and sat down. Dave joined him.

"Have a Lone Star," Merle said.

Dave twisted the top off one. "You're thinking on something, I can tell."

"I was thinking we ought to take them alive," Merle said.

Dave lit a cigarette and looked at him. "We been over this. We take one alive she might scream or get away. We could get caught easy enough."

"We could kill her when we're finished. Way we're doing, we could buy one of those blow-up dolls, put it in the glove box and bring it to the drive-in."

"I've never cottoned to something like that. Even jacking off bothers me. A man ought to have a woman."

"A dead woman?"

"That's the best kind. She's quiet. You haven't got to put up with clothes and makeup jabber, keeping up with the Jones' jabber, getting that promotion jabber. She's not gonna tell you no in the middle of the night. Ain't gonna complain about how you put it to her. One stroke's as good as the next to a dead bitch."

"I kind of like hearing 'em grunt, though. I like being kissed."

"Rape some girl, think she'll want to kiss you?"

"I can make her."

"Dead's better. You don't have to worry yourself about how happy she is. You don't pay for nothing. If you got a live woman, one you're married to even, you're still paying for pussy. If you don't pay in money, you'll pay in pain. They'll smile and coo for a time, but stay out late with the boys, have a little financial stress, they all revert to just what my mama was. A bitch. She drove my daddy into an early grave, way she nagged, and the old sow lived to be ninety. No wonder women live longer than men. They worry men to death.

"Like my uncle I was talking about. All that worry . . . hell, that was his wife put it on him. Wanting this and wanting that. When he got sick, had that operation and had to dip into his savings, she was out of there. They'd been married thirty years, but things got tough, you could see what those thirty years meant. He didn't even come out of that deal with a place to put his dick at night."

"Ain't all women that way."

"Yeah they are. They can't help it. I'm not blaming them. It's in them, like germs. In time, they all turn out just the same."

"I'm talking about raping them, though, not marrying them. Getting kissed."

"You're with the kissing again. You been reading Cosmo or something? What's this kiss stuff? You get hungry, you eat. You get thirsty, you drink. You get tired, you sleep. You get horny, you kill and fuck. You use them like a product, Merle, then when you get through with the product, you throw out the package. Get a new one when you need it. This way you always got the young ones, the tan ones, no matter how old or fat or ugly you get. You don't have to see a pretty woman get old, see that tan turn her face to leather. You can keep the world bright and fresh all the time. You listen to me, Merle. It's the best way."

Merle looked at the woman's body. Her head was turned toward him. Her eyes looked to have filled with milk. Water was running out of her and pooling on the grass and starting to spurt from between her legs. Merle looked away from her, said, "Guess I'm just looking for a little romance. I had me a taste of it, you know. It was all right. She could really kiss."

"Yeah, it was all right for a while, then she ran off with a sand nigger."

"Arab, Dave. She ran off with an Arab."

"He was here right now, you'd call him an Arab?"

"I'd kill him."

"There you are. Call him an Arab or a sand nigger, you'd kill him, right?"

Merle nodded.

"Listen," Dave said. "Don't think I don't understand what you're saying. Thing I like about you, Merle, is you aren't like those guys down at the plant, come in do your job, go home, watch a little TV, fall asleep in the chair dreaming about some magazine model cause the old lady won't give out, or you don't want to think about her giving out on account of the way she's got ugly. Thing is, Merle, you know you're dissatisfied. That's the first step to knowing there's more to life than the old grind. I appreciate that in you. It's a kind of sensitivity some men don't like to face. Think it makes them weak. It's a strength, is what it is, Merle. Something I wish I had more of."

"That's damn nice of you to say, Dave."

"It's true. Anybody knows you, knows you feel things deeply. And I don't want you to think that I don't appreciate romance, but you get our age, you got to look at things a little straighter. I can't see any romance with an old woman anyway, and a young one, she ain't gonna have me . . . unless it's the way we're doing it now."

Merle glanced at the corpse. Water was spewing up from between her legs like a whale blowing. Her stomach was a fat, white mound.

"We don't get that hose out of her," Merle said, "she's gonna blow the hell up."

"I'll get it," Dave said. He went over and turned off the water and pulled the hose out of her and put his foot on her stomach and began to pump his leg. Water gushed from her and her stomach began to flatten. "She was all right, wasn't she, Merle?"

" 'Cept for them feet, she was fine."

* * *

They drove out into the pines and pulled off to the side of a little dirt road and parked. They got out and went around to the trunk and Dave unlocked it. They looked at the young woman's body for a moment, then they each took a leg and jerked her from the trunk, and with her legs spread like a wishbone, they dragged her into the brush and dropped her on the edge of an incline coated in blackberry briars.

"Man," Dave said. "Taste that air. This is the prettiest night I can remember."

"It's nice," Merle said.

Dave put a boot to the woman and pushed, she went rolling down the incline in a white moon-licked haze and crashed into the brush at the bottom. Dave pulled her shorts from the front of his pants and tossed them after her.

"Time they find her, the worms will have had some pussy too," Dave said.

They got in the car and Dave started it up and eased down the road.

"Dave?"

"Yeah?"

"You're a good friend," Merle said. "The talk and all, it done me good. Really."

Dave smiled, clapped Merle's shoulder. "Hey, it's all right. I been seeing this coming in you for a time, since the girl before last . . . you're all right now, though. Right?"

"Well, I'm better."

"That's how you start."

They drove a piece. Merle said, "But I got to admit to you, I still miss being kissed."

Dave laughed. "You and the kiss. You're some piece of work buddy . . . I got your kiss. Kiss my ass."

Merle grinned. "Way I feel, your ass could kiss back, I just might."

Dave laughed again. They drove out of the woods and onto the highway. The moon was high and bright.

BOB THE DINOSAUR GOES TO DISNEYLAND

For a birthday present Fred's wife, Karen, bought him a plastic, inflatable dinosaur -- a Tyrannosaurus Rex. It was in a cardboard box, and Fred thanked her and took the dinosaur downstairs to his study and took it out of the box and spent twenty minutes taking deep breaths and blowing air into it.

When the dinosaur was inflated, he sat it in front of his bookshelves, and as a joke, got a mouse ear hat he had bought at Disneyland three years before, and put it on the dinosaur's head and named it Bob.

Immediately, Bob wanted to go to Disneyland. There was no snuffing the ambition. He talked about it night and day, and it got so the study was no place to visit, because Bob would become most unpleasant on the matter. He scrounged around downstairs at night, pacing the floor, singing the Mouseketeer theme loud and long, waking up Fred and Karen, and when Fred would come downstairs to reason with Bob, Bob wouldn't listen. He wouldn't have a minute's worth of it. No sir, he by golly wanted to go to Disneyland.

Fred said to Karen, "You should have bought me a Brontosaurus, or maybe a Stegosaurus. I have a feeling they'd have been easier to reason with."

Bob kept it up night and day. "Disneyland, Disneyland, I want to go to Disneyland. I want to see Mickey. I want to see Donald." It was like some kind of mantra, Bob said it so much. He even found some old brochures on Disneyland that Fred had stored in his closet, and Bob spread them out on the floor and lay down near them and studied the pictures and wagged his great tail and looked wistful.

"Disneyland," he would whisper. "I want to go to Disneyland."

And when he wasn't talking about it, he was mooning. He'd come up to breakfast and sit in two chairs at the table and stare blankly into the syrup on his pancakes, possibly visualizing the Matterhorn ride or Sleeping Beauty's castle. It got so it was a painful thing to see. And Bob got mean. He chased the neighbor's dogs and tore open garbage sacks and fought with the kids on the bus and argued with his teachers and took up slovenly habits, like throwing his used Kleenex on the floor of the study. There was no living with that dinosaur.

Finally, Fred had had enough, and one morning at breakfast, while Bob was staring into his pancakes, moving his fork through them lazily, but not really trying to eat them (and Fred had noticed that Bob had lost weight and looked as if he needed air), Fred said, "Bob, we've decided that you may go to Disneyland."

"What?" Bob said, jerking his head up so fast his mouse hat flew off and his fork scraped across his plate with a sound like a fingernail on a blackboard. "Really?"

"Yes, but you must wait until school is out for the summer, and you really have to act better."

"Oh, I will, I will," Bob said.

Well now, Bob was one happy dinosaur. He quit throwing Kleenex down and bothering the dogs and the kids on the bus and his teachers, and in fact, he became a model citizen. His school grades even picked up.

Finally, the big day came, and Fred and Karen bought Bob a suit of clothes and a nice John Deere cap, but Bob would have nothing to do with the new duds. He wore his mouse ear hat and a sweatshirt he had bought at Goodwill with a faded picture of Mickey Mouse on it with the word Disneyland inscribed above it. He even insisted on carrying a battered Disney lunchbox he had picked up at the Salvation Army, but other than that, he was very cooperative.

Fred gave Bob plenty of money and Karen gave him some tips on how to eat a balanced meal daily, and then they drove him to the airport in the back of the pickup. Bob was so excited he could hardly sit still in the airport lounge, and when his seat section was called, he gave Fred and Karen quick kisses and pushed in front of an old lady and darted onto the plane.

As the plane lifted into the sky, heading for California and Disneyland, Karen said, "He's so happy. Do you think he'll be all right by himself?"

"He's very mature," Fred said. "He has his hotel arrangements, plenty of money, a snack in his lunchbox and lots of common sense. Hell be all right."

At the end of the week, when it was time for Bob to return, Fred and Karen were not available to pick him up at the airport. They made arrangements with their next-door neighbor, Sally, to do the job for them. When they got home, they could hear Bob playing the stereo in the study, and they went down to see him.

The music was loud and heavy metal and Bob had never listened to that sort of thing before. The room smelled of smoke, and not cigarettes. Bob was lying on the floor reading, and at first, Fred and Karen thought it was the Disney brochures, but then they saw those wadded up in the trashcan by the door.

Bob was looking at a girlie magazine and a reefer was hanging out of his mouth. Fred looked at Karen and Karen was clearly shaken.

"Bob?" Fred said.

"Yeah," Bob said without looking up from the foldout, and his tone was surly.

"Did you enjoy Disneyland?"

Bob carefully took the reefer out of his mouth and thumped ash on the carpet. There was the faintest impression of tears in his eyes. He stood up and tossed the reefer down and ground it into the carpet with his foot.

"Did . . . did you see Mickey Mouse?" Karen asked.

"Shit," Bob said, "there isn't any goddamn mouse. It's just some guy in a suit. The same with the duck." And with that, Bob stalked into the bathroom and slammed the door and they couldn't get him out of there for the rest of the day.

THE STEEL VALENTINE

Even before Morley told him, Dennis knew things were about to get ugly.

A man did not club you unconscious, bring you to his estate and tie you to a chair in an empty storage shed out back of the place if he merely intended to give you a valentine.

Morley had found out about him and Julie.

Dennis blinked his eyes several times as he came to, and each time he did, more of the dimly lit room came into view. It was the room where he and Julie had first made love. It was the only building on the estate that looked out of place: it was old, worn, and not even used for storage; it was a collector of dust, cobwebs, spiders and dessicated flies.

There was a table in front of Dennis, a kerosene lantern on it, and beyond, partially hidden in shadow, a man sitting in a chair smoking a cigarette. Dennis could see the red tip glowing in the dark, and the smoke from it drifted against the lantern light and hung in the air like thin, suspended wads of cotton.

The man leaned out of shadow, and as Dennis expected, it was Morley. His shaved, bullet-shaped head was sweaty and reflected the light. He was smiling with his fine, white teeth, and the high cheek bones were round, flushed circles that looked like clown rouge. The tightness of his skin, the few wrinkles, made him look younger than his fifty-one years.

And in most ways he was younger than his age. He was a man who took care of himself. Jogged eight miles every morning before breakfast, lifted weights three times a week and had only one bad habit -- cigarettes. He smoked three packs a day. Dennis knew all that and he had only met the man twice. He had learned it from Julie, Morley's wife. She told him about Morley while they lay in bed. She liked to talk and she often talked about Morley; about how much she hated him.

"Good to see you," Morley said, and blew smoke across the table into Dennis's face. "Happy Valentine's Day, my good man. I was beginning to think I hit you too hard, put you in a coma."

"What is this, Morley?" Dennis found that the mere act of speaking sent nails of pain through his skull. Morley really had lowered the boom on him.

"Spare me the innocent act, lover boy. You've been laying the pipe to Julie, and I don't like it."

"This is silly, Morley. Let me loose."

"God, they do say stupid things like that in real life. It isn't just the movies . . . you think I brought you here just to let you go, lover boy?"

Dennis didn't answer. He tried to silently work the ropes loose that held his hands to the back of the chair. If he could get free, maybe he could grab the lantern, toss it in Morley's face. There would still be the strand holding his ankles to the chair, but maybe it wouldn't take too long to undo that. And even if it did, it was at least some kind of plan.

If he got the chance to go one on one with Morley, he might take him. He was twenty-five years younger and in good shape himself. Not as good as when he was playing pro basketball, but good shape nonetheless. He had height, reach, and he still had wind. He kept the latter with plenty of jogging and tossing the special-made, sixty-five pound medicine ball around with Raul at the gym.

Still, Morley was strong. Plenty strong. Dennis could testify to that. The pulsating knot on the side of his head was there to remind him.

He remembered the voice in the parking lot, turning toward it and seeing a fist. Nothing more, just a fist hurtling toward him like a comet. Next thing he knew, he was here, the outbuilding.

Last time he was here, circumstances were different, and better. He was with Julie. He met her for the first time at the club where he worked out, and they had spoken, and ended up playing racquetball together. Eventually she brought him here and they made love on an old mattress in the corner; lay there afterward in the June heat of a Mexican summer, holding each other in a warm, sweaty embrace.

After that, there had been many other times. In the great house; in cars; hotels. Always careful to arrange a tryst when Morley was out of town. Or so they thought. But somehow he had found out.

"This is where you first had her," Morley said suddenly. "And don't look so wide-eyed. I'm not a mind reader. She told me all the other times and places too. She spat at me when I told her I knew, but I made her tell me every little detail, even when I knew them. I wanted it to come from her lips. She got so she couldn't wait to tell me. She was begging to tell me. She asked me to forgive her and take her back. She no longer wanted to leave Mexico and go back to the States with you. She just wanted to live."

"You bastard. If you've hurt her --"

"You'll what? Shit your pants? That's the best you can do, Dennis. You see, it's me that has you tied to the chair. Not the other way around."

Morley leaned back into the shadows again, and his hands came to rest on the table, the perfectly manicured fingertips steepling together, twitching ever so gently.

"I think it would have been inconsiderate of her to have gone back to the States with you, Dennis. Very inconsiderate. She knows I'm a wanted man there, that I can't go back. She thought she'd be rid of me. Start a new life with her ex-basketball player. That hurt my feelings, Dennis. Right to the bone." Morley smiled. "But she wouldn't have been rid of me, lover boy. Not by a long shot. I've got connections in my business. I could have followed her anywhere . . . in fact, the idea that she thought I couldn't offended my sense of pride."

"Where is she? What have you done with her, you bald-headed bastard?"

After a moment of silence, during which Morley examined Dennis's face, he said, "Let me put it this way. Do you remember her dogs?"

Of course he remembered the dogs. Seven Dobermans. Attack dogs. They always frightened him. They were big mothers, too. Except for her favorite, a reddish, undersized Doberman named Chum. He was about sixty pounds, and vicious. "Light, but quick," Julie used to say. "Light, but quick."

Oh yeah, he remembered those goddamn dogs. Sometimes when they made love in an estate bedroom, the dogs would wander in, sit down around the bed and watch. Dennis felt they were considering the soft, rolling meat of his testicles, savoring the possibility. It made him feel like a mean kid teasing them with a treat he never intended to give. The idea of them taking that treat by force made his erection soften, and he finally convinced Julie, who found his nervousness hysterically funny, that the dogs should be banned from the bedroom, the door closed.

Except for Julie, those dogs hated everyone. Morley included. They obeyed him, but they did not like him. Julie felt that under the right circumstances, they might go nuts and tear him apart. Something she hoped for, but never happened.

"Sure," Morley continued. "You remember her little pets. Especially Chum, her favorite. He'd growl at me when I tried to touch her. Can you imagine that? All I had to do was touch her, and that damn beast would growl. He was crazy about his mistress, just crazy about her."

Dennis couldn't figure what Morley was leading up to, but he knew in some way he was being baited. And it was working. He was starting to sweat.

"Been what," Morley asked, "a week since you've seen your precious sweetheart? Am I right?"

Dennis did not answer, but Morley was right. A week. He had gone back to the States for a while to settle some matters, get part of his inheritance out of legal bondage so he could come back, get Julie, and take her to the States for good. He was tired of the Mexican heat and tired of Morley owning the woman he loved.

It was Julie who had arranged for him to meet Morley in the first place, and probably even then the old bastard had suspected. She told Morley a partial truth. That she had met Dennis at the club, that they had played racquetball together, and that since he was an American, and supposedly a mean hand at chess, she thought Morley might enjoy the company. This way Julie had a chance to be with her lover, and let Dennis see exactly what kind of man Morley was.

And from the first moment Dennis met him, he knew he had to get Julie away from him. Even if he hadn't loved her and wanted her, he would have helped her leave Morley.

It wasn't that Morley was openly abusive -- in fact, he was the perfect host all the while Dennis was there -- but there was an obvious undercurrent of connubial dominance and menace that revealed itself like a shark fin everytime he looked at Julie.

Still, in a strange way, Dennis found Morley interesting, if not likeable. He was a bright and intriguing talker, and a wizard at chess. But when they played and Morley took a piece, he smirked over it in such a way as to make you feel he had actually vanquished an opponent.

The second and last time Dennis visited the house was the night before he left for the States. Morley had wiped him out in chess, and when finally Julie walked him to the door and called the dogs in from the yard so he could leave without being eaten, she whispered, "I can't take him much longer."

"I know," he whispered back. "See you in about a week. And it'll be all over."

Dennis looked over his shoulder, back into the house, and there was Morley leaning against the fireplace mantle drinking a martini. He lifted the glass to Dennis as if in salute and smiled. Dennis smiled back, called goodbye to Morley and went out to his car feeling uneasy. The smile Morley had given him was exactly the same one he used when he took a chess piece from the board.

"Tonight. Valentine's Day," Morley said, "that's when you two planned to meet again, wasn't it? In the parking lot of your hotel. That's sweet. Really. Lovers planning to elope on Valentine's Day. It has a sort of poetry, don't you think?"

Morley held up a huge fist. "But what you met instead of your sweetheart was this . . . I beat a man to death with this once, lover boy. Enjoyed every second of it."

Morley moved swiftly around the table, came to stand behind Dennis. He put his hands on the sides of Dennis's face. "I could twist your head until your neck broke, lover boy. You believe that, don't you? Don't you? . . . Goddamnit, answer me."

"Yes," Dennis said, and the word was soft because his mouth was so dry.

"Good. That's good. Let me show you something, Dennis."

Morley picked up the chair from behind, carried Dennis effortlessly to the center of the room, then went back for the lantern and the other chair. He sat down across from Dennis and turned the wick of the lantern up. And even before Dennis saw the dog, he heard the growl.

The dog was straining at a large leather strap attached to the wall. He was muzzled and ragged looking. At his feet lay something red and white. "Chum," Morley said. "The light bothers him. You remember ole Chum, don't you? Julie's favorite pet . . . ah, but I see you're wondering what that is at his feet. That sort of surprises me, Dennis. Really. As intimate as you and Julie were, I'd think you'd know her. Even without her makeup."

Now that Dennis knew what he was looking at he could make out the white bone of her skull, a dark patch of matted hair still clinging to it. He also recognized what was left of the dress she had been wearing. It was a red and white tennis dress, the one she wore when they played racquetball. It was mostly red now. Her entire body had been gnawed savagely.

"Murderer!" Dennis rocked savagely in the chair, tried to pull free of his bonds. After a moment of useless struggle and useless epithets, he leaned forward and let the lava-hot gorge in his stomach pour out.

"Oh, Dennis," Morley said. "That's going to be stinky. Just awful. Will you look at your shoes? And calling me a murderer. Now, I ask you, Dennis, is that nice? I didn't murder anyone. Chum did the dirty work. After four days without food and water he was ravenous and thirsty. Wouldn't you be? And he was a little crazy too. I burned his feet some. Not as bad as I burned Julie's, but enough to really piss him off. And I sprayed her with this."

Morley reached into his coat pocket, produced an aerosol canister and waved it at Dennis.

"This was invented by some business associate of mine. It came out of some chemical warfare research I'm conducting. I'm in, shall we say . . . espionage? I work for the highest bidder. I have plants here for arms and chemical warfare . . . if it's profitable and ugly, I'm involved. I'm a real stinker sometimes. I certainly am."

Morley was still waving the canister, as if trying to hypnotize Dennis with it. "We came up with this to train attack dogs. We found we could spray a padded-up man with this and the dogs would go bonkers. Rip the pads right off of him. Sometimes the only way to stop the beggers was to shoot them. It was a failure, actually. It activated the dogs, but it drove them out of their minds and they couldn't be controlled at all. And after a short time the odor faded and the spray became quite the reverse. It made it so the dogs couldn't smell the spray at all. It made whoever was wearing it odorless. Still. I found a use for it. A very personal use.

"I let Chum go a few days without food and water while I worked on Julie . . . and she wasn't tough at all, Dennis. Not even a little bit. Spilled her guts. Now that isn't entirely correct. She didn't spill her guts until later, when Chum got hold of her . . . anyway, she told me what I wanted to know about you two, then I sprayed that delicate thirty-six, twenty-four, thirty-six figure of hers with this. And with Chum so hungry, and me having burned his feet and done some mean things to him, he was not in the best of humor when I gave him Julie.

"It was disgusting, Dennis. Really. I had to come back when it was over and shoot Chum with a tranquilizer dart, get him tied and muzzled for your arrival."

Morley leaned forward, sprayed Dennis from head to foot with the canister. Dennis turned his head and closed his eyes, tried not to breathe the foul-smelling mist.

"He's probably not all that hungry now," Morley said, "but this will still drive him wild."

Already Chum had gotten a whiff and was leaping at his leash. Foam burst from between his lips and frothed on the leather bands of the muzzle.

"I suppose it isn't polite to lecture a captive audience, Dennis, but I thought you might like to know a few things about dogs. No need to take notes. You won't be around for a quiz later.

"But here's some things to tuck in the back of your mind while you and Chum are alone. Dogs are very strong, Dennis. Very. They look small compared to a man, even a big dog like a Doberman, but they can exert a lot of pressure with their bite. I've seen dogs like Chum here, especially when they're exposed to my little spray, bite through the thicker end of a baseball bat. And they're quick. You'd have a better chance against a black belt in karate than an attack dog."

"Morley," Dennis said softly, "you can't do this."

"I can't?" Morley seemed to consider. "No, Dennis, I believe I can. I give myself permission. But hey, Dennis, I'm going to give you a chance. This is the good part now, so listen up. You're a sporting man. Basketball. Racquetball. Chess. Another man's woman. So you'll like this. This will appeal to your sense of competition.

"Julie didn't give Chum a fight at all. She just couldn't believe her Chummy-whummy wanted to eat her. Just wouldn't. She held out her hand, trying to soothe the old boy, and he just bit it right off. Right off. Got half the palm and the fingers in one bite. That's when I left them alone. I had a feeling her Chummy-whummy might start on me next, and I wouldn't have wanted that. Oooohhh, those sharp teeth. Like nails being driven into you."

"Morley, listen --"

"Shut up! You, Mr. Cock Dog and Basketball Star, just might have a chance. Not much of one, but I know you'll fight. You're not a quitter. I can tell by the way you play chess. You still lose, but you're not a quitter. You hang in there to the bitter end."

Morley took a deep breath, stood in the chair and hung the lantern on a low rafter. There was something else up there too. A coiled chain. Morley pulled it down and it clattered to the floor. At the sound of it Chum leaped against his leash and flecks of saliva flew from his mouth and Dennis felt them fall lightly on his hands and face.

Morley lifted one end of the chain toward Dennis. There was a thin, open collar attached to it.

"Once this closes it locks and can only be opened with this." Morley reached into his coat pocket and produced a key, held it up briefly and returned it. "There's a collar for Chum on the other end. Both are made out of good leather over strong, steel chain. See what I'm getting at here, Dennis?"

Morley leaned forward and snapped the collar around Dennis's neck.

"Oh, Dennis," Morley said, standing back to observe his handiwork. "It's you. Really. Great fit. And considering the day, just call this my valentine to you."

"You bastard."

"The biggest."

Morley walked over to Chum. Chum lunged at him, but with the muzzle on he was relatively harmless. Still, his weight hit Morley's legs, almost knocked him down.

Turning to smile at Dennis, Morley said, "See how strong he is? Add teeth to this little engine, some maneuverability . . . it's going to be awesome, lover boy. Awesome."

Morley slipped the collar under Chum's leash and snapped it into place even as the dog rushed against him, nearly knocking him down. But it wasn't Morley he wanted. He was trying to get at the smell. At Dennis. Dennis felt as if the fluids in his body were running out of drains at the bottoms of his feet.

"Was a little poontang worth this, Dennis? I certainly hope you think so. I hope it was the best goddamn piece you ever got. Sincerely, I do. Because death by dog is slow and ugly, lover boy. They like the throat and balls. So, you watch those spots, hear?"

"Morley, for God's sake, don't do this!"

Morley pulled a revolver from his coat pocket and walked over to Dennis. "I'm going to untie you now, stud. I want you to be real good, or I'll shoot you. If I shoot you, I'll gut shoot you, then let the dog loose. You got no chance that way. At least my way you've got a sporting chance -- slim to none."

He untied Dennis. "Now stand."

Dennis stood in front of the chair, his knees quivering. He was looking at Chum and Chum was looking at him, tugging wildly at the leash, which looked ready to snap. Saliva was thick as shaving cream over the front of Chum's muzzle.

Morley held the revolver on Dennis with one hand, and with the other he reproduced the aerosol can, sprayed Dennis once more. The stench made Dennis's head float.

"Last word of advice," Morley said. "Hell go straight for you."

"Morley . . ." Dennis started, but one look at the man and he knew he was better off saving the breath. He was going to need it.

Still holding the gun on Dennis, Morley eased behind the frantic dog, took hold of the muzzle with his free hand, and with a quick ripping motion, pulled it and the leash loose.

Chum sprang.

Dennis stepped back, caught the chair between his legs, lost his balance. Chum's leap carried him into Dennis's chest, and they both went flipping over the chair.

Chum kept rolling and the chain pulled across Dennis's face as the dog tumbled to its full length; the jerk of the sixty pound weight against Dennis's neck was like a blow.

The chain went slack, and Dennis knew Chum was coming. In that same instant he heard the door open, glimpsed a wedge of moonlight that came and went, heard the door lock and Morley laugh. Then he was rolling, coming to his knees, grabbing the chair, pointing it with the legs out.

And Chum hit him.

The chair took most of the impact, but it was like trying to block a cannonball. The chair's bottom cracked and a leg broke off, went skidding across the floor.

The truncated triangle of the Doberman's head appeared over the top of the chair, straining for Dennis's face. Dennis rammed the chair forward.

Chum dipped under it, grabbed Dennis's ankle. If was like stepping into a bear trap. The agony wasn't just in the ankle, it was a sizzling web of electricity that surged through his entire body.

The dog's teeth grated bone and Dennis let forth with a noise that was too wicked to be called a scream.

Blackness waved in and out, but the thought of Julie lying there in ragged display gave him new determination.

He brought the chair down on the dog's head with all his might.

Chum let out a yelp, and the dark head darted away.

Dennis stayed low, pulled his wounded leg back, attempted to keep the chair in front of him. But Chum was a black bullet. He shot under again, hit Dennis in the same leg, higher up this time. The impact slid Dennis back a foot. Still, he felt a certain relief. The dog's teeth had missed his balls by an inch.

Oddly, there was little pain this time. It was as if he were being encased in dark amber; floating in limbo. Must be like this when a shark hits, he thought. So hard and fast and clean you don't really feel it at first. Just go numb. Look down for your leg and it's gone.

The dark amber was penetrated by a bright stab of pain. But Dennis was grateful for it. It meant that his brain was working again. He swiped at Chum with the chair, broke him loose.

Swiveling on one knee, Dennis again used the chair as a shield. Chum launched forward, trying to go under it, but Dennis was ready this time and brought it down hard against the floor.

Chum hit the bottom of the chair with such an impact, his head broke through the thin slats. Teeth snapped in Dennis's face, but the dog couldn't squirm its shoulders completely through the hole and reach him.

Dennis let go of the chair with one hand, slugged the dog in the side of the head with the other. Chum twisted and the chair came loose from Dennis. The dog bounded away, leaping and whipping its body left and right, finally tossing off the wooden collar.

Grabbing the slack of the chain, Dennis used both hands to whip it into the dog's head, then swung it back and caught Chum's feet, knocking him on his side with a loud splat.

Even as Chum was scrambling to his feet, out of the corner of his eye Dennis spotted the leg that had broken off the chair. It was lying less than three feet away.

Chum rushed and Dennis dove for the leg, grabbed it, twisted and swatted at the Doberman. On the floor as he was, he couldn't get full power into the blow, but still it was a good one.

The dog skidded sideways on its belly and forelegs. When it came to a halt, it tried to raise its head, but didn't completely make it.

Dennis scrambled forward on his hands and knees, chopped the chair leg down on the Doberman's head with every ounce of muscle he could muster. The strike was solid, caught the dog right between the pointed ears and drove his head to the floor.

The dog whimpered. Dennis hit him again. And again.

Chum lay still.

Dennis took a deep breath, watched the dog and held his club cocked.

Chum did not move. He lay on the floor with his legs spread wide, his tongue sticking out of his foam-wet mouth.

Dennis was breathing heavily, and his wounded leg felt as if it were melting. He tried to stretch it out, alleviate some of the pain, but nothing helped.

He checked the dog again.

Still not moving.

He took hold of the chain and jerked it. Chum's head came up and smacked back down against the floor.

The dog was dead. He could see that.

He relaxed, closed his eyes and tried to make the spinning stop. He knew he had to bandage his leg somehow, stop the flow of blood. But at the moment he could hardly think.

And Chum, who was not dead, but stunned, lifted his head, and at the same moment, Dennis opened his eyes.

The Doberman's recovery was remarkable. It came off the floor with only the slightest wobble and jumped.

Dennis couldn't get the chair leg around in time and it deflected off of the animal's smooth back and slipped from his grasp.

He got Chum around the throat and tried to strangle him, but the collar was in the way and the dog's neck was too damn big.

Trying to get better traction, Dennis got his bad leg under him and made an effort to stand, lifting the dog with him. He used his good leg to knee Chum sharply in the chest, but the injured leg wasn't good for holding him up for another move like that. He kept trying to ease his thumbs beneath the collar and lock them behind the dog's windpipe.

Chum's hind legs were off the floor and scrambling, the toenails tearing at Dennis's lower abdomen and crotch.

Dennis couldn't believe how strong the dog was. Sixty pounds of pure muscle and energy, made more deadly by Morley's spray and tortures.

Sixty pounds of muscle.

The thought went through Dennis's head again.

Sixty pounds.

The medicine ball he tossed at the gym weighed more. It didn't have teeth, muscle and determination, but it did weigh more.

And as the realization soaked in, as his grip weakened and Chum's rancid breath coated his face, Dennis lifted his eyes to a rafter just two feet above his head; considered there was another two feet of space between the rafter and the ceiling.

He quit trying to choke Chum, eased his left hand into the dog's collar, and grabbed a hind leg with his other. Slowly, he lifted Chum over his head. Teeth snapped at Dennis's hair, pulled loose a few tufts.

Dennis spread his legs slightly. The wounded leg wobbled like an old pipe cleaner, but held. The dog seemed to weigh a hundred pounds. Even the sweat on his face and the dense, hot air in the room seemed heavy.

Sixty pounds.

A basketball weighed little to nothing, and the dog weighed less than the huge medicine ball in the gym. Somewhere between the two was a happy medium; he had the strength to lift the dog, the skill to make the shot -- the most important of his life.

Grunting, cocking the wiggling dog into position, he prepared to shoot. Chum nearly twisted free, but Dennis gritted his teeth, and with a wild scream, launched the dog into space.

Chum didn't go up straight, but he did go up. He hit the top of the rafter with his back, tried to twist in the direction he had come, couldn't, and went over the other side.

Dennis grabbed the chain as high up as possible, bracing as Chum's weight came down on the other side so violently it pulled him onto his toes.

The dog made a gurgling sound, spun on the end of the chain, legs thrashing.

It took a long fifteen minutes for Chum to strangle.

When Chum was dead, Dennis tried to pull him over the rafter. The dog's weight, Dennis's bad leg, and his now aching arms and back, made it a greater chore than he had anticipated. Chum's head kept slamming against the rafter. Dennis got hold of the unbroken chair, and used it as a stepladder. He managed the Doberman over, and Chum fell to the floor, his neck flopping loosely.

Dennis sat down on the floor beside the dog and patted it on the head. "Sorry," he said.

He took off his shirt, tore it into rags and bound his bad leg with it. It was still bleeding steadily, but not gushing; no major artery had been torn. His ankle wasn't bleeding as much, but in the dim lantern light he could see that Chum had bitten him to the bone. He used most of the shirt to wrap and strengthen the ankle.

When he finished, he managed to stand. The shirt binding had stopped the bleeding and the short rest had slightly rejuvenated him.

He found his eyes drawn to the mess in the corner that was Julie, and his first though was to cover her, but there wasn't anything in the room sufficient for the job.

He closed his eyes and tried to remember how it had been before. When she was whole and the room had a mattress and they had made love all the long, sweet, Mexican afternoon. But the right images would not come. Even with his eyes closed, he could see her mauled body on the floor.

Ducking his head made some of the dizziness go away, and he was able to get Julie out of his mind by thinking of Morley. He wondered when he would come back. If he was waiting outside.

But no, that wouldn't be Morley's way. He wouldn't be anxious. He was cocksure of himself, he would go back to the estate for a drink and maybe play a game of chess against himself, gloat a long, sweet while before coming back to check on his handiwork. It would never occur to Morley to think he had survived. That would not cross his mind. Morley saw himself as Life's best chess master, and he did not make wrong moves; things went according to plan. Most likely, he wouldn't even check until morning.

The more Dennis thought about it, the madder he got and the stronger he felt. He moved the chair beneath the rafter where the lantern was hung, climbed up and got it down. He inspected the windows and doors. The door had a sound lock, but the windows were merely boarded. Barrier enough when he was busy with the dog, but not now.

He put the lantern on the floor, turned it up, found the chair leg he had used against Chum, and substituted it for a pry bar. It was hard work and by the time he had worked the boards off the window his hands were bleeding and full of splinters." His face looked demonic.

Pulling Chum to him, he tossed him out the window, climbed after him clutching the chair leg. He took up the chain's slack and hitched it around his forearm. He wondered about the other Dobermans. Wondered if Morley had killed them too, or if he was keeping them around. As he recalled, the Dobermans were usually loose on the yard at night. The rest of the time they had free run of the house, except Morley's study, his sanctuary. And hadn't Morley said that later on the spray killed a man's scent? That was worth something; it could be the edge he needed.

But it didn't really matter. Nothing mattered anymore. Six dogs. Six war elephants. He was going after Morley.

He began dragging the floppy-necked Chum toward the estate.

* * *

Morley was sitting at his desk playing a game of chess with himself, and both sides were doing quite well, he thought. He had a glass of brandy at his elbow, and from time to time he would drink from it, cock his head and consider his next move.

Outside the study door, in the hall, he could hear Julie's dogs padding nervously. They wanted out and in the past they would have been on the yard long before now. But tonight he hadn't bothered. He hated those bastards, and just maybe he'd get rid of them. Shoot them and install a burglar alarm. Alarms didn't have to eat or be let out to shit, and they wouldn't turn on you. And he wouldn't have to listen to the sound of dog toenails clicking on the tile outside of his study door.

He considered letting the Dobermans out, but hesitated. Instead, he opened a box of special Cuban cigars, took one, rolled it between his fingers near his ear so he could hear the fresh crackle of good tobacco. He clipped the end off the cigar with a silver clipper, put it in his mouth and lit it with a desk lighter without actually putting the flame to it. He drew in a deep lung-full of smoke and relished it, let it out with a soft, contented sigh.

At the same moment he heard a sound, like something being dragged across the gravel drive. He sat motionless a moment, not batting an eye. It couldn't be lover boy, he thought. No way.

He walked across the room, pulled the curtain back from the huge glass door, unlocked it and slid it open.

A cool wind had come along and it was shaking the trees in the yard, but nothing else was moving. Morley searched the tree shadows for some tell-tale sign, but saw nothing.

Still, he was not one for imagination. He had heard something. He went back to the desk chair where his coat hung, reached the revolver from his pocket, turned.

And there was Dennis. Shirtless, one pants leg mostly ripped away. There were blood-stained bandages on his thigh and ankle. He had the chain partially coiled around one arm and Chum, quite dead, was lying on the floor beside him. In his right hand Dennis held a chair leg, and at the same moment Morley noted this and raised the revolver, Dennis threw it.

The leg hit Morley squarely between the eyes, knocked him against his desk and as he tried to right himself, Dennis took hold of the chain and used it to swing the dead dog. Chum struck Morley on the ankles and took him down like a scythe cutting fresh wheat. Morley's head slammed into the edge of the desk and blood dribbled into his eyes; everything seemed to be in a mix-master, whirling so fast nothing was identifiable.

When the world came to rest, he saw Dennis standing over him with the revolver. Morley could not believe the man's appearance. His lips were split in a thin grin that barely showed his teeth. His face was drawn and his eyes were strange and savage. It was apparent he had found the key in the coat, because the collar was gone.

Out in the hall, bouncing against the door, Morley could hear Julie's dogs. They sensed the intruder and wanted at him. He wished now he had left the study door open, or put them out on the yard.

"I've got money," Morley said.

"Fuck your money," Dennis screamed. "I'm not selling anything here. Get up and get over here."

Morley followed the wave of the revolver to the front of his desk. Dennis swept the chess set and stuff aside with a swipe of his arm and bent Morley backwards over the desk. He put one of the collars around Morley's neck, pulled the chain around the desk a few times, pushed it under and fastened the other collar over Morley's ankles.

Tucking the revolver into the waistband of his pants, Dennis picked up Chum and tenderly placed him on the desk chair, half-curled. He tried to poke the dog's tongue back into his mouth, but that didn't work. He patted Chum on the head, said, "There, now."

Dennis went around and stood in front of Morley and looked at him, as if memorizing the moment.

At his back the Dobermans rattled the door.

"We can make a deal," Morley said. "I can give you a lot of money, and you can go away. We'll call it even."

Dennis unfastened Morley's pants, pulled them down to his knees. He pulled the underwear down. He went around and got the spray can out of Morley's coat and came back.

"This isn't sporting, Dennis. At least I gave you a fighting chance."

"I'm not a sport," Dennis said.

He sprayed Morley's testicles with the chemical. When he finished he tossed the canister aside, walked over to the door and listened to the Dobermans scuttling on the other side.

"Dennis!"

Dennis took hold of the doorknob.

"Screw you then," Morley said. "I'm not afraid. I won't scream. I won't give you the pleasure."

"You didn't even love her," Dennis said, and opened the door.

The Dobermans went straight for the stench of the spray, straight for Morley's testicles.

Dennis walked calmly out the back way, closed the glass door. And as he limped down the drive, making for the gate, he began to laugh.

Morley had lied. He did too scream. In fact, he was still screaming.

NIGHT THEY MISSED THE HORROR SHOW

If they'd gone to the drive-in like they had planned, none of this would have happened. But Leonard didn't like drive-ins when he didn't have a date, and he'd heard about Night Of The Living Dead, and he knew a nigger starred in it. He didn't want to see no movie with a nigger star. Niggers chopped cotton, fixed flats, and pimped nigger girls, but he'd never heard of one that killed zombies. And he'd heard too that there was a white girl in the movie that let the nigger touch her, and that peeved him. Any white gal that would let a nigger touch her must be the lowest trash in the world. Probably from Hollywood, New York, or Waco, some godforsaken place like that.

Now Steve McQueen would have been all right for zombie killing and girl handling. He would have been the ticket. But a nigger? No sir.

Boy, that Steve McQueen was one cool head. Way he said stuff in them pictures was so good you couldn't help but think someone had written it down for him. He could sure think fast on his feet to come up with the things he said, and he had that real cool, mean look.

Leonard wished he could be Steve McQueen, or Paul Newman even. Someone like that always knew what to say, and he figured they got plenty of bush too. Certainly they didn't get as bored as he did. He was so bored he felt as if he were going to die from it before the night was out. Bored, bored, bored. Just wasn't nothing exciting about being in the Dairy Queen parking lot, leaning on the front of his '64 Impala looking out at the highway. He figured maybe old crazy Harry who janitored at the high school might be right about them flying saucers. Harry was always seeing something. Bigfoot, six-legged weasels, all manner of things. But maybe he was right about the saucers. He'd said he'd seen one a couple nights back hovering over Mud Creek and it was shooting down these rays that looked like wet peppermint sticks. Leonard figured if Harry really had seen the saucers and the rays, then those rays were boredom rays. It would be a way for space critters to get at Earth folks, boring them to death. Getting melted down by heat rays would have been better. That was at least quick, but being bored to death was sort of like being nibbled to death by ducks.

Leonard continued looking at the highway, trying to imagine flying saucers and boredom rays, but he couldn't keep his mind on it. He finally focused on something in the highway. A dead dog.

Not just a dead dog. But a DEAD DOG. The mutt had been hit by a semi at least, maybe several. It looked as if it had rained dog. There were pieces of that pooch all over the concrete and one leg was lying on the curbing on the opposite side, stuck up in such a way that it seemed to be waving hello. Doctor Frankenstein with a grant from Johns Hopkins and assistance from NASA couldn't have put that sucker together again.

Leonard leaned over to his faithful, drunk companion, Billy -- known among the gang as Farto, because he was fart-lighting champion of Mud Creek -- and said, "See that dog there?"

Farto looked where Leonard was pointing. He hadn't noticed the dog before, and he wasn't nearly as casual about it as Leonard. The puzzle-piece hound brought back memories. It reminded him of a dog he'd had when he was thirteen. A big, fine German shepherd that loved him better than his Mama.

Sonofabitch dog tangled its chain through and over a barbed wire fence somehow and hung itself. When Farto found the dog its tongue looked like a stuffed, black sock and he could see where its claws had just been able to scrape the ground, but not quite enough to get a toe hold. It looked as if the dog had been scratching out some sort of coded message in the dirt. When Farto told his old man about it later, crying as he did, his old man laughed and said, "Probably a goddamn suicide note."

Now, as he looked out at the highway, and his whiskey-laced Coke collected warmly in his gut, he felt a tear form in his eyes. Last time he'd felt that sappy was when he'd won the fart-lighting championship with a four-inch burner that singed the hairs of his ass, and the gang awarded him with a pair of colored boxing shorts. Brown and yellow ones so he could wear them without having to change them too often.

So there they were, Leonard and Farto, parked outside the DQ, leaning on the hood of Leonard's Impala, sipping Coke and whiskey, feeling bored and blue and horny, looking at a dead dog and having nothing to do but go to a show with a nigger starring in it. Which, to be up front, wouldn't have been so bad if they'd had dates. Dates could make up for a lot of sins, or help make a few good ones, depending on one's outlook.

But the night was criminal. Dates they didn't have. Worse yet, wasn't a girl in the entire high school would date them. Not even Marylou Flowers, and she had some kind of disease.

All this nagged Leonard something awful. He could see what the problem was with Farto. He was ugly. Had the kind of face that attracted flies. And though being fart-lighting champion of Mud Creek had a certain prestige among the gang, it lacked a certain something when it came to charming the gals.

But for the life of him, Leonard couldn't figure his own problem. He was handsome, had some good clothes, and his car ran good when he didn't buy that old cheap gas. He even had a few bucks in his jeans from breaking into washaterias. Yet his right arm had damn near grown to the size of his thigh from all the whacking off he did. Last time he'd been out with a girl had been a month ago, and as he'd been out with her along with nine other guys, he wasn't rightly sure he could call that a date. He wondered about it so much, he'd asked Farto if he thought it qualified as a date. Farto, who had been fifth in line, said he didn't think so, but if Leonard wanted to call it one, wasn't no skin off his dick.

But Leonard didn't want to call it a date. It just didn't have the feel of one, lacked that something special. There was no romance to it.

True, Big Red had called him Honey when he put the mule in the barn, but she called everyone Honey -- except Stoney. Stoney was Possum sweets, and he was the one who talked her into wearing the grocery bag with the mouth and eye holes. Stoney was like that. He could sweet talk the camel out from under a sand nigger. When he got through chatting Big Red down, she was plumb proud to wear that bag.

When finally it came his turn to do Big Red, Leonard had let her take the bag off as a gesture of good will. That was a mistake. He just hadn't known a good thing when he had it. Stoney had had the right idea. The bag coming off spoiled everything. With it on, it was sort of like balling the Lone Hippo or some such thing, but with the bag off, you were absolutely certain what you were getting, and it wasn't pretty.

Even closing his eyes hadn't helped. He found that the ugliness of that face had branded itself on the back of his eyeballs. He couldn't even imagine the sack back over her head. All he could think about was that puffy, too-painted face with the sort of bad complexion that began at the bone.

He'd gotten so disappointed, he'd had to fake an orgasm and get off before his hooter shriveled up and his Trojan fell off and was lost in the vacuum.

Thinking back on it, Leonard sighed. It would certainly be nice for a change to go with a girl that didn't pull the train or had a hole between her legs that looked like a manhole cover ought to be on it. Sometimes he wished he could be like Farto, who was as happy as if he had good sense. Anything thrilled him. Give him a can of Wolf Brand Chili, a big moon pie, Coke and whiskey and he could spend the rest of his life fucking Big Red and lighting the gas out of his asshole.

God, but this was no way to live. No women and no fun. Bored, bored, bored. Leonard found himself looking overhead for space ships and peppermint-colored boredom rays, but he saw only a few moths fluttering drunkenly through the beams of the DQ's lights.

Lowering his eyes back to the highway and the dog, Leonard had a sudden flash. "Why don't we get the chain out of the back and hook it up to Rex there? Take him for a ride."

"You mean drag his dead ass around?" Farto asked.

Leonard nodded.

"Beats stepping on a tack," Farto said.

They drove the Impala into the middle of the highway at a safe moment and got out for a look. Up close the mutt was a lot worse. Its innards had been mashed out of its mouth and asshole and it stunk something awful. The dog was wearing a thick, metal-studded collar and they fastened one end of their fifteen foot chain to that and the other to the rear bumper.

Bob, the Dairy Queen manager, noticed them through the window, came outside and yelled, "What are you fucking morons doing?"

"Taking this doggie to the vet," Leonard said. "We think this sumbitch looks a might peaked. He may have been hit by a car."

"That's so fucking funny I'm about to piss myself," Bob said.

"Old folks have that problem," Leonard said.

Leonard got behind the wheel and Farto climbed in on the passenger side. They manuvered the car and dog around and out of the path of a tractor-trailer truck just in time. As they drove off, Bob screamed after them, "I hope you two no-dicks wrap that Chevy piece of shit around a goddamn pole."

As they roared along, parts of the dog, like crumbs from a flaky loaf of bread, came off. A tooth here. Some hair there. A string of guts. A dew claw. And some unidentifiable pink stuff. The metal-studded collar and chain threw up sparks now and then like fiery crickets. Finally they hit seventy-five and the dog was swinging wider and wider on the chain, like it was looking for an opportunity to pass.

Farto poured him and Leonard Cokes and whiskey as they drove along. He handed Leonard his paper cup and Leonard knocked it back, a lot happier now than he had been a moment ago. Maybe this night wasn't going to turn out so bad after all.

They drove by a crowd at the side of the road, a tan station wagon and a wreck of a Ford up on a jack. At a glance they could see that there was a nigger in the middle of the crowd and he wasn't witnessing to the white boys. He was hopping around like a pig with a hotshot up his ass, trying to find a break in the white boys so he could make a run for it. But there wasn't any break to be found and there were too many to fight. Nine white boys were knocking him around like he was a pinball and they were a malicious machine.

"Ain't that one of our niggers?" Farto asked. "And ain't that some of them White Tree football players that's trying to kill him?"

"Scott," Leonard said, and the name was dogshit in his mouth. It had been Scott who had outdone him for the position of quarterback on the team. That damn jig could put together a play more tangled than a can of fishing worms, but it damn near always worked. And he could run like a spotted-ass ape.

As they passed, Fatto said, "We'll read about him tomorrow in the papers."

But Leonard drove only a short way before slamming on the brakes and whipping the Impala around. Rex swung way out and clipped off some tall, dried sunflowers at the edge of the road like a scythe.

"We gonna go back and watch?" Farto said. "I don't think them White Tree boys would bother us none if that's all we was gonna do, watch."

"He may be a nigger," Leonard said, not liking himself, "but he's our nigger and we can't let them do that. They kill him, they'll beat us in football."

Farto saw the truth of this immediately. "Damn right. They can't do that to our nigger."

Leonard crossed the road again and went straight for the White Tree boys, hit down hard on the horn. The White Tree boys abandoned beating their prey and jumped in all directions. Bullfrogs couldn't have done any better.

Scott stood startled and weak where he was, his knees bent in and touching one another, his eyes big as pizza pans. He had never noticed how big grillwork was. It looked like teeth there in the night and the headlights looked like eyes. He felt like a stupid fish about to be eaten by a shark.

Leonard braked hard, but off the highway in the dirt it wasn't enough to keep from bumping Scott, sending him flying over the hood and against the glass where his face mashed to it then rolled away, his shirt snagging one of the windshield wipers and pulling it off.

Leonard opened the car door and called to Scott who lay on the ground. "It's now or never."

A White Tree boy made for the car, and Leonard pulled the taped hammer handle out from beneath the seat and stepped out of the car and hit him with it. The White Tree boy went down to his knees and said something that sounded like French but wasn't. Leonard grabbed Scott by the back of the shirt and pulled him up and guided him around and threw him into the open door. Scott scrambled over the front seat and into the back. Leonard threw the hammer handle at one of the White Tree boys and stepped back, whirled into the car behind the wheel. He put the car in gear again and stepped on the gas. The Impala lurched forward, and with one hand on the door Leonard flipped it wider and clipped a White Tree boy with it as if he were flexing a wing. The car bumped back on the highway and the chain swung out and Rex clipped the feet out from under two White Tree boys as neatly as he had taken down the dried sunflowers.

Leonard looked in his rearview mirror and saw two White Tree boys carrying the one he had clubbed with the hammer handle to the station wagon. The others he and the dog had knocked down were getting up. One had kicked the jack out from under Scott's car and was using it to smash the headlights and windshield.

"Hope you got insurance on that thing," Leonard said.

"I borrowed it," Scott said, peeling the windshield wiper out of his T-shirt. "Here, you might want this." He dropped the wiper over the seat and between Leonard and Farto.

"That's a borrowed car?" Farto said. "That's worse."

"Nah," Scott said. "Owner don't know I borrowed it. I'd have had that flat changed if that sucker had had him a spare tire, but I got back there and wasn't nothing but the rim, man. Say, thanks for not letting me get killed, else we couldn't have run that ole pig together no more. Course, you almost run over me. My chest hurts."

Leonard checked the rearview again. The White Tree boys were coming fast. "You complaining?" Leonard said.

"Nah," Scott said, and turned to look through the back glass. He could see the dog swinging in short arcs and pieces of it going wide and far. "Hope you didn't go off and forget your dog tied to the bumper."

"Goddamn," said Farto, "and him registered too."

"This ain't so funny," Leonard said, "them White Tree boys are gaining."

"Well, speed it up," Scott said.

Leonard gnashed his teeth. "I could always get rid of some excess baggage, you know."

"Throwing that windshield wiper out ain't gonna help," Scott said.

Leonard looked in the mirror and saw the grinning nigger in the back seat. Nothing worse than a comic coon. He didn't even look grateful. Leonard had a sudden horrid vision of being overtaken by the White Tree boys. What if he were killed with the nigger? Getting killed was bad enough, but what if tomorrow they found him in a ditch with Farto and the nigger. Or maybe them White Tree boys would make him do something awful with the nigger before they killed them. Like making him suck the nigger's dick or some such thing. Leonard held his foot all the way to the floor; as they passed the Dairy Queen he took a hard left and the car just made it and Rex swung out and slammed a light pole, then popped back in line behind them.

The White Tree boys couldn't make the corner in the station wagon and they didn't even try. They screeched into a car lot down a piece, turned around and came back. By that time the tail lights of the Impala were moving away from them rapidly, looking like two inflamed hemorrhoids in a dark asshole.

"Take the next right coming up," Scott said, "then you'll see a little road off to the left. Kill your lights and take that."

Leonard hated taking orders from Scott on the field, but this was worse. Insulting. Still, Scott called good plays on the field, and the habit of following instructions from the quarterback died hard. Leonard made the right and Rex made it with them after taking a dip in a water-filled bar ditch.

Leonard saw the little road and killed his lights and took it. It carried them down between several rows of large tin storage buildings, and Leonard pulled between two of them and drove down a little alley lined with more. He stopped the car and they waited and listened. After about five minutes, Farto said, "I think we skunked those father-rapers."

"Ain't we a team?" Scott said.

In spite of himself, Leonard felt good. It was like when the nigger called a play that worked and they were all patting each other on the ass and not minding what color the other was because they were just creatures in football suits.

"Let's have a drink," Leonard said.

Farto got a paper cup off the floorboard for Scott and poured him up some warm Coke and whiskey. Last time they had gone to Longview, he had peed in that paper cup so they wouldn't have to stop, but that had long since been poured out, and besides, it was for a nigger. He poured Leonard and himself drinks in their same cups.

Scott took a sip and said, "Shit, man, that tastes kind of rank."

"Like piss," Farto said.

Leonard held up his cup. "To the Mud Creek Wildcats and fuck them White Tree boys."

"You fuck 'em," Scott said. They touched their cups, and at that moment the car filled with light.

Cups upraised, the Three Musketeers turned blinking toward it. The light was coming from an open storage building door, and there was a fat man standing in the center of the glow like a bloated fly on a lemon wedge. Behind him was a big screen made of a sheet and there was some kind of movie playing on it. And though the light was bright and fading out the movie, Leonard, who was in the best position to see, got a look at it. What he could make out looked like a gal down on her knees sucking this fat guy's dick (the man was visible only from the belly down) arid the guy had a short, black revolver pressed to her forehead. She pulled her mouth off of him for an instant and the man came in her face, then fired the revolver. The woman's head snapped out of frame and the sheet seemed to drip blood, like dark condensation on a window pane. Then Leonard couldn't see anymore because another man had appeared in the doorway, and like the first he was fat. Both looked like huge bowling balls that had been set on top of shoes. More men appeared behind these two, but one of the fat men turned and held up his hand and the others moved out of sight. The two fat guys stepped outside and one pulled the door almost shut, except for a thin band of light that fell across the front seat of the Impala.

Fat Man Number One went over to the car and opened Farto's door and said, "You fucks and the nigger get out." It was the voice of doom. They had only thought the White Tree boys were dangerous. They realized now they had been kidding themselves. This was the real article. This guy would have eaten the hammer handle and shit a two-by-four.

They got out of the car and the fat man waved them around and lined them up on Farto's side and looked at them. The boys still had their drinks in their hands, and sparing that, they looked like cons in a lineup.

Fat Man Number Two came over and looked at the trio and smiled. It was obvious the fatties were twins. They had the same bad features in the same fat faces. They wore Hawaiian shirts that varied only in profiles and color of parrots and had on white socks and too-short black slacks and black, shiny, Italian shoes with toes sharp enough to thread needles.

Fat Man Number One took the cup away from Scott and sniffed it. "A nigger with liquor," he said. "That's like a cunt with brains. It don't go together. Guess you was getting tanked up so you could put the ole black snake to some chocolate pudding after while. Or maybe you was wantin' some vanilla and these boys were gonna set it up."

"I'm not wanting anything but to go home," Scott said.

Fat Man Number Two looked at Fat Man Number One and said, "So he can fuck his mother."

The fatties looked at Scott to see what he'd say but he didn't say anything. They could say he screwed dogs and that was all right with him. Hell, bring one on and he'd fuck it now if they'd let him go afterwards.

Fat Man Number One said, "You boys running around with a jungle bunny makes me sick."

"He's just a nigger from school," Farto said. "We don't like him none. We just picked him up because some White Tree boys were beating on him and we didn't want him to get wrecked on account of he's our quarterback."

"Ah," Fat Man Number One said, "I see. Personally, me and Vinnie don't cotton to niggers in sports. They start taking showers with white boys, the next thing they want is to take white girls to bed. It's just one step from one to the other."

"We don't have nothing to do with him playing," Leonard said. "We didn't intergrate the schools."

"No," Fat Man Number One said, "that was ole Big Ears Johnson, but you're running around with him and drinking with him."

"His cup's been peed in," Farto said. "That was kind of a joke on him, you see. He ain't our friend, I swear it. He's just a nigger that plays football."

"Peed in his cup, huh?" said the one called Vinnie. "I like that, Pork, don't you? Peed in his fucking cup."

Pork dropped Scott's cup on the ground and smiled at him. "Come here, nigger. I got something to tell you."

Scott looked at Farto and Leonard. No help there. They had suddenly become interested in the toes of their shoes; they examined them as if they were true marvels of the world.

Scott moved toward Pork, and Pork, still smiling, put his arm around Scott's shoulders and walked him toward the big storage building. Scott said, "What are we doing?"

Pork turned Scott around so they were facing Leonard and Farto who still stood holding their drinks and contemplating their shoes. "I didn't want to get it on the new gravel drive," Pork said and pulled Scott's head in close to his own and with his free hand reached back and under his Hawaiian shirt and brought out a short, black revolver and put it to Scott's temple and pulled the trigger. There was a snap like a bad knee going out and Scott's feet lifted in unison and went to the side and something dark squirted from his head and his feet swung back toward Pork and his shoes shuffled, snapped, and twisted on the concrete in front of the building.

"Ain't that somethin'," Pork said as Scott went limp and dangled from the thick crook of his arm, "the rhythm is the last thing to go."

Leonard couldn't make a sound. His guts were in his throat. He wanted to melt and run under the car. Scott was dead and the brains that had made plays twisted as fishing worms and commanded his feet on down the football field were scrambled like breakfast eggs.

Farto said, "Holy shit."

Pork let go of Scott and Scott's legs split and he sat down and his head went forward and clapped on the cement between his knees. A dark pool formed under his face.

"He's better off, boys," Vinnie said. "Nigger was begat by Cain and the ape and he ain't quite monkey and he ain't quite man. He's got no place in this world 'cept as a beast of burden. You start trying to train them to do things like drive cars and run with footballs, it ain't nothing but grief to them and the whites too. Get any on your shirt, Pork?"

"Nary a drop."

Vinnie went inside the building and said something to the men there that could be heard but not understood, then he came back with some crumpled newspapers. He went over to Scott and wrapped them around the bloody head and let it drop back on the cement. "You try hosing down that shit when it's dried, Pork, and you wouldn't worry none about that gravel. The gravel ain't nothing."

Then Vinnie said to Farto, "Open the back door of that car." Farto nearly twisted an ankle doing it. Vinnie picked Scott up by the back of the neck and seat of his pants and threw him onto the floorboard of the Impala.

Pork used the short barrel of his revolver to scratch his nuts, then put the gun behind him, under his Hawaiian shirt. "You boys are gonna go to the river bottoms with us and help us get shed of this nigger."

"Yes sir," Farto said. "We'll toss his ass in the Sabine for you."

"How about you?" Pork asked Leonard. "You trying to go weak sister?"

"No," Leonard croaked. "I'm with you."

"That's good," Pork said. "Vinnie, you take the truck and lead the way."

Vinnie took a key from his pocket and unlocked the building door next to the one with the light, went inside, and backed out a sharp-looking gold Dodge pickup. He backed it in front of the Impala and sat there with the motor running.

"You boys keep your place," Pork said. He went inside the lighted building for a moment. They heard him say to the men inside, "Go on and watch the movies. And save some of them beers for us. We'll be back." Then the light went out and Pork came out, shutting the door. He looked at Leonard and Farto and said, "Drink up, boys."

Leonard and Farto tossed off their warm Coke and whiskey and dropped the cups on the ground.

"Now," Pork said, "you get in the back with the nigger, I'll ride with the driver."

Farto got in the back and put his feet on Scott's knees. He tried not to look at the head wrapped in newspaper, but he couldn't help it. When Pork opened the front door and the overhead light came on Farto saw there was a split in the paper and Scott's eye was visible behind it. Across the forehead the wrapping had turned dark. Down by the mouth and chin was an ad for a fish sale.

Leonard got behind the wheel and started the car. Pork reached over and honked the horn. Vinnie rolled the pickup forward and Leonard followed him to the river bottoms. No one spoke. Leonard found himself wishing with all his heart that he had gone to the outdoor picture show to see the movie with the nigger starring in it.

The river bottoms were steamy and hot from the closeness of the trees and the under- and overgrowth. As Leonard wound the Impala down the narrow, red clay roads amidst the dense foliage, he felt as if his car was a crab crawling about in a pubic thatch. He could feel from the way the steering wheel handled that the dog and the chain were catching brush and limbs here and there. He had forgotten all about the dog and now being reminded of it worried him. What if the dog got tangled and he had to stop? He didn't think Pork would take kindly to stopping, not with the dead burrhead on the floorboard and him wanting to get rid of the body.

Finally they came to where the woods cleared out a spell and they drove along the edge of the Sabine River. Leonard hated water and always had. In the moonlight the river looked like poisoned coffee flowing there. Leonard knew there were alligators and gars big as little alligators and water moccasins by the thousands swimming underneath the water, and just the thought of all those slick, darting bodies made him queasy.

They came to what was known as Broken Bridge. It was an old worn-out bridge that had fallen apart in the middle and it was connected to the land on this side only. People sometimes fished off of it. There was no one fishing tonight.

Vinnie stopped the pickup and Leonard pulled up beside him, the nose of the Chevy pointing at the mouth of the bridge. They all got out and Pork made Farto pull Scott out by the feet. Some of the newspaper came loose from Scott's head exposing an ear and part of the face. Farto patted the newspaper back into place.

"Fuck that," Vinnie said. "It don't hurt if he stains the fucking ground. You two idgits find some stuff to weight this coon down so we can sink him."

Farto and Leonard started scurrying about like squirrels, looking for rocks or big, heavy logs. Suddenly they heard Vinnie cry out. "Godamighty, fucking A. Pork. Come look at this."

Leonard looked over and saw that Vinnie had discovered Rex. He was standing looking down with his hands on his hips. Pork went over to stand by him, then Pork turned around and looked at them. "Hey, you fucks, come here."

Leonard and Farto joined them in looking at the dog. There was mostly just a head now, with a little bit of meat and fur hanging off a spine and some broken ribs.

"That's the sickest fucking thing I've ever fucking seen," Pork said.

"Godamighty," Vinnie said.

"Doing a dog like that. Shit, don't you got no heart? A dog. Man's best fucking goddamn friend and you two killed him like this."

"We didn't kill him," Farto said.

"You trying to fucking tell me he done this to himself? Had a bad fucking day and done this."

"Godamighty," Vinnie said.

"No sir," Leonard said. "We chained him on there after he was dead."

"I believe that," Vinnie said. "That's some rich shit. You guys murdered this dog. Godamighty."

"Just thinking about him trying to keep up and you fucks driving faster and faster makes me mad as a wasp," Pork said.

"No," Farto said. "It wasn't like that. He was dead and we were drunk and we didn't have anything to do, so we --"

"Shut the fuck up," Pork said, sticking a finger hard against Farto's forehead. "You just shut the fuck up. We can see what the fuck you fucks did. You drug this here dog around until all his goddamn hide came off . . . what kind of mothers you boys got anyhow that they didn't tell you better about animals?"

"Godamighty," Vinnie said.

Everyone grew silent, stood looking at the dog. Finally Farto said, "You want us to go back to getting some stuff to hold the nigger down?"

Pork looked at Farto as if he had just grown up whole from the ground. "You fucks are worse than niggers, doing a dog like that. Get on back over to the car."

Leonard and Farto went over to the Impala and stood looking down at Scott's body in much the same way they had stared at the dog. There, in the dim moonlight shadowed by trees, the paper wrapped around Scott's head made him look like a giant papier-mache doll. Pork came up and kicked Scott in the face with a swift motion that sent newspaper flying and sent a thonking sound across the water that made frogs jump.

"Forget the nigger," Pork said. "Give me your car keys, ball sweat." Leonard took out his keys and gave them to Pork, and Pork went around to the trunk and opened it. "Drag the nigger over here."

Leonard took one of Scott's arms and Farto took the other and they pulled him over to the back of the car.

"Put him in the trunk," Pork said.

"What for?" Leonard asked.

"Cause I fucking said so," Pork said.

Leonard and Farto heaved Scott into the trunk. He looked pathetic lying there next to the spare tire, his face partially covered with newspaper. Leonard thought, if only the nigger had stolen a car with a spare he might not be here tonight. He could have gotten the flat changed and driven on before the White Tree boys ever came along.

"All right, you get in there with him," Pork said, gesturing to Farto.

"Me?" Farto said.

"Nah, not fucking you, the fucking elephant on your fucking shoulder. Yeah, you, get in the trunk. I ain't got all night."

"Jesus, we didn't do anything to that dog, mister. We told you that. I swear. Me and Leonard hooked him up after he was dead . . . it was Leonard's idea."

Pork didn't say a word. He just stood there with one hand on the trunk lid looking at Farto. Farto looked at Pork, then the trunk, then back to Pork. Lastly he looked at Leonard, then climbed into the trunk, his back to Scott.

"Like spoons," Pork said, and closed the lid. "Now you, whatsit, Leonard? You come over here." But Pork didn't wait for Leonard to move. He scooped the back of Leonard's neck with a chubby hand and pushed him over to where Rex lay at the end of the chain with Vinnie still looking down at him.

"What you think, Vinnie?" Pork asked. "You got what I got in mind?"

Vinnie nodded. He bent down and took the collar off the dog. He fastened it on Leonard. Leonard could smell the odor of the dead dog in his nostrils. He bent his head and puked.

"There goes my shoeshine," Vinnie said, and he hit Leonard a short one in the stomach. Leonard went to his knees and puked some more of the hot Coke and whiskey.

"You fucks are the lowest pieces of shit on this earth, doing a dog like that," Vinnie said. "A nigger ain't no lower."

Vinnie got some strong fishing line out of the back of the truck and they tied Leonard's hands behind his back. Leonard began to cry.

"Oh shut up," Pork said. "It ain't that bad. Ain't nothing that bad."

But Leonard couldn't shut up. He was caterwauling now and it was echoing through the trees. He closed his eyes and tried to pretend he had gone to the show with the nigger starring in it and had fallen asleep in his car and was having a bad dream, but he couldn't imagine that. He thought about Harry the janitor's flying saucers with the peppermint rays, and he knew if there were any saucers shooting rays down, they weren't boredom rays after all. He wasn't a bit bored.

Pork pulled off Leonard's shoes and pushed him back flat on the ground and pulled off the socks and stuck them in Leonard's mouth so tight he couldn't spit them out. It wasn't that Pork thought anyone was going to hear Leonard, he just didn't like the noise. It hurt his ears.

Leonard lay on the ground in the vomit next to the dog and cried silently. Pork and Vinnie went over to the Impala and opened the doors and stood so they could get a grip on the car to push. Vinnie reached in and moved the gear from park to neutral and he and Pork began to shove the car forward. It moved slowly at first, but as it made the slight incline that led down to the old bridge, it picked up speed. From inside the trunk, Farto hammered lightly at the lid as if he didn't really mean it. The chain took up slack and Leonard felt it jerk and pop his neck. He began to slide along the ground like a snake.

Vinnie and Pork jumped out of the way and watched the car make the bridge and go over the edge and disappear into the water with amazing quietness. Leonard, pulled by the weight of the car, rustled past them. When he hit the bridge, splinters tugged at his clothes so hard they ripped his pants and underwear down almost to his knees.

The chain swung out once toward the edge of the bridge and the rotten railing, and Leonard tried to hook a leg around an upright board there, but that proved wasted. The weight of the car just pulled his knee out of joint and jerked the board out of place with a screech of nails and lumber.

Leonard picked up speed and the chain rattled over the edge of the bridge, into the water and out of sight, pulling its connection after it like a pull toy. The last sight of Leonard was the soles of his bare feet, white as the bellies of fish.

"It's deep there," Vinnie said. "I caught an old channel cat there once, remember? Big sucker. I bet it's over fifty feet deep down there."

They got in the truck and Vinnie cranked it.

"I think we did them boys a favor," Pork said. "Them running around with niggers and what they did to that dog and all. They weren't worth a thing."

"I know it," Vinnie said. "We should have filmed this, Pork, it would have been good. Where the car and that nigger-lover went off in the water was choice."

"Nah, there wasn't any women."

"Point," Vinnie said, and he backed around and drove onto the trail that wound its way out of the bottoms.

DIRT DEVILS

The Ford came into town full of men and wrapped in a cloud of dust and through the dust the late afternoon sun looked like a cheap lamp shining through wraps of gauze. The cloud glided for a great distance, slowed when the car stopped moving forward, spun and finally faded out and down on all sides until the car could clearly be seen coated in a sheet of white powder. It took a moment to realize that beneath the grime the car was as black as tar. The wind that had been blowing stopped and shifted and the dust wound itself up into a big dust devil that twirled and gritted its way down the rutted street and tore out between two wind-squeaked abandoned buildings toward a gray tree line in the distance.

Outside of the car there wasn't much of the town to see, just a few ramshackle buildings wiped clean by the sandstorms that chewed wood and scraped paint and bleached the color out of clothes hung on wash lines. The dust was everywhere, coating windows and porch steps and rooftops. Sometimes, in just the right light, the dust looked like snow and one half expected polar bears and bewildered Eskimos to appear. The infernal sand seeped under cracks no matter how well blocked or rag stuffed, and it crept into closed cars and through nailed-down windows. The world belonged to sand.

The street was slightly less sandy in spots since tire wheels and footsteps kept it worn down, but you had to stay in the ruts if you drove a car, and the Ford had done just that before parking in front of a little store with a single gas pump with the gas visible in a big dust-covered bulb on top.

The car parked and a man on the passenger side got out. He had a hat in his hand and he put it on. He wore a nice blue suit and fine black shoes and he looked almost clean, the dust having only touched his outfit and hat like glitter tossed at him by The Great Depression Fairy. He leaned left and then leaned right, stretching himself. The other doors opened and three men got out. They all wore suits. One of the men wearing a brown pinstripe suit and two-tone shoes came over and put his foot on the back of the car and wiped at his shoes with a handkerchief that he refolded and put in his inside coat pocket. He said to the man in the blue suit, "You want I should get some Co-colas or somethin', Ralph?"

"Yeah, that'll be all right. But don't come back with all manner of shit like you do. We ain't havin' a picnic. Get some drinks, a few things to nibble on, and that's it."

As the man in the pinstripe suit went into the store, an old man came out to the pump. He looked as if he had once been wadded and was now starting to slowly unfold. His hair was as white as the sand and floated when he walked. "I help you fellas?"

"Yeah," said Ralph. "Filler up."

The old man took the hose and removed the car's gas cap and started filling the tank. He looked at the car window, and then he looked away and looked back at the store. He swallowed once, hard, like he had an apple hung in his throat.

Ralph leaned against the car and took off his hat and ran his hand through his oiled hair and put it back on. He stared at the old man a long time. "Much hunting around here?" he asked the old man.

"Lot of hunting, but not much catching. Depression must be gettin' better though, only seen one man chasin' a rabbit the other day."

It was a tired joke, but Ralph grinned.

"This used to be a town," the old man said. "Wasn't never nothing much, but it was a town. Now most of the folks done moved off and what's here is worn out and gritted over. Hell, you get up in the morning you find sand in the crack of your ass."

Ralph nodded. "Everything's gritted over, and just about everybody too. I think I'm gonna go to California."

"Lots done have. But there ain't no work out there."

"My kind of work, I can find something."

The old man hesitated, and when he asked the question, it was like the words were sneaking out of the corner of his mouth: "What do you do?"

"I work with banks."

"Oh," the old man said. "Well, banking didn't do so good either."

"I work a special division."

"I see . . . Well, it's gonna be another bad night with lots of wind and plenty of dust."

"How can you tell?"

"'Cause it always is. And when it ain't, I can tell before it comes about. I can sniff it. I used to farm some before the winds came, before the dust. Then I bought this and it ain't no better than farming because people 'round here are farmers and they ain't got no money 'cause they ain't got no farms so I ain't got no money. I don't make hardly nothin'."

"Nothin', huh?"

"What you're givin' me for this here gas and the like, that's all I've made all day."

"That does sound like a problem."

"Tell me about it."

"So if I was to rob you, I'd just be keepin' my own money."

"You would . . . You boys staying in town long?"

"Where's to stay?"

"You got that right. Thirty, forty more feet, you're out of town. There ain't nothing here and ain't nobody got nothin'."

"That right?"

"Nothing to be had."

Ralph said, "My daddy, he had a store like this in Kansas. He ain't got nothin' now. He got droughted out and blown out. He died last spring. You remind me somethin' of him."

The other two men who had been loitering on the other side of the car came around to join Ralph and the old man, and when Ralph said what he said about his old man, one of the men, brown suited, glanced at Ralph, then glanced away.

"Me, I'm just hanging in by the skin of my teeth, and I just got a half dozen of 'em left." The old man smiled at Ralph so he would know it was true. "I'm just about done here."

"You a Bible reader?" Ralph asked the old man.

"Everyday."

"I figured that much. My old man was a Bible reader. He could quote chapter and verse."

"I can quote some chapters and some verses."

"You done any preachin'?"

"No. I don't preach."

"My old man did. He ran a store and preached and had too many children. I was the last of 'em."

The old man looked at the tank. "You was bone dry, son, but I about got you filled now."

----------

In the store the man in the brown suit with pinstripes, whose name was Emory, saw a little Negro boy sitting on a stool wearing a thick cloth cap that looked as if it had been used to catch baseballs. The boy had a little pocketknife and was whittlin' on a stick without much energy.

Emory looked at the boy. The boy latched his eyes on Emory.

"What you lookin' at, boy?"

"Nuthin'."

"Nuthin', sir."

"Yes, suh."

Emory wandered around the store and found some candies and some canned peaches. He got some Co-colas out of the ice box and set them dripping wet on the counter with the canned peaches and the candies.

Emory turned and looked at the boy. "You help out here, nigger?"

"Just a little."

"Well, why don't you do just a little? Get over here behind the counter and get me some of them long cigars there, and a couple packs of smokes."

"I don't do that kind of thing," the boy said. "That there is Mr. Grady's job. I just run errands and such. I ain't supposed to go behind the counter."

"Yeah. I guess that make sense. And them errands. What's a nigger get for that kind of work?"

"A nickel sometimes."

"Per errand?"

"Naw, suh. Per day."

"That's a little better. There's white men workin' in the fields ain't making a dollar a day."

"Yes, suh. They's colored men too."

"Yeah. Well, how hard are they workin'?"

"They workin' plenty hard."

"Say they are," Emory said, and took a hard look at the boy. The boy's eyes were still locked on his and the boy had his hands on his knees. The boy's face was kind of stiff like he was thinking hard on something but one eye sagged slightly to the left and there was a scar above and below it. He had one large foot and a very worn-looking oversized shoe about the size of a cinder block.

"What happened to your eye?"

"I had a saw jump back on me. I was cuttin' some wood and it got stuck and I yanked and it come back on me. I can still see though."

"I can tell that. What's wrong with your foot?"

"It's a club foot."

"What club does it belong to?"

"What's that?"

"You ain't so smart, are you?"

"Smart enough, I reckon."

"So, with that foot, you don't really run errands, you walk 'em."

The boy finally quit looking at Emory. "Ain't that right," Emory said when the boy didn't answer.

"I s'pose so," the boy said. "That a gun you got under your coat?"

"You a nosey little nigger, ain't ya? Yeah, that's a gun. You know what I call it?"

The boy shook his head.

"My nigger shooter. You know what I shoot with it?"

The boy jumped up. It caused the stool to turn over. The boy dropped the stick and the pocketknife and moved as fast as his foot would allow toward the door, turned and went right along the side of the store, giving Emory a glance at him through the dusty glass, and then there was just wall and the boy was gone from view.

Emory laughed. "Bet that's the fastest he ever run," he said aloud. "Bet that's some kind of club-footed nigger record."

----------

The old man was topping off the pump as the boy ran by and around the edge of the building and out of sight. By the time the old man called out "Joshua," it was too late and from the way the boy was moving, unlikely to stop anyway.

"What the hell has got into him?" the old man said.

"Ain't no way to figure a colored boy," Ralph said.

"He's all right," the old man said. "He's a good boy."

The other two men were standing next to the pump, and Ralph looked at them. He said, "John, why don't you and Billy go in there and see you can help Emory?"

"He don't need no help," Billy said. He was a small man in an oversized black suit and no hat and he had enough hair for himself and a small dog, all of it greasy and nested on top of his head, the sides of his skull shaved to the skin over the ears so that he gave the impression of some large leafy vegetable ready to be pulled from the ground.

"Well," Ralph said, "you go help him anyway."

The old man was hanging up the gas nozzle. He said, "That's gonna be a dollar."

"Damn," Ralph said. "You run some of that out on the ground?"

"Things gone up," the old man said. "In this town, we got to charge off of what the suppliers charge us. You know that, your daddy owned a store."

Ralph pondered that. He buttoned and unbuttoned his coat. "Yeah, I know it. Just don't like it. Hell, I'm gonna go in the store too. A minute out of this sun ain't gonna hurt me, that's for sure."

Ralph and the old man went into the store side by side until they came to the door, and Ralph let the old man go in first.

The old man went behind the counter and Ralph said, "You sure look a lot like my old man."

"Don't reckon I'm him, though," the old man said, and showed his scattered teeth again, but the smile waved a bit, like the lips might fall off.

"No," Ralph said. "You ain't him, that's for sure. He's good and dead."

"Well, I'm almost dead," the old man said. "Here until God calls me."

"He don't call some," Ralph said. "Some he yanks."

The old man didn't know what to say to that. Ralph noticed that there were pops of sweat on the old man's forehead.

"You look hot," Ralph said.

"I ain't so hot," the old man said.

"You sweatin' good," Billy said.

"Ain't nobody talkin' to you," Ralph said. "Go on over there and sit on that stool and shut up."

Billy didn't pick up and sit on the stool, but he went quiet.

"I guess maybe I am a little hot," the old man said, straightening the items on the counter. "We got the gas, and we got these goods. Canned peaches, some candies, and Co-colas. That's be about a dollar fifty for all that, and then the gas."

"That dollar tank of gas," Ralph said.

"Yes, sir. That'll be two-fifty."

"You got all manner of stuff, didn't you, Emory?" Ralph said. "I told you not to get all that stuff."

"I got carried away," Emory said, and turned to the old man. "You give any stamps or any kind of shit like that with a purchase?"

The men had gathered together near the counter, except for Billy, who was standing off to the side with hurt feelings and some of his hair in his eyes.

The old man shook his head. "No. Nothing like that."

"That don't seem right," Emory said. "Some stores do that."

"Do they?" the old man said.

"Some give dishes," Emory said.

"Shut up," Ralph said. "You wouldn't know what to do with a dish you had it. You'd shit in a bowl and sling the plates. Just get things together and let's go."

The old man was sacking up the groceries, but he left the Co-colas on the counter. "You gonna carry those separate?" he asked.

"That'll be all right," Ralph said. "You even got hands like my old man. That's somethin'."

"Yes, sir," the old man said, "I s'pose it is."

Ralph looked around and saw that the others were staring at him. When he looked at them they looked away. Ralph turned back to the old man.

"You got a phone here?"

"No. No phone."

Ralph nodded. "Total it. I'm goin' on out to the car. Emory, you or John take care of it."

----------

Ralph walked around to the front of the car and got out his cigarettes and pulled one loose of the pack with his lips, put the pack away and lit up with a wooden kitchen match he struck on the bottom of his shoe. As he smoked, he looked through the front window of the car. He walked around to the side of the car and looked in. The tommy gun he had told Billy to put up lay on the backseat in plain view.

He walked around to the other side of the car where the gas pump was and looked in through the side window. You could see it real good from that angle, about where the old man stood to put the gas in.

He walked back around to the front of the car and started to lean against it but saw it was covered in dust, so didn't. He just stood there smoking and thinking.

After a bit, there was a sharp snapping sound from inside the store. Ralph tossed the cigarette and went inside. Emory was putting away his gun.

"What you done?" Ralph said, and he walked to the edge of the counter and took a look. The old man lay on the floor. His eyes were open and his head was turned toward Ralph. The old man had one arm propped on his elbow, and his hand stuck up in the air and his fingers were spread like he was waving hello. On his forehead was what looked like a cherry blossom and it grew darker and the petals fell off and splashed down the old man's face and dripped on the floor in red explosions and then a pool of the same spread out at the back of his head and coated the floor thick as spilled paint.

Ralph turned and looked at Emory. "Why'd you do that?"

"You told me to," Emory said.

Ralph came out from behind the counter and hit Emory hard enough with the flat of his hand to knock Emory's hat off. "I meant pay the man, not shoot him." Emory put a hand to the side of his face.

"We all thought that it's what you wanted," Billy said, and Ralph turned and kicked Billy in the balls. Billy went to his knees.

"I didn't say kill nobody."

"You know he seen that gun in the car," Emory said, backing up. "We all knowed it. We was twenty feet down the road, he was gonna go somewhere and find a phone."

Ralph looked at John. John held both hands up. "Hey, I didn't say to do nothing. It was over before I knew it was happening."

Emory picked up his hat. Billy lay on the floor with his hands between his legs. John didn't move. Ralph took a deep breath, said, "You think nobody noticed a gun shot? You think that little nigger ain't gonna remember you, 'cause I know you run him out. Grab that shit and let's go. And help that retard Billy up."

----------

John drove and Ralph set up front on the passenger side. Billy was behind him, and across from Billy was Emory, his hands still tucked between his legs, holding what made him a gentleman.

"I thought you meant kill him, Ralph," Emory said. "I figured on account of what you said, him like your father and all, and considering what you--"

"Shut up! Shut the hell up!"

Emory shut up.

Ralph said to John: "You better find some back roads. I know some out this way, but it's been awhile. There's one that a car can travel on down by the river."

They took the road when Ralph pointed it out. It wound down amongst some ragged cottonwood trees. The trees had few leaves and what leaves it had were brown with sand stripping and the limbs were covered in sand the color of cigarette ash. The car dipped over a rise and there were some rare green trees below that hadn't been stripped. The trees stood by the river where it was low down and the wind was cut by the hills. The river was thin on water and there were drifts of sand all around it. They drove down there and turned along the edge of the river and went that way awhile till Ralph told John to stop.

They got out and Ralph went over by the bank and looked at the remains of the river. Emory came over. He said, "I didn't mean to make you mad." "I thought you wanted me to do what I did."

Ralph didn't say anything. Emory unbuttoned his fly and started peeing in the water. "I just thought it was one way and it was another," he said while he peed. "I didn't understand."

Ralph reached inside his coat. He didn't do it fast, just with certainty. He turned and had a .45 in his hand. He shot Emory in the mouth when he turned his head toward him, while he was trying to explain something. Emory's head went back so hard it seemed as if it would fly off his neck and parts of it went down the bank and a piece slid into the chalky-colored water and the water turned rusty. Emory lay on his side, still holding his pecker with his right hand. He was still peeing, but in a dribble, and he had clenched himself so hard between thumb and forefinger it looked like he was trying to pinch it off.

"Goddamn!" Billy said. "Goddamn."

He came over and went down the bank and bent over Emory and looked at what was left of his head and saw pieces of Emory's skull on the ground and in the dark water. "Goddamn. You killed him."

"I should think so," Ralph said.

Billy stood up straight and looked at Ralph, who had the gun down by his side. "Wasn't no cause for that. He did what he thought you wanted on account of you saying he looked like your old man. God-damn it, Ralph."

Ralph lifted the .45 a little and John came over and put his hand on Ralph's arm, said, "It's all right, Ralph. You done done it. Billy ain't thinking. He and Emory were cousins. He don't know how things are. He's grieving. You understand that. We all been there."

"Double cousins," Billy said. "Goddamn it."

"Shut up, Billy," John said, and he kept his hand on Ralph's arm.

Billy looked at Ralph's face, and some of his spirit drained away. Billy said, "All right. All right."

"Why don't you put the gun up?" John asked Ralph.

Ralph slowly put the gun in the shoulder holster under his coat. "That fellow looked so much like my old man."

"I know," John said.

"He had the same hands."

"I know."

"Emory shouldn't have done that. Now the town will turn out. They'll have the law all over us. That little nigger will remember Emory's face."

"That won't be a problem. He ain't got a face no more. I don't think he seen the rest of us that good."

"It don't matter," Ralph said, taking off his hat. "They'll know who we are."

"They got to catch us first," John said.

Ralph took off his hat and ran his hand through his oily hair. There was dust on his fingers and some of it came off in his hair. He put the hat back on. "Goddamn, Emory. Goddamn him." He looked over at Billy.

Billy was sitting on the bank looking at Emory's body. Flies had already collected on it.

Ralph started over that way. John touched his arm, but Ralph gently pulled it away. Ralph stood over Billy. "You get to thinking what you ought not, it could go bad for you."

Billy turned his head and looked up at Ralph. "Only thing I'm thinking is my cousin's dead."

"And he ain't comin' back. No matter how much you look at him or shake him, he ain't gonna come around and his head ain't gonna go back together. And I want you to know, I don't feel bad for doin' it. I tell you to do somethin', you don't figure what I mean, you got to know what I mean, not guess. I run this outfit."

Billy ran his hands over his knees, lifting his fingers so that they stood up like white tarantulas. "Yeah. Yeah."

"Give me your gun," Ralph said.

Billy looked at him so hard his eyes teared up. "I'm over it," he said.

"Give me your gun."

Billy reached inside his coat and took hold of a .38 revolver and pulled it out and when he did, Ralph pulled out his .45. "I'll just hold it for you," Ralph said. "While you grieve."

Billy gave Ralph the .38. It was small enough Ralph put it in his coat pocket. "Sometimes, we're upset, we do things we shouldn't."

"That's what you did," Billy said.

"It wasn't something I shouldn't have done. I don't feel bad at all. Ain't no one kills no one unless I say so."

Billy seemed about to say something, but didn't.

Ralph said, "Build up a fire. I don't think anyone will see the smoke much down here, and we'll just have it for a while."

"Why?" Billy said.

"We'll get right on it," John said, came over and took hold of Billy's arm and pulled him up and pushed him toward the woods. He called back to Ralph. "We'll get some wood right away."

----------

While they were gathering wood, Billy said, "He killed him for nothing. He killed him while he was holding his dick in his hand. He didn't have to do that, didn't have to kill him that way."

"He killed him because the old man reminded him of his old man. He'd be just as dead if he hadn't been holding his dick."

"His old man . . . That can't be it. You know what he done."

"I know, but there ain't no way to figure it straight, because what he did wasn't straight. It's just his way."

"Just his way? Jesus. That was my cousin."

"Yeah, and he ain't gonna get no deader, and he ain't gonna get alive not even a little bit, so you got to let it go. I've had to let a lot of things go. Drop it."

"I don't know I want to keep doing this."

"We split up the money, then we can go the ways we want. But you don't want to make Ralph nervous. You make him nervous, only so much I'm gonna do. Me, I plan to make Thanksgiving at home this year. I don't want to end up on the creek bank with part of me in the water and flies all over me. So I'm doin' the last of what I'm doin' for you, you savvy, because I'm more worried about me and I want my share of money. Look at it this way, more money split three ways than four. That's a thing to think about. You savvy?"

"More split two ways than three," Billy said.

"I wouldn't think that. You think that, you'll think yourself into the dirt with your head blown off."

----------

They stacked up the wood like Ralph said and then they sat on a hill above the bank for a while and then Ralph said, "John, you go look in the turtle hull and get out the hose and the jug there, siphon out a bit of gas. Maybe about half a jug full. And bring me back a can of them peaches."

"Sure," John said, and got up to go do it.

Billy made to get up too, but Ralph said, "You stay here and keep me company."

Billy sat back down. Ralph said: "Listen here, now, boy. Your cousin talked too much and didn't listen to me good. John should have stopped him. He should have known better. You're just a dumb kid. But you ain't gonna get to be any older or any smarter you don't start payin' attention. You get me?"

"Yeah," Billy said.

"I don't think you get me."

"I do."

"Not really."

"No. I do."

"We'll see. You go down there and get your cousin, don't have to bring up his brains and stuff, just drag his body up here and you put him face down on that pile of sticks you got together, and then you fold his hands up so that they're under his face."

"Why would I do that?"

"See there, boy, you don't get me. You don't understand a thing I tell you and you always got a question. Now, I told you to go down there and get him."

Billy got up and went down the bank. Ralph didn't move. He lipped out a cigarette and lit it with one of his kitchen matches. After a while, Billy come up the hill tugging at Emory by the heels. He got the body over by the sticks about the time John come back with the clear jug half full of gasoline and the can of peaches. He gave Ralph the peaches.

"Take that gasoline," Ralph said, "and put about half on that pile of sticks, sprinkle it around, and pour the rest on Emory's hands and face. That way, ain't nobody gonna recognize him and he ain't gonna have no fingerprints. Take off his clothes first."

Billy had quit pulling on Emory. He said, "They'll know who we are anyway. You said yourself that little nigger seen us. And Emory hasn't got much of a face left."

"We're just making it harder for them," Ralph said.

"I think you're just making it meaner," Billy said. "I think you're teaching me a lesson."

Ralph turned his head to one side curiously. "That what you think? You think you ain't already got a hole God's gonna put you in? A slot."

"That ain't your call?" Billy said.

"It sure was with Emory. I helped God fit him to his slot. I sent him where he was goin' and I didn't choose his place, just his time, and that there, it was preordained, my old man taught me that. And the place Emory went, I don't figure him nor any of us is going to a place we'd like to go, do you?"

"Ain't mine to think about."

"Oh, Billy, sure it is."

"Not if it's done planned."

"Billy," John said. "I'll help you."

"I ain't gonna put him on that fire."

"You don't, it'll still get done," Ralph said, "and maybe I get John to siphon out some more gas, get some more sticks. You get where the wind is ablowin' on that?"

Billy was breathing heavy. John said, "Billy, let's just do it. Okay?"

Billy looked at John. John's face was pleading. "All right," Billy said.

Billy and John got hold of Emory and rolled him over. They took off his clothes except for his shorts, which were full of shit. Billy got a stick and worked Emory's dick back into the slit in his underwear. John started to pour gasoline on Emory's open-eyed face. The top of Emory's head looked like it had been worked open with a dull can opener.

"No," Ralph said. "Have Billy do that." John handed Billy the jug. Billy looked at John, but there was no help there. He took the jug and poured gas on Emory's head.

"Now put him face down on the sticks and put his hands under his head," Ralph said. He had used his pocketknife to open the can of peaches and he was poking them with the knife and gobbling them down, some of the peach juice running down his chin.

Billy and John did as they were asked and then Ralph gave John a kitchen match. John set the sticks on fire. The stench of Emory's burning body filled the air.

"Let's go," Billy said. "I don't want to see this, smell it neither."

"No," Ralph said, eating more peaches, "you just find you a seat. We'll kinder pretend we're at the movies."

The three of them sat on the hill but Billy sat with his face away from the fire. The fire licked at Emory and pretty soon the head and hands were burned up and so were the feet and parts of the rest of his body.

"Close enough," Ralph said. He had long finished the peaches and had tossed the can down the bank toward the water, but it didn't go that far. "Spread them sticks out and kill the fire so we don't burn half the county down. What's left of him won't matter. Dogs and such will have them a cooked meal tonight."

When they went out to the car, Ralph fell back and said to John, "Any kind of noise goes off, you just hold steady, you hear?"

"Yeah," John said, and then he walked briskly away from Ralph toward the driver's side. Billy was about to get in the backseat when Ralph said, "You sit up front, Billy."

Billy turned and looked at Ralph. He studied him for a long hard moment. He said, "That's okay. I don't mind the back."

"You sit up front," Ralph said.

"You always ride up front," Billy said.

"Not today."

"I don't mind."

"You sit in my seat."

Ralph sat behind Billy in the back, and John drove. They drove out of the trail and out of the woods and onto the main road. It was starting to get dark. John pulled on the lights.

John glanced at Billy. Billy's face was beaded up with sweat. "I been thinking," Billy said. "Everything you was talking about was right, Ralph. I was just upset."

"Yeah," Ralph said.

"Yeah. I mean, I wasn't thinking."

Billy turned halfway around and put his arm on the seat. Ralph was looking right at him. In the early evening he was only slightly better defined than a shadow. He had his hat pulled down tight.

"Turn around, Billy," Ralph said.

Billy turned. He looked at John. John said, "I done told you."

Billy said, "He's my cousin, so of course I was upset. I ain't gonna say nothing about it to no one. Not even his mama."

"That's good," Ralph said, and reached in his pocket and took Billy's revolver out of it and rested it on his knee, his hand resting gently on top of it like a man caressing a pet.

"You know we all done done the sins that's gonna send us to hell," Ralph said. "It's just a matter of when now, but we're all goin'. There ain't a thing we can do to change things. For some of us when it comes, it'll come quick and with a pop."

"Sure we can," Billy said. "We can all do better."

"I don't think so," Ralph said.

"It's like you said, I ain't nothin' but a kid. I ain't thinkin' things through. But I'll get better. We all thought you wanted that old man done."

"Leave me out of this," John said. "I ain't part of that we."

Billy was talking fast. "You sayin' he looked like your daddy, and us knowing what you did."

"Don't mention my old man again," Ralph said. "Ever."

"Sure," Billy said. "Sure. But I've learned my lesson. I've learned a lot."

"Sure you have," Ralph said, and then there was a long silence, and then Billy heard the revolver cock.

WHITE MULE, SPOTTED PIG

Frank's papa, the summer of nineteen hundred and nine, told him right before he died that he had a good chance to win the annual Camp Rapture mule race. He told Frank this 'cause he needed money to keep getting drunk, and he wasn't about to ride no mule himself, fat as he was. If the old man had known he was about to die, Frank figured he would have saved his breath on the race talk and asked for whisky instead, maybe a chaw. But as it was, he said it, and it planted in Frank's head the desire to ride and win.

Frank hated that about himself. Once a thing got into his head he couldn't derail it. He was on the track then, and had to see it to the end. Course, that could be a good trait, but problem was, and Frank knew it, the only things that normally caught up in his head like that and pushed him were bad ideas. Even if he could sense their badness, he couldn't seem to stop their running forward and dragging him with them. He also thought his mama had been right when she told him once that their family was like shit on shoes, the stink of it followed them wherever they went.

But this idea. Winning a mule race. Well, that had some good sides to it. Mainly money.

He thought about what his papa said, and how he said it, and then how, within a few moments, the old man grabbed the bed sheets, moaned once, dribbled some drool, and was gone to wherever it was he was supposed to go, probably a stool next to the devil at fireside.

He didn't leave Frank nothing but an old rundown place with a bit of dried-out corn crop, a mule, a horse with one foot in the grave and the other on a slick spot. And his very own shit to clean out of the sheets, 'cause when the old man let go and departed, he left Frank that present, which was the only kind he had ever given. Something dirty. Something painful. Something shitty.

Frank had to burn the mattress and set fire to the bedclothes, so there really wasn't any real cleaning about it. Then he dug a big hole, and cut roots to do it. Next he had to wrap the old man's naked body in a dirty canvas and put him down and cover him up. It took some work, 'cause the old man must have weighed three hundred pounds, and he wasn't one inch taller than five three if he was wearing boots with dried cow shit on the heels and paper tucked inside them to jack his height. Dragging him along on his dead ass from the house had damn near caused one of Frank's balls to swell up and pop out.

Finished with the burying, Frank leaned against a sickly sweet gum tree and rolled himself a smoke, and thought: Shit, I should have dragged the old man over here on the tarp. Or maybe hitched him up to the mule and dragged his naked ass face down through the dirt. That would have been the way to go, not pulling his guts out.

But, it was done now, and as always, he had used his brain late in the game.

Frank scratched a match on a thumbnail and lit a rolled cigarette and leaned on a sickly sweet gum and smoked and considered. It wasn't that he was all that fond of his old man, but damn if he still didn't in some way want to make him proud, or rather be proud to his memory. He thought: Funny, him not being worth a damn, and me still wanting to please him. Funnier yet, considering the old man used to beat him like a Tom-Tom. Frank had seen him knock mama down once and put his foot on the back of her neck and use his belt to beat her ass while he cussed her for having burned the cornbread. It wasn't the only beating she got, but it was damn sure the champion.

It was shortly after that she decamped with the good horse, a bag of cornmeal, some dried meat and a butcher knife. She also managed, with what Frank thought must have been incredible aim, to piss in one of his old man's liquor jugs. This was discovered by the old man after he took a good strong bolt of the liquor. Cheap as the stuff was he drank, Frank was surprised he could tell the difference, that he had turned out to be such a fine judge of shit liquor.

Papa had ridden out after her on the mule but hadn't found her, which wasn't a surprise, because the only thing Papa had been good at tracking was a whisky bottle or some whore, provided she was practically tied down and didn't cost much. He probably tracked the whores he messed with by the stench.

Back from the hunt, drunk and pissed and empty-handed, Papa had said it was bad enough Frank's mama was a horse and meal thief, but at least she hadn't taken the mule, and frankly, she wasn't that good a cook anyhow.

The mule's name was Rupert, and he could run like his tail was on fire. Papa had actually thought about the mule as a contender for a while, and had put out a little money to have him trained by Leroy, who though short in many departments, and known for having been caught fucking a goat by a half dozen hunters, was pretty good with mules and horses. Perhaps, it could be said he had a way with goats as well. One thing was certain, none of Leroy's stock had testified to the contrary, and only the nanny goats were known to be nervous.

The night after Frank buried his pa, he got in some corn squeezings, and got drunk enough to imagine weasels crawling out from under the floorboards. To clear his head and to relieve his bladder, he went out to do something on his father's grave that would never pass for flowers. He stood there watering, thinking about the prize money and what he would do with it. He looked at the house and the barn and the lot, out to where he could see the dead corn standing in rows like dehydrated soldiers. The house leaned to the left, and one of the windowsills was near on the ground. When he slept at night, he slept on a bed with one side jacked up with flat rocks so that it was high enough and even enough he wouldn't roll out of bed. The barn had one side missing and the land was all rutted from runoff, and had never been terraced.

With the exception of the hill where they grazed their bit of stock, the place was void of grass, and all it brought to mind was brown things and dead things, though there were a few bedraggled chickens who wandered the yard like wild Indians, taking what they could find, even eating one another should one of them keel over dead from starvation or exhaustion. Frank had seen a half dozen chickens go at a weak one lying on the ground, tearing him apart with the chicken still cawing, kicking a leg. It hadn't lasted long. About like a dozen miners at a free lunch table.

Frank smoked his cigarette and thought if he could win that race, he would move away from this shit pile. Sell it to some fool. Move into town and get a job that would keep him. Never again would he look up a mule's ass or fit his hands around the handles on a plow. He was thinking on this while looking up the hill at his mule, Rupert.

The hill was surrounded by a rickety rail fence within which the mule resided primarily on the honor system. At the top of the hill was a bunch of oaks and pines and assorted survivor trees. As Frank watched the sun fall down behind the hill, it seemed as if the limbs of the trees wadded together into a crawling shadow, way the wind blew them and mixed them up. Rupert was clearly outlined near a pathetic persimmon tree from which the mule had stripped the persimmons and much of the leaves.

Frank thought Rupert looked quite noble up there, his mule ears standing high in outline against the redness of the sun behind the dark trees. The world seemed strange and beautiful, as if just created. In that moment Frank felt much older than his years and not so fresh as the world seemed, but ancient and worn like the old Indian pottery he had found while plowing through what had once been great Indian mounds. And now, even as he watched, he noted the sun seemed to darken, as if it were a hot wound turning black from infection. The wind cooled and began to whistle. Frank turned his head to the north and watched as clouds pushed across the fading sky. In instants, all the light was gone and there were just shadows, spitting and twisting in the heavens and filling the hard-blowing wind with the aroma of wet dirt.

When Frank turned again to note Rupert, the mule was still there, but was now little more than a peculiar shape next to the ragged persimmon tree. Had Frank not known it was the mule, he might well have mistaken it for a peculiar rise in the terrain, or a fallen tree lying at an odd angle.

The storm was from the north and blowing west. Thunder boomed and lightning cracked in the dirty sky like snap beans, popped and fizzled like a pissed-on campfire. In that moment, the shadow Frank knew to be Rupert lifted its head, and pointed its dark snout toward the sky, as if in defiance. A bolt of lightning, crooked as a dog's hind leg, and accompanied by a bass-drum blow of thunder, jumped from the heavens and dove for the mule, striking him a perfect white-hot blow on the tip of his nose, making him glow, causing Frank to think that he had in fact seen the inside of the mule light up with all its bones in a row. Then Rupert's head exploded, his body blazed, the persimmon leaped to flames, and the mule fell over in a swirl of heavenly fire and a cannon shot of flying mule shit. The corpse caught a patch of dried grass ablaze. The flames burned in a perfect circle around the corpse and blinked out, leaving a circle of smoke rising skyward.

"Goddamn," Frank said. "Shit."

The cloud split open, let loose of its bladder, pissed all over the hillside and the mule, and not a drop, not one goddamn drop, was thrown away from the hill. The rain just covered that spot, put out the mule and the persimmon tree with a sizzling sound, then passed on, taking darkness, rain, and cool wind with it.

Frank stood there for a long time, looking up the hill, watching his hundred dollars crackle and smoke. Pretty soon the smell from the grilled mule floated down the hill and filled his nostrils.

"Shit," Frank said. "Shit. Shit. Shit."

Late morning, when Frank could finally drag himself out of bed, he went out and caught up the horse, Dobbin, hitched him to a singletree and some chains, drove him out to where the mule lay. He hooked one of the mule's hind legs to the rigging, and Dobbin dragged the corpse up the hill, between the trees, to the other side. Frank figured he'd just let the body rot there, and being on the other side of the hill, there was less chance of the wind carrying down the smell.

After that, he moped around for a few days, drank enough to see weasels again, and then had an idea. His idea was to seek out Leroy, who had been used to train Rupert. See if he could work a deal with him.

Frank rode Dobbin over to Leroy's place, which was as nasty as his own. More so, due to the yard being full not only of chickens and goats, but children. He had five of them, and when Frank rode up, he saw them right away, running about, raising hell in the yard, one of them minus pants, his little johnson flopping about like a grub worm on a hot griddle. He could see Leroy's old lady on the porch, fat and nasty with her hair tied up. She was yelling at the kids and telling them how she was going to kill them and feed them to the chickens. One of the boys, the ten-year-old, ran by the porch whooping, and the Mrs., moving deftly for such a big woman, scrambled to the edge of the porch, stuck her foot out, caught him one just above the waist and sent him tumbling. He went down hard. She laughed like a lunatic. The boy got up with a bloody nose and ran off across the yard and into the woods, screaming.

Frank climbed down from Dobbin and went over to Leroy, who was sitting on a bucket in the front yard whittling a green limb with a knife big enough to sword fight. Leroy was watching his son retreat into the greenery. As Frank came up, leading Dobbin, Leroy said, "Does that all the time. Sometimes, though, she'll throw something at him. Good thing wasn't nothing lying about. She's got a pretty good throwin' arm on her. Seen her hit a seed salesman with a tossed frying pan from the porch there to about where the road meets the property. Knocked him down and knocked his hat off. Scattered his seed samples, which the chickens ate. Must have laid there for an hour afore he got up and wandered off. Forgot his hat. Got it on my head right now, though I had to put me some newspaper in the band to make it fit."

Wasn't nothing Frank could say to that, so he said, "Leroy, Rupert got hit by lightning. Right in the head."

"The head?"

"Wouldn't have mattered had it been the ass. It killed him deader than a post and burned him up."

"Damn. That there is a shame," Leroy said, and stopped whittling. He pushed the seed salesman's hat up on his forehead to reveal some forks of greasy brown hair. Leroy studied Frank. "Is there something I can do for you? Or you come around to visit?"

"I'm thinking you might could help me get a mule and get back in the race."

"Mules cost."

"I know. Thought we might could come up with something. And if we could, and we won, I'd give you a quarter of the prize money."

"I get a quarter for grooming folks' critters in town."

"I mean a quarter of a hundred. Twenty-five dollars."

"I see. Well, I am your man for animals. I got a knack. I can talk to them like I was one of them. Except for chickens. Ain't no one can talk to chickens."

"They're birds."

"That there is the problem. They ain't animal enough."

Frank thought about Leroy and the fucked goat. Wondered what Leroy had said to the goat as way of wooing it. Had he told her something special? I think you got a good-looking face? I love the way your tail wiggles when you walk? It was a mystery that Frank actually wasn't all that anxious to unravel.

"I know you run in the circles of them that own or know about mules," Frank said. "Why I thought you maybe could help me."

Leroy took off the seed salesman's hat, put it on his knee, threw his knife in the dirt, let the whittling stick fall from his hand. "I could sneak up on an idea or two. Old man Torrence, he's got a mule he's looking to sell. And by his claim, it's a runner. He ain't never ridden it himself, but he's had it ridden. Says it can run."

"There's that buying stuff again. I ain't got no real money."

"Takes money to make money."

"Takes money to have money."

Leroy put the seed salesman's hat back on. "You know, we might could ask him if he'd rent out his mule. Race is a ways off yet, so we could get some good practice in. You being about a hundred and twenty-five pounds, you'd make a good rider."

"I've ridden a lot. I was ready on Rupert, reckon I can get ready on another mule."

"Deal we might have to make is, we won the race, we bought the mule afterwards. That might be the way he'd do it."

"Buy the mule?"

"At a fair price."

"How fair?"

"Say twenty-five dollars."

"That's a big slice of the prize money. And a mule for twenty-five, that's cheap."

"I know Torrence got the mule cheap. Fella that owed him made a deal. Besides, times is hard. So they're selling cheap. Cost more, we can make extra money on side bets. Bet on ourselves. Or if we don't think we got a chance, we bet against ourselves."

"I don't know. We lose, it could be said we did it on purpose."

"I can get someone to bet for us."

"Only if we bet to win. I ain't never won nothing or done nothing right in my life, and I figure this here might be my chance."

"You gettin' Jesus?"

"I'm gettin' tired," Frank said.

----------

There are no real mountains in East Texas, and only a few hills of consequence, but Old Man Torrence lived at the top of a big hill that was called with a kind of braggart's lie, Barrow Dog Mountain. Frank had no idea who Barrow or Dog were, but that was what the big hill had been called for as long as he remembered, probably well before he was born. There was a ridge at the top of it that overlooked the road below. Frank found it an impressive sight as he and Leroy rode in on Dobbin, he at the reins, Leroy behind him.

It was pretty on top of the hill too. The air smelled good, and flowers grew all about in red, blue and yellow blooms, and the cloudless sky was so blue you felt as if a great lake were falling down from the heavens. Trees fanned out bright green on either side of the path, and near the top, on a flat section, was Old Man Torrence's place. It was made of cured logs, and he had a fine chicken coop that was built straight and true. There were hog pens and a nice barn of thick cured logs with a roof that had all of its roofing slats. There was a sizable garden that rolled along the top of the hill, full of tall bright green cornstalks, so tall they shaded the rows between them. There was no grass between the rows, and the dirt there looked freshly laid by. Squash and all manner of vegetables exploded out of the ground alongside the corn, and there were little clumps of beans and peas growing in long pretty rows.

In a large pen next to the barn was a fifteen-hands-high chocolate-colored mule, prettiest thing Frank had ever seen in the mule-flesh department. Its ears stood up straight, and it gave Frank and Leroy a snort as they rode in.

"He's a big one," Leroy said.

"Won't he be slow, being that big?" Frank asked.

"Big mule's also got big muscles, he's worked right. And he looks to have been worked right. Got enough muscles, he can haul some freight. Might be fast as Rupert."

"Sure faster right now," Frank said.

As they rode up, they saw Old Man Torrence on the front porch with his wife and three kids, two boys and a girl. Torrence was a fat, ruddy-faced man. His wife was a little plump, but pretty. His kids were all nice looking and they had their hair combed and, unlike Leroy's kids, looked clean. As if they might bathe daily. As they got closer, Frank could see that none of the kids looked whacked on. They seemed to be laughing at something the mother was saying. It certainly was different than from his own upbringing, different from Leroy's place. Wasn't anyone tripping anyone, cussing, tossing frying pans, threatening to cripple one another or put out an eye. Thinking on this, Frank felt something twist around inside of him like some kind of serpent looking for a rock to slide under. He and Leroy got off Dobbin and tied him to a little hitching post that was built out front of the house, took off their hats, and walked up to the steps.

After being offered lemonade, which they turned down, Old Man Torrence came off the porch, ruffling one of his kids' hair as he did. He smiled back at his wife, and then walked with Frank and Leroy out toward the mule pen, Leroy explaining what they had in mind.

"You want to rent my mule? What if I wanted to run him?"

"Well, I don't know," Leroy said. "It hadn't occurred to me you might. You ain't never before, though I heard tell he was a mule could be run."

"It's a good mule," Torrence said. "Real fast."

"You've ridden him?" Frank asked.

"No. I haven't had the pleasure. But my brother and his boys have. They borrow him from time to time, and they thought on running him this year. Nothing serious. Just a thought. They say he can really cover ground."

"Frank here," Leroy said, "he plans on entering, and we would rent your mule. If we win, we could give you a bit of the prize money. What say we rent him for ten, and if he wins, we give you another fifteen. That way you pick up twenty-five dollars."

Frank was listening to all this, thinking: and then I owe Leroy his share; this purse I haven't won is getting smaller and smaller.

"And what if you don't win?" Torrence said.

"You've made ten dollars," Leroy said.

"And I got to take the chance my mule might go lame or get hurt or some such. I don't know. Ten dollars, that's not a lot of money for what you're asking. It ain't even your mule."

"Which is why we're offering the ten dollars," Leroy said.

They went over and leaned on the fence and looked at the great mule, watched his muscles roll beneath his chocolate flesh as he trotted nervously about the pen.

"He looks excitable," Frank said.

"Robert E. Lee has just got a lot of energy is all," Torrence said.

"He's named Robert E. Lee?" Frank asked.

"Best damn general ever lived. Tell you boys what. You give me twenty-five, and another twenty-five if he wins, and you got a deal."

"But I give you that, and Leroy his share, I don't have nothing hardly left."

"You ain't got nothing at all right now," Torrence said.

"How's about," Leroy said, "we do it this way. We give you fifteen, and another fifteen if he wins. That's thirty. Now that's fair for a rented mule. Hell, we might could go shopping, buy a mule for twenty-five, and even if he don't win, we got a mule. He don't race worth a damn, we could put him to plow."

Old Man Torrence pursed his lips. "That sounds good. All right," he said, sticking out his hand, "deal."

"Well, now," Frank said, not taking the hand. "Before I shake on that, I'd like to make sure he can run. Let me ride him."

Old Man Torrence withdrew his hand and wiped it on his pants as if something had gotten on his palm. "I reckon I could do that, but seeing how we don't have a deal yet, and ain't no fifteen dollars has changed hands, how's about I ride him for you. So you can see."

Frank and Leroy agreed, and watched from the fence as Torrence got the equipment and saddled up Robert E. Lee. Torrence walked Robert E. Lee out of the lot, and onto a pasture atop the hill, where the overhang was. The pasture was huge and the grass was as green as Ireland. It was all fenced in with barbed wire strung tight between deeply planted posts.

"I'll ride him around in a loop. Once slow, and then real fast toward the edge of the overhang there, then cut back before we get there. I ain't got a pocket watch, so you'll have to be your own judge."

Torrence swung into the saddle. "You boys ready?"

"Let'er rip," Leroy said.

Old Man Torrence gave Robert E. Lee his heels. The mule shot off so fast that Old Man Torrence's hat flew off, and Leroy, in sympathy, took hold of the brim of the seed salesman's hat, as if Robert E. Lee's lunge might blow it off his head.

"Goddamn," Leroy said. "Look how low that mule is to the ground. He's gonna have the grass touching his belly."

And so the mule ran, and as it neared the barbed-wire fence, Old Man Torrence gave him a tug, to turn him. But, Robert E. Lee wasn't having any. His speed picked up, and the barbed-wire fence came closer.

Leroy said, "Uh-oh."

Robert E. Lee hit the fence hard. So hard it caused his head to dip over the top wire and his ass to rise up as if he might be planning a headstand. Over the mule flipped, tearing loose the fence, causing a strand of wire to snap and strike Old Man Torrence, and then Torrence was thrown ahead of the tumbling mule. Over the overhang. Out of sight. The mule did in fact do a headstand, landed hard that way, its hind legs high in the air, wiggling. For a moment, it seemed as if he might hang there, and then, Robert E. Lee lost his headstand and went over after his owner.

"Damn," Leroy said.

"Damn," Frank said.

They both ran toward the broken fence. When they got there Frank hesitated, not able to look. He glanced away, back across the bright green field.

Leroy scooted up to the cliff's edge and took a gander, studied what he saw for a long time.

"Well?" Frank said, finally turning his head back to Leroy.

"Robert E. Lee just met his Gettysburg. And Old Man Torrence is somewhere between Gettysburg and Robert E. Lee. Actually, you can't tell which is which. Mule, Gettysburg, or Old Man Torrence. It's all kind of bunched up."

When Frank and Leroy got down there, which took some considerable time, as they worked their way down a little trail on foot, they discovered that Old Man Torrence had been lucky in a fashion. He had landed in sand, and the force of Robert E. Lee's body had driven him down deep into it, his nose poking up and out enough to take in air. Robert E. Lee was as dead as a three-penny nail, and his tail was stuck up in the air and bent over like a flag that had been broken at the staff. The wind moved the hairs on it a little.

Frank and Leroy went about digging Old Man Torrence out, starting first with his head so he could really breathe well. When Torrence spat enough sand out of his mouth, he looked up and said, "You sonsofbitches. This is your fault."

"Our fault?" Leroy said. "You was riding him."

"You goat-fucking sonofabitch, get me out of here." Leroy's body sagged a little. "I knew that was gonna get around good. Ain't nobody keeps a secret. There was only that one time too, and them hunters had to come up on me."

They dug Torrence out from under the mule, and Frank went up the trail and got Old Dobbin and rode to the doctor. When Frank got back with the sawbones, Torrence was none the happier to see him. Leroy had gone off to the side to sit by himself, which to Frank meant the goat had come up again.

Old Man Torrence was mostly all right, but he blamed Frank and Leroy, especially Leroy, from then on. And he walked in a way that when he stepped with his right leg, it always looked as if he were about to bend over and tie his shoe. Even in later years, when Frank saw him, he went out of his way to avoid him, and Leroy dodged him like the smallpox, not wanting to hear reference to the goat.

But in that moment in time, the important thing to Frank was simply that he was still without a mule. And the race was coming closer.

That night, as Frank lay in his sagging bed, looking out from it at the angled wall of the room, listening to the crickets saw their fiddles outside and inside the house, he closed his eyes and remembered how Old Man Torrence's place had looked. He saw himself sitting with the pretty plump wife and the clean, polite kids. Then he saw himself with the wife inside that pretty house, on the bed, and he imagined that for a long time.

It was a pleasant thought, the wife and the bed, but even more pleasant was imagining Torrence's place as his. All that greenery and high-growing corn and blooming squash and thick pea and bean vines dripping with vegetables. The house and the barn and the pasture. And in his dream, the big mule, alive, not yet a confusion of bones and flesh and fur, the tail a broken flag.

He thought then of his mother, and the only way he could remember her was with her hair tied back and her face sweaty and both of her eyes blacked. That was how she had looked the last time he had seen her, right before she run off with a horse and some cornmeal and a butcher knife. He wondered where she was, and if she now lived in a place where the buildings were straight and the grass was green and the corn was tall.

After a while he got up and peed out the window, and smelled the aroma of other nights drifting up from the ground he had poisoned with his water, and thought: I am better than Papa. He just peed in the corner of the room and shit out the window, splattering it all down the side of the house. I don't do that. I pee out the window, but I don't shit, and I don't pee in the corner. That's a step up. I go outside for the messy business. And if I had a good house, I wouldn't do this. I'd use the slop jar. I'd go to the privy.

That didn't stop him from finishing his pee, thinking about what he would do or ought to do as far as his toilet habits went. Besides, peeing was the one thing he was really good at. He could piss like a horse and from a goodly distance. He had even won money on his ability. It was the one thing his father had been proud of. "My son, Frank. He can piss like a racehorse. Get it out, Frank. Show them."

And he would.

But, compared to what he wanted out of life, his ability to throw water from his johnson didn't seem all that wonderful right then.

Frank thought he ought to call a halt to his racing plans, but like so many of his ideas, he couldn't let it go. It blossomed inside of him until he was filled with it. Then he was obsessed with an even wilder plan. A story he had heard came back to him, and ran 'round inside his head like a greased pig.

He would find the White Mule and capture it and run it. It was a mule he could have for free, and it was known to be fast, if wild. And, of course, he would have to capture its companion, the Spotted Pig. Though, he figured, by now, the pig was no longer a pig, but a hog, and the mule would be three, maybe four years old.

If they really existed.

It was a story he had heard for the last three years or so, and it was told for the truth by them who told him, his Papa among them. But if drinking made him see weasels oozing out of the floorboards, it might have made Papa see white mules and spotted pigs on parade. But the story wasn't just Papa's story. He had heard it from others, and it went like this:

Once upon a time, there was this pretty white mule with pink eyes, and the mule was fine and strong and set to the plow early on, but he didn't take to it. Not at all. But the odder part of the story was that the mule took up with a farm pig, and they became friends. There was no explaining it. It happened now and then, a horse or mule adopting their own pet, and that was what had happened with the white mule and the spotted pig.

When Frank had asked his Papa, why would a mule take up with a pig, his father had said: "Ain't no explaining. Why the hell did I take up with your mother?"

Frank thought the question went the other way, but the tale fascinated him, and his papa was just drunk enough to be in a good mood. Another pint swallowed, he'd be kicking his ass or his mama's. But he pushed while he could, trying to get the goods on the tale, since outside of worrying about dying corn and sagging barns, there wasn't that much in life that thrilled him.

The story his papa told him was the farmer who owned the mule, and no one could ever put a name to who that farmer was, had supposedly found the mule wouldn't work if the pig wasn't around, leading him between the rows. The pig was in front, the mule plowed fine. The pig wasn't there, the mule wouldn't plow.

This caused the farmer to come up with an even better idea. What would the mule do if the pig was made to run? So the farmer got the mule all saddled, and had one of his boys put the pig out front of the mule and swat it with a knotted plow line, and away went the pig and away went the white mule. The pig pretty soon veered off, but the mule, once set to run, couldn't stop, and would race so fast that the only way it halted was when it was tuckered out. Then it would go back to the start, and look for its pig.

Never failed.

One night the mule broke loose, kicked the pig's pen down, and he and the pig, like Jesse and Frank James, headed for the hills. Went into the East Texas greenery and wound in amongst the trees, and were lost to the farmer. Only to be seen after that in glimpses and in stories that might or might not be true. Stories about how they raided cornfields and ate the corn and how the mule kicked down pens and let hogs and goats and cattle go free.

The White Mule and the Spotted Pig. Out there. On the run. Doing whatever it was that white mules and spotted pigs did when they weren't raiding crops and freeing critters.

Frank thought on this for a long time, saddled up Dobbin and rode over to Leroy's place. When Frank arrived, Leroy was out in the yard on his back, unconscious, the seed salesman's hat spun off to the side, and was being moved around by a curious chicken. Finding Leroy like this didn't frighten Frank any. He often found Leroy that way, cold as a wedge from drink, or the missus having snuck up behind him with a stick of stove wood. They were rowdy, Leroy's bunch.

The missus came out on the porch and shook her fist at Frank, and not knowing anything else to do, he waved. She spat a stream of brown tobacco off the porch in his direction and went inside. A moment later one of the kids bellowed from being whapped, and there was a sound like someone slamming a big fish on flat ground. Then silence.

Frank bent down and shook Leroy awake. Leroy cursed, and Frank dragged him over to an overturned bucket and sat him up on it, asked him, "What happened?"

"Missus come up behind me. I've got so I don't watch my back enough."

"Why'd she do it?"

"Just her way. She has spells."

"You all right?"

"I got a headache."

Frank went straight to business. "I come to say maybe we ain't out of the mule business."

"What you mean?"

Frank told him about the mule and the pig, about his idea.

"Oh, yeah. Mule and pig are real. I've seen 'em once myself. Out hunting. I looked up, and there they were at the end of a trail, just watching. I was so startled, I just stood there looking at them."

"What did they do?"

"Well, Frank, they ran off. What do you think? But it was kind of funny. They didn't get in no hurry, just turned and went around the trail, showing me their ass, the pig's tail curled up and a little swishy, and the mule swatting his like at flies. They just went around that curve in the trail, behind some oaks and blackberry vines, and they was gone. I tracked them a bit, but they got down in a stream and walked it. I could find their tracks in the stream with my hands, but pretty soon the whole stream was brown with mud, and they come out of it somewhere I didn't find, and they was gone like a swamp fog come noon."

"Was the mule really white?"

"Dirty a bit, but white. Even from where I was standing, just bits of light coming in through the trees, I could see he had pink eyes. Story is, that's why he don't like to come out in day much, likes to stay in the trees, and do his crop raiding at night. Say the sun hurts his skin."

"That could be a drawback."

"You act like you got him in a pen somewhere."

"I'd like to see if I could get hold of him. Story is, he can run, and he needs the pig to do it."

"That's the story. But stories ain't always true. I even heard stories about how the pig rides the mule, and that the mule is stump broke, and the pig climbs up on a stump and diddles the mule in the ass. I've heard all manner of tale, and ain't maybe none of it got so much as a nut of truth in it. Still, it's one of them ideas that kind of appeals to me. Course, you know, we might catch that mule and he might not can run at all. Maybe all he can do is sneak around in the woods and eat corn crops."

"Well, it's all the idea I got," Frank said, and the thought of that worried Frank more than a little. He considered on his knack for clinging to bad notions like a rutting dog hanging on to a fella's leg. But, like the dog, he was determined to finish what he started.

"So what you're saying here," Leroy said, "is you want to capture the mule, and the pig, so the mule has got his helpmate. And you want to ride the mule in the race?"

"That's what I said."

Leroy paused for a moment, rubbed the knot on the back of his noggin. "I think we should get Black Joe to help us track him. We want him, that's the way we do it. Black Joe catches him, and we'll break him, and you can ride him."

Black Joe was part Indian and part Irish and part Negro. His skin was somewhere between brown and red and he had a red cast to his kinky hair and strawberry freckles and bright green eyes. But the black blood named him, and he himself went by the name Black Joe.

He was supposed to be able to track a bird across the sky, a fart across the yard. He had two women that lived with him and he called them his wives. One of them was a Negro, and the other one was part Negro and Cherokee. He called the black one Sweetie, the red and black one Pie.

When Frank and Leroy rode up double on Dobbin, and stopped in Black Joe's yard, a rooster was fucking one of the hens. It was a quick matter, and a moment later the rooster was strutting across the yard like he was ten foot tall and bullet proof.

They got off Dobbin, and no sooner had they hit the ground, than Black Joe was beside them, tall and broad shouldered with his freckled face.

"Damn, man," Frank said, "where did you come from?" Black Joe pointed in an easterly direction.

"Shit," Leroy said, "coming up on a man like that could make him bust a heart."

"Want something?" Black Joe asked.

"Yeah," Leroy said. "We want you to help track the White Mule and the Spotted Pig, 'cause Frank here, he's going to race him."

"Pig or mule?" Black Joe asked.

"The mule," Leroy said. "He's gonna ride the mule."

"Eat the pig?"

"Well," Leroy said, continuing his role as spokesman, "not right away. But there could come a point."

"He eats the pig, I get half of pig," Black Joe said.

"If he eats it, yeah," Leroy said. "Shit, he eats the mule, he'll give you half of that."

"My women like mule meat," Black Joe said. "I've eat it, but it don't agree with me. Horse is better," and to strengthen his statement, he gave Dobbin a look over.

"We was thinking," Leroy said, "we could hire you to find the mule and the pig, capture them with us."

"What was you thinking of giving me, besides half the critters if you eat them?"

"How about ten dollars?"

"How about twelve?"

"Eleven."

"Eleven-fifty."

Leroy looked at Frank. Frank sighed and nodded, stuck out his hand. Black Joe shook it, then shook Leroy's hand. Black Joe said, "Now, mule runs like the rock, that ain't my fault. I get the eleven-fifty anyway."

Frank nodded.

"Okay, tomorrow morning," Black Joe said, "just before light, we'll go look for him real serious and then some."

"Thing does come to me," Frank said, "is haven't other folks tried to get hold of this mule and pig before? Why are you so confident?"

Black Joe nodded. "They weren't Black Joe."

"You could have tracked them before on your own," Frank said. "Why now?"

Black Joe looked at Frank. "Eleven-fifty."

----------

In the pre-dawn light, down in the swamp, the fog moved through the trees like someone slow-pulling strands of cotton from cotton bolls. It wound its way amongst the limbs that were low down, along the ground. There were wisps of it on the water, right near the bank, and as Frank and Leroy and Black Joe stood there, they saw what looked like dozens of sticks rise up in the swamp water and move along briskly.

Nigger Jim said, "Cottonmouth snakes. They going with they heads up, looking for anything foolish enough to get out there. You swimming out there now, pretty quick you be bit good and plenty and swole up like old tick. Only you burst all over and spill green poison, and die. Seen it happen."

"Ain't planning on swimming," Frank said.

"Watch your feet," Black Joe said. "Them snakes is thick this year. Them cottons and them copperheads. Cottons, they always mad."

"We've seen snakes," Leroy said.

"I know it," Black Joe said, "but where we go, they are more than a few, that's what I'm trying to tell you. Back there where mule and pig hides, it's thick in snakes and blackberry vines. And the trees thick like the wool on a sheep. It a goat or a sheep you fucked?"

"For Christ sakes," Leroy said. "You heard that too?"

"Wives talk about it when they see you yesterday. There the man who fuck a sheep, or a goat, or some such. Say you ain't a man can get pussy."

"Oh, hell," Leroy said.

"So, tell me some," Black Joe said. "Which was it, now?"

"Goat," Leroy said.

"That is big nasty," Black Joe said, and started walking, leading them along a narrow trail by the water. Frank watched the cottonmouth snakes swim on ahead, their evil heads sticking up like some sort of water-devil erections.

The day grew hot and the trees held the hot and made it hotter and made it hard to breathe, like sucking down wool and chunks of flannel. Frank and Leroy sweated their clothes through and their hair turned to wet strings. Black Joe, though sweaty, appeared as fresh as a virgin in spring.

"Where you get your hat?" Black Joe asked Leroy suddenly, when they stopped for a swig from canteens.

"Seed salesman. My wife knocked him out and I kept the hat."

"Huh, no shit?" Black Joe took off his big old hat and waved around. "Bible salesman. He told me I was gonna go to hell, so I beat him up, kept his hat. I shit in his Bible case."

"Wow, that's mean," Frank said.

"Him telling me I'm going to hell, that make me real mad. I tell you that to tell you not to forget my eleven-fifty. I'm big on payment."

"You can count on us if we win," Frank said.

"No. You owe me eleven-fifty win or lose." Black Joe said, putting his hat back carefully on his head, looking at the two smaller men like a man about to pick a hen for neck wringing and Sunday dinner.

"Sure," Frank said. "Eleven-fifty, win or lose. Eleven-fifty when we get the pig and the mule."

"Now that's the deal as I see it," Black Joe said. "I tell women it's eight dollars, that way I make some whisky money. Black Joe didn't get up yesterday. No, he didn't. And when he gets up, he got Bible salesman's hat on."

----------

They waded through the swamp and through the woods for some time, and just before dark, Black Joe picked up on the mule's unshod tracks. He bent down and looked at them. He said, "We catch him, he's gonna need trimming and shoes. Not enough rock to wear them down. Soft sand and swamp. And here's the pig's tracks. Hell, he's big. Tracks say, three hundred pounds. Maybe more."

"That's no pig," Leroy said. "That's a full-blown hog."

"Damn," Frank said. "They're real."

"But can he race?" Leroy said. "And will the pig cooperate?"

They followed the tracks until it turned dark. They threw up a camp, made a fire, and made it big so the smoke was strong, as the mosquitoes were everywhere and hungry and the smoke kept them off a little. They sat there in the night before the fire, the smoke making them cough, watching it churn up above them, through the trees. And up there, as if resting on a limb, was a piece of the moon.

They built the fire up big one last time, turned into their covers, and tried to sleep. Finally, they did, but before morning, Frank awoke, his bladder full, his mind as sharp as if he had slept well. He got up and stoked up the fire, and walked out a few paces in the dark and let it fly. When he looked up to button his pants, he saw through the trees, across a stretch of swamp water, something moving.

He looked carefully, because whatever it was had stopped. He stood very still for a long time, and finally what he had seen moved again. He thought at first it was a deer, but no. There was enough light from the early rising sun knifing through the trees that he could now see clearly what it was.

The White Mule. It stood between two large trees, just looking at him, its head held high, its tall ears alert. The mule was big. Fifteen hands high, like Robert E. Lee, and it was big-chested, and its legs were long. Something moved beside it.

The Spotted Pig. It was big and ugly, with one ear turned up and one ear turned down. It grunted once, and the mule snorted, but neither moved.

Frank wasn't sure what to do. He couldn't go tearing across the stretch of swamp after them, since he didn't know how deep it was, and what might be waiting for him. Gators, snakes and sinkholes. And by the time he woke up the others, the mule and hog would be gone. He just stood there instead, staring at them. This went on for a long time, and finally the hog turned and started moving away, behind some thicket. The mule tossed its head, turned and followed.

My God, thought Frank. The mule is beautiful. And the hog, he's a pistol. He could tell that from the way it had grunted at him. He had some strange feelings inside of him that he couldn't explain. Some sensation of having had a moment that was greater than any moment he had had before.

He thought it strange these thoughts came to him, but he knew it was the sight of the mule and the hog that had stirred them. As he walked back to the fire and lay down on his blankets, he tried to figure the reason behind that, and only came up with a headache and more mosquito bites.

He closed his eyes and slept a little while longer, thinking of the mule and the hog, and the way they were free and beautiful. And then he thought of the race, and all of that went away, and when he awoke, it was to the toe of Black Joe's boot in his ribs.

"Time to do it," Black Joe said.

Frank sat up. "I saw them."

"What?" Leroy said, stirring out of his blankets. Frank told them what he had seen, and how there was nothing he could do then. Told them all this, but didn't tell them how the mule and the hog had made him feel.

"Shit," Leroy said. "You should have woke us."

Black Joe shook his head. "No matter. We see over there where they stood. See what tracks they leave us. Then we do the sneak on them."

----------

They worked their way to the other side of the swamp, swatting mosquitoes and killing a cottonmouth in the process, and when they got to where the mule and the hog stood, they found tracks and mule droppings.

"You not full of shit, like Black Joe thinking," Black Joe said. "You really see them."

"Yep," Frank said.

Black Joe bent down and rubbed some of the mule shit between his fingers, and smelled it. "Not more than a couple hours old."

"Should have got us up," Leroy said.

"Easier to track in the day," Black Joe said. "They got their place they stay. They got some hideout."

The mosquitoes were not so bad now, and finally they came to some clear areas, marshy, but clear, and they lost the tracks there, but Black Joe said, "The two of them, they probably cross here. It's a good spot. Pick their tracks up in the trees over there, on the soft ground."

When they crossed the marshy stretch, they came to a batch of willows and looked around there. Black Joe was the one who found their tracks.

"Here they go," he said. "Here they go."

They traveled through woods and more swamp, and from time to time they lost the tracks, but Black Joe always found them. Sometimes Frank couldn't even see what Black Joe saw. But Black Joe saw something, because he kept looking at the ground, stopping to stretch out on the earth, his face close to it. Sometimes he would pinch the earth between finger and thumb, rub it about. Frank wasn't sure why he did that, and he didn't ask. Like Leroy, he just followed.

Mid-day, they came to a place that amazed Frank. Out there in the middle of what should have been swamp, there was a great clear area, at least a hundred acres. They found it when they came out of a stretch of shady oaks. The air was sweeter there, in the trees, and the shadows were cooling, and at the far edge was a drop of about fifty feet. Down below was the great and natural pasture. A fire, brought on by heat or lightning, might have cleared the place at some point in time. It had grown back without trees, just tall green grass amongst a few rotting, ant-infested stumps. It was surrounded by the oaks, high up on their side, and low down on the other. The oaks on the far side stretched out and blended with sweet gums and black jack and hickory and bursts of pines. From their vantage point they could see all of this, and see the cool shadow on the other side amongst the trees.

A hawk sailed over it all, and Frank saw there was a snake in its beak. Something stirred again inside of Frank, and he was sure it wasn't his last meal. "You're part Indian," Frank said to Black Joe. "That hawk and that snake, does it mean something?"

"Means that snake is gonna get et," Black Joe said. "Damn trees. Don't you know that make a lot of good hard lumber. Go quiet. Look there."

Coming out of the trees into the great pasture was the mule and the hog. The hog led the way, and the mule followed close behind. They came out into the sunlight, and pretty soon the hog began to root and the mule began to graze.

"Got their own paradise," Frank said.

"We'll fix that," Leroy said.

They waited there, sitting amongst the oaks, watching, and late in the day the hog and the mule wandered off into the trees across the way.

"Ain't we gonna do something besides watch?" Leroy said.

"They leave, tomorrow they come back," Black Joe said. "Got their spot. Be back tomorrow. We'll be ready for them."

----------

Just before dark they came down from their place on a little trail and crossed the pasture and walked over to where the mule and the hog had come out of the trees. Black Joe looked around for some time, said, "Got a path. Worked it out. Always the same. Same spot. Come through here, out into the pasture. What we do is we get up in a tree. Or I get in tree with my rope, and I rope the mule and tie him off and let him wear himself down."

"He could kill himself, thrashing," Frank said.

"Could kill myself, him thrashing. I think it best tie him to a tree, folks."

Frank translated Black Joe's strange way of talking in his head, said, "He dies, you don't get the eleven-fifty."

"Not how I understand it," Black Joe said.

"That's how it is," Frank said, feeling as if he might be asking for a knife in his belly, his guts spilled. Out here, no one would ever know. Black Joe might think he could do that, kill Leroy too, take their money. Course, they didn't have any money. Not here. There was fifteen dollars buried in a jar out back of the house, eleven-fifty of which would go to Black Joe, if he didn't kill them.

Black Joe studied Frank for a long moment. Frank shifted from one foot to the other, trying not to do it, but unable to stop. "Okay," Black Joe said. "That will work up good enough."

"What about Mr. Porky?" Leroy asked.

"That gonna be you two's job. I rope damn mule, and you two, you gonna rope damn pig. First, we got to smell like dirt."

"What?" Frank said.

Black Joe rubbed himself down with dark soil. He had Frank and Leroy rub themselves down with it. Leroy hated it and complained, but Frank found the earth smelled like incoming rain, and he thought it pleasant. It felt good on his skin, and he had a sudden strange thought, that when he died, he would become one and the same as the earth, and he wondered how many dead animals, maybe people, made up the dirt he had rubbed onto himself. He felt odd thinking that way. He felt odd thinking in any way.

They slept for a while, then Black Joe kicked him and Leroy awake. It was still dark when they rolled dirty out of their bedclothes.

"Couldn't we have waited on the dirt?" Leroy said, climbing out of his blankets. "It's all in my bedroll."

"Need time for dirt to like you good, so you smell like it," Black Joe said. "We put some more on now, rub in the hair good, then get ready."

"It's still dark," Frank said. "They gonna come in the dark? How you know when they're gonna come?"

"They come. But we gotta be ready. They have a good night in farmer's cornfields, they might come real soon, full bellies. Way ground reads, they come here to stand and to wallow. Hog wallows all time, way ground looks. And they shit all over. This their spot. They don't get corn and peas and such, they'll be back here. Water not far from spot, and they got good grass. Under the trees, hog has some acorns. Hogs like acorns. Wife, Sweetie, makes sometimes coffee from acorns."

"How about I make some regular coffee, made from coffee?" Leroy said.

"Nope. We don't want a smoke smell. Don't want our smell. Need to piss or shit, don't let free here. Go across pasture there. Far side. Dump over there. Piss over there. Use the heel of your shoe to cover it all. Give it lots of dirt."

"Walk all the way across?" Leroy said.

"Want hog and mule," Black Joe said. "Walk all the way across. Now, eat some jerky, do your shit over on other side. Put more dirt on. And wait."

The sun rose up and it got hot, and the dirt on their skins itched, or at least Frank itched, and he could tell Leroy itched, but Black Joe, he didn't seem to. Sat silent. And when the early morning was eaten up by the heat, Black Joe showed them places to be, and Black Joe, with his lasso, climbed up into an oak and sat on a fat limb, his feet stretched along it, his back against the trunk, the rope in his lap.

The place for Frank and Leroy to be was terrible. The dirt they smeared on themselves came from long scoops they made. Then they lay down in the scoops with their ropes, and Black Joe, before he climbed the tree, tossed leaves and sticks and dirt and bits of mule and hog shit over them. The way they lay, Frank and Leroy were twenty feet apart, on either side of what Black Joe said was a trail the hog and mule traveled. It wasn't much of a trail. A bit of ruffled oak leaves, some wallows the hog had made.

The day crawled forward and so did the worms. They were all around Frank, and it was all he could do not to jump up screaming. It wasn't that he was afraid of them. He had put many of them on hooks for fishing. But to just lay there and have them squirm against your arm, your neck. And there was something that bit. Something in the hog shit was Frank's thought.

Frank heard a sound. A different sound. Being close to the ground it seemed to move the earth. It was the slow careful plodding of the mule's hooves, and another sound. The hog, maybe.

They listened and waited and the sounds came closer, and then Frank, lying there, trying not to tremble with anticipation, heard a whizzing sound. The rope. And then there was a bray, and a scuffle sound.

Frank lifted his head slightly.

Not ten feet from him was the great white mule, the rope around its neck, the length of it stretching up into the tree. Frank could see Black Joe. He had wrapped the rope around the limb and was holding on to it, tugging, waiting for the mule to wear itself out.

The hog was bounding about near the mule, as if it might jump up and grab the rope and chew it in two. It actually went up on its hind legs once.

Frank knew it was time. He burst out of his hiding place, and Leroy came out of his. The hog went straight for Leroy. Frank darted in front of the leaping mule and threw his rope and caught the hog around the neck. It turned instantly and went for him.

Leroy dove and grabbed the hog's hind leg. The hog kicked him in the face, but Leroy hung on. The hog dragged Leroy across the ground, going for Frank, and as his rope become more slack, Frank darted for a tree.

By the time Frank arrived at the tree trunk, Leroy had managed to put his rope around the hog's hind leg, and now Frank and Leroy had the hog in a kind of tug-of-war.

"Don't hurt him now some," Black Joe yelled from the tree. "Got to keep him up for it. He's the mule leader. Makes him run."

"What the hell did he say?" Frank said.

"Don't hurt the goddamn pig," Leroy said.

"Ha," Frank said, tying off his end of the rope to a tree trunk. Leroy stretched his end, giving the hog a little slack, and tied off to another tree. Nearby the mule leaped and kicked.

Leroy made a move to try and grab the rope on the mule up short, but the mule whipped as if on a Yankee dollar, and kicked Leroy smooth in the chest, launching him over the hog and into the brush. The hog would have had him then, but the rope around its neck and back leg held it just short of Leroy, but close enough a string of hog spittle and snot was flung across Leroy's face.

"Goddamn," Leroy said, as he inched farther away from the hog.

For a long while, they watched the mule kick and buck and snort and snap its large teeth.

It was near nightfall when the mule, exhausted, settled down on its front knees first, then rolled over on its side. The hog scooted across the dirt and came to rest near the great mule, its snout resting on the mule's flank.

"I'll be damned," Leroy said. "The hog's girlie or something."

It took three days to get back, because the mule wasn't cooperating, and the hog was no pushover either. They had to tie logs on either side of the hog, so that he had to drag them. It wore the hog down, but it wore the men down too, because the logs would tangle in vines and roughs, and constantly had to be removed. The mule was hobbled loosely, so that it could walk, but couldn't bolt. The mule was led by Black Joe, and fastened around the mule's waist was a rope with two rope lines leading off to the rear. They were in turn fastened to a heavy log that kept the mule from bolting forward to have a taste of Black Joe, and to keep him, like the hog, worn down.

At night they left the logs on the critters, and built make-do corrals of vines and limbs and bits of leather straps.

By the time they were out of the woods and the swamp, the mule and the hog were covered in dirt and mud and such. The animals heaved as they walked, and Frank feared they might keel over and die.

They made it though, and they took the mule up to Black Joe's. He had a corral there. It wasn't much, but it was solid and it held the mule in. The hog they put in a small pen. There was hardly room for the hog to turn around. Now that the hog was well placed, Frank stood by the pen and studied the animal. It looked at him with a feral eye. This wasn't a hog who had been slopped and watered. This was an animal who early on had escaped into the wild, as a pig, and had made his way to adulthood. His spotted hide was covered in scars, and though he had a coating of fat on him, his body was long and muscular, and when the hog flexed its shoulders to startle a fly, those muscles rolled beneath its skin like snakes beneath a tight-stretched blanket.

The mule, after the first day, began to perk up. But he didn't do much. Stood around mostly, and when they walked away for a distance, it began to trot the corral, stopping often to look out at the hog pen, at his friend. The mule made a sound, and the hog made a sound back.

"Damn, if I don't think they're talking to one another," Leroy said.

"Oh yeah. You can bet. They do that all right," Black Joe said.

----------

The race was coming closer, and within the week, Leroy and Black Joe had the mule's hooves trimmed, but no shoes. Decided he didn't need them, as the ground was soft this time of year. They got him saddled. Leroy got bucked off and kicked and bitten once, a big plug was out of his right elbow.

"Mean one," Black Joe said. "Real bastard, this mule. Strong. He got the time, he eat Leroy."

"Do you think he can run?" Frank asked.

"Time to see soon," Black Joe said.

That night, when the saddling and bucking was done, the mule began to wear down, let Black Joe stay on his back. As a reward, Black Joe fed the mule well, but with only a little water. He fed the hog some pulled-up weeds, a bit of corn, watered him.

"Want mule strong, but hog weak," Black Joe said. "Don't want hog strong enough to go digging out of pen that's for some sure."

Frank listened to this, wondering where Black Joe had learned his American.

Black Joe went in for the night, his two wives calling him to supper. Leroy walked home. Frank saddled up Dobbin, but before he left, he led the horse out to the corral and stared at the mule. There in the starlight, the beams settled around the mule's head, and made it very white. The mud was gone now and the mule had been groomed, cleaned of briars and burrs from the woods, and the beast looked magnificent. Once Frank had seen a book. It was the only book he had ever seen other than the Bible, which his mother owned. But he had seen this one in the window of the General Store downtown. He hadn't opened the book, just looked at it through the window. There on the cover was a white horse with wings on its back. Well, the mule didn't look like a horse, and it didn't have wings on its back, but it certainly had the bearing of the beast on the book's cover. Like maybe it was from somewhere else other than here; like the sky had ripped open and the mule had ridden into this world through the tear.

Frank led Dobbin over to the hog pen. There was nothing beautiful about the spotted hog. It stared up at him, and the starlight filled its eyes and made them sharp and bright as shrapnel.

As Frank was riding away, he heard the mule make a sound, then the hog. They did it more than once, and were still doing it when he rode out of earshot.

----------

It took some doing, and it took some time, and Frank, though he did little but watch, felt as if he were going to work every day. It was a new feeling for him. His old man often made him work, but as he grew older he had quit, just like his father. The fields rarely got attention, and being drunk became more important than hoeing corn and digging taters. But here he was not only showing up early, but staying all day, handing harness and such to Black Joe and Leroy, bringing out feed and pouring water.

In time Black Joe was able to saddle up the mule with no more than a snort from the beast, and he could ride about the pen without the mule turning to try and bite him or buck him. He even stopped kicking at Black Joe and Leroy, who he hated, when they first entered the pen.

The hog watched all of this through the slats of his pen, his beady eyes slanting tight, his battle-torn ears flicking at flies, his curly tail curled even tighter. Frank wondered what the hog was thinking. He was certain, whatever it was, was not good.

Soon enough, Black Joe had Frank enter the pen, climb up in the saddle. Sensing a new rider, the mule threw him. But the second time he was on board, the mule trotted him around the corral, running lightly with that kind of rolling-barrel run mules have.

"He's about ready for a run, he is," Black Joe said.

Frank led the mule out of the pen and out to the road, Leroy following. Black Joe led Dobbin. "See he'll run that way. Not so fast at first," Black Joe said. "Me and this almost dead horse, we follow and find you, you ain't neck broke in some ditch somewheres."

Cautiously, Frank climbed on the white mule's back. He took a deep breath, then, settling himself in the saddle, he gave the mule a kick.

The mule didn't move.

He kicked again.

The mule trotted down the road about twenty feet, then turned, dipped its head into the grass that grew alongside the red clay road, and took a mouthful.

Frank kicked at the mule some more, but the mule wasn't having any. He did move, but just a bit. A few feet down the road, then across the road and into the grass, amongst the trees, biting leaves off of them with a sharp snap of his head, a smack of his teeth.

Black Joe trotted up on Dobbin.

"You ain't going so fast."

"Way I see it too," Frank said. "He ain't worth a shit."

"We not bring the hog in on some business yet."

"How's that gonna work? I mean, how's he gonna stay around and not run off?"

"Maybe hog run off in goddamn woods and not see again, how it may work. But, nothing else, hitch mule to plow or sell. You done paid me eleven-fifty."

"Your job isn't done," Frank said.

"You say, and may be right, but we got the one card, the hog, you see. He don't deal out with an ace, we got to call him a joker, and call us assholes, and the mule, we got to make what we can. We have to, shoot and eat the hog. Best, keep him up a few more days, put some corn in him, make him better than what he is. Fatter. The mule, I told you ideas. Hell, eat mule too if nothing other works out."

They let the hog out of the pen.

Or rather, Leroy did. Just picked up the gate, and out came the hog. The hog didn't bolt. It bounded over to the mule, on which Frank was mounted. The mule dipped its head, touched noses with the hog.

"I'll be damned," Frank said, thinking he had never had a friend like that. Leroy was as close as it got, and he had to watch Leroy. He'd cheat you. And if you had a goat, he might fuck it. Leroy was no real friend. Frank felt lonesome.

Black Joe took the bridle on the mule away from Frank, and led them out to the road. The hog trotted beside the mule.

"Now, story is, hog likes to run," Black Joe said. "And when he run, mule follows. And then hog, he falls off, not keeping up, and mule, he got the arrow-sight then, run like someone put turpentine on his nut sack. Or that the story as I hear it. You?"

"Pretty close," Frank said.

Frank took the reins back, and the hog stood beside the mule. Nothing happened.

"Gonna say go, is what I'm to do here now. And when I say, you kick mule real goddamn hard. Me, I'm gonna stick boot in hog's big ass. Hear me now, Frank?"

"I do."

"Signal will be me shouting when kick the hog's ass, okay?"

"Okay."

"Ready some."

"Ready."

Black Joe yelled, "Git, hog," and kicked the hog in the ass with all his might. The hog did a kind of hop, and bolted. A hog can move quick for its size for a short distance, haul some serious freight, and the old spotted hog, he was really fast, hauling the whole freight line. Frank expected the hog to dart into the woods, and be long gone. But it didn't. The hog bounded down the road running for all it was worth, and before Frank could put his heels to the mule, the mule leaped. That was the only way to describe it. The mule did not seem cocked to fire, but suddenly it was a white bullet, lunging forward so fast Frank nearly flew out of the saddle. But he clung, and the mule ran, and the hog ran, and after a bit, the mule ducked its head and the hog began to fade. But the mule was no longer following the hog. Not even close. It snorted, and its nose appeared to get long and the ears laid back flat. The mule jetted by the fat porker and stretched its legs wider, and Frank could feel the wind whipping cool on his face. The body of the mule rolled like a barrel, but man, my God, thought Frank, this sonofabitch can run.

There was one problem. Frank couldn't turn him. When he felt the mule had gone far enough, it just kept running, and no amount of tugging led to response. That booger was gone. Frank just leaned forward over the mule's neck, hung on, and let him run.

Eventually the mule quit, just stopped, dipped its head to the ground, then looked left and right. Trying to find the hog, Frank figured. It was like the mule had gone into a kind of spell, and now he was out of it and wanted his friend.

He could turn the mule then. He trotted it back down the road, not trying to get it to run anymore, just letting it trot, and when it came upon Black Joe and Leroy, standing in the road, the hog came out of the woods and moseyed up beside the mule.

As Black Joe reached up and took the mule's reins, he said, "See that there. Hog and him are buddies. He stays around. He don't want to run off. Wants to be with mule. Hog a goddamn fool. Could be long gone, out in the woods. Find some other wild hog and fuck it. Eat acorns. Die of old age. Now he gonna get et sometime."

"Dumb shit hog," Leroy said.

The mule tugged at the reins, dipped its head. The hog and the mule's noses came together. The mule snorted. The hog made a kind of squealing sound.

----------

They trained for several days the same way. The hog would start, and then the mule would run. Fast. They put the mule up at night in the corral, hobbled, and the hog, they didn't have to pen him anymore. He stayed with the mule by choice.

One day, after practice, Frank said, "He seems pretty fast."

"Never have seen so fast," Black Joe said. "He's moving way good."

"Do you think he can win?" Leroy said.

"He can win, they let us bring hog in. No hog. Not much on the run. Got to have hog. But there's one mule give him trouble. Dynamite. He runs fast too. Might can run faster."

"You think?"

"Could be. I hear he can go lickity split. Tomorrow, we find out, hey?"

----------

The world was made of men and mules and dogs and one hog. There were women too, most of them with parasols. Some sitting in the rows of chairs at the starting line, their legs tucked together primly, their dresses pulled down tight to the ankles. The air smelled of early summer morning and hot mule shit and sweat and perfume, cigar smoke, beer and farts. Down from it all, in tents, were other women who smelled different and wore less clothes. The women with parasols would not catch their eye, but some of the men would, many when their wives or girls were not looking.

Frank was not interested. He couldn't think of anything but the race. Leroy was with him, and of course, Black Joe. They brought the mule in, Black Joe leading him. Frank on Old Dobbin, Leroy riding double. And the hog, loose, on its own, strutting as if he were the one throwing the whole damn shindig.

The mules at the gathering were not getting along. There were bites and snorts and kicks. The mules could kick backwards, and they could kick out sideways like cattle. You had to watch them.

White Mule was surprisingly docile. It was as if his balls had been clipped. He walked with his head down, the pig trotting beside him.

As they neared the forming line of mules, Frank looked at them. Most were smaller than the white mule, but there was one that was bigger, jet black, and had a roaming eye, as if he might be searching for victims. He had a big hard-on and it was throbbing in the sunlight like a fat cottonmouth.

"That mule there, big-dicked one," Black Joe said, pausing. "He the kind get a hard-on he gonna race or fight, maybe quicker than the fuck, you see. He's the one to watch. Anything that like the running or fighting better than pussy, him, you got to keep the eye on."

"That's Dynamite," Leroy said. "Got all kinds of mule muscle, that's for sure."

White Mule saw Dynamite, lifted his head high and threw back his ears and snorted.

"Oh, yeah," said Leroy. "There's some shit between them already."

"Somebody gonna outrun somebody or fuck other in ass, that's what I tell you for sure. Maybe they fight some too. Whole big blanket of business here."

White Mule wanted to trot, and Black Joe had to run a little to keep up with him. They went right through a clutch of mules about to be lined up, and moved quickly so that White Mule was standing beside Dynamite. The two mules looked at one another and snorted. In that moment, the owner of Dynamite slipped blinders on Dynamite's head, tossing off the old bridle to a partner.

The spotted hog slid in between the feet of his mule, stood with his head poking out beneath his buddy's legs, looking up with his ugly face, flaring his nostrils, narrowing his cave-dark eyes.

Dynamite's owner was Levi Crone, one big gent in a dirty white shirt with the sleeves ripped out. He had a big red face and big fat muscles and a belly like a big iron wash pot. He wore a hat you could have bathed in. He was as tall as Black Joe, six foot two or more. Hands like hams, feet like boats. He looked at the White Mule, said, "That ain't the story mule, is it?"

"One and the same," Frank said, as if he had raised the white mule from a colt.

"I heard someone had him. That he had been caught. Catch and train him?"

"Me and my partners."

"You mean Leroy and the nigger?"

"Yeah."

"That the hog in the stories, too, I guess?"

"Yep," Frank said.

"What's he for? A stepstool?"

"He runs with the mule. For a ways."

"That ain't allowed."

"Where say can't do it, huh?" Black Joe asked.

Crone thought. "Nowhere, but it stands to reason."

"What about rule can't run with the dick hard?" Black Joe said, pointing at Dynamite's member.

"Ain't no rule like that," Crone said. "Mule can't help that."

"Ain't no rule about goddamn hog none either," Black Joe said.

"It don't matter," Crone said. "You got this mule from hell, given to you by the goddamn red-assed devil his ownself, and you got the pork chop there too from the same place, it ain't gonna matter. Dynamite here, he's gonna outrun him. Gets finished, he'll fuck your mule in the ass and shit a turd on him."

"Care to make a bet on the side some?" Black Joe said.

"Sure," Crone said. "I'll bet you all till my money runs out. That ain't good enough, I'll arm wrestle you or body wrestle you or see which of us can shoot jack-off the farthest. You name it, speckled nigger."

Black Joe studied Crone as if he might be thinking about where to make all the prime cuts, but he finally just grinned, got out ten of the eleven-fifty he had been paid. "There mine. You got some holders?"

"Ten dollars. I got sight of it, and I got your word, which better be good," Crone said.

"Where's your money?" Leroy said.

Crone pulled out a wad from his front pocket, presented it with open palm as if he might be giving a teacher an apple. He looked at Leroy, said, "You gonna trade a goat? I hear you like goats."

"Okay," Leroy said. "Okay. I fucked a goddamn goat. What of it?"

Crone laughed at him. He shook the money at Black Joe. "Good enough?"

"Okay," Black Joe said.

"Here's three dollars," Frank said, dug in his pocket, held it so Crone could see.

Crone nodded.

Frank slipped the money back in his pocket.

"Well," Leroy said. "I ain't got shit, so I just throw out my best wishes."

"You boys could bet the mule," Crone said.

"That could be an idea," Leroy said.

"No," Frank said. "We won't do that."

"Ain't we partners?" Leroy said, taking off his seed salesman's hat.

"We got a deal," Frank said, "but I'm the one paid Black Joe for catching and training. So, I decide. And that's about as partner as we get."

Leroy shrugged, put the seed salesman's hat back on.

----------

The mules lined up and it was difficult to make them stay the line. Dynamite, still toting serious business on the undercarriage, lined up by White Mule, stood at least a shoulder above him. Both wore blinders now, but they turned their heads and looked at one another. Dynamite snapped at the white mule and missed. White Mule snapped back at Dynamite's nose, grazing him. He threw a little kick sideways that made Dynamite shuffle to his right.

There was yelling from the judges, threats of disqualification, though no one expected that. The crowd had already figured this race out. White Mule, the forest legend, and Dynamite, of the swinging big dick, they were the two to watch.

Leroy and Black Joe had pulled the hog back with a rope, but now they brought him out and let him stand in front of his mule. They had to talk to the judges on the matter, explain. There wasn't any rule for or against it. One judge said he didn't like the idea. One said the hog would get trampled to death anyway. Another said, shit, why not. Final decision, they let the hog stay in the race.

So the mules and the hog and the riders lined up, the hog just slightly to the side of the white mule. The hog looked over its shoulder at Black Joe standing behind him. By now the hog knew what was coming. A swift kick in the ass.

Frank climbed up on the white mule, and a little guy with a face like a timber axe climbed up on Crone's mule, Dynamite.

Out front of the line was a little bald man in a loose shirt and suspenders holding up his high-water pants, showing his scuffed and broken-laced boots. He had a pistol in his hand. He has a voice loud as Nester on the Greek line.

"Now, we got us a mule race today, ladies and gentlemen. And there will be no cheatin', or there will be disqualification, and a butt-beating you can count on to be remembered by everyone, 'specially the cheater. What I want now, line of mules and riders, is a clean race. This here path is wide enough for all twenty of you, and you can't fan too much to the right or left, as we got folks all along the run watching. You got to keep up pretty tight. Now, there might be some biting and kicking, and that's to be expected. From the mules. You riders got to be civil. Or mostly. A little out of line is all right, but no knives or guns or such. Everyone understand and ain't got no questions, let up a shout."

A shout came from the line. The mules stirred, stepped back, stepped forward.

"Anybody don't understand what I just said? Anyone not speak Texan or 'Merican here that's gonna race?"

No response.

"All right, then. Watch women and children, and try not to run over the men or the whores neither. I'm gonna step over there to the side, and I'm gonna raise this pistol, and when you hear the shot, there you go. May the best mule and the best rider win. Oh, yeah. We got a hog in the race too. He ain't supposed to stay long. Just kind of lead. No problems with that from anybody, is there?"

There were no complaints.

"All right, then."

The judge stepped briskly to the side of the road and raised his old worn .36 Navy at the sky and got an important look on his face. Black Joe removed the rope from the pig's neck and found a solid position between mules and behind the hog. He cocked his foot back.

The judge fired his pistol. Black Joe kicked the hog in the ass. The mule line charged forward.

The hog, running for all it was worth, surged forward as well, taking the lead even. White Mule and Dynamite ran dead even. The mules ran so hard a cloud of dust was thrown up. The mules and the men and the hog were swallowed by it. Frank, seeing nothing but dust, coughed and cursed and lay tight against the white mule's neck, and squinted his eyes. He feared, without the white mule being able to see the hog, he might bolt. Maybe run into another mule, throw him into a stampede, get him stomped flat. But as they ran the cloud moved behind them, and when Frank came coughing out of the cloud, he was amazed to see the hog was well out in front, running as if he could go like that all the way to Mexico.

To his right, Frank saw Dynamite and his little axe-faced rider. The rider looked at him and smiled with gritty teeth. "You gonna get run into a hole, shit breath."

"Shitass," Frank said. It was the best he could come up with, but he threw it out with meaning.

Dynamite was leading the pack now, leaving the white mule and the others behind, throwing dust in their faces. White Mule saw Dynamite start to straighten out in front of him, and he moved left, nearly knocking against a mule on that side. Frank figured it was so he could see the hog. The hog was moving his spotted ass on down the line.

"Git him, White Mule," Frank said, and leaned close to the mule's left ear, rubbed the side of the mule's neck, then rested his head close on his mane. The white mule focused on the hog and started hauling some ass. He went lower and his strides got longer and the barrel back and belly rolled. When Frank looked up, the hog was bolting left, across the path of a dozen mules, just making it off the trail before taking a tumble under hooves. He fell, rolled over and over in the grass.

Frank thought: Shit, White Mule, he's gonna bolt, gonna go after the hog. But, nope, he was true to the trail, and closing on Dynamite. The spell was on. And now the other mules were moving up too, taking a whipping, getting their sides slapped hard enough Frank could hear it, thinking it sounded like Papa's belt on his back.

"Come on, White Mule. You don't need no hittin', don't need no hard heels. You got to outrun that hard dick for your own sake."

It was as if White Mule understood him. White Mule dropped lower and his strides got longer yet. Frank clung for all he was worth, fearing the saddle might twist and lose him.

But no, Leroy, for all his goat-fucking and seed salesman's hat stealing, could fasten harness better than anyone that walked.

The trail became shady as they moved into a line of oaks on either side of the road. For a long moment the shadows were so thick they ran in near darkness. Then there were patches of lights through the leaves and the dust was lying closer to the ground and the road was sun-baked and harder and showing clay the color of a poison-ivy rash. Scattered here and there along the road were viewers. A few in chairs. Most standing.

Frank ventured a look over his shoulder. The other mules and riders were way back, and some of them were already starting to falter. He noticed a couple of the mules were riderless, and one had broken rank with its rider and was off trail, cutting across the grass, heading toward the creek that twisted down amongst a line of willow trees.

As White Mule closed on Dynamite, the mule took a snapping bite at Dynamite's tail, jerking its head back with teeth full of tail hair.

Dynamite tried to turn and look, but his rider pulled his head back into line. White Mule lunged forward, going even lower than before. Lower than Frank had ever seen him go. Lower than he thought he could go. Now White Mule was pulling up on Dynamite's left. Dynamite's rider jerked Dynamite back into the path in front of White Mule. Frank wheeled his mount to the right side of Dynamite. In mid-run, Dynamite wheeled and kicked, hit White Mule in the side hard enough there was an explosion of breath that made Frank think his mule would go down.

Dynamite pulled ahead.

White Mule was not so low now. He was even staggering a little as he ran.

"Easy, boy," Frank said. "You can do it. You're the best goddamn mule ever ran a road."

White Mule began to run evenly again, or as even as a mule can run. He began to stretch out again, going low. Frank was surprised to see they were closing on Dynamite.

Frank looked back.

No one was in sight. Just a few twists of dust, a ripple of heat waves. It was White Mule and Dynamite, all the way.

As Frank and White Mule passed Dynamite, Frank noted Dynamite didn't run with a hard-on anymore. Dynamite's rider let the mule turn its head and snap at White Mule. Frank, without really thinking about it, slipped his foot from the saddle and kicked the mule in the jaw.

"Hey," yelled Dynamite's rider. "Stop that."

"Hey, shitass," Frank said. "You better watch that limb."

Dynamite and his rider had let White Mule push them to the right side of the road, near the trees, and a low-hanging hickory limb was right in line with them. The rider ducked it by a half inch, losing only his cap.

Shouldn't have told him, thought Frank. What he was hoping was to say something smart just as the limb caught the bastard. That would have made it choice, seeing the little axe-faced shit take it in the teeth. But he had outsmarted his ownself.

"Fuck," Frank said.

Now they were thundering around a bend, and there were lots of people there, along both sides. There had been a spot of people here and there, along the way, but now they were everywhere.

Must be getting to the end of it, thought Frank.

Dynamite had lost a step for a moment, allowing White Mule to move ahead, but now he was closing again. Frank looked up. He could see that a long red ribbon was stretched across in front of them. It was almost the end.

Dynamite lit a fuse.

He came up hard and on the left, and began to pass. The axe-faced rider slapped out with the long bridle and caught Frank across the face.

"You goddamn turd," Frank said, and slashed out with his own bridle, missing by six inches. Dynamite and Axe-Face pulled ahead.

Frank turned his attention back to the finish line. Thought: this is it. White Mule was any lower to the ground he'd have a belly full of gravel, stretched out any farther, he'd come apart. He's gonna be second. And no prize.

"You done what you could," Frank said, putting his mouth close to the bobbing head of the mule, rubbing the side of his neck with the tips of his fingers.

White Mule brought out the reinforcements. He was low and he was stretched, but now his legs were moving even faster, and for a long, strange moment, Frank thought the mule had sprung wings, like that horse he had seen on the front of the book so long ago. There didn't feel like there was any ground beneath them.

Frank couldn't believe it. Dynamite was falling behind, snorting and blowing, his body lathering up as if he were soaped.

White Mule leaped through the red ribbon a full three lengths ahead to win.

Frank let White Mule run past the watchers, on until he slowed and began to trot, and then walk. He let the mule go on like that for some time, then he gently pulled the reins and got out of the saddle. He walked the mule a while. Then he stopped and unbuttoned the belly band. He slid the saddle into the dirt. He pulled the bridle off of the mule's head.

The mule turned and looked at him.

"You done your part," Frank said, and swung the bridle gently against the mule's ass. "Go on."

White Mule sort of skipped forward and began running down the road, then turned into the trees. And was gone.

Frank walked all the way back to the beginning of the race, the viewers amazed he was without his mule.

But he was still the winner.

"You let him go?" Leroy said. "After all we went through, you let him go?"

"Yep," Frank said.

Black Joe shook his head. "Could have run him again. Plowed him. Ate him."

Frank took his prize money from the judges and side bet from Crone, paid Leroy his money, watched Black Joe follow Crone away from the race's starting line, on out to Crone's horse and wagon. Dynamite, his head down, was being led to the wagon by Axe-Face.

Frank knew what was coming. Black Joe had not been paid, and on top of that, he was ill tempered. As Frank watched, Black Joe hit Crone and knocked him flat. No one did anything.

Black man or not, you didn't mess with Black Joe.

Black Joe took his money from Crone's wallet, punched the axe-faced rider in the nose for the hell of it, and walked back in their direction.

Frank didn't wait. He went over to where the hog lay on the grass. His front and back legs had been tied and a kid about thirteen was poking him with a stick. Frank slapped the kid in the back of the head, knocking his hat off. The kid bolted like a deer.

Frank got Dobbin and called Black Joe over. "Help me."

Black Joe and Frank loaded the hog across the back of Dobbin as if he were a sack of potatoes. Heavy as the porker was, it was accomplished with some difficulty, the hog's head hanging down on one side, his feet on the other. The hog seemed defeated. He hardly even squirmed.

"Misses that mule," Black Joe said.

"You and me got our business done, Joe?" Frank asked. Black Joe nodded.

Frank took Dobbin's reins and started leading him away.

"Wait," Leroy said.

Frank turned on him. "No. I'm through with you. You and me. We're quits."

"What?" Leroy said.

Frank pulled at the reins and kept walking. He glanced back once to see Leroy standing where they had last spoke, standing in the road looking at him, wearing the seed salesman's hat.

Frank put the hog in the old hog pen at his place and fed him good. Then he ate and poured out all the liquor he had, and waited until dark. When it came he sat on a large rock out back of the house. The wind carried the urine smell of all those out-the-window pees to his nostrils. He kept his place.

The moon was near full that night and it had risen high above the world and its light was bright and silver. Even the old ugly place looked good under that light.

Frank sat there for a long time, finally dozed. He was awakened by the sound of wood cracking. He snapped his head up and looked out at the hog pen. The mule was there. He was kicking at the slats of the pen, trying to free his friend.

Frank got up and walked out there. The mule saw him, ran back a few paces, stared at him.

"Knew you'd show," Frank said. "Just wanted to see you one more time. Today, buddy, you had wings."

The mule turned its head and snorted.

Frank lifted the gate to the pen and the hog ran out. The hog stopped beside the mule and they both looked at Frank.

"It's all right," Frank said. "I ain't gonna try and stop you."

The mule dipped its nose to the hog's snout and they pressed them together. Frank smiled. The mule and the hog wheeled suddenly, as if by agreed signal, and raced toward the rickety rail fence near the hill.

The mule, with one beautiful leap, jumped the fence, seemed pinned in the air for a long time, held there by the rays of the moon. The way the rays fell, for a strange short instant, it seemed as if he were sprouting gossamer wings.

The hog wiggled under the bottom rail and the two of them ran across the pasture, between the trees and out of sight. Frank didn't have to go look to know that the mule had jumped the other side of the fence as well, that the hog had worked his way under. And that they were gone.

When the sun came up and Frank was sure there was no wind, he put a match to a broom's straw and used it to start the house afire, then the barn and the rotten outbuildings. He kicked the slats on the hog pen until one side of it fell down.

He went out to where Dobbin was tied to a tree, saddled and ready to go. He mounted him and turned his head toward the rail fence and the hill. He looked at it for a long time. He gave a gentle nudge to Dobbin with his heels and started out of there, on down toward the road and town.

THE BIG BLOW

tueSdaY, SePtemBer 4, 1900, 4:00 P.m.

Telegraphed Message from Washington, D.C., Weather Bureau, Central Office, to Issac Cline, Galveston, Texas, Weather Bureau:

Tropical storm disturbance moving northward over Cuba.

6:38 P.m.

On an afternoon hotter than two rats fucking in a wool sock, John McBride, six-foot one-and-a-half inches, 220 pounds, ham-handed, built like a wild boar and of similar disposition, arrived by ferry from mainland Texas to Galveston Island, a six-gun under his coat and a razor in his shoe.

As the ferry docked, McBride set his suitcase down, removed his bowler, took a crisp white handkerchief from inside his coat, wiped the bowler's sweatband with it, used it to mop his forehead, ran it over his thinning black hair, and put the hat back on.

An old Chinese guy in San Francisco told him he was losing his hair because he always wore hats, and McBride decided maybe he was right, but now he wore the hats to hide his baldness. At thirty he felt he was too young to lose his hair. The Chinaman had given him a tonic for his problem at a considerable sum. McBride used it religiously, rubbed it into his scalp. So far, all he could see it had done was shine his bald spot. He ever got back to Frisco, he was gonna look that Chinaman up, maybe knock a few knots on his head.

As McBride picked up his suitcase and stepped off the ferry with the others, he observed the sky. It appeared green as a pool-table cloth. As the sun dipped down to drink from the Gulf, McBride almost expected to see steam rise up from beyond the island. He took in a deep breath of sea air and thought it tasted all right. It made him hungry. That was why he was here. He was hungry. First on the menu was a woman, then a steak, then some rest before the final meal--the thing he had come for. To whip a nigger.

He hired a buggy to take him to a poke house he had been told about by his employers, the fellows who had paid his way from Chicago. According to what they said, there was a redhead there so good and tight she'd make you sing soprano. Way he felt, if she was redheaded, female, and ready, he'd be all right, and to hell with the song. It was on another's tab anyway.

As the coach trotted along, McBride took in Galveston. It was a Southerner's version of New York, with a touch of the tropics. Houses were upraised on stilts--thick support posts actually--against the washing of storm waters, and in the city proper the houses looked to be fresh off Deep South plantations.

City Hall had apparently been designed by an architect with a Moorish background. It was ripe with domes and spirals. The style collided with a magnificent clock housed in the building's highest point, a peaked tower. The clock was like a miniature Big Ben. England meets the Middle East.

Electric streetcars hissed along the streets, and there were a large number of bicycles, carriages, buggies, and pedestrians. McBride even saw one automobile.

The streets themselves were made of buried wooden blocks that McBride identified as ships' ballast. Some of the side streets were made of white shell, and some were hardened sand. He liked what he saw, thought: Maybe, after I do in the nigger, I'll stick around a while. Take in the sun at the beach. Find a way to get my fingers in a little solid graft of some sort.

When McBride finally got to the whorehouse, it was full dark. He gave the black driver a big tip, cocked his bowler, grabbed his suitcase, went through the ornate iron gate, up the steps, and inside to get his tumblers clicked right.

After giving his name to the plump madam, who looked as if she could still grind out a customer or two herself, he was given the royalty treatment. The madam herself took him upstairs, undressed him, bathed him, fondled him a bit.

When he was clean, she dried him off, nestled him in bed, kissed him on the forehead as if he were her little boy, then toddled off. The moment she left, he climbed out of bed, got in front of the mirror on the dresser and combed his hair, trying to push as much as possible over the bald spot. He had just gotten it arranged and gone back to bed when the redhead entered.

She was green-eyed and a little thick-waisted, but not bad to look at. She had fire red hair on her head and a darker fire between her legs, which were white as sheets and smooth as a newborn pig.

He started off by hurting her a little, tweaking her nipples, just to show her who was boss. She pretended to like it. Kind of money his employers were paying, he figured she'd dip a turd in gravel and push it around the floor with her nose and pretend to like it.

McBride roughed her bottom some, then got in the saddle and bucked a few. Later on, when she got a little slow about doing what he wanted, he blacked one of her eyes.

When the representatives of the Galveston Sporting Club showed up, he was lying in bed with the redhead, uncovered, letting a hot wind blow through the open windows and dry his and the redhead's juices.

The madam let the club members in and went away. There were four of them, all dressed in evening wear with top hats in their hands. Two were gray-haired and gray-whiskered. The other two were younger men. One was large, had a face that looked as if it regularly stopped cannonballs. Both eyes were black from a recent encounter. His nose was flat and strayed to the left of his face. He did his breathing through his mouth. He didn't have any top front teeth.

The other young man was slight and a dandy. This, McBride assumed, would be Ronald Beems, the man who had written him on behalf of the Sporting Club.

Everything about Beems annoyed McBride. His suit, unlike the wrinkled and drooping suits of the others, looked fresh-pressed, unresponsive to the afternoon's humidity. He smelled faintly of mothballs and naphtha, and some sort of hair tonic that had ginger as a base. He wore a thin little moustache and the sort of hair McBride wished he had. Black, full, and longish, with muttonchop sideburns. He had perfect features. No fist had ever touched him. He stood stiff, as if he had a hoe handle up his ass.

Beems, like the others, looked at McBride and the redhead with more than a little astonishment. McBride lay with his legs spread and his back propped against a pillow. He looked very big there. His legs and shoulders and arms were thick and twisted with muscle and glazed in sweat. His stomach protruded a bit, but it was hard-looking.

The whore, sweaty, eye blacked, legs spread, breasts slouching from the heat, looked more embarrassed than McBride. She wanted to cover, but she didn't move. Fresh in her memory was that punch to the eye.

"For heaven's sake, man," Beems said. "Cover yourself."

"What the hell you think we've been doin' here?" McBride said. "Playin' checkers?"

"There's no need to be open about it. A man's pleasure is taken in private."

"Certainly you've seen balls before," McBride said, reaching for a cigar that lay on the table next to his revolver and a box of matches. Then he smiled and studied Beems. "Then maybe you ain't . . . And then again, maybe, well, you've seen plenty and close up. You look to me the sort that would rather hear a fat boy fart than a pretty girl sing."

"You disgusting brute," Beems said.

"That's telling me," McBride said. "Now I'm hurt. Cut to the god-damn core." McBride patted the redhead's inner thigh. "You recognize this business, don't you? You don't, I got to tell you about it. We men call it a woman, and that thing between her legs is the ole red snapper."

"We'll not conduct our affairs in this fashion," Beems said.

McBride smiled, took a match from the box, and lit the cigar. He puffed, said, "You dressed-up pieces of dirt brought me all the way down here from Chicago. I didn't ask to come. You offered me a job, and I took it, and I can untake it, it suits me. I got round-trip money from you already. You sent for me, and I came, and you set me up with a paid hair hole, and you're here for a meeting at a whorehouse, and now you're gonna tell me you're too special to look at my balls. Too prudish to look at pussy. Go on out, let me finish what I really want to finish. I'll be out of here come tomorrow, and you can whip your own nigger."

There was a moment of foot shuffling, and one of the elderly men leaned over and whispered to Beems. Beems breathed once, like a fish out of water, said, "Very well. There's not that much needs to be said. We want this nigger whipped, and we want him whipped bad. We understand in your last bout, the man died."

"Yeah," McBride said. "I killed him and dipped my wick in his old lady. Same night."

This was a lie, but McBride liked the sound of it. He liked the way their faces looked when he told it. The woman had actually been the man's half sister, and the man had died three days later from the beating.

"And this was a white man?" Beems said.

"White as snow. Dead as a stone. Talk money."

"We've explained our financial offer."

"Talk it again. I like the sound of money."

"Hundred dollars before you get in the ring with the nigger. Two hundred more if you beat him. A bonus of five hundred if you kill him. This is a short fight. Not forty-five rounds. No prizefighter makes money like that for so little work. Not even John L. Sullivan."

"This must be one hated nigger. Why? He mountin' your dog?"

"That's our business."

"All right. But I'll take half of that money now."

"That wasn't our deal."

"Now it is. And I'll be runnin' me a tab while I'm here, too. Pick it up."

More foot shuffling. Finally, the two elderly men got their heads together, pulled out their wallets. They pooled their money, gave it to Beems. "These gentlemen are our backers," Beems said. "This is Mr.--"

"I don't care who they are," McBride said. "Give me the money."

Beems tossed it on the foot of the bed.

"Pick it up and bring it here," McBride said to Beems.

"I will not."

"Yes, you will, 'cause you want me to beat this nigger. You want me to do it bad. And another reason is this: You don't, I'll get up and whip your dainty little ass all over this room."

Beems shook a little. "But why?"

"Because I can."

Beems, his face red as infection, gathered the bills from the bed, carried them around to McBride. He thrust them at McBride. McBride, fast as a duck on a june bug, grabbed Beems's wrist and pulled him forward, causing him to let go of the money and drop it onto McBride's chest. McBride pulled the cigar from his mouth with his free hand, stuck it against the back of Beems's thumb. Beems let out a squeal, said, "Forrest!"

The big man with no teeth and black eyes started around the bed toward McBride. McBride said, "Step back, Charlie, or you'll have to hire someone to yank this fella out of your ass."

Forrest hesitated, looked as if he might keep coming, then stepped back and hung his head.

McBride pulled Beems's captured hand between his legs and rubbed it over his sweaty balls a few times, then pushed him away. Beems stood with his mouth open, stared at his hand.

"I'm bull of the woods here," McBride said, "and it stays that way from here on out. You treat me with respect. I say, hold my rope while I pee, you hold it. I say, hold my sacks off the sheet while I get a piece, you hold 'em."

Beems said, "You bastard. I could have you killed."

"Then do it. I hate your type. I hate someone I think's your type. I hate someone who likes your type or wants to be your type. I'd kill a dog liked to be with you. I hate all of you expensive bastards with money and no guts. I hate you 'cause you can't whip your own nigger, and I'm glad you can't, 'cause I can. And you'll pay me. So go ahead, send your killers around. See where it gets them. Where it gets you. And I hate your goddamn hair, Beems."

"When this is over," Beems said, "you leave immediately!"

"I will, but not because of you. Because I can't stand you or your little pack of turds."

The big man with missing teeth raised his head, glared at McBride. McBride said, "Nigger whipped your ass, didn't he, Forrest?"

Forrest didn't say anything, but his face said a lot. McBride said, "You can't whip the nigger, so your boss sent for me. I can whip the nigger. So don't think for a moment you can whip me."

"Come on," Beems said. "Let's leave. The man makes me sick."

Beems joined the others, his hand held out to his side. The elderly gentlemen looked as if they had just realized they were lost in the forest. They organized themselves enough to start out the door. Beems followed, turned before exiting, glared at McBride.

McBride said, "Don't wash that hand, Beems. You can say, 'Shake the hand of the man who shook the balls of John McBride.'"

"You go to hell," Beems said.

"Keep me posted," McBride said. Beems left. McBride yelled after him and his crowd, "And gentlemen, enjoyed doing business with you."

9:12 P.m.

Later in the night the redhead displeased him and McBride popped her other eye, stretched her out, lay across her, and slept. While he slept, he dreamed he had a head of hair like Mr. Ronald Beems.

Outside, the wind picked up slightly, blew hot, brine-scented air down Galveston's streets and through the whorehouse window.

9:34 P.m.

Bill Cooper was working outside on the second-floor deck he was building. He had it completed except for a bit of trim work. It had gone dark on him sometime back, and he was trying to finish by lantern light. He was hammering a sidewall board into place when he felt a drop of rain. He stopped hammering and looked up. The night sky had a peculiar appearance, and for a moment it gave him pause. He studied the heavens a moment longer, decided it didn't look all that bad. It was just the starlight that gave it that look. No more drops fell on him.

Bill tossed the hammer on the deck, leaving the nail only partially driven, picked up the lantern, and went inside the house to be with his wife and baby son. He'd had enough for one day.

11:01 P.m.

The waves came in loud against the beach and the air was surprisingly heavy for so late at night. It lay hot and sweaty on "Lil" Arthur John Johnson's bare chest. He breathed in the air and blew it out, pounded the railroad tie with all his might for the hundredth time. His right fist struck it, and the tie moved in the sand. He hooked it with a left, jammed it with a straight right, putting his entire six-foot, two-hundred-pound frame into it. The tie went backwards, came out of the sand, and hit the beach.

Arthur stepped back and held out his broad, black hands and examined them in the moonlight. They were scuffed, but essentially sound. He walked down to the water and squatted and stuck his hands in, let the surf roll over them. The salt didn't even burn. His hands were like leather. He rubbed them together, being sure to coat them completely with seawater. He cupped water in his palms, rubbed it on his face, over his shaved, bullet head.

Along with a number of other pounding exercises, he had been doing this for months, conditioning his hands and face with work and brine. Rumor was, this man he was to fight, this McBride, had fists like razors, fists that cut right through the gloves and tore the flesh.

"Lil" Arthur took another breath, and this one was filled not only with the smell of saltwater and dead fish, but of raw sewage, which was regularly dumped offshore in the Gulf.

He took his shovel and re-dug the hole in the sand and dropped the tie back in, patted it down, went back to work. This time, two socks and it came up. He repeated the washing of his hands and face, then picked up the tie, placed it on a broad shoulder and began to run down the beach. When he had gone a good distance, he switched shoulders and ran back. He didn't even feel winded.

He collected his shovel, and with the tie on one shoulder, started toward his family's shack in the Rats, also known as Nigger Town.

"Lil" Arthur left the tie in front of the shack and put the shovel on the sagging porch. He was about to go inside when he saw a man start across the little excuse of a yard. The man was white. He was wearing dress clothes and a top hat.

When he was near the front porch, he stopped, took off his hat. It was Forrest Thomas, the man "Lil" Arthur had beaten unconscious three weeks back. It had taken only till the middle of the third round.

Even in the cloud-hazy moonlight, "Lil" Arthur could see Forrest looked rough. For a moment, a fleeting moment, he almost felt bad about inflicting so much damage. But then he began to wonder if the man had a gun.

"Arthur," Forrest said. "I come to talk a minute, if'n it's all right."

This was certainly different from the night "Lil" Arthur had climbed into the ring with him. Then, Forrest Thomas had been conceited and full of piss and vinegar and wore the word nigger on his lips as firmly as a mole. He was angry he had been reduced by his employer to fighting a black man. To hear him tell it, he deserved no less than John L. Sullivan, who refused to fight a Negro, considering it a debasement to the heavyweight title.

"Yeah," "Lil" Arthur said. "What you want?"

"I ain't got nothing against you," Forrest said.

"Don't matter you do," "Lil" Arthur said.

"You whupped me fair and square."

"I know, and I can do it again."

"I didn't think so before, but I know you can now."

"That's what you come to say? You got all dressed up, just to come talk to a nigger that whupped you?"

"I come to say more."

"Say it. I'm tired."

"McBride's come in."

"That ain't tellin' me nothin'. I reckoned he'd come in sometime. How'm I gonna fight him, he don't come in?"

"You don't know anything about McBride. Not really. He killed a man in the ring, his last fight in Chicago. That's why Beems brought him in, to kill you. Beems and his bunch want you dead 'cause you whipped a white man. They don't care you whipped me. They care you whipped a white man. Beems figures it's an insult to the white race, a white man being beat by a colored. This McBride, he's got a shot at the Championship of the World. He's that good."

"You tellin' me you concerned for me?"

"I'm tellin' you Beems and the members of the Sportin' Club can't take it. They lost a lot of money on bets, too. They got to set it right, see. I ain't no friend of yours, but I figure I owe you that. I come to warn you this McBride is a killer."

"Lil" Arthur listened to the crickets saw their legs a moment, then said, "If that worried me, this man being a killer, and I didn't fight him, that would look pretty good for your boss, wouldn't it? Beems could say the bad nigger didn't show up. That he was scared of a white man."

"You fight this McBride, there's a good chance he'll kill you or cripple you. Boxing bein' against the law, there won't be nobody there legal to keep check on things. Not really. Audience gonna be there ain't gonna say nothin'. They ain't supposed to be there anyway. You died, got hurt bad, you'd end up out there in the Gulf with a block of granite tied to your dick, and that'd be that."

"Sayin' I should run?"'

"You run, it gives Beems face, and you don't take a beatin', maybe get killed. You figure it."

"You ain't doin' nothin' for me. You're just pimpin' for Beems. You tryin' to beat me with your mouth. Well, I ain't gonna take no beatin'. White. Colored. Striped. It don't matter. McBride gets in the ring, I'll knock him down. You go on back to Beems. Tell him I ain't scared, and I ain't gonna run. And ain't none of this workin'."

Forrest put his hat on. "Have it your way, nigger." He turned and walked away.

"Lil" Arthur started inside the house, but before he could open the door, his father, Henry, came out. He dragged his left leg behind him as he came, leaned on his cane. He wore a ragged undershirt and work pants. He was sweaty. Tired. Gray. Grayer yet in the muted moonlight.

"You ought not talk to a white man that way," Henry said. "Them Ku Kluxers'll come 'round."

"I ain't afraid of no Ku Kluxers."

"Yeah, well I am, and we be seein' what you say when you swingin' from a rope, a peckerwood cuttin' off yo balls. You ain't lived none yet. You ain't nothin' but twenty-two years. Sit down, boy."

"Papa, you ain't me. I ain't got no bad leg. I ain't scared of nobody."

"I ain't always had no bad leg. Sit down."

"Lil" Arthur sat down beside his father. Henry said, "A colored man, he got to play the game, to win the game. You hear me?"

"I ain't seen you winnin' much."

Henry slapped "Lil" Arthur quickly. It was fast, and "Lil" Arthur realized where he had inherited his hand speed. "You shut yo face," Henry said. "Don't talk to your papa like that."

"Lil" Arthur reached up and touched his cheek, not because it hurt, but because he was still a little amazed. Henry said, "For a colored man, winnin' is stayin' alive to live out the time God give you."

"But how you spend what time you got, Papa, that ain't up to God. I'm gonna be the Heavyweight Champion of the World someday. You'll see."

"There ain't never gonna be no colored Champion of the World, 'Lil' Arthur. And there ain't no talkin' to you. You a fool. I'm gonna be cuttin' you down from a tree some morning, yo neck all stretched out. Help me up. I'm goin' to bed."

"Lil" Arthur helped his father up, and the old man, balanced on his cane, dragged himself inside the shack.

A moment later, "Lil" Arthur's mother, Tina, came out. She was a broad-faced woman, short and stocky, nearly twenty years younger than her husband.

"You don't need talk yo papa that way," she said.

"He don't do nothin', and he don't want me to do nothin'," "Lil" Arthur said.

"He know what he been through, Arthur. He born a slave. He made to fight for white mens like he was some kinda fightin' rooster, and he got his leg paralyzed 'cause he had to fight for them Rebels in the war. You think on that. He in one hell of a fix. Him a colored man out there shootin' at Yankees, 'cause if he don't, they gonna shoot him, and them Rebels gonna shoot him he don't fight the Yankees."

"I ain't all that fond of Yankees myself. They ain't likin' niggers any more than anyone else."

"That's true. But, yo papa, he right about one thing. You ain't lived enough to know nothin' about nothin'. You want to be a white man so bad it hurt you. You is African, boy. You is born of slaves come from slaves come from Africa."

"You sayin' what he's sayin'?"

"Naw, I ain't. I'm sayin', you whup this fella, and you whup him good. Remember when them bullies used to chase you home, and I tell you, you come back without fightin', I'm gonna whup you harder than them?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"And you got so you whupped 'em good, just so I wouldn't whup yo ass?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Well, these here white men hire out this man against you, threaten you, they're bullies. You go in there, and you whup this fella, and you use what God give you in them hands, and you make your way. But you remember, you ain't gonna have nothin' easy. Only way a white man gonna get respect for you is you knock him down, you hear? And you can knock him down in that ring better than out here, 'cause then you just a bad nigger they gonna hang. But you don't talk to yo papa that way. He better than most. He got him a steady job, and he hold this family together."

"He's a janitor."

"That's more than you is."

"And you hold this family together."

"It a two-person job, son."

"Yes, ma'am."

"Good night, son."

"Lil" Arthur hugged her, kissed her cheek, and she went inside. He followed, but the smallness of the two-room house, all those bodies on pallets, his parents, three sisters, two brothers, and a brother-in-law, all made him feel crowded. And the pigeons sickened him. Always the pigeons. They had found a hole in the roof, the one that had been covered with tar paper, and now they were roosting inside on the rafters. Tomorrow, half the house would be covered in bird shit. He needed to get up there and put some fresh tar paper on the roof. He kept meaning to. Papa couldn't do it, and he spent his own time training. He had to do more for the family besides bring in a few dollars from fighting.

"Lil" Arthur got the stick they kept by the door for just such an occasion, used it to rout the pigeons by poking at them. In the long run, it wouldn't matter. They would fly as high as the roof, then gradually creep back down to roost. But the explosion of bird wings, their rise to the sky through the hole in the roof, lifted his spirits.

His brother-in-law, Clement, rose up on an elbow from his pallet, and his wife, "Lil" Arthur's sister Lucy, stirred and rolled over, stretched her arm across Clement's chest, but didn't wake up.

"What you doin', Arthur?" Clement whispered. "You don't know a man's got to sleep? I got work to do 'morrow. Ain't all of us sleep all day."

"Sleep then. And stay out of my sister. Lucy don't need no kids now. We got a house full a folks."

"She my wife. We supposed to do that. And multiply."

"Then get your own place and multiply. We packed tight as turds here."

"You crazy, Arthur."

Arthur cocked the pigeon stick. "Lay down and shut up."

Clement lay down, and Arthur put the stick back and gathered up his pallet and went outside. He inspected the pallet for bird shit, found none, stretched out on the porch, and tried to sleep. He thought about getting his guitar, going back to the beach to strum it, but he was too tired for that. Too tired to do anything, too awake to sleep.

His mother had told him time and again that when he was a baby, an old Negro lady with the second sight had picked up his little hand and said, "This child gonna eat his bread in many countries."

It was something that had always sustained him. But now, he began to wonder. Except for trying to leave Galveston by train once, falling asleep in the boxcar, only to discover it had been making circles in the train yard all night as supplies were unloaded, he'd had no adventures, and was still eating his bread in Galveston.

All night he fought mosquitoes, the heat, and his own ambition. By morning he was exhausted.

WedneSdaY, SePtemBer 5, 10:20 a.m.

Telegraphed Message from Washington, D.C., Weather Bureau, Central Office, to Issac Cline, Galveston, Texas, Weather Bureau:

Disturbance center near Key West moving northwest. Vessels bound for Florida and Cuban ports should exercise caution. Storm likely to become dangerous.

10:23 a.m.

McBride awoke, flicked the redhead, sat up in bed, and cracked his knuckles, said, "I'm going to eat and train, Red. You have your ass here when I get back, and put it on the Sportin' Club's bill. And wash yourself, for heaven's sake."

"Yes, sir, Mr. McBride," she said.

McBride got up, poured water into a washbasin, washed his dick, under his arms, splashed water on his face. Then he sat at the dresser in front of the mirror and spent twenty minutes putting on the Chinaman's remedy and combing his hair. As soon as he had it just right, he put on a cap.

He got dressed in loose pants, a short-sleeved shirt, soft shoes, wrapped his knuckles with gauze, put a little notebook and pencil in his back pocket, then pulled on soft leather gloves. When the redhead wasn't looking, he wrapped his revolver and razor in a washrag, stuffed them between his shirt and his stomach.

Downstairs, making sure no one was about, he removed the rag containing his revolver and razor, stuck them into the drooping greenness of a potted plant, then went away.

He strolled down the street to a cafe and ordered steak and eggs and lots of coffee. He ate with his gloves and hat on. He paid for the meal, but got a receipt.

Comfortably full, he went out to train.

He began at the docks. There were a number of men hard at work. They were loading bags of cottonseed onto a ship. He stood with his hands behind his back and watched. The scent of the sea was strong. The water lapped at the pilings enthusiastically, and the air was as heavy as a cotton sack.

After a while, he strolled over to a large bald man with arms and legs like plantation columns. The man wore faded overalls without a shirt, and his chest was as hairy as a bear's ass. He had on heavy work boots with the sides burst out. McBride could see his bare feet through the openings. McBride hated a man that didn't keep up his appearance, even when he was working. Pride was like a dog. You didn't feed it regularly, it died.

McBride said, "What's your name?"

The man, a bag of cottonseed under each arm, stopped and looked at him, taken aback. "Ketchum," he said. "Warner Ketchum."

"Yeah," McBride said. "Thought so. So, you're the one."

The man glared at him. "One what?"

The other men stopped working, turned to look.

"I just wanted to see you," McBride said. "Yeah, you fit the description. I just never thought there was a white man would stoop to such a thing. Fact is, hard to imagine any man stooping to such a thing."

"What are you talkin' about, fella?"

"Well, word is, Warner Ketchum that works at the dock has been known to suck a little nigger dick in his time."

Ketchum dropped the cottonseed bags. "Who the hell are you? Where you hear that?"

McBride put his gloved hands behind his back and held them. "They say, on a good night, you can do more with a nigger's dick than a cat can with a ball of twine."

The man was fuming. "You got me mixed up with somebody else, you Yankee-talkin' sonofabitch."

"Naw, I ain't got you mixed up. Your name's Warner Ketchum. You look how you was described to me by the nigger whose stick you slicked."

Warner stepped forward with his right foot and swung a right punch so looped it looked like a sickle blade. McBride ducked it without removing his hands from behind his back, slipped inside and twisted his hips as he brought a right uppercut into Warner's midsection.

Warner's air exploded and he wobbled back and McBride was in again, a left hook to the ribs, a straight right to the solar plexus. Warner doubled and went to his knees.

McBride leaned over and kissed him on the ear, said, "Tell me. Them nigger dicks taste like licorice?"

Warner came up then, and he was wild. He threw a right, then a left.

McBride bobbed beneath them. Warner kicked at him. McBride turned sideways, let the kick go by, unloaded a left hand that caught Warner on the jaw, followed it with a right that struck with a sound like the impact of an artillery shell.

Warner dropped to one knee. McBride grabbed him by the head and swung his knee into Warner's face, busting his nose all over the dock. Warner fell face forward, caught himself on his hands, almost got up. Then, very slowly, he collapsed, lay down, and didn't move.

McBride looked at the men who were watching him. He said, "He didn't suck no nigger dicks. I made that up." He got out his paper pad and pencil and wrote: Owed me. Price of one sparring partner, FIVE DOLLARS.

He put the pad and pencil away. Got five dollars out of his wallet, folded it, put it in the man's back pocket. He turned to the other men who stood staring at him as if he were one of Jesus' miracles.

"Frankly, I think you're all a bunch of sorry assholes, and I think, one at a time, I can lick every goddamn one of you Southern white trash pieces of shit. Any takers?"

"Not likely," said a stocky man at the front of the crowd. "You're a ringer." He picked up a sack of cottonseed he had put down, started toward the ship. The other men did the same.

McBride said, "Okay," and walked away.

He thought, maybe, on down the docks he might find another sparring partner.

5:23 P.m.

By the end of the day, near dark, McBride checked his notepad for expenses, saw the Sporting Club owed him forty-five dollars in sparring partners, and a new pair of gloves, as well as breakfast and dinner to come. He added money for a shoeshine. A clumsy sonofabitch had scuffed one of his shoes.

He got the shoeshine and ate a steak, flexed his muscles as he arrived at the whorehouse. He felt loose still, like he could take on another two or three yokels.

He went inside, got his goods out of the potted plant, and climbed the stairs.

thurSdaY, SePtemBer 6, 6:00 P.m.

Telegraphed Message from Washington, D.C., Weather Bureau, Central Office, to Issac Cline, Galveston, Texas, Weather Bureau:

Storm center just northwest of Key West.

7:30 P.m.

"Lil" Arthur ran down to the Sporting Club that night and stood in front of it, his hands in his pants pockets. The wind was brisk, and the air was just plain sour.

Saturday, he was going to fight a heavyweight crown contender, and though it would not be listed as an official bout, and McBride was just in it to pick up some money, "Lil" Arthur was glad to have the chance to fight a man who might fight for the championship someday. And if he could beat him, even if it didn't affect McBride's record, "Lil" Arthur knew he'd have that, he would have beaten a contender for the Heavyweight Championship of the World.

It was a far cry from the Battle Royales he had first participated in. There was a time when he looked upon those degrading events with favor.

He remembered his first Battle Royale. His friend Ernest had talked him into it. Once a month, sometimes more often, white "sporting men" liked to get a bunch of colored boys and men to come down to the club for a free-for-all. They'd put nine or ten of them in a ring, sometimes make them strip naked and wear Sambo masks. He'd done that once himself.

While the coloreds fought, the whites would toss money and yell for them to kill one another. Sometimes they'd tie two coloreds together by the ankles, let them go at it. Blood flowed thick as molasses on flapjacks. Bones were broken. Muscles torn. For the whites, it was great fun, watching a couple of coons knock each other about.

"Lil" Arthur found he was good at all that fighting, and even knocked Ernest out, effectively ending their friendship. He couldn't help himself. He got in there, got the battling blood up, he would hit whoever came near him.

He started boxing regularly, gained some skill. No more Battle Roy-ales. He got a reputation with the colored boxers, and in time that spread to the whites.

The Sporting Club, plumb out of new white contenders for their champion, Forrest Thomas, gave "Lil" Arthur twenty-five dollars to mix it up with their man, thinking a colored and a white would be a novelty, and the superiority of the white race would be proved in a match of skill and timing.

Right before the fight, "Lil" Arthur said his prayers, and then, considering he was going to be fighting in front of a bunch of angry, mean-spirited whites, and for the first time, white women--sporting women, but women--who wanted to see a black man knocked to jelly, he took gauze and wrapped his dick. He wrapped it so that it was as thick as a blackjack. He figured he'd give them white folks something to look at. The thing they feared the most. A black-as-coal stud nigger.

He whipped Forrest Thomas like he was a redheaded stepchild; whipped him so badly, they stopped the fight so no one would see a colored man knock a white man out.

Against their wishes, the Sporting Club was forced to hand the championship over to "Lil" Arthur John Johnson, and the fact that a colored now held the club's precious boxing crown was like a chicken bone in the club's throat. Primarily Beems's throat. As the current president of the Sporting Club, the match had been Beems's idea, and Forrest Thomas had been Beems's man.

Enter McBride. Beems, on the side, talked a couple of the Sporting Club's more wealthy members into financing a fight. One where a true contender to the heavyweight crown would whip "Lil" Arthur and return the local championship to a white man, even if that white man relinquished the crown when he returned to Chicago, leaving it vacant. In that case, "Lil" Arthur was certain he'd never get another shot at the Sporting Club championship. They wanted him out, by hook or crook.

"Lil" Arthur had never seen McBride. Didn't know how he fought. He'd just heard he was as tough as stone and had balls like a brass monkey. He liked to think he was the same way. He didn't intend to give the championship up. Saturday, he'd find out if he had to.

9:00 P.m.

The redhead, nursing a fat lip, two black eyes, and a bruise on her belly, rolled over gingerly and put her arm across McBride's hairy chest. "You had enough?"

"I'll say when I've had enough."

"I was just thinking, I might go downstairs and get something to eat. Come back in a few minutes."

"You had time to eat before I got back. You didn't eat, you just messed up. I'm paying for this. Or rather the Sportin' Club is."

"An engine's got to have coal, if you want that engine to go."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." The redhead reached up and ran her fingers through McBride's hair.

McBride reached across his chest and slapped the redhead.

"Don't touch my hair. Stay out of my hair. And shut up. I don't care you want to fuck or not. I want to fuck, we fuck. Got it?"

"Yes, sir."

"Listen here, I'm gonna take a shit. I get back, I want you to wash that goddamn nasty hole of yours. You think I like stickin' my wick in that, it not being clean? You got to get clean."

"It's so hot. I sweat. And you're just gonna mess me up again."

"I don't care. You wash that thing. I went around with my johnson like that, it'd fall off. I get a disease, girl, I'll come back here, kick your ass so hard your butthole will swap places with your cunt."

"I ain't got no disease, Mr. McBride."

"Good."

"Why you got to be so mean?" the redhead asked suddenly, then couldn't believe it had come out of her mouth. She realized, not only would a remark like that anger McBride, but the question was stupid. It was like asking a chicken why it pecked shit. It just did. McBride was mean because he was, and that was that.

But even as the redhead flinched, McBride turned philosophical. "It isn't a matter of mean. It's because I can do what I want, and others can't. You got that, sister?"

"Sure. I didn't mean nothing by it."

"Someone can do to me what I do to them, then all right, that's how it is. Isn't a man, woman, or animal on earth that's worth a damn. You know that?"

"Sure. You're right."

"You bet I am. Only thing pure in this world is a baby. Human or animal, a baby is born hungry and innocent. It can't do a thing for itself. Then it grows up and gets just like everyone else. A baby is all right until it's about two. Then, it ought to just be smothered and save the world the room. My sister, she was all right till she was about two, then it wasn't nothing but her wanting stuff and my mother giving it to her. Later on, Mama didn't have nothing to do with her either, same as me. She got over two years old, she was just trouble. Like I was. Like everybody else is."

"Sure," the redhead said.

"Oh, shut up, you don't know your ass from a pig track."

McBride got up and went to the john. He took his revolver and his wallet and his razor with him. He didn't trust a whore--any woman for that matter--far as he could hurl one.

While he was in the can trying out the new flush toilet, the redhead eased out of bed wearing only a sheet. She slipped out the door, went downstairs and outside, into the streets. She flagged down a man in a buggy, talked him into a ride, for a ride, then she was out of there, destination unimportant.

9:49 P.m.

Later, pissed at the redhead, McBride used the madam herself, blacked both her eyes when she suggested that a lot of sex before a fight might not be a good idea for an athlete.

The madam, lying in bed with McBride's muscular arm across her ample breasts, sighed and watched the glow of the gas streetlights play on the ceiling.

Well, she thought, it's a living.

FrIdaY, SePtemBer 7, 10:35 a.m.

Telegraphed Message from Washington, D.C., Weather Bureau, Central Office, to Issac Cline, Galveston, Texas, Weather Bureau:

Storm warning. Galveston, Texas. Take precautions.

Issac Cline, head of the Galveston Weather Bureau, sat at his desk on the third floor of the Levy Building and read the telegram. He went downstairs and outside for a look-see.

The weather was certainly in a stormy mood, but it didn't look like serious hurricane weather. He had been with the Weather Bureau for eight years, and he thought he ought to know a hurricane by now, and this wasn't it. The sky wasn't the right color.

He walked until he got to the beach. By then the wind was picking up, and the sea was swelling. The clouds were like wads of duck down ripped from a pillow: He walked a little farther down the beach, found a turtle wrapped in seaweed, poked it with a stick. It was dead as a stone.

Issac returned to the Levy Building, and by the time he made his way back, the wind had picked up considerably. He climbed the stairs to the roof. The roof barometer was dropping quickly, and the wind was serious. He revised his opinion on how much he knew about storms. He estimated the wind to be blowing at twenty miles an hour, and growing. He pushed against it, made his way to the weather pole, hoisted two flags. The top flag was actually a white pennant. It whipped in the wind like a gossip's tongue. Anyone who saw it knew it meant the wind was coming from the northwest. Beneath it was a red flag with a black center; this flag meant the wind was coming ass over teakettle, and that a seriously violent storm was expected within hours.

The air smelled dank and fishy. For a moment, Cline thought perhaps he had actually touched the dead turtle and brought its stink back with him. But no, it was the wind.

At about this same time, the steamship Pensacola, commanded by Captain James Slater, left the port of Galveston from Pier 34, destination Pensacola, Florida.

Slater had read the hurricane reports of the day before, and though the wind was picking up and was oddly steamy, the sky failed to show what he was watching for: A dusty, brick red color, a sure sign of a hurricane. He felt the whole Weather Bureau business was about as much guess and luck as it was anything else. He figured he could do that and be as accurate.

He gave orders to ease the Pensacola into the Gulf.

1:06 P.m.

The pigeons fluttered through the opening in the Johnsons' roof. Tar paper lifted, tore, blew away, tumbled through the sky as if they were little black pieces of the structure's soul.

"It's them birds again," his mother said.

"Lil" Arthur stopped doing push-ups, looked to the ceiling. Pigeons were thick on the rafters. So was pigeon shit. The sky was very visible through the roof. And very black. It looked venomous.

"Shit," "Lil" Arthur said.

"It's okay," she said. "Leave 'em be. They scared. So am I."

"Lil" Arthur stood up, said, "Ain't nothin' be scared of. We been through all kinda storms. We're on a rise here. Water don't never get this high."

"I ain't never liked no storm. I be glad when yo daddy and the young'uns gets home."

"Papa's got an old tarp I might can put over that hole. Keep out the rain."

"You think you can, go on."

"I already should'a," "Lil" Arthur said.

"Lil" Arthur went outside, crawled under the upraised porch, and got hold of the old tarp. It was pretty rotten, but it might serve his purpose, at least temporarily. He dragged it into the yard, crawled back under, tugged out the creaking ladder and a rusty hammer. He was about to go inside and get the nails when he heard a kind of odd roaring. He stopped, listened, recognized it.

It was the surf. He had certainly heard it before, but not this loud and this far from the beach. He got the nails and put the ladder against the side of the house and carried the tarp onto the roof. The tarp nearly took to the air when he spread it, almost carried him with it. With considerable effort he got it nailed over the hole, trapping what pigeons didn't flee inside the house.

2:30 P.m.

Inside the whorehouse, the madam, a fat lip added to her black eyes, watched from the bed as McBride, naked, seated in a chair before the dresser mirror, carefully oiled and combed his hair over his bald spot. The windows were closed, and the wind rattled them like dice in a gambler's fist. The air inside the whorehouse was as stuffy as a minister's wife.

"What's that smell?" she asked.

It was the tonic the Chinaman had given him. He said, "You don't want your tits pinched, shut the fuck up."

"All right," she said.

The windows rattled again. Pops of rain flecked the glass.

McBride went to the window, his limp dick resting on the windowsill, almost touching the glass, like a large, wrinkled grub looking for a way out.

"Storm coming," he said.

The madam thought: No shit.

McBride opened the window. The wind blew a comb and hairbrush off the dresser. A man, walking along the sandy street, one hand on his hat to save it from the wind, glanced up at McBride. McBride took hold of his dick and wagged it at him. The man turned his head and picked up his pace.

McBride said, "Spread those fat legs, honey-ass, 'cause I'm sailing into port, and I'm ready to drop anchor."

Sighing, the madam rolled onto her back, and McBride mounted her. "Don't mess up my hair this time," he said.

4:30 P.m.

The study smelled of stale cigar smoke and sweat, and faintly of baby oil. The grandfather clock chimed four-thirty. The air was humid and sticky as it shoved through the open windows and fluttered the dark curtains. The sunlight, which was tinted with a green cloud haze, flashed in and out, giving brightness to the false eyes and the yellowed teeth of a dozen mounted animal heads on the walls. Bears. Boar. Deer. Even a wolf.

Beems, the source of much of the sweat smell, thought: It's at least another hour before my wife gets home. Good.

Forrest drove him so hard Beems's forehead slammed into the wall, rocking the head of the wild boar that was mounted there, causing the boar to look as if it had turned its head in response to a distant sound, a peculiar sight.

"It's not because I'm one of them kind I do this," Beems said. "It's just, oh yeah, honey . . . The wife, you know, she don't do nothing for me. I mean, you got to get a little pleasure where you can. A man's got to get his pleasure, don't you think . . . Oh, yes. That's it . . . A man, he's got to get his pleasure, right? Even if there's nothing funny about him?"

Forrest rested his hands on Beems's naked shoulders, pushing him down until his head rested on top of the couch cushion. Forrest cocked his hips, drove forward with teeth clenched, penetrating deep into Beems's ass. He said, "Yeah. Sure."

"You mean that? This don't make me queer?"

"No," Forrest panted. "Never has. Never will. Don't mean nothin'. Not a damn thing. It's all right. You're a man's man. Let me concentrate."

Forrest had to concentrate. He hated this business, but it was part of the job. And, of course, unknown to Beems, he was putting the meat to Beems's wife. So, if he wanted to keep doing that, he had to stay in with the boss. And Mrs. Beems, of course, had no idea he was reaming her husband's dirty ditch, or that her husband had about as much interest in women as a pig does a silver tea service.

What a joke. He was fucking Beems's old lady, doing the dog work for Beems, for a good price, and was reaming Beems's asshole and assuring Beems he wasn't what he was, a fairy. And as an added benefit, he didn't have to fight the nigger tomorrow night. That was a big plus. That sonofabitch hit like a mule kicked. He hoped this McBride would tap him good. The nigger died, he'd make a point of shitting on his grave. Right at the head of it.

Well, maybe, Forrest decided, as he drove his hips forward hard enough to make Beems scream a little, he didn't hate this business after all. Not completely. He took so much crap from Beems, this was kinda nice, having the bastard bent over a couch, dicking him so hard his head slammed the wall. Goddamn, nutless queer, insulting him in public, trying to act tough.

Forrest took the bottle of baby oil off the end table and poured it onto Beems's ass. He put the bottle back and realized he was going soft. He tried to imagine he was plunging into Mrs. Beems, who had the smoothest ass and the brightest blond pubic hair he had ever seen. "I'm almost there," Forrest said.

"Stroke, Forrest! Stroke, man. Stroke!"

In the moment of orgasm, Beems imagined that the dick plunging into his hairy ass belonged to the big nigger, "Lil" Arthur. He thought about "Lil" Arthur all the time. Ever since he had seen him fight naked in a Battle Royale while wearing a Sambo mask for the enjoyment of the crowd.

And the way "Lil" Arthur had whipped Forrest. Oh, God. So thoroughly. So expertly. Forrest had been the man until then, and that made him want Forrest, but now, he wanted the nigger.

Oh God, Beems thought, to have him in me, wearing that mask, that would do it for all time. Just once. Or twice. Jesus, I want it so bad I got to be sure the nigger gets killed. I got to be sure I don't try to pay the nigger money to do this, because he lives after the fight with McBride, I know I'll break down and try. And I break down and he doesn't do it, and word gets around, or he does it, and word gets around, or I get caught . . . I couldn't bear that. This is bad enough. But a nigger . . . ?

Then there was McBride. He thought about him. He had touched McBride's balls and feigned disgust, but he hadn't washed that hand yet, just as McBride suggested.

McBride won the fight with the nigger, better yet, killed him, maybe McBride would do it with him. McBride was a gent that liked money, and he liked to hurt whoever he was fucking. Beems could tell that from the way the redhead was battered. That would be good. That would be all right. McBride was the type who'd fuck anyone or anything, Beems could tell.

He imagined it was McBride at work instead of Forrest. McBride, naked, except for the bowler.

Forrest, in his moment of orgasm, grunted, said, "Oh yeah," and almost called Mrs. Beems's name. He lifted his head as he finished, saw the hard glass eyes of the stuffed wild boar. The eyes were full of sunlight. Then the curtains fluttered and the eyes were full of darkness.

4:45 P.m.

The steamship Pensacola, outbound from Galveston, reached the Gulf, and a wind reached the Pensacola. Captain Slater felt his heart clench. The sea came high and savage from the east, and the ship rose up and dived back down, and the waves, dark green and shadowed by the thick clouds overhead, reared up on either side of the steamship, hissed, plunged back down, and the Pensacola rode up.

Jake Bernard, the pilot commissioner, came onto the bridge looking green as the waves. He was Slater's guest on this voyage, and now he wished he were back home. He couldn't believe how ill he felt. Never, in all his years, had he encountered seas like this, and he had thought himself immune to seasickness.

"I don't know about you, Slater," Bernard said, "but I ain't had this much fun since a bulldog gutted my daddy."

Slater tried to smile, but couldn't make it. He saw that Bernard, in spite of his joshing, didn't look particularly jovial. Slater said, "Look at the glass."

Bernard checked the barometer. It was falling fast.

"Never seen it that low," Bernard said.

"Me either," Slater said. He ordered his crew then. Told them to take in the awning, to batten the hatches, and to prepare for water.

Bernard, who had not left the barometer, said, "God. Look at this, man!"

Slater looked. The barometer read 28.55.

Bernard said, "Way I heard it, ever gets that low, you're supposed to bend forward, kiss your root, and tell it good-bye."

6:30 P.m.

The Coopers, Bill and Angelique and their eighteen-month-old baby, Teddy, were on their way to dinner at a restaurant by buggy, when their horse, Bess, a beautiful chocolate-colored mare, made a run at the crashing sea.

It was the sea that frightened the horse, but in its moment of fear, it had tried to plunge headlong toward the source of its fright, assuring Bill that horses were, in fact, the most stupid animals in God's creation.

Bill jerked the reins and cussed the horse. Bess wheeled, lurched the buggy so hard Bill thought they might tip, but the buggy bounced on line, and he maneuvered Bess back on track.

Angelique, dark-haired and pretty, said, "I think I soiled my bloomers . . . I smell it . . . No, that's Teddy. Thank goodness."

Bill stopped the buggy outside the restaurant, which was situated on high posts near the beach, and Angelique changed the baby's diaper, put the soiled cloth in the back of the buggy.

When she was finished, they tied up the reins and went in for a steak dinner. They sat by a window where they could see the buggy. The horse bucked and reared and tugged so much, Bill feared she might break the reins and bolt. Above them, they could hear the rocks that covered the flat roof rolling and tumbling about like mice battling over morsels. Teddy sat in a high chair provided by the restaurant, whammed a spoon in a plate of applesauce.

"Had I known the weather was this bad," Angelique said, "we'd have stayed home. I'm sorry, Bill."

"We stay home too much," Bill said, realizing the crash of the surf was causing him to raise his voice. "Building that upper deck on the house isn't doing much for my nerves either. I'm beginning to realize I'm not much of a carpenter."

Angelique widened her dark brown eyes. "No? You, not a carpenter?"

Bill smiled at her.

"I could have told you that, just by listening to all the cussing you were doing. How many times did you hit your thumb, dear?"

"Too many to count."

Angelique grew serious. "Bill. Look."

Many of the restaurant's patrons had abandoned their meals and were standing at the large windows, watching the sea. The tide was high and it was washing up to the restaurant's pilings, splashing against them hard, throwing spray against the glass.

"Goodness," Bill said. "It wasn't this bad just minutes ago."

"Hurricane?" Angelique asked.

"Yeah. It's a hurricane all right. The flags are up. I saw them."

"Why so nervous? We've had hurricanes before."

"I don't know. This feels different, I guess . . . It's all right. I'm just jittery is all."

They ate quickly and drove the buggy home, Bess pulling briskly all the way. The sea crashed behind them and the clouds raced above them like apparitions.

8:00 P.m.

Captain Slater figured the wind was easily eighty knots. A hurricane. The Pensacola was jumping like a frog. Crockery was crashing below. A medicine chest so heavy two men couldn't move it leaped up and struck the window of the bridge, went through onto the deck, slid across it, hit the railing, bounced high, and dropped into the boiling sea.

Slater and Bernard bumped heads so hard they nearly knocked each other out. When Slater got off the floor, he got a thick rope out from under a shelf and tossed it around a support post, made a couple of wraps, then used the loose ends to tie bowlines around his and Bernard's waists. That way, he and Bernard could move about the bridge if they had to, but they wouldn't end up following the path of the medicine chest.

Slater tried to think of something to do, but all he knew to do he had done. He'd had the crew drop anchor in the open Gulf, down to a hundred fathoms, and he'd instructed them to find the best shelter possible close to their posts, and to pray.

The Pensacola swung to the anchor, struggled like a bull on a leash. Slater could hear the bolts and plates that held the ship together screaming in agony. Those bolts broke, the plates cracked, he didn't need Captain Ahab to tell him they'd go down to Davy Jones's locker so fast they wouldn't have time to take in a lungful of air.

Using the wall for support, Slater edged along to where the bridge glass had been broken by the flying chest. Sea spray slammed against him like needles shot from a cannon. He was concentrating on the foredeck, watching it dip, when he heard Bernard make a noise that was not quite a word, yet more expressive than a grunt.

Slater turned, saw Bernard clutching the latch on one of the bridge windows so tightly he thought he would surely twist it off. Then he saw what Bernard saw.

The sea had turned black as a Dutch oven, the sky the color of gangrene, and between sea and sky there appeared to be something rising out of the water, something huge and oddly shaped, and then Slater realized what it was. It was a great wall of water, many times taller than the ship, and it was moving directly toward and over them.

SaturdaY, SePtemBer 8, 3:30 a.m.

Bill Cooper opened his eyes. He had been overwhelmed by a feeling of dread. He rose carefully, so as not to wake Angelique, went into the bedroom across the hall and checked on Teddy. The boy slept soundly, his thumb in his mouth.

Bill smiled at the child, reached down, and gently touched him. The boy was sweaty, and Bill noted that the air in the room smelled foul. He opened a window, stuck his head out, and looked up. The sky had cleared and the moon was bright. Suddenly, he felt silly. Perhaps this storm business, the deck he was building on the upper floor of the house, had made him restless and worried. Certainly, it looked as if the storm had passed them by.

Then his feeling of satisfaction passed. For when he examined the yard, he saw it had turned to molten silver. And then he realized it was moonlight on water. The Gulf had crept all the way up to the house. A small rowboat, loose from its moorings, floated by.

8:06 a.m.

Issac Cline had driven his buggy down the beach, warning residents near the water to evacuate. Some had. Some had not. Most had weathered many storms and felt they could weather another.

Still, many residents and tourists made for the long wooden trestle bridge to mainland Texas. Already, the water was leaping to the bottom of the bridge, slapping at it, testing its strength.

Wagons, buggies, horses, pedestrians were as thick on the bridge as ants on gingerbread. The sky, which had been oddly clear and bright and full of moon early that morning, had now grown gray and it was raining. Of the three railway bridges that led to the mainland, one was already underwater.

3:45 P.m.

Henry Johnson, aided by "Lil" Arthur, climbed up on the wagon beside his wife. Tina held an umbrella over their heads. In the back of the wagon was the rest of the family, protected by upright posts planted in the corners, covered with the tarp that had formerly been on the roof of the house.

All day Henry had debated whether they should leave. But by 2:00, he realized this wasn't going to be just another storm. This was going to be a goddamn, wetassed humdinger. He had organized his family, and now, by hook or crook, he was leaving. He glanced at his shack, the water pouring through the roof like the falls of Niagara. It wasn't much, but it was all he had. He doubted it could stand much of this storm, but he tried not to think about that. He had greater concerns. He said to "Lil" Arthur, "You come on with us."

"I got to fight," "Lil" Arthur said.

"You got to do nothin'. This storm'll wash your ass to sea."

"I got to, Papa." Tina said, "Maybe yo papa's right, baby. You ought to come."

"You know I can't. Soon as the fight's over, I'll head on out. I promise. In fact, weather's so bad,

I'll knock this McBride out early."

"You do that," Tina said.

"Lil" Arthur climbed on the wagon and hugged his mama and shook his father's hand. Henry spoke quickly without looking at "Lil" Arthur, said, "Good luck, son. Knock him out."

"Lil" Arthur nodded. "Thanks, Papa." He climbed down and went around to the back of the wagon and threw up the tarp and hugged his sisters one at a time and shook hands with his brother-in-law, Clement. He pulled Clement close to him, said, "You stay out of my sister, hear?"

"Yeah, Arthur. Sure. But I think maybe we done got a problem. She's already swole up."

"Ah, shit," "Lil" Arthur said.

4:03 P.m.

As Henry Johnson drove the horses onto the wooden bridge that connected Galveston to the mainland, he felt ill. The water was washing over the sides, against the wagon wheels. The horses were nervous, and the line of would-be escapees on the bridge was tremendous. It would take them a long time to cross, maybe hours, and from the look of things, the way the water was rising, wouldn't be long before the bridge was underwater.

He said a private prayer: "Lord, take care of my family. And especially that fool son of mine, 'Lil' Arthur."

It didn't occur to him to include himself in the prayer.

4:37 P.m.

Bill and Angelique Cooper moved everything of value they could carry to the second floor of the house. Already the water was sloshing in the doorway. Rain splattered against the windows violently enough to shake them, and shingles flapped boisterously on the roof.

Bill paused in his work and shuffled through ankle-deep water to a window and looked out. He said, "Angelique, I think we can stop carrying."

"But I haven't carried up the--"

"We're leaving."

"Leaving? It's that bad?"

"Not yet."

Bess was difficult to hook to the buggy. She was wild-eyed and skittish. The barn was leaking badly. Angelique held an umbrella over her head, waiting for the buggy to be fastened. She could feel water rising above her high-button shoes.

Bill paused for a moment to calm the horse, glanced at Angelique, thought she looked oddly beautiful, the water running off the umbrella in streams. She held Teddy close to her. Teddy was asleep, totally unaware of what was going on around him. Any other time, the baby would be squalling, annoyed. The rain and the wind were actually helping him to sleep. At least, thought Bill, I am grateful for that.

By the time the buggy was hooked, they were standing in calf-deep water. Bill opened the barn door with great difficulty, saw that the yard was gone, and so was the street. He would have to guess at directions. Worse yet, it wasn't rainwater running through the street. It was definitely seawater; the water of the Gulf had risen up as if to swallow Galveston the way the ocean was said to have swallowed Atlantis.

Bill helped Angelique and Teddy into the buggy, took hold of the reins, clucked to Bess. Bess jerked and reared, and finally, by reins and voice, Bill calmed her. She began to plod forward through the dark, powerful water.

5:00 P.m.

McBride awoke. The wind was howling. The window glass was rattling violently, even though the windows were raised. The air was cool for a change, but damp. It was dark in the room.

The madam, wrapped in a blanket, sat in a chair pulled up against the far wall. She turned and looked at McBride. She said, "All hell's broken loose."

"Say it has?" McBride got up, walked naked to the windows. The wind was so furious it pushed him. "Damn," he said. "It's dark as midnight. This looks bad."

"Bad?" The madam laughed. "Worst hurricane I've ever seen, and I don't even think it's cranked up good yet."

"You don't think they'll call off the fight, do you?"

"Can you fight in a boat?"

"Hell, honey, I can fight and fuck at the same time on a boat. Come to think of it, I can fight and fuck on a rolling log, I have to. I used to be a lumberjack up north."

"I was you, I'd find a log, and get to crackin'."

A bolt of lightning, white as eternity, split the sky, and when it did, the darkness outside subsided, and in that instant, McBride saw the street was covered in waist-deep water.

"Reckon I better start on over there," he said. "It may take me a while."

The madam thought: Well, honey, go right ahead, and I hope you drown.

5:20 P.m.

"Lil" Arthur was standing on the porch, trying to decide if he should brave the water, which was now up to the lip of the porch, when he saw a loose rowboat drift by.

Suddenly he was in the water, swimming, and the force of the water carried him after the boat, and soon he had hold of it. When he climbed inside, he found the boat was a third filled with water. He found a paddle and a pail half-filled with dirt. The dirt had turned to mud and was beginning to flow over the top of the bucket. A few dead worms swirled in the mess. The world was atumble with wind, water, and darkness.

"Lil" Arthur took the bucket and poured out the mud and the worms and started to bail. Now and then he put the bucket aside and used the boat paddle. Not that he needed it much. The water was carrying him where he wanted to go.

Uptown.

5:46 P.m.

Uptown the water was not so deep but it took McBride almost an hour to get to the Sporting Club. He waded through waist-deep water for a block, then knee-deep, and finally ankle-deep. His bowler hat had lost all its shape when he arrived, and his clothes were ruined. The water hadn't done his revolver or his razor any good either.

When he arrived at the building, he was surprised to find a crowd of men had gathered on the steps. Most stood under umbrellas, but many were bareheaded. There were a few women among them. Whores mostly. Decent women didn't go to prizefights.

McBride went up the steps, and the crowd blocked him. He said, "Look here. I'm McBride. I'm to fight the nigger."

The crowd parted, and McBride, with words of encouragement and pats on the back, was allowed indoors. Inside, the wind could still be heard, but it sounded distant. The rain was just a hum.

Beems, Forrest, and the two oldsters were standing in the foyer, looking tense as fat hens at noontime. As soon as they saw McBride, their faces relaxed, and the elderly gentlemen went away. Beems said, "We were afraid you wouldn't make it."

"Worried about your investment?"

"I suppose."

"I'd have come if I had to swim."

"The nigger doesn't show, the title and the money's yours."

"I don't want it like that," McBride said. "I want to hit him. Course, he don't show, I'll take the money. You seen it this bad before?"

"No," Beems said.

"I didn't expect nobody to be here."

"Gamblers always show," Forrest said. "They gamble their money, they gamble their lives."

"Go find something to do, Forrest," Beems said. "I'll show Mr. McBride the dressing room."

Forrest looked at Beems, grinned a little, showed Beems he knew what he had in mind. Beems fumed. Forrest went away. Beems took hold of McBride's elbow and began to guide him.

"I ain't no dog got to be led," McBride said.

"Very well," Beems said, and McBride followed him through a side door and down into a locker room. The room had two inches of water in it.

"My God," Beems said. "We've sprung a leak somewhere."

"Water like this," McBride said. "The force . . . it's washing out the mortar in the bricks, seeping through the chinks in the wall . . . Hell, it's all right for what I got to do."

"There's shorts and boots in the locker there," Beems said. "You could go ahead and change."

McBride sloshed water, sat on a bench and pulled off his shoes and socks with his feet resting on the bench. Beems stood where he was, watching the water rise.

McBride took the razor out of the side of one of the shoes, held it up for Beems to see, and said, "Mexican boxing glove."

Beems grinned. He watched as McBride removed his bowler, coat and shirt. He watched carefully as he removed his pants and shorts. McBride reached into the locker Beems had recommended, paused, turned, stared at Beems.

"You're liking what you're seein', ain't you, buddy?" Beems didn't say anything. His heart was in his throat.

McBride grinned at him. "I knew first time I seen you, you was an Alice."

"No," Beems said. "Nothing like that. It's not like that at all."

McBride smiled. He looked very gentle in that moment. He said, "It's all right. Come here. I don't mind that."

"Well . .."

"Naw. Really. It's just, you know, you got to be careful. Not let everyone know. Not everyone understands, see."

Beems, almost licking his lips, went over to McBride. When he was close, McBride's smile widened, and he unloaded a right uppercut into Beems's stomach. He hit him so hard Beems dropped to his knees in the water, nodded forward, and banged his head on the bench. His top hat came off, hit the water, sailed along the row of lockers, made a right turn near the wall, flowed out of sight behind a bench.

McBride picked Beems up by the hair and pulled his head close to his dick, said, "Look at it a minute, 'cause that's all you're gonna do."

Then McBride pulled Beems to his feet by his pretty hair and went to work on him. Lefts and rights. Nothing too hard. But more than Beems had ever gotten. When he finished, he left Beems lying in the water next to the bench, coughing.

McBride said, "Next time you piss, you'll piss blood, Alice." McBride got a towel out of the locker and sat on the bench and put his feet up and dried them. He put on the boxing shorts. There was a mirror on the inside of the locker, and McBride was upset to see his hair. It was a mess. He spent several minutes putting it in place. When he finished, he glanced down at Beems, who was pretending to be dead.

McBride said, "Get up, fairy-ass. Show me where I'm gonna fight."

"Don't tell anybody," Beems said. "I got a wife. A reputation. Don't tell anybody."

"I'll make you a promise," McBride said, closing the locker door. "That goddamn nigger beats me, I'll fuck you. Shit, I'll let you fuck me. But don't get your butthole all apucker. I ain't losin' nothin'. Tonight, way I feel, I could knock John L. Sullivan on his ass."

McBride started out of the locker room, carrying his socks and the boxing shoes with him. Beems lay in the water, giving him plenty of head start.

6:00 P.m.

Henry couldn't believe how slow the line was moving. Hundreds of people, crawling for hours. When the Johnsons were near the end of the bridge, almost to the mainland, the water rushed in a dark brown wave and washed the buggy in front of them off the bridge. The John-sons' wagon felt the wave too, but only slid to the railing. But the buggy hit the railing, bounced, went over, pulling the horse into the railing after it. For a moment the horse hung there, its back legs slipping through, pulling with its front legs, then the railing cracked and the whole kit and kaboodle went over.

"Oh Jesus," Tina said.

"Hang on," Henry said. He knew he had to hurry, before another wave washed in, because if it was bigger, or caught them near the gap the buggy had made, they, too, were gone.

Behind them the Johnsons could hear screams of people fleeing the storm. The water was rising rapidly over the bridge, and those to the middle and the rear realized if they didn't get across quickly, they weren't going to make it. As they fought to move forward, the bridge cracked and moaned as if with a human voice.

The wind ripped at the tarp over the wagon and tore it away. "Shit," said Clement. "Ain't that something?"

A horse bearing a man and a woman, the woman wearing a great straw hat that drooped down on each side of her head, raced by the Johnsons. The bridge was too slick and the horse was moving too fast. Its legs splayed and it went down and started sliding. Slid right through the opening the buggy had made. Disappeared immediately beneath the water. When Henry ventured a look in that direction, he saw the woman's straw hat come up once, then blend with the water.

When Henry's wagon was even with the gap, a fresh brown wave came over the bridge, higher and harder this time. It hit his horses and the wagon broadside. The sound of it, the impact of it, reminded Henry of when he was in the Civil War and a wagon he was riding in was hit by Yankee cannon fire. The impact had knocked him spinning, and when he tried to get up, his leg had been ruined. He thought he would never be that frightened again. But now, he was even more afraid.

The wagon drifted sideways, hit the gap, but was too wide for it. It hung on the ragged railing, the sideboards cracking with the impact. Henry's family screamed and lay down flat in the wagon as the water came down on them like a heavy hand. The pressure of the water snapped the wagon's wheels off the axle, slammed the bottom of the wagon against the bridge, but the sideboards held together.

"Everybody out!" Henry said.

Henry, his weak leg failing to respond, tumbled out of the wagon onto the bridge, which was now under a foot of water. He got hold of a sideboard and pulled himself up, helped Tina down, reached up, and snatched his cane off the seat.

Clement and the others jumped down, started hustling toward the end of the bridge on foot. As they came even with Henry, he said, "Go on, hurry. Don't worry none about me."

Tina clutched his arm. "Go on, woman," he said. "You got young'uns to care about. I got to free these horses." He patted her hand. She moved on with the others.

Henry pulled out his pocketknife and set to cutting the horses free of the harness. As soon as they were loose, both fool animals bolted directly into the railing. One of them bounced off of it, pivoted, made for the end of the bridge at a splashing gallop, but the other horse hit with such impact it flipped over, turning its feet to the sky. It pierced the water and was gone.

Henry turned to look for his family. They were no longer visible. Surely, they had made the mainland by now.

Others had come along to fill their place; people in wagons, and buggies, on horseback and on foot. People who seemed to be scrambling on top of water, since the bridge was now completely below sea level.

Then Henry heard a roar. He turned to the east side of the bridge. There was a heavy sheet of water cocked high above him, and it was coming down, like a monstrous wet fly swatter. And when it struck Henry and the bridge, and all those on it, it smashed them flat and drove them into the churning belly of the sea.

6:14 P.m.

Bill and Angelique Cooper, their buggy half-submerged in water, saw the bridge through the driving rain, then suddenly they saw it no more. The bridge and the people were wadded together and washed down.

The bridge rose up on the waves a moment later, like a writhing spinal column. People still clung to it. It leaped forward into the water, the end of it lashing the air, then it was gone and the people with it.

"God have mercy on their souls," Angelique said.

Bill said, "That's it then."

He turned the buggy around in the water with difficulty, headed home. All around him, shingles and rocks from the roofs of structures flew like shrapnel.

7:39 P.m.

"Lil" Arthur, as he floated toward town, realized it was less deep here. It was just as well, the rain was pounding his boat and filling it with water. He couldn't bail and paddle as fast as it went in. He climbed over the side and let the current carry the boat away.

The water surprised him with its force. He was almost swept away, but it was shallow enough to get a foothold and push against the flow. He waded to the Sporting Club, went around back to the colored entrance. When he got there, an elderly black man known as Uncle Cooter let him in, said, "Man, I'd been you, I'd stayed home."

"What," "Lil" Arthur said, "and missed a boat ride?"

"A boat ride?"

"Lil" Arthur told him how he had gotten this far.

"Damnation," Uncle Cooter said. "God gonna put this island underwater 'cause it's so evil. Like that Sodom and Gomorrah place."

"What have you and me done to God?"

Uncle Cooter smiled. "Why, we is the only good children God's got. He gonna watch after us. Well, me anyway. You done gonna get in with this Mr. McBride, and he's some bad stuff, 'Lil' Arthur. God ain't gonna help you there. And this Mr. McBride, he ain't got no sense neither. He done beat up Mr. Beems, and Mr. Beems the one settin' this up, gonna pay him money."

"Why'd he beat him up?"

"Hell, you can't figure white people. They all fucked up. But Mr. Beems damn sure look like a raccoon now. Both his eyes all black, his lip pouched out."

"Where do I change?"

"Janitor's closet. They done put your shorts and shoes in there. And there's some gauze for your hands."

"Lil" Arthur found the shorts. They were old and faded. The boxing shoes weren't too good either. He found some soiled rags and used those to dry himself. He used the gauze to wrap his hands, then his dick. He figured, once you start a custom, you ought to stick with it.

7:45 P.m.

When Bill and Angelique and Teddy arrived at their house, they saw that the water had pushed against the front door so violently, it had come open. Water was flowing into the hall and onto the bottom step of the stairs. Bill looked up and saw a lamp burning upstairs. They had left so quickly, they had forgotten to extinguish it.

With a snort, Bess bolted. The buggy jerked forward, hit a curb, and the harness snapped so abruptly Bill and his family were not thrown from their seat, but merely whipped forward and back against the seat. The reins popped through Bill's hands so swiftly, the leather cut his palms.

Bess rushed across the yard and through the open doorway of the house, and slowly and carefully, began to climb the stairs.

Angelique said, "My lands."

Bill, a little stunned, climbed down, went around, and helped Angelique and the baby out of the buggy. The baby was wet and crying, and Angelique tried to cover him with the umbrella, but now the wind and rain seemed to come from all directions. The umbrella was little more than a wad of cloth.

They waded inside the house, tried to close the door, but the water was too much for them. They gave it up.

Bess had reached the top landing and disappeared. They followed her up. The bedroom door was open and the horse had gone in there. She stood near the table bearing the kerosene lamp. Shaking.

"Poor thing," Angelique said, gathering some towels from a chifforobe. "She's more terrified than we are."

Bill removed the harness that remained on Bess, stroked her, tried to soothe her. When he went to the window and looked out, the horse went with him. The world had not miraculously dried up. The water was obviously rising.

"Maybe we'll be all right here," Angelique said. She was drying Teddy, who was crying violently because he was cold and wet. "Water can't get this high, can it?"

Bill idly stroked Bess's mane, thought of the bridge. The way it had snapped like a wooden toy. He said, "Of course not."

8:15 P.m.

The fight had started late, right after two one-legged colored boys had gone a couple of rounds, hopping about, trying to club each other senseless with oversize boxing gloves.

The crowd was sparse but vocal. Loud enough that "Lil" Arthur forgot the raging storm outside. The crowd kept yelling, "Kill the nigger," and had struck up a chorus of "All coons look alike to me"--a catchy little number that "Lil" Arthur liked in spite of himself.

The yelling, the song, was meant to drop his spirits, but he found it fired him up. He liked being the underdog. He liked to make assholes eat their words. Besides, he was the Galveston Champion, not McBride, no matter what the crowd wanted. He was the one who would step through the ropes tonight the victor. And he had made a change. He would no longer allow himself to be introduced as "Lil" Arthur. When his name had been called, and he had been reluctantly named Galveston Sporting Club Champion by the announcer, the announcer had done as he had asked. He had called him by the name he preferred from here on. Not "Lil" Arthur Johnson. Not Arthur John Johnson, but the name he called him, the name he called himself. Jack Johnson.

So far, however, the fight wasn't going either way, and he had to hand it to McBride, the fella could hit. He had a way of throwing short, sharp punches to the ribs, punches that felt like knife stabs.

Before the fight, Jack, as McBride had surely done, had used his thumbs to rearrange as much of the cotton in his gloves as possible. Arrange it so that his knuckles would be against the leather and would make good contact with McBride's flesh. But so far McBride had avoided most of his blows. The man was a master of slipping and sliding the punches. Jack had never seen anything like that before. McBride could also pick off shots with a flick of his forearms. It was very professional and enlightening.

Even so, Jack found he was managing to take the punches pretty well, and he'd discovered something astonishing. The few times he'd hit McBride was when he got excited, leaned forward, went flat-footed, and threw the uppercut. This was not a thing he had trained for much, and when he had, he usually threw the uppercut by coming up on his toes, twisting his body, the prescribed way to throw it. But he found, against all logic, he could throw it flat-footed and leaning forward, and he could throw it hard.

He thought he had seen a bit of surprise on McBride's face when he'd hit him with it. He knew that he'd certainly surprised himself.

It went like that until the beginning of the fourth round, then when McBride came out, he said, "I've carried you enough, nigger. Now you got to fight."

Then Jack saw stuff he'd never seen before. The way this guy moved, it was something. Bounced around like a cat; like the way he'd heard Gentleman Jim fought, and the guy was fast with those hands. Tossed bullets, and the bullets stunned a whole lot worse than before. Jack realized McBride had been holding back, trying to make the fight interesting. And he realized something else. Something important about himself. He didn't know as much about boxing as he thought.

He tried hooking McBride, but McBride turned the hooks away with his arms, and Jack tried his surprise weapon, the uppercut, found he could catch McBride a little with that, in the stomach, but not enough to send McBride to the canvas.

When the fifth round came up, Jack was scared. And hurt. And the referee--a skinny bastard with a handlebar moustache--wasn't helping. Anytime he tied McBride up, the referee separated them. McBride tied him up, thumbed him in the eye, butted him, the referee grinned like he was eating jelly.

Jack was thinking maybe of taking a dive. Just going down and lying there, getting himself out of this misery next time McBride threw one of those short ones that connected solid, but then the bell rang and he sat on his bench, and Uncle Cooter, who was the only man in his corner, sprayed water in his mouth and let him spit blood in a bucket.

Uncle Cooter said, "I was you, son, I'd play possum. Just hit that goddamn canvas and lay there like you axed. You don't, this shithead gonna cut you to pieces. This way, you get a little payday and you don't die. Paydays is all right. Dyin' ain't nothin' to rush."

"Jesus, he's good. How can I beat him?"

Uncle Cooter rubbed Jack's shoulders. "You can't. Play dead."

"There's got to be a way."

"Yeah," Uncle Cooter said. "He might die on you. That's the only way you gonna beat him. He got to just die."

"Thanks, Cooter. You're a lot of help."

"You welcome."

Jack feared the sound of the bell. He looked in McBride's corner, and McBride was sitting on his stool as if he were lounging, drinking from a bottle of beer, chatting with a man in the audience. He was asking the man to go get him a sandwich.

Forrest Thomas was in McBride's corner, holding a folded towel over his arm, in case McBride might need it, which, considering he needed to break a good sweat first, wasn't likely.

Forrest looked at Jack, pointed a finger, and lowered his thumb like it was the hammer of a revolver. Jack could see a word on Forrest's lips. The word was: POW!

The referee wandered over to McBride's corner, leaned on the ring post, had a laugh with McBride over something.

The bell rang. McBride gave the bottle of beer to Forrest and came out. Jack rose, saw Beems, eyes blacked, looking rough, sitting in the front row. Rough or not, Beems seemed happy. He looked at Jack and smiled like a gravedigger.

This time out, Jack took a severe pounding. He just couldn't stop those short little hooks of McBride's, and he couldn't seem to hit McBride any kind of blow but the uppercut, and that not hard enough. McBride was getting better as he went along, getting warmed up. If he had another beer and a sandwich, hell, he might go ahead and knock Jack out so he could have coffee and pie.

Jack decided to quit trying to hit the head and the ribs, and just go in and pound McBride on the arms. That way, he could at least hit something. He did, and was amazed at the end of the round to find McBride lowering his guard.

Jack went back to his corner and Uncle Cooter said, "Keep hittin' him on the arms. That's gettin' to him. You wreckin' his tools."

"I figured that much. Thanks a lot."

"You welcome."

Jack examined the crowd in the Sporting Club bleachers. They were not watching the ring. They had turned their heads toward the east wall, and for good reason. It was vibrating. Water was seeping in, and it had filled the floor beneath the ring six inches deep. The people occupying the bottom row of bleachers, all around the ring, had been forced to lift their feet. Above him, Jack heard a noise that sounded like something big and mean peeling skin off an elephant's head.

By the time the bell rang and Jack shuffled out, he noticed that the water had gone up another two inches.

8:46 P.m.

Bill held the lantern in front of him at arm's length as he crouched at the top of the stairs. The water was halfway up the steps. The house was shaking like a fat man's ass on a bucking bronco. He could hear shingles ripping loose, blowing away.

He went back to the bedroom. The wind was screaming. The windows were vibrating; panes had blown out of a couple of them. The baby was crying. Angelique sat in the middle of the bed, trying to nurse the child, but Teddy wouldn't have any of that. Bess was facing a corner of the room, had her head pushed against the wall. The horse lashed her tail back and forth nervously, made nickering noises.

Bill went around and opened all the windows to help take away some of the force of the wind. Something he knew he should have done long ago, but he was trying to spare the baby the howl of the wind, the dampness.

The wind charged through the open windows and the rain charged with it. Bill could hardly stand before them, they were so powerful.

Fifteen minutes later, he heard the furniture below thumping on the ceiling, floating against the floor on which he stood.

9:00 P.m.

My God, thought Jack, how many rounds this thing gonna go? His head ached and his ribs ached worse and his insides felt as if he had swallowed hot tacks and was trying to regurgitate them. His legs, though strong, were beginning to feel the wear. He had thought this was a fifteen-round affair, but realized now it was twenty, and if he wasn't losing by then, he might get word it would go twenty-five.

Jack slammed a glove against McBride's left elbow, saw McBride grimace, drop the arm. Jack followed with the uppercut, and this time he not only hit McBride, he hit him solid. McBride took the shot so hard, he farted. The sandwich he'd eaten between rounds probably didn't seem like such a good idea now.

Next time Jack threw the combination, he connected with the uppercut again. McBride moved back, and Jack followed, hitting him on the arms, slipping in the uppercut now and then, even starting to make contact with hooks and straight rights.

Then every light in the building went out as the walls came apart and the bleachers soared up on a great surge of water and dumped the boxing patrons into the wet darkness. The ring itself began to move, to rise to the ceiling, but before it tilted out from under Jack, McBride hit him a blow so hard Jack thought he felt past lives cease to exist; ancestors fresh from the slime rocked from that blow, and the reverberations of it rippled back to the present and into the future, and back again. The ceiling went away on a torrent of wind, Jack reached out and got hold of something and clung for dear life.

"You stupid sonofabitch," Uncle Cooter said, "you got me by the goddamn head."

9:05 P.m.

Captain Slater thought they would be at the bottom of the Gulf by now, and was greatly surprised they were not. A great wave of water had hit them so hard the night before it had snapped the anchor chain. The ship was driven down, way down, and then all the water in the world washed over them and there was total darkness and horror, and then, what seemed like hours later but could only have been seconds, the water broke and the Pensacola flew high up as if shot from a cannon, came down again, leaned starboard so far it took water, then, miraculously, corrected itself. The sea had been choppy and wild ever since.

Slater shook shit and seawater out of his pants legs and followed the rope around his waist to the support post. He got hold of the post, felt for the rest of the rope. In the darkness, he cried out, "Bernard. You there?"

"I think so," came Bernard's voice from the darkness. And then they heard a couple of bolts pop free, fire off like rifle blasts. Then: "Oh, Jesus," Bernard said. "Feel that swell? Here it comes again."

Slater turned his head and looked out. There was nothing but a great wall of blackness moving toward them. It made the first wave seem like a mere rise; this one was bigger than the Great Wall of China.

10:00 P.m.

Bill and Angelique lay on the bed with Teddy. The water was washing over the edges of the feather mattress, blowing wet, cold wind over them. They had started the Edison and a gospel record had been playing, but the wind and rain had finally gotten into the mechanism and killed it.

As it went dead, the far wall cracked and leaned in and a ripple of cracking lumber went across the floor and the ceiling sagged and so did the bed. Bess suddenly disappeared through a hole in the floor. One moment she was there, the next she was gone, beneath the water.

Bill grabbed Angelique by the arm, pulled her to her feet in the knee-deep water. She held Teddy close to her. He pulled them across the room as the floor shifted, pulled them through the door that led onto the unfinished deck, stumbled over a hammer that lay beneath the water, but managed to keep his feet.

Bill couldn't help but think of all the work he had put in on this deck. Now it would never be finished. He hated to leave anything unfinished. He hated worse that it was starting to lean.

There was one central post that seemed to stand well enough, and they took position behind that. The post was one of several that the house was built around; a support post to lift the house above the normal rise of water. It connected bedroom to deck.

Bill tried to look through the driving rain. All he could see was water. Galveston was covered by the sea. It had risen up and swallowed the city and the island.

The house began to shake violently. They heard lumber splintering, felt it shimmying. The deck swayed more dynamically.

"We're not going to make it, are we, Bill?" Angelique said.

"No, darling. We aren't."

"I love you."

"I love you."

He held her and kissed her. She said, "It doesn't matter, you and I. But Teddy. He doesn't know. He doesn't understand. God, why Teddy? He's only a baby . . . How do I drown, darling?"

"One deep breath and it's over. Just one deep pull of the water, and don't fight it."

Angelique started to cry. Bill squatted, ran his hand under the water and over the deck. He found the hammer. It was lodged in its spot because it was caught in a gap in the unfinished deck. Bill brought the hammer out. There was a big nail sticking out of the main support post. He had driven it there the day before, to find it easily enough. It was his last big nail and it was his intent to save it.

He used the claw of the hammer to pull it out. He looked at Angelique. "We can give Teddy a chance."

Angelique couldn't see Bill well in the darkness, but she somehow felt what his face was saying. "Oh, Bill."

"It's a chance."

"But . . ."

"We can't stand against this, but the support post--"

"Oh Lord, Bill," and Angelique sagged, holding Teddy close to her chest. Bill grabbed her shoulders, said, "Give me my son."

Angelique sobbed, then the house slouched far to the right--except for the support post. All the other supports were washing loose, but so far, this one hadn't budged.

Angelique gave Teddy to Bill. Bill kissed the child, lifted him as high on the post as he could, pushed the child's back against the wood, and lifted its arm. Angelique was suddenly there, supporting the baby. Bill kissed her. He took the hammer and the nail, and placing the nail squarely against Teddy's little wrist, drove it through the child's flesh with one swift blow.

Then the storm blew more furious and the deck turned to gelatin. Bill clutched Angelique, and Angelique almost managed to say, "Teddy," then all the powers of nature took them and the flimsy house away.

High above it all, water lapping around the post, Teddy, wet and cold, squalled with pain.

Bess surfaced among lumber and junk. She began to paddle her legs furiously, snorting water. A nail on a board cut across her muzzle, opening a deep gash. The horse nickered, thrashed her legs violently, lifted her head, trying to stay afloat.

SundaY, SePtemBer 9, 4:00 a.m.

The mechanism that revolved the Bolivar lighthouse beam had stopped working. The stairs that led up to the lighthouse had gradually filled with people fleeing the storm, and as the water rose, so did the people. One man with a young boy had come in last, and therefore was on the constantly rising bottom rung. He kept saying, "Move up. Move up, lessen' you want to see a man and his boy drown." And everyone would move up. And then the man would soon repeat his refrain as the water rose.

The lighthouse was becoming congested. The lighthouse tower had begun to sway. The lighthouse operator, Jim Marlin, and his wife, Elizabeth, lit the kerosene lamp and placed it in the center of the circular, magnifying lens, and tried to turn the beam by hand. They wanted someone to know there was shelter here, even though it was overcrowded, and might soon cease to exist. The best thing to do was to douse the light and hope they could save those who were already there, and save themselves. But Jim and Elizabeth couldn't do that. Elizabeth said, "Way I see it, Jim. It's all or nothing, and the good Lord would want it that way. I want it that way."

All night long they had heard screams and cries for help, and once, when the lighthouse beam was operating, they had seen a young man clinging to a timber. When the light swung back to where the young man had been, he had vanished.

Now, as they tried to turn the light by hand, they found it was too much of a chore. Finally, they let it shine in one direction, and there in the light they saw a couple of bodies being dragged by a large patch of canvas from which dangled ropes, like jellyfish tentacles. The ropes had grouped and twisted around the pair, and the canvas seemed to operate with design, folded and opened like a pair of great wings, as if it were an exotic sea creature bearing them off to a secret lair where they could be eaten in privacy.

Neither Jim nor Elizabeth Marlin knew the bloated men tangled in the ropes together; had no idea they were named Ronald Beems and Forrest Thomas.

5:00 a.m.

A crack of light. Dawn. Jim and Elizabeth had fallen asleep leaning against the base of the great light, and at the first ray of sunshine, they awoke, saw a ship's bow at the lighthouse window, and standing at the bow, looking in at them, was a bedraggled man in uniform, and he was crying savagely.

Jim went to the window. The ship had been lifted up on great piles of sand and lumber. Across the bow he could see the letters PENSACOLA. The man was leaning against the glass. He wore a captain's hat. He held out his hand, palm first. Jim put his hand to the glass, trying to match the span of the crying captain's hand.

Behind the captain a number of wet men appeared. When they saw the lighthouse they fell to their knees and lifted their heads to the heavens in prayer, having forgotten that it was in fact the heavens that had devastated them.

6:00 a.m.

The day broke above the shining water, and the water began to go down, rapidly, and John McBride sat comfortably on the great hour hand of what was left of the City Hall clock. He sat there with his arms wrapped around debris that dangled from the clock. In the night, a huge spring mechanism had jumped from the face of the clock and hit him a glancing blow in the head, and for a moment, McBride had thought he was still battling the nigger. He wasn't sure which was worse to fight. The hurricane or the nigger. But through the night, he had become grateful for the spring to hold on to.

Below him he saw much of what was left of the Sporting Club, including the lockers where he had put his belongings. The whole damn place had washed up beneath the clock tower.

McBride used his teeth to work off the binds of his boxing gloves and slip his hands free. All through the night the gloves had been a burden. He feared his lack of grip would cause him to fall. It felt good to have his hands out of the tight, wet leather.

McBride ventured to take hold of the minute hand of the clock, swing on it a little, and cause it to lower him onto a pile of rubble. He climbed over lumber and junk and found a mass of bloated bodies, men, women, and children, most of them sporting shingles that had cut into their heads and bodies. He searched their pockets for money and found none, but one of the women--he could tell it was a woman by her hair and dress only, her features were lost in the fleshy swelling of her face--had a ring. He tried to pull it off her finger, but it wouldn't come off. The water had swollen her flesh all around it.

He sloshed his way to the pile of lockers. He searched through them until he found the one where he had put his clothes. They were so filthy with mud, he left them. But he got the razor and the revolver. The revolver was full of grit. He took out the shells and shook them and put them back.

He stuck the gun in his soaked boxing trunks. He opened the razor and shook out the silt and went over to the woman and used the razor to cut off her finger. The blade cut easily through the flesh, and he whacked through the bone. He pushed the ring on his little finger, closed the razor, and slipped it into the waistband of his trunks, next to his revolver.

This was a hell of a thing to happen. He had hidden his money back at the whorehouse, and he figured it and the plump madam were probably far at sea, the madam possibly full of harpoon wounds.

And the shitasses who were to pay him were now all choked, including the main one, the queer Beems. And if they weren't, they were certainly no longer men of means.

This had been one shitty trip. No clothes. No money. No whipped nigger. And no more pussy. He'd come with more than he was leaving with.

What the hell else could go wrong?

He decided to wade toward the whorehouse, see if it was possibly standing, maybe find some bodies along the way to loot--something to make up for his losses.

As he started in that direction, he saw a dog on top of a doghouse float by. The dog was chained to the house and the chain had gotten tangled around some floating rubble and it had pulled the dog flat against the roof. It lifted its eyes and saw McBride, barked wearily for help. McBride determined it was well within pistol shot.

McBride lifted the revolver and pulled the trigger. It clicked, but nothing happened. He tried again, hoping against hope. It fired this time and the dog took a blast in the skull and rolled off the house, and hung by the chain, then sailed out of sight.

McBride said, "Poor thing."

7:03 a.m.

The water was falling away rapidly, returning to the sea, leaving in its wake thousands of bodies and the debris that had once been Galveston. The stench was awful. Jack and Cooter, who had spent the night in a child's tree house, awoke, amazed they were alive.

The huge oak tree they were in was stripped of leaves and limbs, but the tree house was unharmed. It was remarkable. They had washed right up to it, just climbed off the lumber to which they had been clinging, and went inside. It was dry in there, and they found three hard biscuits in a tin and three hot bottles of that good ole Waco, Texas, drink, Dr Pepper. There was a phone on the wall, but it was a fake, made of lumber and tin cans. Jack had the urge to try it, as if it might be a line to God, for surely, it was God who had brought them here.

Cooter had helped Jack remove his gloves, then they ate the biscuits, drank a bottle of Dr Pepper apiece, then split the last bottle and slept.

When it was good and light, they decided to climb down. The ladder, a series of boards nailed to the tree, had washed away, but they made it to the ground by sliding down like firemen on a pole.

When they reached the earth, they started walking, sloshing through the mud and water that had rolled back to ankle-deep. The world they had known was gone. Galveston was a wet mulch of bloated bodies-- humans, dogs, mules, and horses--and mashed lumber. In the distance they saw a bedraggled family walking along like ducks in a row. Jack recognized them. He had seen them around town. They were Issac Cline, his brother Joseph, Issac's wife and children. He wondered if they knew where they were going, or were they like him and Cooter, just out there? He decided on the latter.

Jack and Cooter decided to head for higher ground, back uptown. Soon they could see the tower of City Hall, in sad shape but still standing, the clock having sprung a great spring. It poked from the face of the mechanism like a twisted, metal tongue.

They hadn't gone too far toward the tower when they encountered a man coming toward them. He was wearing shorts and shoes like Jack and was riding a chocolate-brown mare bareback. He had looped a piece of frayed rope around the horse's muzzle and was using that as a primitive bridle. His hair was combed to perfection. It was McBride.

"Shit," Cooter said. "Ain't this somethin'? Well, Jack, you take care, I gonna be seein' you."

"Asshole," Jack said.

Cooter put his hands in his pockets and turned right, headed over piles of junk and bodies on his way to who knew where.

McBride spotted Jack, yelled, "You somethin', nigger. A hurricane can't even drown you."

"You neither," Jack said. They were within twenty feet of one another now. Jack could see the revolver and the razor in McBride's waistband. The horse, a beautiful animal with a deep cut on its muzzle, suddenly buckled and lay down with its legs folded beneath it, dropped its head into the mud.

McBride stepped off the animal, said, "Can you believe that? God-damn horse survived all this and it can't carry me no ways at all."

McBride pulled his pistol and shot the horse through the head. It rolled over gently, lay on its side without so much as one last heave of its belly. McBride turned back to Jack. The revolver lay loose in his hand. He said, "Had it misfired, I'd have had to beat that horse to death with a board. I don't believe in animals suffering. Gun's been underwater, and it's worked two out of three. Can you believe that?"

"That horse would have been all right," Jack said.

"Nah, it wouldn't," McBride said. "Why don't you shake it, see if it'll come around?" McBride pushed the revolver into the waistband of his shorts. "How's about you and me? Want to finish where we left off?"

"You got to be jokin'," Jack said.

"You hear me laughin'?"

"I don't know about you, peckerwood, but I feel like I been in a hurricane, then swam a few miles in boxing gloves, then slept all night in a tree house and had biscuits and Dr Pepper for breakfast."

"I ain't even had no breakfast, nigger. Listen here. I can't go home not knowing I can whip you or not. Hell, I might never get home. I

want to know I can take you. You want to know."

"Yeah. I do. But I don't want to fight no pistol and razor."

McBride removed the pistol and razor from his trunks, found a dry spot and put them there. He said, "Come on."

"Where?"

"Here's all we got."

Jack turned and looked. He could see a slight rise of dirt beyond the piles of wreckage. A house had stood there. One of its great support poles was still visible.

"Over there," Jack said.

They went over there and found a spot about the size of a boxing ring. Down below them on each side were heaps of bodies and heaps of gulls on the bodies, scrambling for soft flesh and eyeballs. McBride studied the bodies, what was left of Galveston, turned to Jack, said, "Fuck the rules."

They waded into each other, bare knuckle. It was obvious after only moments that they were exhausted. They were throwing hammers, not punches, and the sounds of their strikes mixed with the caws and cries of the gulls. McBride ducked his head beneath Jack's chin, drove it up. Jack locked his hands behind McBride's neck, kneed him in the groin.

They rolled on the ground and in the mud, then came apart. They regained their feet and went at it again. Then the sounds of their blows and the shrieks of the gulls were overwhelmed by a cry so unique and savage, they ceased punching.

"Time," Jack said.

"What in hell is that?" McBride said.

They walked toward the sound of the cry, leaned on the great support post. Once a fine house had stood here, and now, there was only this. McBride said, "I don't know about you, nigger, but I'm one tired sonofabitch."

The cry came again. Above him. He looked up. A baby was nailed near the top of the support. Its upraised, nailed arm was covered in caked blood. Gulls were flapping around its head, making a kind of halo.

"I'll be goddamned," Jack said. "Boost me, McBride."

"What?"

"Boost me."

"You got to be kidding."

Jack lifted his leg. McBride sighed, made a stirrup with his cupped hands, and Jack stood, got hold of the post and worked his way painfully up. At the bottom, McBride picked up garbage and hurled it at the gulls.

"You gonna hit the baby, you jackass," Jack said.

When he got up there, Jack found the nail was sticking out of the baby's wrist by an inch or so. He wrapped his legs tight around the post, held on with one arm while he took hold of the nail and tried to work it free with his fingers. It wouldn't budge.

"Can't get it loose," Jack yelled down. He was about to drop; his legs and arms had turned to butter.

"Hang on," McBride said, and went away.

It seemed like forever before he came back. He had the revolver with him. He looked up at Jack and the baby. He looked at them for a long moment. Jack watched him, didn't move. McBride said, "Listen up, nigger. Catch this, use it to work out the nail."

McBride emptied the remaining cartridges from the revolver and tossed it up. Jack caught it on the third try. He used the trigger guard to snag the nail, but mostly mashed the baby's wrist. The baby had stopped crying. It was making a kind of mewing sound, like a dying goat.

The nail came loose, and Jack nearly didn't grab the baby in time, and when he did, he got hold of its nailed arm and he felt and heard its shoulder snap out of place. He was weakening, and he knew he was about to fall.

"McBride," he said, "catch."

The baby dropped and so did the revolver. McBride reached out and grabbed the child. It screamed when he caught it, and McBride raised it over his head and laughed.

He laid the baby on top of a pile of wide lumber and looked at it.

Jack was about halfway down the post when he fell, landing on his back, knocking the wind out of him. By the time he got it together enough to get up and find the revolver and wobble over to McBride, McBride had worked the child's shoulder back into place and was cooing to him.

Jack said, "He ain't gonna make it. He's lost lots of blood."

McBride stood up with the baby on his shoulder. He said, "Naw. He's tough as a warthog. Worst this little shit will have is a scar. Elastic as he is, there ain't no real damage. And he didn't bleed out bad neither. He gets some milk in him, fifteen, sixteen years from now, he'll be chasin' pussy. Course, best thing is, come around when he's about two and go on and kill him. He'll just grow up to be men like us."

McBride held the child out and away from him, looked him over. The baby's penis lifted and the child peed all over him. McBride laughed uproariously.

"Well, shit, nigger. I reckon today ain't my day, and it ain't the day you and me gonna find out who's the best. Here. I don't know no one here. Take 'im."

Jack took the child, gave McBride his revolver, said, "I don't know there's anyone I know anymore."

"I tell you, you're one lucky nigger," McBride said. "I'm gonna forgo you a beating, maybe a killing."

"That right?"

"Uh-huh. Someone's got to tote this kid to safety, and if'n I kept him, I might get tired of him in an hour. Put his little head underwater."

"You would, wouldn't you?"

"I might. And you know, you're a fool to give me back my gun."

"Naw. I broke it gettin' that nail loose."

McBride grinned, tossed the gun in the mud, shaded his eyes, and looked at the sky. "Can you beat that? Looks like it's gonna be a nice day."

Jack nodded. The baby sucked on his shoulder. He decided McBride was right. This was one tough kid. It was snuggled against him as if nothing had happened, trying to get milk. Jack wondered about the child's family. Wondered about his own. Where were they? Were they alive?

McBride grinned, said, "Nigger, you got a hell of an uppercut." Then he turned and walked away.

Jack patted the baby's back, watched McBride find his razor, then walk on. Jack watched him until he disappeared behind a swell of lumber and bodies, and he never saw him again.

BUBBA HO-TEP

Elvis dreamed he had his dick out, checking to see if the bump on the head of it had filled withpus again. If it had, he was going to name the bump Priscilla, after his ex-wife, and bust it by jacking off. Or he liked to think that's what he'd do. Dreams let you think like that. The truth was, he hadn't had a hard-on in years.

That bitch, Priscilla. Gets a new hairdo and she's gone, just because she caught him fucking a big-tittied gospel singer. It wasn't like the singer had mattered. Priscilla ought to have understood that, so what was with her making a big deal out of it?

Was it because she couldn't hit a high note same and as good as the singer when she came?

When had that happened anyway, Priscilla leaving?

Yesterday? Last year? Ten years ago?

Oh God, it came to him instantly as he slipped out of sleep like a soft turd squeezed free of a loose asshole--for he could hardly think of himself or life in any context other than sewage, since so often he was too tired to do anything other than let it all fly in his sleep, wake up in an ocean of piss or shit, waiting for the nurses or the aides to come in and wipe his ass. But now it came to him. Suddenly he realized it had been years ago that he had supposedly died, and longer years than that since Priscilla left, and how old was she anyway? Sixty-five? Seventy?

And how old was he?

Christ! He was almost convinced he was too old to be alive, and had to be dead, but he wasn't convinced enough, unfortunately. He knew where he was now, and in that moment of realization, he sincerely wished he were dead. This was worse than death.

From across the room, his roommate, Bull Thomas, bellowed and coughed and moaned and fell back into painful sleep, the cancer gnawing at his insides like a rat plugged up inside a watermelon.

Bull's bellow of pain and anger and indignation at growing old and diseased was the only thing bullish about him now, though Elvis had seen photographs of him when he was younger, and Bull had been very bullish indeed. Thick-chested, slab-faced and tall. Probably thought he'd live forever, and happily. A boozing, pill-popping, swinging dick until the end of time.

Now Bull was shrunk down, was little more than a wrinkled sheet-white husk that throbbed with occasional pulses of blood while the carcinoma fed.

Elvis took hold of the bed's lift button, eased himself upright. He glanced at Bull. Bull was breathing heavily and his bony knees rose up and down like he was pedaling a bicycle; his kneecaps punched feebly at the sheet, making pup tents that rose up and collapsed, rose up and collapsed.

Elvis looked down at the sheet stretched over his own bony knees. He thought:

My God, how long have I been here? Am I really awake now, or am I dreaming I'm awake? How could my plans have gone so wrong? When are they going to serve lunch, and considering what they serve, why do I care? And if Priscilla discovered I was alive, would she come see me, would she want to see me, and would we still want to fuck, or would we have to merely talk about it? Is there finally, and really, anything to life other than food and shit and sex?

Elvis pushed the sheet down to do what he had done in the dream. He pulled up his gown, leaned forward, and examined his dick. It was wrinkled and small. It didn't look like something that had dive-bombed movie starlet pussies or filled their mouths like a big zucchini or pumped forth a load of sperm frothy as cake icing. The healthiest thing about his pecker was the big red bump with the black ring around it and the pus-filled white center. Fact was, that bump kept growing, he was going to have to pull a chair up beside his bed and put a pillow in it so the bump would have some place to sleep at night. There was more pus in that damn bump than there was cum in his loins. Yep. The old diddlebopper was no longer a flesh cannon loaded for bare ass. It was a peanut too small to harvest; wasting away on the vine. His nuts were a couple of darkening, about-to-rot grapes, too limp to produce juice for life's wine. His legs were stick and paper things with over-large, vein-swollen feet on the ends. His belly was such a bloat, it was a pain for him to lean forward and scrutinize his dick and balls.

Pulling his gown down and the sheet back over himself, Elvis leaned back and wished he had a peanut butter and banana sandwich fried in butter. There had been a time when he and his crew would board his private jet and fly clean across country just to have a special-made fried peanut butter and 'nanner sandwich. He could still taste the damn things.

Elvis closed his eyes and thought he would awake from a bad dream, but didn't. He opened his eyes again, slowly, and saw that he was still where he had been, and things were no better. He reached over and opened his dresser drawer and got out a little round mirror and looked at himself.

He was horrified. His hair was white as salt and had receded dramatically. He had wrinkles deep enough to conceal outstretched earthworms, the big ones, the night crawlers. His pouty mouth no longer appeared pouty. It looked like the dropping waddles of a bulldog, seeming more that way because he was slobbering a mite. He dragged his tired tongue across his lips to daub the slobber, revealed to himself in the mirror that he was missing a lot of teeth.

Goddamn it! How had he gone from King of Rock and Roll to this? Old guy in a rest home in East Texas with a growth on his dick?

And what was that growth? Cancer? No one was talking. No one seemed to know. Perhaps the bump was a manifestation of the mistakes of his life, so many of them made with his dick.

He considered on that. Did he ask himself this question every day, or just now and then? Time sort of ran together when the last moment and the immediate moment and the moment forthcoming were all alike.

Shit, when was lunchtime? Had he slept through it?

Was it about time for his main nurse again? The good-looking one with the smooth chocolate skin and tits like grapefruits? The one who came in and sponge bathed him and held his pitiful little pecker in her gloved hands and put salve on his canker with all the enthusiasm of a mechanic oiling a defective part?

He hoped not. That was the worst of it. A doll like that handling him without warmth or emotion. Twenty years ago, just twenty, he could have made with the curled-lip smile and had her eating out of his asshole. Where had his youth gone? Why hadn't fame sustained old age and death, and why had he left his fame in the first place, and did he want it back, and could he have it back, and if he could, would it make any difference?

And finally, when he was evacuated from the bowels of life into the toilet bowl of the beyond and was flushed, would the great sewer pipe flow him to the other side where God would--in the guise of a great all-seeing turd with corn kernel eyes--be waiting with open turd arms, and would there be amongst the sewage his mother (bless her fat little heart) and father and friends, waiting with fried peanut butter and 'nanner sandwiches and ice cream cones, predigested, of course?

He was reflecting on this, pondering the afterlife, when Bull gave out with a hell of a scream, pouched his eyes damn near out of his head, arched his back, grease-farted like a blast from Gabriel's trumpet, and checked his tired old soul out of the Mud Creek Shady Rest Convalescent Home; flushed it on out and across the great shitty beyond.

Later that day, Elvis lay sleeping, his lips fluttering the bad taste of lunch--steamed zucchini and boiled peas--out of his belly. He awoke to a noise, rolled over to see a young attractive woman cleaning out Bull's dresser drawer. The curtains over the window next to Bull's bed were pulled wide open, and the sunlight was cutting through it and showing her to great advantage. She was blonde and Nordic-featured and her long hair was tied back with a big red bow and she wore big gold hoop earrings that shimmered in the sunlight. She was dressed in a white blouse and a short black skirt and dark hose and high heels. The heels made her ass ride up beneath her skirt like soft bald baby heads under a thin blanket.

She had a big yellow plastic trashcan and she had one of Bull's dresser drawers pulled out, and she was picking through it, like a magpie looking for bright things. She found a few--coins, a pocketknife, a cheap watch. These were plucked free and laid on the dresser top, then the remaining contents of the drawer--Bull's photographs of himself when young, a rotten pack of rubbers (wishful thinking never deserted Bull), a bronze star and a purple heart from his performance in the Vietnam War--were dumped into the trashcan with a bang and a flutter.

Elvis got hold of his bed lift button and raised himself for a better look. The woman had her back to him now, and didn't notice. She was replacing the dresser drawer and pulling out another. It was full of clothes. She took out the few shirts and pants and socks and underwear, and laid them on Bull's bed-- remade now, and minus Bull, who had been toted off to be taxidermied, embalmed, burned up, whatever.

"You're gonna toss that stuff," Elvis said. "Could I have one of them pictures of Bull? Maybe that purple heart? He was proud of it."

The young woman turned and looked at him. "I suppose," she said. She went to the trashcan and bent over it and showed her black panties to Elvis as she rummaged. He knew the revealing of her panties was neither intentional nor unintentional. She just didn't give a damn. She saw him as so physically and sexually non-threatening, she didn't mind if he got a bird's-eye view of her; it was the same to her as a house cat sneaking a peek.

Elvis observed the thin panties straining and slipping into the caverns of her ass cheeks and felt his pecker flutter once, like a bird having a heart attack, then it laid down and remained limp and still.

Well, these days, even a flutter was kind of reassuring.

The woman surfaced from the trashcan with a photo and the purple heart, went over to Elvis's bed and handed them to him.

Elvis dangled the ribbon that held the purple heart between his fingers, said, "Bull your kin?"

"My daddy," she said.

"I haven't seen you here before."

"Only been here once before," she said. "When I checked him in."

"Oh," Elvis said. "That was three years ago, wasn't it?"

"Yeah. Were you and him friends?"

Elvis considered the question. He didn't know the real answer. All he knew was Bull listened to him when he said he was Elvis Presley and seemed to believe him. If he didn't believe him, he at least had the courtesy not to patronize. Bull always called him Elvis, and before Bull grew too ill, he always played cards and checkers with him.

"Just roommates," Elvis said. "He didn't feel good enough to say much. I just sort of hated to see what was left of him go away so easy. He was an all-right guy. He mentioned you a lot. You're Callie, right?"

"Yeah," she said. "Well, he was all right."

"Not enough you came and saw him though."

"Don't try to put some guilt trip on me, Mister. I did what I could. Hadn't been for Medicaid, Medicare, whatever that stuff was, he'd have been in a ditch somewhere. I didn't have the money to take care of him."

Elvis thought of his own daughter, lost long ago to him. If she knew he lived, would she come to see him? Would she care? He feared knowing the answer.

"You could have come and seen him," Elvis said.

"I was busy. Mind your own business. Hear?"

The chocolate-skin nurse with the grapefruit tits came in. Her white uniform crackled like cards being shuffled. Her little white nurse hat was tilted on her head in a way that said she loved mankind and made good money and was getting regular dick. She smiled at Callie and then at Elvis. "How are you this morning, Mr. Haff?"

"All right," Elvis said. "But I prefer Mr. Presley. Or Elvis. I keep telling you that. I don't go by Sebastian Haff anymore. I don't try to hide anymore."

"Why, of course," said the pretty nurse. "I knew that. I forgot. Good morning, Elvis."

Her voice dripped with sorghum syrup. Elvis wanted to hit her with his bedpan.

The nurse said to Callie: "Did you know we have a celebrity here, Miss Thomas? Elvis Presley. You know, the rock and roll singer?"

"I've heard of him," Callie said. "I thought he was dead."

Callie went back to the dresser and squatted and set to work on the bottom drawer. The nurse looked at Elvis and smiled again, only she spoke to Callie. "Well, actually, Elvis is dead, and Mr. Haff knows that, don't you, Mr. Haff?"

"Hell no," said Elvis. "I'm right here. I ain't dead, yet."

"Now, Mr. Haff, I don't mind calling you Elvis, but you're a little confused, or like to play sometimes. You were an Elvis impersonator. Remember? You fell off a stage and broke your hip. What was it . . . Twenty years ago? It got infected and you went into a coma for a few years. You came out with a few problems."

"I was impersonating myself," Elvis said. "I couldn't do nothing else. I haven't got any problems. You're trying to say my brain is messed up, aren't you?"

Callie quit cleaning out the bottom drawer of the dresser. She was interested now, and though it was no use, Elvis couldn't help but try and explain who he was, just one more time. The explaining had become a habit, like wanting to smoke a cigar long after the enjoyment of it was gone.

"I got tired of it all," he said. "I got on drugs, you know. I wanted out. Fella named Sebastian Haff, an Elvis imitator, the best of them. He took my place. He had a bad heart and he liked drugs too. It was him died, not me. I took his place."

"Why would you want to leave all that fame," Callie said, "all that money?" and she looked at the nurse, like "Let's humor the old fart for a lark."

"'Cause it got old. Woman I loved, Priscilla, she was gone. Rest of the women . . . were just women. The music wasn't mine anymore. I wasn't even me anymore. I was this thing they made up. Friends were sucking me dry. I got away and liked it, left all the money with Sebastian, except for enough to sustain me if things got bad. We had a deal, me and Sebastian. When I wanted to come back, he'd let me. It was all written up in a contract in case he wanted to give me a hard time, got to liking my life too good. Thing was, copy of the contract I had got lost in a trailer fire. I was living simple. Way Haff had been. Going from town to town doing the Elvis act. Only I felt like I was really me again. Can you dig that?"

"We're digging it, Mr. Haff . . . Mr. Presley," said the pretty nurse.

"I was singing the old way. Doing some new songs. Stuff I wrote. I was getting attention on a small but good scale. Women throwing themselves at me, 'cause they could imagine I was Elvis, only I was Elvis, playing Sebastian Haff playing Elvis. . . . It was all pretty good. I didn't mind the contract being burned up. I didn't even try to go back and convince anybody. Then I had the accident. Like I was saying, I'd laid up a little money in case of illness, stuff like that. That's what's paying for here. These nice facilities. Ha!"

"Now, Elvis," the nurse said. "Don't carry it too far. You may just get way out there and not come back."

"Oh, fuck you," Elvis said.

The nurse giggled.

Shit, Elvis thought. Get old, you can't even cuss somebody and have it bother them. Everything you do is either worthless or sadly amusing.

"You know, Elvis," said the pretty nurse, "we have a Mr. Dillinger here too. And a President Kennedy. He says the bullet only wounded him and his brain is in a fruit jar at the White House, hooked up to some wires and a battery, and as long as the battery works, he can walk around without it. His brain, that is. You know, he says everyone was in on trying to assassinate him. Even Elvis Presley."

"You're an asshole," Elvis said.

"I'm not trying to hurt your feelings, Mr. Haff," the nurse said. "I'm merely trying to give you a reality check."

"You can shove that reality check right up your pretty black ass," Elvis said.

The nurse made a sad little snicking sound. "Mr. Haff, Mr. Haff. Such language."

"What happened to get you here?" said Callie. "Say you fell off a stage?"

"I was gyrating," Elvis said. "Doing 'Blue Moon,' but my hip went out. I'd been having trouble with it." Which was quite true. He'd sprained it making love to a blue-haired old lady with ELVIS tattooed on her fat ass. He couldn't help himself from wanting to fuck her. She looked like his mother, Gladys.

"You swiveled right off the stage?" Callie said. "Now that's sexy."

Elvis looked at her. She was smiling. This was great fun for her, listening to some nut tell a tale. She hadn't had this much fun since she put her old man in the rest home.

"Oh, leave me the hell alone," Elvis said.

The women smiled at one another, passing a private joke. Callie said to the nurse: "I've got what I want." She scraped the bright things off the top of Bull's dresser into her purse. "The clothes can go to Goodwill or the Salvation Army."

The pretty nurse nodded to Callie. "Very well. And I'm very sorry about your father. He was a nice man."

"Yeah," said Callie, and she started out of there. She paused at the foot of Elvis's bed. "Nice to meet you, Mr. Presley."

"Get the hell out," Elvis said.

"Now, now," said the pretty nurse, patting his foot through the covers, as if it were a little cantankerous dog. "I'll be back later to do that . . . little thing that has to be done. You know?"

"I know," Elvis said, not liking the words "little thing."

Callie and the nurse started away then, punishing him with the clean lines of their faces and the sheen of their hair, the jiggle of their asses and tits. When they were out of sight, Elvis heard them laugh about something in the hall, then they were gone, and Elvis felt as if he were on the far side of Pluto without a jacket. He picked up the ribbon with the purple heart and looked at it.

Poor Bull. In the end, did anything really matter?

Meanwhile . . .

The Earth swirled around the sun like a spinning turd in the toilet bowl (to keep up with Elvis's metaphors) and the good old abused Earth clicked about on its axis and the hole in the ozone spread slightly wider, like a shy lady fingering open her vagina, and the South American trees that had stood for centuries were visited by the dozer, the chainsaw, and the match, and they rose up in burned black puffs that expanded and dissipated into minuscule wisps, and while the puffs of smoke dissolved, there were IRA bombings in London, and there was more war in the Mid-East. Blacks died in Africa of famine, the HIV virus infected a million more, the Dallas Cowboys lost again, and that Ole Blue Moon that Elvis and Patsy Cline sang so well about swung around the Earth and came in close and rose over the Shady Rest Convalescent Home, shone its bittersweet, silver-blue rays down on the joint like a flashlight beam shining through a blue-haired lady's do, and inside the rest home, evil waddled about like a duck looking for a spot to squat, and Elvis rolled over in his sleep and awoke with the intense desire to pee.

All right, thought Elvis. This time I make it. No more piss or crap in the bed. (Famous last words.)

Elvis sat up and hung his feet over the side of the bed and the bed swung far to the left and around the ceiling and back, and then it wasn't moving at all. The dizziness passed.

Elvis looked at his walker and sighed, leaned forward, took hold of the grips and eased himself off the bed and clumped the rubber-padded tips forward, made for the toilet.

He was in the process of milking his bump-swollen weasel when he heard something in the hallway. A kind of scrambling, like a big spider scuttling about in a box of gravel.

There was always some sound in the hallway, people coming and going, yelling in pain or confusion, but this time of night, three A.M., was normally quite dead.

It shouldn't have concerned him, but the truth of the matter was, now that he was up and had successfully pissed in the pot, he was no longer sleepy; he was still thinking about that bimbo, Callie, and the nurse (what the hell was her name?) with the tits like grapefruits, and all they had said.

Elvis stumped his walker backwards out of the bathroom, turned it, made his way forward into the hall. The hall was semi-dark, with every other light cut, and the lights that were on were dimmed to a watery egg-yolk yellow. The black and white tile floor looked like a great chessboard, waxed and buffed for the next game of life, and here he was, a semi-crippled pawn, ready to go.

Off in the far wing of the home, Old Lady McGee, better known in the home as The Blue Yodeler, broke into one of her famous yodels (she claimed to have sung with a Country and Western band in her youth) then ceased abruptly. Elvis swung the walker forward and moved on. He hadn't been out of his room in ages, and he hadn't been out of his bed much either. Tonight, he felt invigorated because he hadn't pissed his bed, and he'd heard the sound again, the spider in the box of gravel. (Big spider. Big box. Lots of gravel.) And following the sound gave him something to do.

Elvis rounded the corner, beads of sweat popping out on his forehead like heat blisters. Jesus. He wasn't invigorated now. Thinking about how invigorated he was had bushed him. Still, going back to his room to lie on his bed and wait for morning so he could wait for noon, then afternoon and night, didn't appeal to him.

He went by Jack McLaughlin's room, the fellow who was convinced he was John F. Kennedy, and that his brain was in the White House running on batteries. The door to Jack's room was open. Elvis peeked in as he moved by, knowing full well that Jack might not want to see him. Sometimes he accepted Elvis as the real Elvis, and when he did, he got scared, saying it was Elvis who had been behind the assassination.

Actually, Elvis hoped he felt that way tonight. It would at least be some acknowledgment that he was who he was, even if the acknowledgment was a fearful shriek from a nut.

Course, Elvis thought, maybe I'm nuts too. Maybe I am Sebastian Haff and I fell off the stage and broke more than my hip, cracked some part of my brain that lost my old self and made me think I'm Elvis.

No. He couldn't believe that. That's the way they wanted him to think. They wanted him to believe he was nuts and he wasn't Elvis, just some sad old fart who had once lived out part of another man's life because he had none of his own.

He wouldn't accept that. He wasn't Sebastian Haff. He was Elvis Goddamn Aaron Fucking Presley with a boil on his dick.

Course, he believed that, maybe he ought to believe Jack was John

F. Kennedy, and Mums Delay, another patient here at Shady Rest, was Dillinger. Then again, maybe not. They were kind of scanty on evidence. He at least looked like Elvis gone old and sick. Jack was black--he claimed The Powers That Be had dyed him that color to keep him hidden--and Mums was a woman who claimed she'd had a sex-change operation.

Jesus, was this a rest home or a nuthouse?

Jack's room was one of the special kind. He didn't have to share. He had money from somewhere. The room was packed with books and little luxuries. And though Jack could walk well, he even had a fancy electric wheelchair that he rode about in sometimes. Once, Elvis had seen him riding it around the outside circular drive, popping wheelies and spinning doughnuts.

When Elvis looked into Jack's room, he saw him lying on the floor. Jack's gown was pulled up around his neck, and his bony black ass appeared to be made of licorice in the dim light. Elvis figured Jack had been on his way to the shitter, or was coming back from it, and had collapsed. His heart, maybe.

"Jack," Elvis said.

Elvis clumped into the room, positioned his walker next to Jack, took a deep breath and stepped out of it, supporting himself with one side of it. He got down on his knees beside Jack, hoping he'd be able to get up again. God, but his knees and back hurt.

Jack was breathing hard. Elvis noted the scar at Jack's hairline, a long scar that made Jack's skin lighter there, almost gray. ("That's where they took the brain out," Jack always explained, "put it in that fucking jar. I got a little bag of sand up there now.")

Elvis touched the old man's shoulder. "Jack. Man, you okay?"

No response.

Elvis tried again. "Mr. Kennedy?"

"Uh," said Jack (Mr. Kennedy).

"Hey, man. You're on the floor," Elvis said.

"No shit? Who are you?"

Elvis hesitated. This wasn't the time to get Jack worked up.

"Sebastian," he said. "Sebastian Haff."

Elvis took hold of Jack's shoulder and rolled him over. It was about as difficult as rolling a jelly roll. Jack lay on his back now. He strayed an eyeball at Elvis. He started to speak, hesitated. Elvis took hold of Jack's nightgown and managed to work it down around Jack's knees, trying to give the old fart some dignity.

Jack finally got his breath. "Did you see him go by in the hall? He scuttled like."

"Who?"

"Someone they sent."

"Who's they?"

"You know. Lyndon Johnson. Castro. They've sent someone to finish me. I think maybe it was Johnson himself. Real ugly. Real goddamn ugly."

"Johnson's dead," Elvis said.

"That won't stop him," Jack said.

Later that morning, sunlight shooting into Elvis's room through venetian blinds, Elvis put his hands behind his head and considered the night before while the pretty black nurse with the grapefruit tits salved his dick. He had reported Jack's fall and the aides had come to help Jack back in bed, and him back on his walker. He had clumped back to his room (after being scolded for being out there that time of night) feeling that an air of strangeness had blown into the rest home, an air that wasn't there as short as the day before. It was at low ebb now, but certainly still present, humming in the background like some kind of generator ready to buzz up to a higher notch at a moment's notice.

And he was certain it wasn't just his imagination. The scuttling sound he'd heard last night, Jack had heard it too. What was that all about? It wasn't the sound of a walker, or a crip dragging their foot, or a wheelchair creeping along, it was something else, and now that he thought about it, it wasn't exactly spider legs in gravel, more like a roll of barbed wire tumbling across tile.

Elvis was so wrapped up in these considerations, he lost awareness of the nurse until she said, "Mr. Haff!"

"What . . . " and he saw that she was smiling and looking down at her hands. He looked too. There, nestled in one of her gloved palms, was a massive, blue-veined hooter with a pus-filled bump on it the size of a pecan. It was his hooter and his pus-filled bump.

"You ole rascal," she said, and gently lowered his dick between his legs. "I think you better take a cold shower, Mr. Haff."

Elvis was amazed. That was the first time in years he'd had a boner like that. What gave here?

Then he realized what gave. He wasn't thinking about not being able to do it. He was thinking about something that interested him, and now, with something clicking around inside his head besides old memories and confusions, concerns about his next meal and going to the crapper, he had been given a dose of life again. He grinned his gums and what teeth were in them at the nurse.

"You get in there with me," he said, "and I'll take that shower."

"You silly thing," she said, and pulled his nightgown down and stood and removed her plastic gloves and dropped them in the trash-can beside his bed.

"Why don't you pull on it a little?" Elvis said.

"You ought to be ashamed," the nurse said, but she smiled when she said it.

She left the room door open after she left. This concerned Elvis a little, but he felt his bed was at such an angle no one could look in, and if they did, tough luck. He wasn't going to look a gift hard-on in the pee-hole. He pulled the sheet over him and pushed his hands beneath the sheets and got his gown pulled up over his belly. He took hold of his snake and began to choke it with one hand, running his thumb over the pus-filled bump. With his other hand, he fondled his balls. He thought of Priscilla and the pretty black nurse and Bull's daughter and even the blue-haired fat lady with ELVIS tattooed on her butt, and he stroked harder and faster, and goddamn but he got stiffer and stiffer, and the bump on his cock gave up its load first, exploded hot pus down his thighs, and then his balls, which he thought forever empty, filled up with juice and electricity, and finally he threw the switch. The dam broke and the juice flew. He heard himself scream happily and felt hot wetness jetting down his legs, splattering as far as his big toes.

"Oh God," he said softly. "I like that. I like that."

He closed his eyes and slept. And for the first time in a long time, not fitfully.

Lunchtime. The Shady Rest lunch room.

Elvis sat with a plate of steamed carrots and broccoli and flaky roast beef in front of him. A dry roll, a pat of butter and a short glass of milk soldiered on the side. It was not inspiring.

Next to him, The Blue Yodeler was stuffing a carrot up her nose while she expounded on the sins of God, The Heavenly Father, for knocking up that nice Mary in her sleep, slipping up her ungreased poontang while she snored, and--bless her little heart--not even knowing it, or getting a clit throb from it, but waking up with a belly full of baby and no memory of action.

Elvis had heard it all before. It used to offend him, this talk of God as rapist, but he'd heard it so much now he didn't care. She rattled on.

Across the way, an old man who wore a black mask and sometimes a white Stetson, known to residents and staff alike as Kemosabe, snapped one of his two capless cap pistols at the floor and called for an invisible Tonto to bend over so he could drive him home.

At the far end of the table, Dillinger was talking about how much whisky he used to drink, and how many cigars he used to smoke before he got his dick cut off at the stump and split so he could become a she and hide out as a woman. Now she said she no longer thought of banks and machine guns, women and fine cigars. She now thought about spots on dishes, the colors of curtains and drapes as coordinated with carpets and walls.

Even as the depression of his surroundings settled over him again, Elvis deliberated last night, and glanced down the length of the table at Jack (Mr. Kennedy), who headed its far end. He saw the old man was looking at him, as if they shared a secret.

Elvis's ill mood dropped a notch; a real mystery was at work here, and come nightfall, he was going to investigate.

Swing the Shady Rest Convalescent Home's side of the Earth away from the sun again, and swing the moon in close and blue again. Blow some gauzy clouds across the nasty, black sky. Now ease on into 3 A.M.

Elvis awoke with a start and turned his head toward the intrusion. Jack stood next to the bed looking down at him. Jack was wearing a suit coat over his nightgown and he had on thick glasses. He said, "Sebastian. It's loose."

Elvis collected his thoughts, pasted them together into a not-tooscattered collage. "What's loose?"

"It," said Sebastian. "Listen."

Elvis listened. Out in the hall he heard the scuttling sound of the night before. Tonight, it reminded him of great locust-wings beating frantically inside a small cardboard box, the tips of them scratching at the cardboard, cutting it, ripping it apart.

"Jesus Christ, what is it?" Elvis said.

"I thought it was Lyndon Johnson, but it isn't. I've come across new evidence that suggests another assassin."

"Assassin?"

Jack cocked an ear. The sound had gone away, moved distant, then ceased.

"It's got another target tonight," said Jack. "Come on. I want to show you something. I don't think it's safe if you go back to sleep."

"For Christ sake," Elvis said. "Tell the administrators."

"The suits and the white starches," Jack said. "No thanks. I trusted them back when I was in Dallas, and look where that got my brain and me. I'm thinking with sand here, maybe picking up a few waves from my brain. Someday, who's to say they won't just disconnect the battery at the White House?"

"That's something to worry about, all right," Elvis said.

"Listen here," Jack said. "I know you're Elvis, and there were rumors, you know . . . about how you hated me, but I've thought it over. You hated me, you could have finished me the other night. All I want from you is to look me in the eye and assure me you had nothing to do with that day in Dallas, and that you never knew Lee Harvey Oswald or Jack Ruby."

Elvis stared at him as sincerely as possible. "I had nothing to do with Dallas, and I knew neither Lee Harvey Oswald or Jack Ruby."

"Good," said Jack. "May I call you Elvis instead of Sebastian?"

"You may."

"Excellent. You wear glasses to read?"

"I wear glasses when I really want to see," Elvis said.

Get 'em and come on."

Elvis swung his walker along easily, not feeling as if he needed it too much tonight. He was excited. Jack was a nut, and maybe he himself was nuts, but there was an adventure going on.

They came to the hall restroom. The one reserved for male visitors. "In here," Jack said.

"Now wait a minute," Elvis said. "You're not going to get me in there and try and play with my pecker, are you?"

Jack stared at him. "Man, I made love to Jackie and Marilyn and a ton of others, and you think I want to play with your nasty ole dick?"

"Good point," said Elvis.

They went into the restroom. It was large, with several stalls and urinals.

"Over here," said Jack. He went over to one of the stalls and pushed open the door and stood back by the commode to make room for Elvis's walker. Elvis eased inside and looked at what Jack was now pointing to.

Graffiti.

"That's it?" Elvis said. "We're investigating a scuttling in the hall, trying to discover who attacked you last night, and you bring me in here to show me stick pictures on the shit house wall?"

"Look close," Jack said.

Elvis leaned forward. His eyes weren't what they used to be, and his glasses probably needed to be upgraded, but he could see that instead:

Book of the Dead and The Complete Works of H. P. Lovecraft.

Straight away he recognized what he was staring at. "Egyptian hieroglyphics," he said.

"Right-a-reen-O," Jack said. "Hey, you're not as stupid as some folks made you out."

"Thanks," Elvis said.

Jack reached into his suit coat pocket and took out a folded piece of paper and unfolded it. He pressed it to the wall. Elvis saw that it was covered with the same sort of figures that were on the wall of the stall.

"I copied this down yesterday. I came in here to shit because they hadn't cleaned up my bathroom. I saw this on the wall, went back to my room and looked it up in my books and wrote it all down. The top line translates something like: Pharaoh gobbles donkey goober. And the bottom line is: Cleopatra does the dirty."

"What?"

"Well, pretty much," Jack said.

Elvis was mystified. "All right," he said. "One of the nuts here, present company excluded, thinks he's Tutankhamun or something, and he writes on the wall in hieroglyphics. So what? I mean, what's the connection? Why are we hanging out in a toilet?"

"I don't know how they connect exactly," Jack said. "Not yet. But this . . . thing, it caught me asleep last night, and I came awake just in time to . . . well, he had me on the floor and had his mouth over my asshole."

"A shit eater?" Elvis said.

"I don't think so," Jack said. "He was after my soul. You can get that out of any of the major orifices in a person's body. I've read about it."

"Where?" Elvis asked. "Hustler?"

"The Everyday Man or Woman's Book of the Soul, by David Webb. It has some pretty good movie reviews about stolen soul movies in the back too."

"Oh, that sounds trustworthy," Elvis said.

They went back to Jack's room and sat on his bed and looked through his many books on astrology, the Kennedy assassination, and a number of esoteric tomes, including the philosophy book, The Everyday Man or Woman's Book of the Soul.

Elvis found that book fascinating in particular; it indicated that not only did humans have a soul, but that the soul could be stolen, and there was a section concerning vampires and ghouls and incubi and succubi, as well as related soul suckers. Bottom line was, one of those dudes was around, you had to watch your holes. Mouth hole. Nose hole. Asshole. If you were a woman, you needed to watch a different hole. Dick pee-holes and ear holes--male or female--didn't matter. The soul didn't hang out there. They weren't considered major orifices for some reason.

In the back of the book was a list of items, related and not related to the book, that you could buy. Little plastic pyramids. Hats you could wear while channeling. Subliminal tapes that would help you learn Arabic. Postage was paid.

"Every kind of soul eater is in that book except politicians and science-fiction fans," Jack said. "And I think that's what we got here in Shady Rest. A soul eater. Turn to the Egyptian section."

Elvis did. The chapter was prefaced by a movie still from The Ten Commandments with Yul Brynner playing Pharaoh. He was standing up in his chariot looking serious, which seemed a fair enough expression, considering the Red Sea, which had been parted by Moses, was about to come back together and drown him and his army.

Elvis read the article slowly while Jack heated hot water with his plug-in heater and made cups of instant coffee. "I get my niece to smuggle this stuff in," said Jack. "Or she claims to be my niece. She's a black woman. I never saw her before I was shot that day in Dallas and they took my brain out. She's part of the new identity they've given me. She's got a great ass."

"Damn," said Elvis. "What it says here, is that you can bury some dude, and if he gets the right tanna leaves and spells said over him and such bullshit, he can come back to life some thousands of years later, and to stay alive, he has to suck on the souls of the living, and that if the souls are small, his life force doesn't last long. Small. What's that mean?"

"Read on . . . No, never mind, I'll tell you." Jack handed Elvis his cup of coffee and sat down on the bed next to him. "Before I do, want a Ding Dong? Not mine. The chocolate kind. Well, I guess mine is chocolate, now that I've been dyed."

"You got Ding Dongs?" Elvis asked.

"Couple of Pay Days and Baby Ruth too," Jack said. "Which will it be? Let's get decadent."

Elvis licked his lips. "I'll have a Ding Dong."

While Elvis savored the Ding Dong, gumming it sloppily, sipping his coffee between bites, Jack, coffee cup balanced on his knee, a Baby Ruth in one mitt, expounded.

"Small souls means those without much fire for life," Jack said. "You know a place like that?"

"If souls were fires," Elvis said, "they couldn't burn much lower without being out than here. Only thing we got going in this joint is the pilot light."

"Exactamundo," Jack said. "What we got here in Shady Rest is an Egyptian soul sucker of some sort. A mummy hiding out, coming in here to feed on the sleeping. It's perfect, you see. The souls are little, and don't provide him with much. If this thing comes back two or three times in a row to wrap his lips around some elder's asshole, that elder is going to die pretty soon, and who's the wiser? Our mummy may not be getting much energy out of this, way he would with big souls, but the prey is easy. A mummy couldn't be too strong, really. Mostly just husk. But we're pretty much that way ourselves. We're not too far off being mummies."

"And with new people coming in all the time," Elvis said, "he can keep this up forever, this soul robbing."

"That's right. Because that's what we're brought here for. To get us out of the way until we die. And the ones don't die first of disease, or just plain old age, he gets."

Elvis considered all that. "That's why he doesn't bother the nurses and aides and administrators? He can go unsuspected."

"That, and they're not asleep. He has to get you when you're sleeping or unconscious."

"All right, but the thing throws me, Jack, is how does an ancient Egyptian end up in an East Texas rest home, and why is he writing on shit house walls?"

"He went to take a crap, got bored, and wrote on the wall. He probably wrote on pyramid walls, centuries ago."

"What would he crap?" Elvis said. "It's not like he'd eat, is it?"

"He eats souls," Jack said, "so I assume, he craps soul residue. And what that means to me is, you die by his mouth, you don't go to the other side, or wherever souls go. He digests the souls till they don't exist anymore--"

"And you're just so much toilet water decoration," Elvis said.

"That's the way I've got it worked out," Jack said. "He's just like anyone else when he wants to take a dump. He likes a nice clean place with a flush. They didn't have that in his time, and I'm sure he finds it handy. The writing on the walls is just habit. Maybe, to him, Pharaoh and Cleopatra were just yesterday."

Elvis finished off the Ding Dong and sipped his coffee. He felt a rush from the sugar and he loved it. He wanted to ask Jack for the Pay Day he had mentioned, but restrained himself. Sweets, fried foods, late nights and drugs had been the beginning of his original downhill spiral. He had to keep himself collected this time. He had to be ready to battle the Egyptian soul-sucking menace.

Soul-sucking menace?

God. He was really bored. It was time for him to go back to his room and to bed so he could shit on himself, get back to normal.

But Jesus and Ra, this was different from what had been going on up until now! It might all be bullshit, but considering what was going on in his life right now, it was absorbing bullshit. It might be worth playing the game to the hilt, even if he was playing it with a black guy who thought he was John F. Kennedy and believed an Egyptian mummy was stalking the corridors of Shady Rest Convalescent Home, writing graffiti on toilet stalls, sucking people's souls out through their assholes, digesting them, and crapping them down the visitors' toilet.

Suddenly Elvis was pulled out of his considerations. There came from the hall the noise again. The sound that each time he heard it reminded him of something different. This time it was dried corn husks being rattled in a high wind. He felt goose bumps travel up his spine and the hairs on the back of his neck and arms stood up. He leaned forward and put his hands on his walker and pulled himself upright.

"Don't go in the hall," Jack said.

"I'm not asleep."

"That doesn't mean it won't hurt you."

"It, my ass, there isn't any mummy from Egypt."

"Nice knowing you, Elvis."

Elvis inched the walker forward. He was halfway to the open door when he spied the figure in the hallway.

As the thing came even with the doorway, the hall lights went dim and sputtered. Twisting about the apparition, like pet crows, were flutters of shadows. The thing walked and stumbled, shuffled and flowed. Its legs moved like Elvis's own, meaning not too good, and yet, there was something about its locomotion that was impossible to identify. Stiff, but ghostly smooth. It was dressed in nasty-looking jeans, a black shirt, a black cowboy hat that came down so low it covered where the thing's eyebrows should be. It wore large cowboy boots with the toes curled up, and there came from the thing a kind of mixed-stench: a compost pile of mud, rotting leaves, resin, spoiled fruit, dry dust, and gassy sewage.

Elvis found that he couldn't scoot ahead another inch. He froze. The thing stopped and cautiously turned its head on its apple-stem neck and looked at Elvis with empty eye sockets, revealing that it was, in fact, uglier than Lyndon Johnson.

Surprisingly, Elvis found he was surging forward as if on a zooming camera dolly, and that he was plunging into the thing's right eye socket, which swelled speedily to the dimensions of a vast canyon bottomed by blackness.

Down Elvis went, spinning and spinning, and out of the emptiness rushed resin-scented memories of pyramids and boats on a river, hot blue skies, and a great silver bus lashed hard by black rain, a crumbling bridge and a charge of dusky water and a gleam of silver. Then there was a darkness so caliginous it was beyond being called dark, and Elvis could feel and taste mud in his mouth and a sensation of claustrophobia beyond expression. And he could perceive the thing's hunger, a hunger that prodded him like hot pins, and then--

--there came a popping sound in rapid succession, and Elvis felt himself whirling even faster, spinning backwards out of that deep memory canyon of the dusty head, and now he stood once again within the framework of his walker, and the mummy--for Elvis no longer denied to himself that it was such--turned its head away and began to move again, to shuffle, to flow, to stumble, to glide, down the hall, its pet shadows screeching with rusty throats around its head.

Pop! Pop! Pop!

As the thing moved on Elvis compelled himself to lift his walker and advance into the hall. Jack slipped up beside him, and they saw the mummy in cowboy clothes traveling toward the exit door at the back of the home. When it came to the locked door, it leaned against where the door met the jamb and twisted and writhed, squeezed through the invisible crack where the two connected. Its shadows pursued it, as if sucked through by a vacuum cleaner.

The popping sound went on, and Elvis turned his head in that direction, and there, in his mask, his double concho-studded holster belted around his waist, was Kemosabe, a silver Fanner Fifty in either hand. He was popping caps rapidly at where the mummy had departed, the black-spotted red rolls flowing out from behind the hammers of his revolvers in smoky relay.

"Asshole!" Kemosabe said. "Asshole!"

And then Kemosabe quivered, dropped both hands, popped a cap from each gun toward the ground, stiffened, collapsed.

Elvis knew he was dead of a ruptured heart before he hit the black and white tile; gone down and out with both guns blazing, soul intact.

The hall lights trembled back to normal.

The administrators, the nurses and the aides came then. They rolled Kemosabe over and drove their palms against his chest, but he didn't breathe again. No more Hi-Yo-Silver. They sighed over him and clucked their tongues, and finally an aide reached over and lifted Kemosabe's mask, pulled it off his head and dropped it on the floor, nonchalantly, and without respect, revealed his identity.

It was no one anyone really knew.

Once again, Elvis got scolded, and this time he got quizzed about what had happened to Kemosabe, and so did Jack, but neither told the truth. Who was going to believe a couple of nuts? Elvis and Jack Kennedy explaining that Kemosabe was gunning for a mummy in cowboy duds, a Bubba Ho-Tep with a flock of shadows roiling about his cowboy-hatted head?

So, what they did was lie.

"He came snapping caps and then he fell," Elvis said, and Jack corroborated his story, and when Kemosabe had been carried off, Elvis, with some difficulty, using his walker for support, got down on his knee and picked up the discarded mask and carried it away with him.

He had wanted the guns, but an aide had taken those for her four-yearold son.

Later, he and Jack learned through the grapevine that Kemosabe's roommate, an eighty-year-old man who had been in a semi-comatose condition for several years, had been found dead on the floor of his room. It was assumed Kemosabe had lost it and dragged him off his bed and onto the floor and the eighty-year-old man had kicked the bucket during the fall. As for Kemosabe, they figured he had then gone nuts when he realized what he had done, and had wandered out in the hall firing, and had a heart attack.

Elvis knew different. The mummy had come and Kemosabe had tried to protect his roommate in the only way he knew how. But instead of silver bullets, his gun smoked sulfur. Elvis felt a rush of pride in the old fart.

He and Jack got together later, talked about what they had seen, and then there was nothing left to say.

Night went away and the sun came up, and Elvis, who had slept not a wink, came up with it and put on khaki pants and a khaki shirt and used his walker to go outside. It had been ages since he had been out, and it seemed strange out there, all that sunlight and the smells of flowers and the Texas sky so high and the clouds so white.

It was hard to believe he had spent so much time in his bed. Just the use of his legs with the walker these last few days had tightened the muscles, and he found he could get around better.

The pretty nurse with the grapefruit tits came outside and said: "Mr. Presley, you look so much stronger. But you shouldn't stay out too long. It's almost time for a nap and for us, to, you know . . ."

"Fuck off, you patronizing bitch," said Elvis. "I'm tired of your shit. I'll lube my own transmission. You treat me like a baby again, I'll wrap this goddamn walker around your head."

The pretty nurse stood stunned, then went away quietly.

Elvis inched his way with the walker around the great circular drive that surrounded the home. It was a half hour later when he reached the back of the home and the door through which the mummy had departed. It was still locked, and he stood and looked at it amazed. How in hell had the mummy done that, slipping through an indiscernible chink between door and frame?

Elvis looked down at the concrete that lay at the back of the door.

No clues there. He used the walker to travel toward the growth of trees out back, a growth of pin-oaks and sweet gums and hickory nut trees that shouldered on either side of the large creek that flowed behind the home.

The ground tipped sharply there, and for a moment he hesitated, then reconsidered. Well, what the fuck? he thought.

He planted the walker and started going forward, the ground sloping ever more dramatically. By the time he reached the bank of the creek and came to a gap in the trees, he was exhausted. He had the urge to start yelling for help, but didn't want to belittle himself, not after his performance with the nurse. He knew that he had regained some of his former confidence. His cursing and abuse had not seemed cute to her that time. The words had bitten her, if only slightly, Truth was, he was going to miss her greasing his pecker.

He looked over the bank of the creek. It was quite a drop there. The creek itself was narrow, and on either side of it was a gravel-littered six feet of shore. To his left, where the creek ran beneath a bridge, he could see where a mass of weeds and mud had gathered over time, and he could see something shiny in their midst.

Elvis eased to the ground inside his walker and sat there and looked at the water churning along. A huge woodpecker laughed in a tree nearby and a jay yelled at a smaller bird to leave his territory.

Where had ole Bubba Ho-Tep gone? Where did he come from? How in hell did he get here?

He recalled what he had seen inside the mummy's mind. The silver bus, the rain, the shattered bridge, the wash of water and mud.

Well, now, wait a minute, he thought. Here we have water and mud and a bridge, though it's not broken, and there's something shiny in the midst of all those leaves and limbs and collected debris. All these items were elements of what he had seen in Bubba Ho-Tep's head. Obviously there was a connection.

But what was it?

When he got his strength back, Elvis pulled himself up and got the walker turned, and worked his way back to the home. He was covered in sweat and stiff as wire by the time he reached his room and tugged himself into bed. The blister on his dick throbbed and he unfastened his pants and eased down his underwear. The blister had refilled with pus, and it looked nastier than usual.

It's a cancer, he determined. He made the conclusion in a certain final rush. They're keeping it from me because I'm old and to them it doesn't matter. They think age will kill me first, and they are probably right.

Well, fuck them. I know what it is, and if it isn't, it might as well be.

He got the salve and doctored the pus-filled lesion, and put the salve away, and pulled up his underwear and pants, and fastened his belt.

Elvis got his TV remote off the dresser and clicked it on while he waited for lunch. As he ran the channels, he hit upon an advertisement for Elvis Presley week. It startled him. It wasn't the first time it had happened, but at the moment it struck him hard. It showed clips from his movies, Clambake, Roustabout, several others. All shit movies. Here he was complaining about loss of pride and how life had treated him, and now he realized he'd never had any pride and much of how life had treated him had been quite good, and the bulk of the bad had been his own fault. He wished now he'd fired his manager, Colonel Parker, about the time he got into films. The old fart had been a fool, and he had been a bigger fool for following him. He wished too he had treated Priscilla right. He wished he could tell his daughter he loved her.

Always the questions. Never the answers. Always the hopes. Never the fulfillments.

Elvis clicked off the set and dropped the remote on the dresser just as Jack came into the room. He had a folder under his arm. He looked like he was ready for a briefing at the White House.

"I had the woman who calls herself my niece come get me," he said. "She took me downtown to the newspaper morgue. She's been helping me do some research."

"On what?" Elvis said.

"On our mummy."

"You know something about him?" Elvis asked.

"I know plenty."

Jack pulled a chair up next to the bed, and Elvis used the bed's lift button to raise his back and head so he could see what was in Jack's folder.

Jack opened the folder, took out some clippings, and laid them on the bed. Elvis looked at them as Jack talked.

"One of the lesser mummies, on loan from the Egyptian government, was being circulated across the United States. You know, museums, that kind of stuff. It wasn't a major exhibit, like the King Tut exhibit some years back, but it was of interest. The mummy was flown or carried by train from state to state. When it got to Texas, it was stolen.

"Evidence points to the fact that it was stolen at night by a couple of guys in a silver bus. There was a witness. Some guy walking his dog or something. Anyway, the thieves broke in the museum and stole it, hoping to get a ransom probably. But in came the worst storm in East Texas history. Tornadoes. Rain. Hail. You name it. Creeks and rivers overflowed. Mobile homes were washed away. Livestock drowned. Maybe you remember it. . . . No matter. It was one hell of a flood.

"These guys got away, and nothing was ever heard from them. After you told me what you saw inside the mummy's head--the silver bus, the storm, the bridge, all that--I came up with a more interesting, and I believe, considerably more accurate scenario."

"Let me guess. The bus got washed away. I think I saw it today. Right out back in the creek. It must have washed up there years ago."

"That confirms it. The bridge you saw breaking, that's how the bus got in the water, which would have been as deep then as a raging river. The bus was carried downstream. It lodged somewhere nearby, and the mummy was imprisoned by debris, and recently it worked its way loose."

"But how did it come alive?" Elvis asked. "And how did I end up inside its memories?"

"The speculation is broader here, but from what I've read, sometimes mummies were buried without their names, a curse put on their sarcophagus, or coffin, if you will. My guess is our guy was one of those. While he was in the coffin, he was a drying corpse. But when the bus was washed off the road, the coffin was overturned, or broken open, and our boy was freed of coffin and curse. Or more likely, it rotted open in time, and the holding spell was broken. And think about him down there all that time, waiting for freedom, alive, but not alive. Hungry, and no way to feed. I said he was free of his curse, but that's not entirely true. He's free of his imprisonment, but he still needs souls.

"And now, he's free to have them, and he'll keep feeding unless he's finally destroyed. . . . You know, I think there's a part of him, oddly enough, that wants to fit in. To be human again. He doesn't entirely know what he's become. He responds to some old desires and the new desires of his condition. That's why he's taken on the illusion of clothes, probably copying the dress of one of his victims.

"The souls give him strength. Increase his spectral powers. One of which was to hypnotize you, kinda, draw you inside his head. He couldn't steal your soul that way, you have to be unconscious to have that done to you, but he could weaken you, distract you."

"And those shadows around him?"

"His guardians. They warn him. They have some limited powers of their own. I've read about them in the Everyday Man or Woman's Book of the Soul."

"What do we do?" Elvis said.

"I think changing rest homes would be a good idea," Jack said. "I can't think of much else. I will say this. Our mummy is a nighttime kind of guy. 3 A.M., actually. So, I'm going to sleep now, and again after lunch. Set my alarm for before dark so I can fix myself a couple cups of coffee. He comes tonight, I don't want him slapping his lips over my asshole again. I think he heard you coming down the hall about the time he got started on me the other night, and he ran. Not because he was scared, but because he didn't want anyone to find out he's around. Consider it. He has the proverbial bird's nest on the ground here."

After Jack left, Elvis decided he should follow Jack's lead and nap. Of course, at his age, he napped a lot anyway, and could fall asleep at any time, or toss restlessly for hours. There was no rhyme or reason to it.

He nestled his head into his pillow and tried to sleep, but sleep wouldn't come. Instead, he thought about things. Like, what did he really have left in life but this place? It wasn't much of a home, but it was all he had, and he'd be damned if he'd let a foreign, graffiti-writing, soul-sucking sonofabitch in an oversized hat and cowboy boots (with elf toes) take away his family members' souls and shit them down the visitors' toilet.

In the movies he had always played heroic types. But when the stage lights went out, it was time for drugs and stupidity and the coveting of women. Now it was time to be a little of what he had always fantasized being.

A hero.

Elvis leaned over and got hold of his telephone and dialed Jack's room. "Mr. Kennedy," Elvis said when Jack answered. "Ask not what your rest home can do for you. Ask what you can do for your rest home."

"Hey, you're copping my best lines," Jack said.

"Well, then, to paraphrase one of my own, 'Let's take care of business.'"

"What are you getting at?"

"You know what I'm getting at. We're gonna kill a mummy."

The sun, like a boil on the bright blue ass of day, rolled gradually forward and spread its legs wide to reveal the pubic thatch of night, a hairy darkness in which stars crawled like lice, and the moon crabbed slowly upward like an albino dog tick thriving for the anal gulch.

During this slow-rolling transition, Elvis and Jack discussed their plans, then they slept a little, ate their lunch of boiled cabbage and meatloaf, slept some more, ate a supper of white bread and asparagus and a helping of shit on a shingle without the shingle, slept again, awoke about the time the pubic thatch appeared and those starry lice began to crawl.

And even then, with night about them, they had to wait until midnight to do what they had to do.

Jack squinted through his glasses and examined his list. "Two bottles of rubbing alcohol?" Jack said.

"Check," said Elvis. "And we won't have to toss it. Look here." Elvis held up a paint sprayer. "I found this in the storage room."

"I thought they kept it locked," Jack said.

"They do. But I stole a hairpin from Dillinger and picked the lock."

"Great!" Jack said. "Matches?"

"Check. I also scrounged a cigarette lighter."

"Good. Uniforms?"

Elvis held up his white suit, slightly grayed in spots with a chili stain on the front. A white silk scarf and the big gold and silver and ruby-studded belt that went with the outfit lay on the bed. There were zippered boots from K-Mart. "Check."

Jack held up a gray business suit on a hanger. "I've got some nice shoes and a tie to go with it in my room."

"Check," Elvis said.

"Scissors?"

"Check."

"I've got my motorized wheelchair oiled and ready to roll," Jack said, "and I've looked up a few words of power in one of my magic books. I don't know if they'll stop a mummy, but they're supposed to ward off evil. I wrote them down on a piece of paper."

"We use what we got," Elvis said. "Well, then. Two forty-five out back of the place."

"Considering our rate of travel, better start moving about two-thirty," Jack said.

"Jack," Elvis asked. "Do we know what we're doing?"

"No, but they say fire cleanses evil. Let's hope they, whoever they are, is right."

"Check on that too," said Elvis. "Synchronize watches."

They did, and Elvis added: "Remember. The key words for tonight are Caution and Flammable. And Watch Your Ass."

The front door had an alarm system, but it was easily manipulated from the inside. Once Elvis had the wires cut with the scissors, they pushed the compression lever on the door, and Jack shoved his wheelchair outside, and held the door while Elvis worked his walker through. Elvis tossed the scissors into the shrubbery, and Jack jammed a paperback book between the doors to allow them re-entry, should re-entry be an option at a later date.

Elvis was wearing a large pair of glasses with multicolored gem-studded chocolate frames and his stained white jumpsuit with scarf and belt and zippered boots. The suit was open at the front and hung loose on him, except at the belly. To make it even tighter there, Elvis had made up a medicine bag of sorts, and stuffed it inside his jumpsuit. The bag contained Kemosabe's mask, Bull's purple heart, and the newspaper clipping where he had first read of his alleged death.

Jack had on his gray business suit with a black-and-red-striped tie knotted carefully at the throat, sensible black shoes, and black nylon socks. The suit fit him well. He looked like a former president.

In the seat of the wheelchair was the paint sprayer, filled with rubbing alcohol, and beside it, a cigarette lighter and a paper folder of matches. Jack handed Elvis the paint sprayer. A strap made of a strip of torn sheet had been added to the device. Elvis hung the sprayer over his shoulder, reached inside his belt and got out a flattened, half-smoked stogie he had been saving for a special occasion. An occasion he had begun to think would never arrive. He clenched the cigar between his teeth, picked the matches from the seat of the wheelchair, and lit his cigar. It tasted like a dog turd, but he puffed it anyway. He tossed the folder of matches back on the chair and looked at Jack, said, "Let's do it, amigo."

Jack put the matches and the lighter in his suit pocket. He sat down in the wheelchair, kicked the foot stanchions into place and rested his feet on them. He leaned back slightly and flicked a switch on the arm rest. The electric motor hummed, the chair eased forward.

"Meet you there," said Jack. He rolled down the concrete ramp, on out to the circular drive, and disappeared around the edge of the building.

Elvis looked at his watch. It was nearly two forty-five. He had to hump it. He clenched both hands on the walker and started truckin'.

Fifteen exhaustive minutes later, out back, Elvis settled in against the door, the place where Bubba Ho-Tep had been entering and exiting. The shadows fell over him like an umbrella. He propped the paint gun across the walker and used his scarf to wipe the sweat off his forehead.

In the old days, after a performance, he'd wipe his face with it and toss it to some woman in the crowd, watch as she creamed on herself. Panties and hotel keys would fly onto the stage at that point, bouquets of roses.

Tonight, he hoped Bubba Ho-Tep didn't use the scarf to wipe his ass after shitting him down the crapper.

Elvis looked where the circular concrete drive rose up slightly to the right, and there, seated in the wheelchair, very patient and still, was Jack. The moonlight spread over Jack and made him look like a concrete yard gnome.

Apprehension spread over Elvis like a dose of the measles. He thought:

Bubba Ho-Tep comes out of that creek bed, he's going to come out hungry and pissed, and when I try to stop him, he's going to jam this paint gun up my ass, then jam me and that wheelchair up Jack's ass.

He puffed his cigar so fast it made him dizzy. He looked out at the creek bank, and where the trees gaped wide, a figure rose up like a cloud of termites, scrabbled like a crab, flowed like water, chunked and chinked like a mass of oilfield tools tumbling downhill.

Its eyeless sockets trapped the moonlight and held it momentarily before permitting it to pass through and out the back of its head in irregular gold beams. The figure that simultaneously gave the impression of shambling and gliding appeared one moment as nothing more than a shadow surrounded by more active shadows, then it was a heap of twisted brown sticks and dried mud molded into the shape of a human being, and in another moment, it was a cowboy-hatted, booted thing taking each step as if it were its last.

Halfway to the rest home it spotted Elvis, standing in the dark framework of the door. Elvis felt his bowels go loose, but he determined not to shit his only good stage suit. His knees clacked together like stalks of ribbon cane rattling in a high wind. The dog-turd cigar fell from his lips.

He picked up the paint gun and made sure it was ready to spray. He pushed the butt of it into his hip and waited.

Bubba Ho-Tep didn't move. He had ceased to come forward. Elvis began to sweat more than before. His face and chest and balls were soaked. If Bubba Ho-Tep didn't come forward, their plan was fucked. They had to get him in range of the paint sprayer. The idea was he'd soak him with the alcohol, and Jack would come wheeling down from behind, flipping matches or the lighter at Bubba, catching him on fire.

Elvis said softly, "Come and get it, you dead piece of shit."

Jack had nodded off for a moment, but now he came awake. His flesh was tingling. It felt as if tiny ball bearings were being rolled beneath his skin. He looked up and saw Bubba Ho-Tep paused between the creek bank, himself, and Elvis at the door.

Jack took a deep breath. This was not the way they had planned it. The mummy was supposed to go for Elvis because he was blocking the door. But, no soap.

Jack got the matches and the cigarette lighter out of his coat pocket and put them between his legs on the seat of the chair. He put his hand on the gear box of the wheelchair, gunned it forward. He had to make things happen; had to get Bubba Ho-Tep to follow him, come within range of Elvis's spray gun.

Bubba Ho-Tep stuck out his arm and clotheslined Jack Kennedy. There was a sound like a rifle crack (no question, Warren Commission, this blow was from the front), and over went the chair, and out went Jack, flipping and sliding across the driveway, the cement tearing his suit knees open, gnawing into his hide. The chair, minus its rider, tumbled over and came upright, and still rolling, veered downhill toward Elvis in the doorway, leaning on his walker, spray gun in hand.

The wheelchair hit Elvis's walker. Elvis bounced against the door, popped forward, grabbed the walker just in time, but dropped his spray gun.

He glanced up to see Bubba Ho-Tep leaning over the unconscious Jack. Bubba Ho-Tep's mouth went wide, and wider yet, and became a black toothless vacuum that throbbed pink as a raw wound in the moonlight; then Bubba Ho-Tep turned his head and the pink was not visible. Bubba Ho-Tep's mouth went down over Jack's face, and as Bubba Ho-Tep sucked, the shadows about it thrashed and gobbled like turkeys.

Elvis used the walker to allow him to bend down and get hold of the paint gun. When he came up with it, he tossed the walker aside, eased himself around, and into the wheelchair. He found the matches and the lighter there. Jack had done what he had done to distract Bubba Ho-Tep, to try and bring him down closer to the door. But he had failed. Yet by accident, he had provided Elvis with the instruments of mummy destruction, and now it was up to him to do what he and Jack had hoped to do together. Elvis put the matches inside his open-chested outfit, pushed the lighter tight under his ass.

Elvis let his hand play over the wheelchair switches, as nimbly as he had once played with studio keyboards. He roared the wheelchair up the incline toward Bubba Ho-Tep, terrified but determined, and as he rolled, in a voice cracking, but certainly reminiscent of him at his best, he began to sing "Don't Be Cruel," and within instants, he was on Bubba Ho-Tep and his busy shadows.

Bubba Ho-Tep looked up as Elvis roared into range, singing. Bubba Ho-Tep's open mouth irised to normal size, and teeth, formerly nonexistent, rose up in his gums like little black stumps. Electric locusts crackled and hopped in his empty sockets. He yelled something in Egyptian. Elvis saw the words jump out of Bubba Ho-Tep's mouth in visible hieroglyphics like dark beetles and sticks:

"By the unwinking eye of Ra!"

Elvis bore down on Bubba Ho-Tep. When he was in range, he ceased singing, and gave the paint sprayer trigger a squeeze. Rubbing alcohol squirted from the sprayer and struck Bubba Ho-Tep in the face.

Elvis swerved, screeched around Bubba Ho-Tep in a sweeping circle, came back, the lighter in his hand. As he neared Bubba, the shadows swarming around the mummy's head separated and flew high up above him like startled bats.

The black hat Bubba wore wobbled and sprouted wings and flapped away from his head, becoming what it had always been, a living shadow. The shadows came down in a rush, screeching like harpies. They swarmed over Elvis's face, giving him the sensation of skinned animal pelts--blood-side in--being dragged over his flesh.

Bubba bent forward at the waist like a collapsed puppet, bopped his head against the cement drive. His black bat hat came down out of the dark in a swoop, expanding rapidly and falling over Bubba's body, splattering it like spilled ink. Bubba blob-flowed rapidly under the wheels of Elvis's mount and rose up in a dark swell beneath the chair and through the spokes of the wheels and billowed over the front of the chair and loomed upwards, jabbing his ravaged, ever-changing face through the flittering shadows, poking it right at Elvis.

Elvis, through gaps in the shadows, saw a face like an old jack-o'lantern gone black and to rot, with jagged eyes, nose and mouth. And that mouth spread tunnel wide, and down that tunnel-mouth Elvis could see the dark and awful forever that was Bubba's lot, and Elvis clicked the lighter to flame, and the flame jumped, and the alcohol lit Bubba's face, and Bubba's head turned baby-eye blue, flowed jet-quick away, splashed upward like a black wave carrying a blazing oil slick. Then Bubba came down in a shuffle of blazing sticks and dark mud, a tar baby on fire, fleeing across the concrete drive toward the creek. The guardian shadows flapped after it, fearful of being abandoned.

Elvis wheeled over to Jack, leaned forward and whispered: "Mr. Kennedy."

Jack's eyelids fluttered. He could barely move his head, and something grated in his neck when he did. "The President is soon dead," he said, and his clenched fist throbbed and opened, and out fell a wad of paper. "You got to get him."

Jack's body went loose and his head rolled back on his damaged neck and the moon showed double in his eyes. Elvis swallowed and saluted Jack. "Mr. President," he said.

Well, at least he had kept Bubba Ho-Tep from taking Jack's soul. Elvis leaned forward, picked up the paper Jack had dropped. He read it aloud to himself in the moonlight: "You nasty thing from beyond the dead. No matter what you think and do, good things will never come to you. If evil is your black design, you can bet the goodness of the Light Ones will kick your bad behind."

That's it? thought Elvis. That's the chant against evil from the Book of Souls? Yeah, right, boss. And what kind of decoder ring does that come with? Shit, it doesn't even rhyme well.

Elvis looked up. Bubba Ho-Tep had fallen down in a blue blaze, but he was rising up again, preparing to go over the lip of the creek, down to wherever his sanctuary was.

Elvis pulled around Jack and gave the wheelchair full throttle. He gave out with a rebel cry. His white scarf fluttered in the wind as he thundered forward.

Bubba Ho-Tep's flames had gone out. He was on his feet. His head was hissing gray smoke into the crisp night air. He turned completely to face Elvis, stood defiant, raised an arm and shook a fist. He yelled, and once again Elvis saw the hieroglyphics leap out of his mouth. The characters danced in a row, briefly--and vanished.

Elvis let go of the protective paper. It was dog shit. What was needed here was action.

"Eat the dog dick of Anubis, you ass-wipe!"

When Bubba Ho-Tep saw Elvis was coming, chair geared to high, holding the paint sprayer in one hand, he turned to bolt, but Elvis was on him.

Elvis stuck out a foot and hit Bubba Ho-Tep in the back, and his foot went right through Bubba. The mummy squirmed, spitted on Elvis's leg. Elvis fired the paint sprayer, as Bubba Ho-Tep, himself, and chair went over the creek bank in a flash of moonlight and a tumble of shadows.

Elvis screamed as the hard ground and sharp stones snapped his body like a pinata. He made the trip with Bubba Ho-Tep still on his leg, and when he quit sliding, he ended up close to the creek.

Bubba Ho-Tep, as if made of rubber, twisted around on Elvis's leg, and looked at him.

Elvis still had the paint sprayer. He had clung to it as if it were a life preserver. He gave Bubba another dose. Bubba's right arm flopped way out and ran along the ground and found a hunk of wood that had washed up on the edge of the creek, gripped it, and swung the long arm back. The arm came around and hit Elvis on the side of the head with the wood.

Elvis fell backwards. The paint sprayer flew from his hands. Bubba Ho-Tep was leaning over him. He hit Elvis again with the wood. Elvis felt himself going out. He knew if he did, not only was he a dead sonofabitch, but so was his soul. He would be just so much crap; no afterlife for him; no reincarnation; no angels with harps. Whatever lay beyond would not be known to him. It would all end right here for Elvis Presley. Nothing left but a quick flush.

Bubba Ho-Tep's mouth loomed over Elvis's face. It looked like an open manhole. Sewage fumes came out of it.

Elvis reached inside his open jumpsuit and got hold of the folder of matches. Laying back, pretending to nod out so as to bring Bubba Ho-Tep's ripe mouth closer, he thumbed back the flap on the matches, thumbed down one of the paper sticks, and pushed the sulfurous head of the match across the black strip.

Just as Elvis felt the cloying mouth of Bubba Ho-Tep falling down on his kisser like a Venus Flytrap, the entire folder of matches ignited in Elvis's hand, burned him and made him yell.

The alcohol on Bubba's body called the flames to it, and Bubba burst into a stalk of blue flame, singeing the hair off Elvis's head, scorching his eyebrows down to nubs, blinding him until he could see nothing more than a scalding white light.

Elvis realized that Bubba Ho-Tep was no longer on or over him, and the white light became a stained white light, then a gray light, and eventually, the world, like a Polaroid negative developing, came into view, greenish at first, then full of the night's colors.

Elvis rolled on his side and saw the moon floating in the water. He saw too a scarecrow floating in the water, the straw separating from it, the current carrying it away.

No, not a scarecrow. Bubba Ho-Tep. For all his dark magic and ability to shift, or to appear to shift, fire had done him in, or had it been the stupid words from Jack's book on souls? Or both?

It didn't matter. Elvis got up on one elbow and looked at the corpse. The water was dissolving it more rapidly and the current was carrying it away.

Elvis fell over on his back. He felt something inside him grate against something soft. He felt like a water balloon with a hole poked in it.

He was going down for the last count, and he knew it.

But I've still got my soul, he thought. Still mine. All mine. And the folks in Shady Rest, Dillinger, The Blue Yodeler, all of them, they have theirs, and they'll keep 'em.

Elvis stared up at the stars between the forked and twisted boughs of an oak. He could see a lot of those beautiful stars, and he realized now that the constellations looked a little like the outlines of great hieroglyphics. He turned away from where he was looking, and to his right, seeming to sit on the edge of the bank, were more stars, more hieroglyphics.

He rolled his head back to the figures above him, rolled to the right and looked at those. Put them together in his mind.

ALL IS WELL.

He smiled. Suddenly, he thought he could read hieroglyphics after all, and what they spelled out against the dark beautiful night was simple, and yet profound.

Elvis closed his eyes and did not open them again.

THE END

A CHANGE OF LIFESTYLE

Got up this morning and couldn't take it anymore. I'd had all the cutesy words and hugs I could take from the old bag, and I'd also had it with my food. She thought that just because I liked something once, I couldn't wait to have it every day.

Of course, it beat hell out of that McWhipple burger I got out of the next-door neighbor's trashcan. I saw him toss it out, and as I recall, he was looking mighty green and holding his stomach. Didn't bother me none, though; I'd eaten out of his trashcan before. (He even took a shot at me one night on account of it.) But this McWhipple burger would have made a vulture choke! Must've been kangaroo meat or something. Or maybe the burger had just been lying on the assembly line too long. In any case, it sure made me sick, and up until then I could eat anything short of strychnine.

See, that's part of the problem. Suddenly I couldn't stand the way I'd been living. Just came over me, you know? One day I was fine and happy as a tick in an armpit, and the next day things were no longer hokay-by-me. I wanted a change of lifestyle.

It was all so goofy . . . the way I was feeling in the head, I thought maybe I'd got some medical problems, you know? So first thing I thought of was to go see the doc. Figured I ought to do that before I made any drastic changes--changes like getting the old lady out of my life, finding a new place to live, that soft of thing. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't having a spell of some sort, one of them metabolistic shake-ups.

So the doc was the ticket. I mean, he'd always been nice to me. A few pills and needles, but that's to be expected, right?

Next problem was getting out of the house without making a scene. Old gal treated me like some sort of prisoner, and that didn't make it easy.

The window over the sink was open, though, and that's how I plotted my escape. It was hard for me to get my body up and through the opening, but I managed. Made the six-foot drop without so much as a sprained ankle.

I got my thoughts together, charted out the doc's office, and set out. On the way, I noticed something weird: not only was I having this change in attitude, I seemed to be having some physical problems, too. I could feel stuff shifting around inside me, the way you feel the wind when it changes.

When I finally reached the doc's, man, was I bushed. Caught this lady coming out with a white cat under her arm, and she looked at me like I was the strange one. I mean, here she was with a cat under her arm, things hanging off her ears and wrists and wearing as much war paint as an Indian in a TV western, and she looks at me like I'm wearing a propeller beanie or something.

I slid in before she closed the door, and I looked around. People were sitting all over the place, and they had their pets with them. Dogs, cats, even a pet monkey.

I suddenly felt mighty sick, but I figured the best thing to do was to hang tough and not think about my problem. I decided to get a magazine down from the rack, but I couldn't get one down. Couldn't seem to hold onto it.

People were staring.

So were their pets.

I decided the heck with this and went right over to the receptionist. Standing on my hind legs, I leaned against the desk and said, "Listen, sweetheart, I've got to see the doc, and pronto."

"Oh, my God!" she screamed. "A talking Siberian husky!" Then she bounced her appointment book off one of my pointy ears.

Was this any way to run a veterinarian's office?

Man, did that place clear out fast. Nothing but a few hairs--dog, cat, and blue-rinse--floating to the floor.

The doc obviously wasn't the ticket. I cleared out of there myself and ran three blocks on my hind legs before I realized it. I felt good, too. Problem was, it tended to stop traffic.

I got down on all fours again, and though it hurt my back, I walked like that until I got to the park. As soon as I reached it, I stood up on my hind legs and stretched my back. I tell you, that felt some better.

There was a bum sitting on a park bench tipping a bottle, and when he lamped me coming toward him, he jumped up, screamed, and ran away, smashing his bottle on a tree as he went.

Sighing, I took his place on the bench, crossed my legs, and noticed that a fleshy pink knee was poking up through a rip in my fur. Man, what next?

There was a newspaper lying beside me, and having nothing better to do, I picked it up.

Didn't have a lick of trouble holding it. My toes had lengthened now, and my dewclaw could fold and grasp. The hair on the back of my paws had begun to fall off.

The paper was the morning edition. The first article that caught my eye was about this guy over on Winchester--and why not? That was right next door to where I'd been living with the old hag. It was the fellow who'd tossed out the hamburger.

Seems he went weird. Woke up in the middle of the night and started baying at the moon through his bedroom window. Later on he got to scratching behind his ears with his feet, even though he was still wearing slippers. Next he got out of the house somehow and started chasing cars. Lady finally had to beat him with a newspaper to make him stop--at which point he raised his legs and peed on her, then chased the neighbor's cat up a tree.

That's when the old lady called the nut-box people.

By the time they got there the guy'd gotten a case of hairy knees, a wet nose, and a taste for the family dog's Gravy Train. In fact, the man and the dog got into a fight over it, and the man bit the rat terrier's ear off.

Yeeecccchhh--fighting over Gravy Train! They can have the stuff. Give me steak and 'taters.

Lady said she didn't know what had gone wrong. Said he'd gone to bed with a stomachache and feeling a bit under the weather. And why not? He'd got hold of a week-old hamburger from McWhipple's that she'd set on top of the refrigerator and forgotten about. Seems this guy was a real chowhound and went for it. Ate a couple of big bites before his taste buds had time to work and he realized he was chomping sewer fodder.

Ouch and flea bites! That must have been the same green meat I got a bite of.

I tossed the paper aside and patted my chest for a cigarette. No pockets, of course.

Just then, my tail fell off. It went through the slats in the park bench and landed on the ground. I looked down and saw it turn to dust, hair and all, till a little wind came along and whipped it away.

Man, some days the things that happen to you shouldn't happen to a dog.

DEADMAN'S ROAD

The evening sun had rolled down and blown out in a bloody wad, and the white, full moon had rolled up like an enormous ball of tightly wrapped twine.

As he rode, the Reverend Jebidiah Rains watched it glow above the tall pines. All about it stars were sprinkled white-hot in the dead-black heavens.

The trail he rode on was a thin one, and the trees on either side of it crept toward the path as if they might block the way, and close up behind him. The weary horse on which he was riding moved forward with its head down, and Jebidiah, too weak to fight it, let his mount droop and take its lead. Jebidiah was too tired to know much at that moment, but he knew one thing: he was a man of the Lord and he hated God, hated the sonofabitch with all his heart.

And he knew God knew and didn't care, because He knew Jebidiah was His messenger. Not one of the New Testament, but one of the Old Testament, harsh and mean and certain, vengeful and without compromise; a man who would have shot a leg out from under Moses and spat in the face of the Holy Ghost and scalped him, tossing his celestial hair to the wild four winds.

It was not a legacy Jebidiah would have preferred, being the bad-man messenger of God, but it was his, and he had earned it through sin, and no matter how hard he tried to lay it down and leave it be, he could not. He knew that to give in and abandon his God-given curse was to burn in hell forever, and to continue was to do as the Lord prescribed, no matter what his feelings toward his mean master might be. His Lord was not a forgiving Lord, nor was he one who cared for your love. All he cared for was obedience, servitude and humiliation. It was why God had invented the human race.

Amusement.

As he thought on these matters, the trail turned and widened, and off to one side, amongst tree stumps, was a fairly large clearing, and in its center was a small log house, and out to the side a somewhat larger log barn. In the curtained window of the cabin was a light that burned orange behind the flour-sack curtains. Jebidiah, feeling tired and hungry and thirsty and weary of soul, made for it.

Stopping a short distance from the cabin, Jebidiah leaned forward on his horse and called out, "Hello, the cabin."

He waited for a time, called again, and was halfway through calling when the door opened, and a man about five-foot-two with a large droopy hat, holding a rifle, stuck himself part of the way out of the cabin, said, "Who is it calling?

You got a voice like a bullfrog."

"Reverend Jebidiah Rains."

"You ain't come to preach none, have you?"

"No, sir. I find it does no good. I'm here to beg for a place in your barn, a night under its roof. Something for my horse, something for myself if it's available. Most anything, as long as water is involved."

"Well," said the man, "this seems to be the gathering place tonight. Done got two others, and we just sat asses down to eat. I got enough you want it, some hot beans and some old bread."

"I would be most obliged, sir," Jebidiah said.

"Oblige all you want. In the meantime, climb down from that nag, put it in the barn, and come in and chow. They call me Old Timer, but I ain't that old. It's cause most of my teeth are gone and I'm crippled in a foot a horse stepped on.

There's a lantern just inside the barn door. Light that up, and put it out when you finish, come on back to the house."

-*-

When Jebidiah finished grooming and feeding his horse with grain in the barn, watering him, he came into the cabin, made a show of pushing his long black coat back so that it revealed his ivory-handled .44 cartridge-converted revolvers. They were set so that they leaned forward in their holsters, strapped close to the hips, not draped low like punks wore them. Jebidiah liked to wear them close to the natural swing of his hands. When he pulled them it was a movement quick as the flick of a hummingbird's wings, the hammers clicking from the cock of his thumb, the guns barking, spewing lead with amazing accuracy. He had practiced enough to drive a cork into a bottle at about a hundred paces, and he could do it in bad light. He chose to reveal his guns that way to show he was ready for any attempted ambush. He reached up and pushed his wide-brimmed black hat back on his head, showing black hair gone gray-tipped. He thought having his hat tipped made him look casual. It did not. His eyes always seemed aflame in an angry face.

Inside, the cabin was bright with kerosene lamplight, and the kerosene smelled, and there were curls of black smoke twisting about, mixing with gray smoke from the pipe of Old Timer, and the cigarette of a young man with a badge pinned to his shirt. Beside him, sitting on a chopping log by the fireplace--which was too hot for the time of year, but was being used to heat up a pot of beans--was a middle-aged man with a slight paunch and a face that looked like it attracted thrown objects. He had his hat pushed up a bit, and a shock of wheat-colored, sweaty hair hung on his forehead. There was a cigarette in is mouth, half of it ash. He twisted on the chopping log, and Jebidiah saw that his hands were manacled together.

"I heard you say you was a preacher," said the manacled man, as he tossed the last of his smoke into the fireplace. "This here sure ain't God's country."

"Worse thing is," said Jebidiah, "it's exactly God's country."

The manacled man gave out with a snort, and grinned.

"Preacher," said the younger man, "my name is Jim Taylor. I'm a deputy for Sheriff Spradley, out of Nacogdoches. I'm taking this man there for a trial, and most likely a hanging. He killed a fella for a rifle and a horse. I see you tote guns, old-style guns, but good ones. Way you tote them, I'm suspecting you know how to use them."

"I've been known to hit what I aim at," Jebidiah said, and sat in a rickety chair at an equally rickety table. Old Timer put some tin plates on the table, scratched his ass with a long wooden spoon, then grabbed a rag and used it as a potholder, lifted the hot bean pot to the table. He popped the lid of the pot, used the ass-scratching spoon to scoop a heap of beans onto plates. He brought over some wooden cups and poured them full from a pitcher of water.

"Thing is," the deputy said, "I could use some help. I don't know I can get back safe with this fella, havin' not slept good in a day or two. Was wondering, you and Old Timer here could watch my back till morning? Wouldn't even mind if you rode along with me tomorrow, as sort of a backup. I could use a gun hand.

Sheriff might even give you a dollar for it."

Old Timer, as if this conversation had not been going on, brought over a bowl with some moldy biscuits in it, placed them on the table. "Made them a week ago. They've gotten a bit ripe, but you can scratch around the mold. I'll warn you, though, they're tough enough you could toss one hard and kill a chicken on the run. So mind your teeth."

"That how you lost yours, Old Timer?" the manacled man said.

"Probably part of them," Old Timer said.

"What you say, preacher?" the deputy said. "You let me get some sleep?"

"My problem lies in the fact that I need sleep," Jebidiah said. "I've been busy, and I'm what could be referred to as tuckered."

"Guess I'm the only one that feels spry," said the manacled man.

"No," said, Old Timer. "I feel right fresh myself."

"Then it's you and me, Old Timer," the manacled man said, and grinned, as if this meant something.

"You give me cause, fella, I'll blow a hole in you and tell God you got in a nest of termites."

The manacled man gave his snort of a laugh again. He seemed to be having a good old time.

"Me and Old Timer can work shifts," Jebidiah said. "That okay with you, Old Timer?"

"Peachy," Old Timer said, and took another plate from the table and filled it with beans. He gave this one to the manacled man, who said, lifting his bound hands to take it, "What do I eat it with?"

"Your mouth. Ain't got no extra spoons. And I ain't giving you a knife."

The manacled man thought on this for a moment, grinned, lifted the plate and put his face close to the edge of it, sort of poured the beans toward his mouth. He lowered the plate and chewed. "Reckon they taste scorched with or without a spoon."

Jebidiah reached inside his coat, took out and opened up a pocketknife, used it to spear one of the biscuits, and to scrape the beans toward him.

"You come to the table, young fella," Old Timer said to the deputy. "I'll get my shotgun, he makes a move that ain't eatin', I'll blast him and the beans inside him into that fireplace there."

-*-

Old Timer sat with a double-barrel shotgun resting on his leg, pointed in the general direction of the manacled man. The deputy told all that his prisoner had done while he ate. Murdered women and children, shot a dog and a horse, and just for the hell of it, shot a cat off a fence, and set fire to an outhouse with a woman in it. He had also raped women, stuck a stick up a sheriff's ass, and killed him, and most likely shot other animals that might have been some good to somebody. Overall, he was tough on human beings, and equally as tough on livestock.

"I never did like animals," the manacled man said. "Carry fleas. And that woman in the outhouse stunk to high heaven. She ought to eat better. She needed burning."

"Shut up," the deputy said. "This fella," and he nodded toward the prisoner, "his name is Bill Barrett, and he's the worst of the worst. Thing is, well, I'm not just tired, I'm a little wounded. He and I had a tussle. I hadn't surprised him, wouldn't be here today. I got a bullet graze in my hip. We had quite a dust-up. I finally got him down by putting a gun barrel to his noggin' half a dozen times or so. I'm not hurt so bad, but I lost blood for a couple days. Weakened me. You'd ride along with me, Reverend, I'd appreciate it."

"I'll consider it," Jebidiah said. "But I'm about my business."

"Who you gonna preach to along here, 'sides us?" the deputy said.

"Don't even think about it," Old Timer said. "Just thinking about that Jesus foolishness makes my ass tired. Preaching makes me want to kill the preacher and cut my own throat. Being at a preachin' is like being tied down in a nest red bitin' ants."

"At this point in my life," Jebidiah said. "I agree."

There was a moment of silence in response to Jebidiah, then the deputy turned his attention to Old Timer. "What's the fastest route to Nacogdoches?"

"Well now," Old Timer said, "you can keep going like you been going, following the road out front. And in time you'll run into a road, say thirty miles from here, and it goes left. That should take you right near Nacogdoches, which is another ten miles, though you'll have to make a turn somewhere up in there near the end of the trip. Ain't exactly sure where unless I'm looking at it. Whole trip, traveling at an even pace, ought to take you two day."

"You could go with us," the deputy said. "Make sure I find that road."

"Could," said Old Timer, "but I won't. I don't ride so good anymore. My balls ache I ride a horse for too long. Last time I rode a pretty good piece, I had to squat over a pan of warm water and salt, soak my taters for an hour or so just so they'd fit back in my pants. "

"My balls ache just listening to you," the prisoner said. "Thing is, though, them swollen up like that, was probably the first time in your life you had man-sized balls, you old fart. You should have left them swollen."

Old Timer cocked back the hammers on the double-barrel. "This here could go off."

Bill just grinned, leaned his back against the fireplace, then jumped forward. For a moment, it looked as if Old Timer might cut him in half, but he realized what had happened.

"Oh yeah," Old Timer said. "That there's hot, stupid. Why they call it a fireplace."

Bill readjusted himself, so that his back wasn't against the stones. He said,

"I'm gonna cut this deputy's pecker off, come back here, make you fry it up and eat it."

"You're gonna shit and fall back in it," Old Timer said. "That's all you're gonna do."

When things had calmed down again, the deputy said to Old Timer,

"There's no faster route?"

Old Timer thought for a moment. "None you'd want to take."

"What's that mean?" the deputy said.

Old Timer slowly lowered the hammers on the shotgun, smiling at Bill all the while. When he had them lowered, he turned his head, looked at the deputy.

"Well, there's Deadman's Road."

"What's wrong with that?" the deputy asked.

"All manner of things. Used to be called Cemetery Road. Couple years back that changed."

Jebidiah's interest was aroused. "Tell us about it, Old Timer."

"Now I ain't one to believe in hogwash, but there's a story about the road, and I got it from someone you might say was the horse's mouth."

"A ghost story, that's choice," said Bill.

"How much time would the road cut off going to Nacogdoches?" the deputy asked.

"Near a day," Old Timer said.

"Damn. Then that's the way I got to go," the deputy said.

"Turn off for it ain't far from here, but I wouldn't recommend it," Old Timer said. "I ain't much for Jesus, but I believe in haints, things like that. Living out here in this thicket, you see some strange things. There's gods ain't got nothing to do with Jesus or Moses, or any of that bunch. There's older gods than that.

Indians talk about them."

"I'm not afraid of any Indian gods," the deputy said.

"Maybe not," Old Timer said, "but these gods, even the Indians ain't fond of them. They ain't their gods. These gods are older than the Indian folk their ownselfs. Indians try not to stir them up. They worship their own."

"And why would this road be different than any other?" Jebidiah asked.

"What does it have to do with ancient gods?"

Old Timer grinned. "You're just wanting to challenge it, ain't you, Reverend? Prove how strong your god is. You weren't no preacher, you'd be a gunfighter, I reckon. Or, maybe you are just that. A gunfighter preacher."

"I'm not that fond of my god," Jebidiah said, "but I have been given a duty.

Drive out evil. Evil as my god sees it. If these gods are evil, and they're in my path, then I have to confront them."

"They're evil, all right," Old Timer said.

"Tell us about them," Jebidiah said.

-*-

"Gil Gimet was a beekeeper," Old Timer said. "He raised honey, and lived off of Deadman's Road. Known then as Cemetery Road. That's 'cause there was a graveyard down there. It had some old Spanish graves in it, some said conquistadores who tromped through here but didn't tromp out. I know there was some Indians buried there, early Christian Indians, I reckon. Certainly there were stones and crosses up and Indian names on the crosses. Maybe mixed-breeds.

Lots of intermarrying around here. Anyway, there were all manner people buried up there. The dead ground don't care what color you are when you go in, 'cause in the end, we're all gonna be the color of dirt."

"Hell, " Bill said. "You're already the color of dirt. And you smell like some pretty old dirt at that."

"You gonna keep on, mister," Old Timer said, "and you're gonna wind up having the undertaker wipe your ass." Old Timer cocked back the hammers on the shotgun again. "This here gun could go off accidentally. Could happen, and who here is gonna argue it didn't?"

"Not me," the deputy said. "It would be easier on me you were dead, Bill."

Bill looked at the Reverend. "Yeah, but that wouldn't set right with the Reverend, would it, Reverend?"

"Actually, I wouldn't care one way or another. I'm not a man of peace, and I'm not a forgiver, even if what you did wasn't done to me. I think we're all rich and deep in sin. Maybe none of us are worthy of forgiveness."

Bill sunk a little in his seat. No one was even remotely on his side. Old Timer continued with his story.

"This here beekeeper, Gimet, he wasn't known as much of a man. Mean-hearted is how he was thunk of. I knowed him, and I didn't like him. I seen him snatch up a little dog once and cut the tail off of it with his knife, just 'cause he thought it was funny. Boy who owned the dog tried to fight back, and Gimet, he cut the boy on the arm. No one did nothin' about it. Ain't no real law in these parts, you see, and wasn't nobody brave enough to do nothin'. Me included. And he did lots of other mean things, even killed a couple of men, and claimed self-defense. Might have been, but Gimet was always into something, and whatever he was into always turned out with someone dead, or hurt, or humiliated."

"Bill here sounds like he could be Gimet's brother," the deputy said.

"Oh, no," Old Timer said, shaking his head. "This here scum-licker ain't a bump on the mean old ass of Gimet. Gimet lived in a little shack off Cemetery Road. He raised bees, and brought in honey to sell at the community up the road.

Guess you could even call it a town. Schow is the way the place is known, on account of a fella used to live up there was named Schow. He died and got ate up by pigs. Right there in his own pen, just keeled over slopping the hogs, and then they slopped him, all over that place. A store got built on top of where Schow got et up, and that's how the place come by the name. Gimet took his honey in there to the store and sold it, and even though he was a turd, he had some of the best honey you ever smacked your mouth around. Wish I had me some now. It was dark and rich, and sweeter than any sugar. Think that's one reason he got away with things. People don't like killing and such, but they damn sure like their honey."

"This story got a point?" Bill said.

"You don't like way I'm telling it," Old Timer said, "why don't you think about how that rope's gonna fit around your neck. That ought to keep your thoughts occupied, right smart."

Bill made a grunting noise, turned on his block of wood, as if to show he wasn't interested.

"Well, now, honey or not, sweet tooth or not, everything has an end to it.

And thing was he took to a little gal, Mary Lynn Twoshoe. She was a part-Indian gal, a real looker, hair black as the bottom of a well, eyes the same color, and she was just as fine in the features as them pictures you see of them stage actresses.

She wasn't five feet tall, and that hair of hers went all the way down her back.

Her daddy was dead. The pox got him. And her mama wasn't too well off, being sickly, and all. She made brooms out of straw and branches she trimmed down.

Sold a few of them, raised a little garden and a hog. When all this happened, Mary Lynn was probably thirteen, maybe fourteen. Wasn't no older than that."

"If you're gonna tell a tale," Bill said, "least don't wander all over the place."

"So, you're interested?" Old Timer said.

"What else I got to do?" Bill said.

"Go on," Jebidiah said. "Tell us about Mary Lynn."

Old Timer nodded. "Gimet took to her. Seen her around, bringing the brooms her mama made into the store. He waited on her, grabbed her, and just throwed her across his saddle, kickin' and screamin', like he'd bought a sack of flour and was ridin' it to the house. Mack Collins, store owner, came out and tried to stop him. Well, he said something to him. About how he shouldn't do it, least that's the way I heard it. He didn't push much, and I can't blame him. Didn't do good to cross Gimet. Anyway, Gimet just said back to Mack, 'Give her mama a big jar of honey. Tell her that's for her daughter. I'll even make her another jar or two, if the meat here's as sweet as I'm expecting.'

"With that, he slapped Mary Lynn on the ass and rode off with her."

"Sounds like my kind of guy," Bill said.

"I have become irritated with you now," Jebidiah said. "Might I suggest you shut your mouth before I pistol-whip you."

Bill glared at Jebidiah, but the Reverend's gaze was as dead and menacing as the barrels of Old Timer's shotgun.

"Rest of the story is kind of grim," Old Timer said. "Gimet took her off to his house and had his way with her. So many times he damn near killed her. And then he turned her loose, or got so drunk she was able to get loose. Time she walked down Cemetery Road, made it back to town, well, she was bleeding so bad from having been used so rough, she collapsed. She lived a day and died from loss of blood. Her mother, out of her sickbed, rode a mule out there to the cemetery on Cemetery Road. I told you she was Indian, and she knew some Indian ways, and she knew about them old gods that wasn't none of the gods of her people, but she still knew about them.

"She knew some signs to draw in cemetery dirt. I don't know the whole of it, but she did some things, and she did it on some old grave out there, and the last thing she did was she cut her own throat, died right there, her blood running on top of that grave and them pictures she drawed in the dirt."

"Don't see how that done her no good," the deputy said.

"Maybe it didn't, but folks think it did," Old Timer said. "Community that had been pushed around by Gimet finally had enough, went out there in mass to hang his ass, shoot him, whatever it took. Got to his cabin, they found Gimet dead outside his shack. His eyes had been torn out, or blown out is how they looked. Skin was peeled off his head, just leaving the skull and a few hairs. His chest was ripped open, and his insides was gone, exceptin' the bones in there.

And them bees of his had nested in the hole in his chest, had done gone about making honey. Was buzzing out of that hole, his mouth, empty eyes, nose . . . or where his nose used to be. I figure they'd rolled him over, tore off his pants, they'd have been coming out of his asshole."

"How come you weren't out there with them?" Bill said. "How come this is all stuff you heard?"

"Because I was a coward when it come to Gimet," Old Timer said. "That's why. Told myself

wouldn't never be a coward again, no matter what. I should have been with them. Didn't matter

no how. He was done good and dead, them bees all in him. What was done then is the crowd got kind of loco, tore off his clothes, hooked his feet up to a horse and dragged him through a blackberry patch, them bees just burstin' out and hummin' all around him. All that ain't right, but I think I'd been with them, knowing who he was and all the things he'd done, I might have been loco, too. They dumped him out on the cemetery to let him rot, took that girl's mother home to be buried some place better. Wasn't no more than a few nights later that folks started seeing Gimet. They said he walked at night, when the moon was at least half, or full, like it is now. Number of folks seen him, said he loped alongside the road, following their horses, grabbing hold of the tail if he could, trying to pull horse and rider down, or pull himself up on the back of their mounts. Said them bees was still in him. Bees black as flies and angry, whirling all about him, and coming from inside him. Worse, there was a larger number of folks took that road that wasn't never seen again. It was figured Gimet got them."

"Horseshit," the deputy said. "No disrespect, Old Timer. You've treated me all right, that's for sure. But a ghost chasing folks down. I don't buy that."

"Don't have to buy it," Old Timer said. "I ain't trying to sell it to you none.

Don't have to believe it. And I don't think it's no ghost anyway. I think that girl's mother, she done something to let them old gods out for awhile, sicced them on that bastard, used her own life as a sacrifice, that's what I think. And them gods, them things from somewhere else, they ripped him up like that. Them bees is part of that, too. They ain't no regular honeybees. They're some other kind of bees.

Some kind of fitting death for a bee raiser, is my guess."

"That's silly," the deputy said.

"I don't know," Jebidiah said. "The Indian woman may only have succeeded in killing him in this life. She may not have understood all that she did. Didn't know she was giving him an opportunity to live again . . . or maybe that is the curse. Though there are plenty others have to suffer for it."

"Like the folks didn't do nothing when Gimet was alive," Old Timer said. "

Folks like me that let what went on go on."

Jebidiah nodded. "Maybe."

The deputy looked at Jebidiah. "Not you too, Reverend. You should know better than that. There ain't but one true god, and ain't none of that hoodoo business got a drop of truth to it."

"If there's one god," Jebidiah said, "there can be many. They are at war with one another, that's how it works, or so I think. I've seen some things that have shook my faith in the one true god, the one I'm servant to. And what is our god but hoodoo? It's all hoodoo, my friend."

"Okay. What things have you seen, Reverend?" the deputy asked.

"No use describing it to you, young man," Jebidiah said. "You wouldn't believe me. But I've recently come from Mud Creek. It had an infestation of a sort. That town burned down, and I had a hand in it."

"Mud Creek," Old Timer said. "I been there."

"Only thing there now," Jebidiah said, "is some charred wood."

"Ain't the first time it's burned down," Old Timer said. "Some fool always rebuilds it, and with it always comes some kind of ugliness. I'll tell you straight. I don't doubt your word at all, Reverend."

"Thing is," the deputy said, "I don't believe in no haints. That's the shortest road, and it's the road I'm gonna take."

"I wouldn't," Old Timer said.

"Thanks for the advice. But no one goes with me or does, that's the road I'm taking, provided it cuts a day off my trip."

"I'm going with you," Jebidiah said. "My job is to strike at evil. Not to walk around it."

"I'd go during the day," Old Timer said. "Ain't no one seen Gimet in the day, or when the moon is thin or not at all. But way it is now, it's full, and will be again tomorrow night. I'd ride hard tomorrow, you're determined to go. Get there as soon as you can, before dark."

"I'm for getting there," the deputy said. "I'm for getting back to Nacogdoches, and getting this bastard in a cell."

"I'll go with you," Jebidiah said. "But I want to be there at night. I want to take Deadman's Road at that time. I want to see if Gimet is there. And if he is, send him to his final death. Defy those dark gods the girl's mother called up.

Defy them and loose my god on him. What I'd suggest is you get some rest, Deputy. Old Timer here can watch a bit, then I'll take over. That way we all get some rest. We can chain this fellow to a tree outside, we have to. We should both get slept up to the gills, then leave here mid-day, after a good dinner, head out for Deadman's Road. Long as we're there by nightfall."

"That ought to bring you right on it," Old Timer said. "You take Deadman's Road. When you get to the fork, where the road ends, you go right. Ain't no one ever seen Gimet beyond that spot, or in front of where the road begins. He's tied to that stretch, way I heard it."

"Good enough," the deputy said. "I find this all foolish, but if I can get some rest, and have you ride along with me, Reverend, then I'm game. And I'll be fine with getting there at night."

-*-

Next morning they slept late, and had an early lunch. Beans and hard biscuits again, a bit of stewed squirrel. Old Timer had shot the rodent that morning while Jebidiah watched Bill sit on his ass, his hands chained around a tree in the front yard. Inside the cabin, the deputy had continued to sleep.

But now they all sat outside eating, except for Bill.

"What about me?" Bill asked, tugging at his chained hands.

"When we finish," Old Timer said. "Don't know if any of the squirrel will be left, but we got them biscuits for you. I can promise you some of them. I might even let you rub one of them around in my plate, sop up some squirrel gravy."

"Those biscuits are awful," Bill said.

"Ain't they," Old Timer said.

Bill turned his attention to Jebidiah. "Preacher, you ought to just go on and leave me and the boy here alone. Ain't smart for you to ride along, 'cause I get loose, ain't just the deputy that's gonna pay. I'll put you on the list."

"After what I've seen in this life," Jebidiah said, "you are nothing to me. An insect. . . . So, add me to your list."

"Let's feed him," the deputy said, nodding at Bill, "and get to moving. I'm feeling rested and want to get this ball started."

-*-

The moon had begun to rise when they rode in sight of Deadman's Road.

The white crossroad sign was sticking up beside the road. Trees and brush had grown up around it, and between the limbs and the shadows, the crudely painted words on the sign were halfway readable in the waning light. The wind had picked up and was grabbing at leaves, plucking them from the ground, tumbling them about, tearing them from trees and tossing them across the narrow, clay road with a sound like mice scuttling in straw.

"Fall always depresses me," the deputy said, halting his horse, taking a swig from his canteen.

"Life is a cycle," Jebidiah said. "You're born, you suffer, then you're punished."

The deputy turned in his saddle to look at Jebidiah. "You ain't much on that resurrection and reward, are you?"

"No, I'm not."

"I don't know about you," the deputy said, "but I wish we hadn't gotten here so late. I'd rather have gone through in the day."

"Thought you weren't a believer in spooks?" Bill said, and made with his now familiar snort. "You said it didn't matter to you."

The deputy didn't look at Bill when he spoke. "I wasn't here then. Place has a look I don't like. And I don't enjoy temptin' things. Even if I don't believe in them."

"That's the silliest thing I ever heard," Bill said.

"Wanted me with you," Jebidiah said. "You had to wait."

"You mean to see something, don't you, preacher?" Bill said.

"If there is something to see," Jebidiah said.

"You believe Old Timer's story?" the deputy said. "I mean, really?"

"Perhaps."

Jebidiah clucked to his horse and took the lead.

-*-

When they turned onto Deadman's Road, Jebidiah paused and removed a small, fat Bible from his saddlebag.

The deputy paused too, forcing Bill to pause as well. "You ain't as ornery as I thought," the deputy said. "You want the peace of the Bible just like anyone else."

"There is no peace in this book," Jebidiah said. "That's a real confusion.

Bible isn't anything but a book of terror, and that's how God is: terrible. But the book has power. And we might need it."

"I don't know what to think about you, Reverend," the deputy said.

"Ain't nothin' you can think about a man that's gone loco," Bill said. "I don't want to stay with no man that's loco."

"You get an idea to run, Bill, I can shoot you off your horse," the deputy said. "Close range with my revolver, far range with my rifle. You don't want to try it."

"It's still a long way to Nacogdoches," Bill said.

-*-

The road was narrow and of red clay. It stretched far ahead like a band of blood, turned sharply to the right around a wooded curve where it was a dark as the bottom of Jonah's whale. The blowing leaves seemed especially intense on the road, scraping dryly about, winding in the air like giant hornets. The trees, which grew thick, bent in the wind, from right to left. This naturally led the trio to take to the left side of the road.

The farther they went down the road, the darker it became. By the time they got to the curve, the woods were so thick, and the thunderous skies had grown so dark, the moon was barely visible; its light was as weak as a sick baby's grip.

When they had traveled for some time, the deputy said, obviously feeling good about it, "There ain't nothing out here 'sides what you would expect. A possum maybe. The wind."

"Good for you, then," Jebidiah said. "Good for us all."

"You sound disappointed to me," the deputy said.

"My line of work isn't far from yours, Deputy. I look for bad guys of a sort, and try and send them to hell . . . or in some cases, back to hell."

And then, almost simultaneous with a flash of lightning, something crossed the road not far in front of them.

"What the hell was that?" Bill said, coming out of what had been a near stupor.

"It looked like a man," the deputy said.

"Could have been," Jebidiah said. "Could have been."

"What do you think it was?"

"You don't want to know."

"I do."

"Gimet," Jebidiah said.

-*-

The sky let the moon loose for a moment, and its light spread through the trees and across the road. In the light there were insects, a large wad of them, buzzing about in the air.

"Bees," Bill said. "Damn if them ain't bees. And at night. That ain't right."

"You an expert on bees?" the deputy asked.

"He's right," Jebidiah said. "And look, they're gone now."

"Flew off," the deputy said.

"No . . . no, they didn't," Bill said. "I was watching, and they didn't fly nowhere. They're just gone. One moment they were there, then they was gone, and that's all there is to it. They're like ghosts."

"You done gone crazy," the deputy said.

"They are not insects of this earth," Jebidiah said. "They are familiars."

"What?" Bill said.

"They assist evil, or evil beings," Jebidiah said. "In this case, Gimet.

They're like a witches black cat familiar. Familiars take on animal shapes, insects, that sort of thing."

"That's ridiculous," the deputy said. "That don't make no kind of sense at all."

"Whatever you say," Jebidiah said, "but I would keep my eyes alert, and my senses raw. Wouldn't hurt to keep your revolvers loose in their holsters. You could well need them. Though, come to think of it, your revolvers won't be much use."

"What the hell does that mean?" Bill said.

Jebidiah didn't answer. He continued to urge his horse on, something that was becoming a bit more difficult as they went. All of the horses snorted and turned their heads left and right, tugged at their bits; their ears went back and their eyes went wide.

"Holy hell," Bill said, "what's that?"

Jebidiah and the deputy turned to look at him. Bill was turned in the saddle, looking back. They looked too, just in time to see something that looked pale blue in the moonlight dive into the brush on the other side of the road. Black dots followed, swarmed in the moonlight, then darted into the bushes behind the pale, blue thing like a load of buckshot.

"What was that?" the deputy said. His voice sounded as if it had been pistol-whipped.

"Already told you," Jebidiah said.

"That couldn't have been nothing human," the deputy said.

"Don't you get it?" Bill said. "That's what the preacher is trying to tell you.

It's Gimet, and he ain't nowhere alive. His skin was blue. And he's all messed up.

I seen more than you did. I got a good look. And them bees. We ought to break out and ride hard."

"Do as you choose," the Reverend said. "I don't intend to."

"And why not?" Bill said.

"That isn't my job."

"Well, I ain't got no job. Deputy, ain't you supposed to make sure I get to Nacogdoches to get hung? Ain't that your job?"

"It is."

"Then we ought to ride on, not bother with this fool. He wants to fight some grave crawler, then let him. Ain't nothing we ought to get into."

"We made a pact to ride together," the deputy said. "So we will."

"I didn't make no pact," Bill said.

"Your word, your needs, they're nothing to me," the deputy said.

At that moment, something began to move through the woods on their left.

Something moving quick and heavy, not bothering with stealth. Jebidiah looked in the direction of the sounds, saw someone, or something, moving through the underbrush, snapping limbs aside like they were rotten sticks. He could hear the buzz of the bees, loud and angry. Without really meaning to, he urged the horse to a trot. The deputy and Bill joined in with their own mounts, keeping pace with the Reverend's horse.

They came to a place off the side of the road where the brush thinned, and out in the distance they could see what looked like bursting white waves, frozen against the dark. But they soon realized it was tombstones. And there were crosses. A graveyard. The graveyard Old Timer had told them about. The sky had cleared now, the wind had ceased to blow hard. They had a fine view of the cemetery, and as they watched, the thing that had been in the brush moved out of it and went up the little rise where the graves were, climbed up on one of the stones and sat. A black cloud formed around its head, and the sound of buzzing could be heard all the way out to the road. The thing sat there like a king on a throne. Even from that distance it was easy to see it was nude, and male, and his skin was gray--blue in the moonlight--and the head looked misshapen. Moon glow slipped through cracks in the back of the horror's head and poked out of fresh cracks at the front of its skull and speared out of the empty eye sockets. The bee's nest, visible through the wound in its chest, was nestled between the ribs. It pulsed with a yellow-honey glow. From time to time, little black dots moved around the glow and flew up and were temporarily pinned in the moonlight above the creature's head.

"Jesus," said the deputy.

"Jesus won't help a bit," Jebidiah said.

"It's Gimet, ain't it? He . . . it . . . really is dead," the deputy said.

"Undead," Jebidiah said. "I believe he's toying with us. Waiting for when he plans to strike."

"Strike?" Bill said. "Why?"

"Because that is his purpose," Jebidiah said, "as it is mine to strike back.

Gird your loins men, you will soon be fighting for your life."

"How about we just ride like hell?" Bill said.

In that moment, Jebidiah's words became prophetic. The thing was gone from the gravestone. Shadows had gathered at the edge of the woods, balled up, become solid, and when the shadows leaped from the even darker shadows of the trees, it was the shape of the thing they had seen on the stone, cool blue in the moonlight, a disaster of a face, and the teeth . . . they were long and sharp. Gimet leaped in such a way that his back foot hit the rear of Jebidiah's animal, allowing him to spring over the deputy's horse, to land hard and heavy on Bill. Bill let out a howl and was knocked off his mount. When he hit the road, his hat flying, Gimet grabbed him by his bushy head of straw-colored hair and dragged him off as easily as if he were a kitten. Gimet went into the trees, tugging Bill after him.

Gimet blended with the darkness there. The last of Bill was a scream, the raising of his cuffed hands, the cuffs catching the moonlight for a quick blink of silver, then there was a rustle of leaves and a slapping of branches, and Bill was gone.

"My God," the deputy said. "My God. Did you see that thing?"

Jebidiah dismounted, moved to the edge of the road, leading his horse, his gun drawn. The deputy did not dismount. He pulled his pistol and held it, his hands trembling. "Did you see that?" he said again, and again.

"My eyes are as good as your own," Jebidiah said. "I saw it. We'll have to go in and get him."

"Get him?" the deputy said. "Why in the name of everything that's holy would we do that? Why would we want to be near that thing? He's probably done what he's done already. . . . Damn, Reverend. Bill, he's a killer. This is just as good as I might want. I say while the old boy is doing whatever he's doing to that bastard, we ride like the goddamn wind, get on out on the far end of this road where it forks. Gimet is supposed to be only able to go on this stretch, ain't he?"

"That's what Old Timer said. You do as you want. I'm going in after him."

"Why? You don't even know him."

"It's not about him," Jebidiah said.

"Ah, hell. I ain't gonna be shamed." The deputy swung down from his horse, pointed at the place where Gimet had disappeared with Bill. "Can we get the horses through there?"

"Think we will have to go around a bit. I discern a path over there."

"Discern?"

"Recognize. Come on, time is wasting."

-*-

They went back up the road a pace, found a trail that led through the trees.

The moon was strong now as all the clouds that had covered it had rolled away like windblown pollen. The air smelled fresh, but as they moved forward, that changed. There was a stench in the air, a putrid smell both sweet and sour, and it floated up and spoiled the freshness.

"Something dead," the deputy said.

"Something long dead," Jebidiah said.

Finally the brush grew so thick they had to tie the horses, leave them. They pushed their way through briars and limbs.

"There ain't no path," the deputy said. "You don't know he come through this way."

Jebidiah reached out and plucked a piece of cloth from a limb, held it up so that the moon dropped rays on it. "This is part of Bill's shirt. Am I right?"

The deputy nodded. "But how could Gimet get through here? How could he get Bill through here?"

"What we pursue has little interest in the things that bother man. Limbs, briars. It's nothing to the living dead."

They went on for a while. Vines got in their way. The vines were wet. They were long, thick vines, and sticky, and finally they realized they were not vines at all, but guts, strewn about and draped like decorations.

"Fresh," the deputy said. "Bill, I reckon."

"You reckon right," Jebidiah said.

They pushed on a little farther, and the trail widened, making the going easier. They found more pieces of Bill as they went along. The stomach. Fingers.

Pants with one leg in them. A heart, which looked as if it had been bitten into and sucked on. Jebidiah was curious enough to pick it up and examine it. Finished, he tossed it in the dirt, wiped his hands on Bill's pants leg, the one with the leg still in it, said, "Gimet just saved you a lot of bother and the state of Texas the trouble of a hanging."

"Heavens," the deputy said, watching Jebidiah wipe blood on the leg-filled pants.

Jebidiah looked up at the deputy. "He won't mind I get blood on his pants,"

Jebidiah said. "He's got more important things to worry about, like dancing in the fires of hell. And by the way, yonder sports his head."

Jebidiah pointed. The deputy looked. Bill's head had been pushed onto a broken limb of a tree, the sharp end of the limb being forced through the rear of the skull and out the left eye. The spinal cord dangled from the back of the head like a bell rope.

The deputy puked in the bushes. "Oh, God. I don't want no more of this."

"Go back. I won't think the less of you, 'cause I don't think that much of you to begin with. Take his head for evidence and ride on, just leave me my horse."

The deputy adjusted his hat. "Don't need the head. . . . And if it comes to it, you'll be glad I'm here. I ain't no weak sister."

"Don't talk me to death on the matter. Show me what you got, boy."

The trail was slick with Bill's blood. They went along it and up a rise, guns drawn. At the top of the hill they saw a field, grown up, and not far away, a sagging shack with a fallen-down chimney.

They went that direction, came to the shack's door. Jebidiah kicked it with the toe of his boot and it sagged open. Once inside, Jebidiah struck a match and waved it about. Nothing but cobwebs and dust.

"Must have been Gimet's place," Jebidiah said. Jebidiah moved the match before him until he found a lantern full of coal oil. He lit it and placed the lantern on the table.

"Should we do that?" the deputy asked. "Have a light. Won't he find us?"

"In case you have forgotten, that's the idea."

Out the back window, which had long lost its grease-paper covering, they could see tombstones and wooden crosses in the distance. "Another view of the graveyard," Jebidiah said. "That would be where the girl's mother killed herself."

No sooner had Jebidiah said that than he saw a shadowy shape move on the hill, flitting between stones and crosses. The shape moved quickly and awkwardly.

"Move to the center of the room," Jebidiah said.

The deputy did as he was told, and Jebidiah moved the lamp there as well.

He sat it in the center of the floor, found a bench and dragged it next to the lantern. Then he reached in his coat pocket and took out the Bible. He dropped to one knee and held the Bible close to the lantern light and tore out certain pages.

He wadded them up, and began placing them all around the bench on the floor, placing the crumpled pages about six feet out from the bench and in a circle with each wad two feet apart.

The deputy said nothing. He sat on the bench and watched Jebidiah's curious work. Jebidiah sat on the bench beside the deputy, rested one of his pistols on his knee. "You got a .44, don't you?"

"Yeah. I got a converted-cartridge pistol, just like you."

"Give me your revolver."

The deputy complied.

Jebidiah opened the cylinders and let the bullets fall out on the floor.

"What in hell are you doing?"

Jebidiah didn't answer. He dug into his gun belt and came up with six silver-tipped bullets, loaded the weapon and gave it back to the deputy.

"Silver," Jebidiah said. "Sometimes it wards off evil."

"Sometimes?"

"Be quiet now. And wait."

"I feel like a staked goat," the deputy said.

After a while, Jebidiah rose from the bench and looked out the window.

Then he sat down promptly and blew out the lantern.

-*-

Somewhere in the distance a night bird called. Crickets sawed and a large frog bleated. They sat there on the bench, near each other, facing in opposite directions, their silver-loaded pistols on their knees. Neither spoke.

Suddenly the bird ceased to call and the crickets went silent, and no more was heard from the frog. Jebidiah whispered to the deputy.

"He comes."

The deputy shivered slightly, took a deep breath. Jebidiah realized he too was breathing deeply.

"Be silent, and be alert," Jebidiah said.

"All right," said the deputy, and he locked his eyes on the open window at the back of the shack. Jebidiah faced the door, which stood halfway open and sagging on its rusty hinges.

For a long time there was nothing. Not a sound. Then Jebidiah saw a shadow move at the doorway and heard the door creak slightly as it moved. He could see a hand on what appeared to be an impossibly long arm, reaching out to grab at the edge of the door. The hand clutched there for a long time, not moving.

Then, it was gone, taking its shadow with it.

Time crawled by.

"It's at the window," the deputy said, and his voice was so soft it took Jebidiah a moment to decipher the words. Jebidiah turned carefully for a look.

It sat on the windowsill, crouched there like a bird of prey, a halo of bees circling its head. The hive pulsed and glowed in its chest, and in that glow they could see more bees, so thick they appeared to be a sort of humming smoke.

Gimet's head sprouted a few springs of hair, like withering grass fighting its way through stone. A slight turn of its head allowed the moon to flow through the back of its cracked skull and out of its empty eyes. Then the head turned and the face was full of shadows again. The room was silent except for the sound of buzzing bees.

"Courage," Jebidiah said, his mouth close to the deputy's ear. "Keep your place."

The thing climbed into the room quickly, like a spider dropping from a limb, and when it hit the floor, it stayed low, allowing the darkness to lay over it like a cloak.

Jebidiah had turned completely on the bench now, facing the window. He heard a scratching sound against the floor. He narrowed his eyes, saw what looked like a shadow, but was in fact the thing coming out from under the table.

Jebidiah felt the deputy move, perhaps to bolt. He grabbed his arm and held him.

"Courage," he said.

The thing kept crawling. It came within three feet of the circle made by the crumpled Bible pages.

The way the moonlight spilled through the window and onto the floor near the circle Jebidiah had made, it gave Gimet a kind of eerie glow, his satellite bees circling his head. In that moment, every aspect of the thing locked itself in Jebidiah's mind. The empty eyes, the sharp, wet teeth, the long, cracked nails, blackened from grime, clacking against the wooden floor. As it moved to cross between two wads of scripture, the pages burst into flames and a line of crackling blue fulmination moved between the wadded pages and made the circle light up fully, all the way around, like Ezekiel's wheel.

Gimet gave out with a hoarse cry, scuttled back, clacking nails and knees against the floor. When he moved, he moved so quickly there seemed to be missing spaces between one moment and the next. The buzzing of Gimet's bees was ferocious.

Jebidiah grabbed the lantern, struck a match and lit it. Gimet was scuttling along the wall like a cockroach, racing to the edge of the window.

Jebidiah leaped forward, tossed the lit lantern, hit the beast full in the back as it fled through the window. The lantern burst into flames and soaked Gimet's back, causing a wave of fire to climb from the thing's waist to the top of its head, scorching a horde of bees, dropping them from the sky like exhausted meteors.

Jebidiah drew his revolver, snapped off a shot. There was a howl of agony, and then the thing was gone.

Jebidiah raced out of the protective circle and the deputy followed. They stood at the open window, watched as Gimet, flame-wrapped, streaked through the night in the direction of the graveyard.

"I panicked a little," Jebidiah said. "I should have been more resolute. Now he's escaped."

"I never even got off a shot," the deputy said. "God, but you're fast. What a draw."

"Look, you stay here if you like. I'm going after him. But I tell you now, the circle of power has played out."

The deputy glanced back at it. The pages had burned out and there was nothing now but a black ring on the floor.

"What in hell caused them to catch fire in the first place?"

"Evil," Jebidiah said. "When he got close, the pages broke into flame. Gave us the protection of God. Unfortunately, as with most of God's blessings, it doesn't last long."

"I stay here, you'd have to put down more pages."

"I'll be taking the Bible with me. I might need it."

"Then I guess I'll be sticking."

-*-

They climbed out the window and moved up the hill. They could smell the odor of fire and rotted flesh in the air. The night was as cool and silent as the graves on the hill.

Moments later they moved amongst the stones and wooden crosses, until they came to a long wide hole in the earth. Jebidiah could see that there was a burrow at one end of the grave that dipped down deeper into the ground.

Jebidiah paused there. "He's made this old grave his den. Dug it out and dug deeper."

"How do you know?" the deputy asked.

"Experience . . . and it smells of smoke and burned skin. He crawled down there to hide. I think we surprised him a little."

Jebidiah looked up at the sky. There was the faintest streak of pink on the horizon. "He's running out of daylight, and soon he'll be out of moon. For a while."

"He damn sure surprised me. Why don't we let him hide? You could come back when the moon isn't full, or even half full. Back in the daylight, get him then."

"I'm here now. And it's my job."

"That's one hell of a job you got, mister."

"I'm going to climb down for a better look."

"Help yourself."

Jebidiah struck a match and dropped himself into the grave, moved the match around at the mouth of the burrow, got down on his knees and stuck the match and his head into the opening.

"Very large," he said, pulling his head out. "I can smell him. I'm going to have to go in."

"What about me?"

"You keep guard at the lip of the grave," Jebidiah said, standing. "He may have another hole somewhere, he could come out behind you for all I know. He could come out of that hole even as we speak."

"That's wonderful."

Jebidiah dropped the now-dead match on the ground. "I will tell you this. I can't guarantee success. I lose, he'll come for you, you can bet on that, and you better shoot those silvers as straight as William Tell's arrows."

"I'm not really that good a shot."

"I'm sorry," Jebidiah said, and struck another match along the length of his pants seam, then with his free hand drew one of his revolvers. He got down on his hands and knees again, stuck the match in the hole and looked around. When the match was near done, he blew it out.

"Ain't you gonna need some light?" the deputy said. "A match ain't nothin'."

"I'll have it." Jebidiah removed the remains of the Bible from his pocket, tore it in half along the spine, pushed one half in his coat, pushed the other half before him, into the darkness of the burrow. The moment it entered the hole, it flamed.

"Ain't your pocket gonna catch inside that hole?" the deputy asked.

"As long as I hold it or it's on my person, it won't harm me. But the minute I let go of it, and the aura of evil touches it, it'll blaze. I got to hurry, boy."

With that, Jebidiah wiggled inside the burrow.

-*-

In the burrow, Jebidiah used the tip of his pistol to push the Bible pages forward. They glowed brightly, but Jebidiah knew the light would be brief. It would burn longer than writing paper, but still, it would not last long.

After a goodly distance, Jebidiah discovered the burrow dropped off. He found himself inside a fairly large cavern. He could hear the sound of bats, and smell bat guano, which, in fact, greased his path as he slid along on his elbows until he could stand inside the higher cavern and look about. The last flames of the Bible burned out with a puff of blue light and a sound like an old man breathing his last.

Jebidiah listened in the dark for a long moment. He could hear the bats squeaking, moving about. The fact that they had given up the night sky let Jebidiah know daylight was not far off.

Jebidiah's ears caught a sound, rocks shifting against the cave floor.

Something was moving in the darkness, and he didn't think it was the bats. It scuttled, and Jebidiah felt certain it was close to the floor, and by the sound of it, moving his way at a creeping pace. The hair on the back of Jebidiah's neck bristled like porcupine quills. He felt his flesh bump up and crawl. The air became stiffer with the stench of burnt and rotting flesh. Jebidiah's knees trembled. He reached cautiously inside his coat pocket, produced a match, struck it on his pants leg, held it up.

At that very moment, the thing stood up and was brightly lit in the glow of the match, the bees circling its skin-stripped skull. It snarled and darted forward.

Jebidiah felt its rotten claws on his shirt front as he fired the revolver. The blaze from the bullet gave a brief, bright flare and was gone. At the same time, the match was knocked out of his hand and Jebidiah was knocked backwards, onto his back, the thing's claws at his throat. The monster's bees stung him. The stings felt like red-hot pokers entering his flesh. He stuck the revolver into the creature's body and fired. Once. Twice. Three times. A fourth.

Then the hammer clicked empty. He realized he had already fired two other shots. Six dead silver soldiers were in his cylinders, and the thing still had hold of him.

He tried to draw his other gun, but before he could, the thing released him, and Jebidiah could hear it crawling away in the dark. The bats fluttered and screeched.

Confused, Jebidiah drew the pistol, managed to get to his feet. He waited, listening, his fresh revolver pointing into the darkness.

Jebidiah found another match, struck it.

The thing lay with its back draped over a rise of rock. Jebidiah eased toward it. The silver loads had torn into the hive. It oozed a dark, odiferous trail of death and decaying honey. Bees began to drop to the cavern floor. The hive in Gimet's chest sizzled and pulsed like a large, black knot. Gimet opened his mouth, snarled, but otherwise didn't move.

Couldn't move.

Jebidiah, guided by the last wisps of his match, raised the pistol, stuck it against the black knot, and pulled the trigger. The knot exploded. Gimet let out with a shriek so sharp and loud it startled the bats to flight, drove them out of the cave, through the burrow, out into the remains of the night.

Gimet's claw-like hands dug hard at the stones around him, then he was still and Jebidiah's match went out.

-*-

Jebidiah found the remains of the Bible in his pocket, and as he removed it, tossed it on the ground, it burst into flames. Using the two pistol barrels like large tweezers, he lifted the burning pages and dropped them into Gimet's open chest. The body caught on fire immediately, crackled and popped dryly, and was soon nothing more than a blaze. It lit the cavern up bright as day.

Jebidiah watched the corpse being consumed by the biblical fire for a moment, then headed toward the burrow, bent down, squirmed through it, came up in the grave.

He looked for the deputy and didn't see him. He climbed out of the grave and looked around. Jebidiah smiled. If the deputy had lasted until the bats charged out, that was most likely the last straw, and he had bolted.

Jebidiah looked back at the open grave. Smoke wisped out of the hole and out of the grave and climbed up to the sky. The moon was fading and the pink on the horizon was widening.

Gimet was truly dead now. The road was safe. His job was done.

At least for one brief moment.

Jebidiah walked down the hill, found his horse tied in the brush near the road where he had left it. The deputy's horse was gone, of course, the deputy most likely having already finished out Deadman's Road at a high gallop, on his way to Nacogdoches, perhaps to have a long drink of whisky and turn in his badge.

ALONE

The smooth silver rockets stood against the sky, silent sentinels piercing the night. Waiting for something or someone, those spaceships reminded him of those big, old stone faces down on the ridge outside of Mud Creek. He never knew rightly how they got there but their open mouths and wide eyes turned ever skyward seemed connected somehow, since the rockets never rusted and the moss never grew over the expectant stone features. They were always bright with the morning light or copper red with the dying sun. He liked them best when they glowed silver in the moonlight or burned like white gold when the moon vanished blindly behind clouds.

And though the rockets seemed ready for takeoff at any time of day or night, there was no one to ride in them. And no one had anything to do with them except him, James Leroy Carver, the self-appointed guardian of the town and the rockets--although what he did wouldn't pass for much and there was never anyone to pat him on the back and say, "Good job, Jim, good job!"

For that matter, there was hardly anyone left at all. There was Sleepy Sam who worked the fields with the help of his son, Cranky Dan'l, and Issy, a big spotted hound dog, two cows, a goat, two hogs and some chickens. They lived in a farmhouse that used to be white but was now faded into mottled gray. They also had a barn with a tin roof and some pitiful outbuildings they took care of just about as good as they took care of the vegetable garden that was surrounded by barbed wire--fair-to-middling. There used to be a horse but it died of old age. They gave Jim eggs, carrots, onions and potatoes when he helped out. He had to barter for anything else.

Behind and beyond the spaceships, the trees had started to come back, and Jim realized he had lived practically his entire life (how long that was he had no expert opinion) watching them return. First, they'd just been scorched sprouts, but somehow their roots had survived and given bloom to new life. Gradually, they inched up until they were almost taller than Jim. Lately, they'd grown as big as one of the sheds at Sleepy Sam's. It amazed him. Didn't seem quite right.

Were trees supposed to grow that fast?

The world was coming back green, and he felt like there was nothing much left but the green. His parents were long dead now. The Revolution had taken them.

Back in the before time, the bad times when he was really small, he hid more than anything.

The people who survived the fighting didn't seem much interested in him. Sometimes someone would take him in and feed him. Sometimes he'd just steal food. He stole so little, no one much minded. One time an ugly man--an outsider who talked funny--tried to take him outside of town on his bike but Jim cut him with his knife and bit him for good measure and escaped. And then Sleepy Sam had killed him after a poker game went wrong and the man refused to hand over his bike. Jim never knew the drifter's name. He hadn't been a regular in Mud Creek and certainly not on his street.

Part of the street sign had broken off so he couldn't quite remember the whole name of the street. Something Heights. His mom had had a book called Wuthering Heights that she liked a lot. "Nobody ever wrote a book as good as Wuthering Heights." Funny how things stuck in a person's head. Jim took to calling his place "Wuthering Heights," although most of the house had burned down during the Revolution when his parents ran off and left him or were killed.

He couldn't remember anything. Seemed his life began one day when he woke up in the back seat of the SUV, head on his plaid backpack, sucking his thumb and holding on to his old brown teddy and his blue blankie and his crackers. He loved his warm sleeping space in the family's unworkable SUV that was parked in what was left of the garage. He had been old enough then to survive.

And, in time, there was no one really hunting boy meat anymore, or anybody doing much of anything. Sleepy Sam said the cannibals focused on the still-crowded cities, not on the dead little towns or out here on the fringe--that's what Sleepy Sam said. Jim thought that suited him just fine out here by the rockets. And as far as it went, he was okay. Cannibals didn't like rockets, he guessed. Can't eat rockets. And they didn't seem to like any meat but human meat.

Animal meat must seem too tame.

"Stay here and keep your nose clean," Sleepy Sam said. He had a generator so he had electricity when the lights went out and stayed out a few years ago.

Most people left the little town during the Revolution or were killed by the monsters and the cannibals. Some stayed and some came back, then left again. They were primarily teens with no parents and no place to go, but the intense jungle that had suddenly surrounded and engulfed the town freaked them out and most left. They liked concrete and danger better. It put him in mind of The Jungle Book he kept in his ragged backpack. His parents were long dead now but they used to read from that book sometimes, together at night when he was little and dreaming about living in a jungle someday and here he was. The Revolution had taken his parents but given him the jungle. He kept a picture of another jungle at his sleeping space. He'd stolen it from the library. The picture also showed some terrible animals attacking each other. What if this jungle would summon such creatures? He began considering the possibility such wild beasts might arrive and decided he would always be ready. He kept his pocketknife, a sharp stick and a hammer always handy.

Not long ago there was a group that rode into town that seemed nice at first and then turned deadly. He had had little to no interaction with those just passing through Mud Creek, but these people laughed and danced and sang a lot. They built a big bonfire and ate rabbit and squirrel they shared with him. They made a game out of chasing a big beach ball one of them blew up and threw around like it was something special. Then one of the women got angry, the red-headed leader, and her man who had a long black beard. They fought like feral cats and it scared him. He crawled back home when they started killing each other.

The next day, when he went to see if their camp in the parking lot of the abandoned police station was still there, he found it wasn't. Gone from Mud Creek. He was relieved and sad at the same time.

-*-

"Good riddance to bad rubbish," Sleepy Sam had said when Jim told him and his son.

Cranky Dan'l, who rarely spoke, nodded his head.

"Dey kilt my hog, Billy. I hate dem," Dan'l said.

"They be lost wanderers, those gypsy kind. They don't care about nothing but getting high and eatin' all they can, stealin' all they can and fightin' about what they didn't eat and didn't steal," Sleepy Sam said.

"But they danced. They sang songs. They seemed real happy and they just went crazy."

"I know. But the whole world be crazy now, son. Just keep clear of weirdos."

Jim took the advice and a hat full of eggs and left.

-*-

Mud Creek was just a little town near the rockets now. Weeds and grass grew in the cracks of the streets, curbs and sidewalks. The windows of most buildings no longer were glass. Most of the stores had been looted and truthfully, Jim had done his share of looting before going away to hide, but after most of the people left, he found it just wasn't as much fun doing it alone.

Jim knew there was still much to be had for one man and he shouldn't act like a kid, afraid of the ghosts in the stores. If he needed something now, he just took it like a man. Jim knew he had to act like a man, not a little boy. The encounter with the ugly man had taught him that, as much as his own jungle dreams which sometimes included a sad-faced girl with big eyes and soft pink lips.

He wondered where everyone had gone to after they left Mud Creek and what in the Sam Hill could be better out there? He envisioned only the worst: all of them gone crazy and eating one another like sharks with blood in the water.

The town provided most of his needs and the library had provided books that taught him about things like sharks that he had never seen except in pictures, and about bears and such, the monkey, the lion, the birds. From Sleepy Sam and Cranky Dan'l, he also learned about how to plant the seeds from the stores, and because he planted them behind the garage, he survived because he didn't have to depend on Sleepy Sam or on anyone. He even bartered with his extras, sometimes with an old lady who made beeswax candles. She sold them in the center of town along with some moonshine her old man made, but she frightened him. She always made awful cannibal jokes.

"I got me a hankering for boy today. My stomach aches to eat me some boy. You know some boy I can eat? What's pink and white and et' all over?" she'd laugh.

"Raw boy," Jim would have to say or she wouldn't exchange her candle for what scavenged item he was proffering, usually some stolen book, unbroken crockery or beans. The old man's moonshine wasn't too bad and it was cheap. A book of matches and Jim was set with a jar full of amber fire. He didn't drink it, though. He used it to clean stuff.

-*-

Their set-up was in an old gasoline station that smelled funny. He avoided Mr. and Mrs.

(They had no other names that Jim knew of.)

He preferred the rockets.

He had even come to like the quiet, the sky and the moon, the stars at night. The sun in the daytime. The rain. He had a good shelter not far from the SUV where he hid things and sometimes slept when he wasn't too scared. It was inside one of the old rockets and it was roomy in there and the power that ran the lights never went down. It was not bad at all. He felt safe there, protected.

Being alone was not bad until he saw the girl. Saw her one day in town while he was hunting for things to barter with to go with what he grew. Saw her scrounging through an old Wal-Mart store, dressed only in a pink tee-shirt, flip-flops and boy's underwear. He saw her. She saw him.

And she ran. And in that moment he knew he did not truly like being alone or with farts like Sleepy Sam and his dumb son.

After that, he thought of her often. Her long blonde hair and the way she looked in that underwear.

He knew about girls--and women like Mrs. and the insane warrior woman and her maniac man who fought till they died. Girls were better. There had been girls when there was a school, but after the Revolution there were few more girls to see, just some guys. The girls often fled to the cities. He assumed some girls lived nearby, he'd just never seen any. He thought most went into hiding because of the monsters who enjoyed taking women to their masters, so he thought they were all gone and he figured cannibals liked girl meat even more than boy meat. He liked to watch the old movies Sleepy Sam had on videos and DVDs. Sleepy Sam had quite a stash and Jim had loved watching the Star Wars series over and over but Sam always demanded payment. Jim had swiped the first Star Wars movie and watched it several times on a small battery-powered DVD player he had found in some rich person's house, but the battery went dead and he hadn't found another one that would work. After awhile, though, he just got tired of the movies, especially the porno films Sleepy Sam adored. Too many pretty women in the movies.

It was better to know you were alone, and just be alone, and learn to like it. If you didn't, you thought too much, and if you thought too much, you hurt too much, and that led to wondering too much about imagined things that could not be. Then, if you held yourself in your hand at night and made pleasure come, it became a mean, hollow pleasure that only made you want the other and that made you feel just how lonely and alone you truly were.

If you didn't watch the DVDs and the jerky videos, then you didn't think about it so much.

Not so much.

Not as much.

But, once he knew the girl existed, he could not rest. He could no longer be alone and like it.

-*-

Alone was no longer the absence of others. It was a hollow ache, a hole that couldn't be plugged and had no bottom. Then he asked Sleepy Sam what he did to get over being lonesome.

"I just never think about it none."

"What about Dan'l's mom?"

"She died."

"Well, how'd you get over it?"

Sleepy Sam attacked the dirt with his hoe. "You just don't."

"Well, then how do you stand it?"

"You just do."

Not much help. Jim supposed the two were his best friends in the universe but they weren't really very bright. He guessed he would have to find the girl. He needed to talk to her.

-*-

On another day, as the year wound down and summer died out and the cool winds came in, bringing the first rains of the winter to come, he went back to town and scrounged about for some canned goods. He found some canned meat, and was happy even if the expiration date had come and gone years ago. He thought pork and beans and tuna and Spam would just make Mr. and Mrs. the happiest souls on the planet. And the tin of sardines, even if slightly spoiled, would make Sleepy Sam laugh. He also found a Corning Ware lid in excellent condition. That should be worth three candles at least. If he had a gun he might shoot something fresh to eat, but he had only seen a few crows and scrawny squirrels.

All the guns in town had been taken, the stores looted of them and their ammunition. So that was out. He fished from time to time with a pole, cord and a hook made from a paperclip.

Worms he dug out of the ground for bait. Sometimes he used crickets. But finding the canned meat was a good thing. He had thought it was all gone, but there were several cans in a store he thought he had checked out. They were stashed under a tarpaulin inside an old standing fridge.

It was the store where he had first seen the girl. He was hoping she might be there.

She wasn't.

He took the meat back to the rocket ship and ate the Spam with some fresh carrots and enjoyed it, but it didn't stop him from thinking about the girl, and he couldn't be happy alone anymore.

-*-

The boy had long dark hair. He kept it tied back with a strip of black leather. He acted tough, like he owned Mud Creek, and he made her so angry. He stole her stash of food that she'd found the day before. She watched him cram everything into a kid's backpack. Her stomach growled.

He was like a monster, one of those creeps that stole her family. She hated him and yearned for him at the same time. She decided to stalk him, pretend he was a beast she could capture and roast over a slow fire for dinner. A little garlic made anything edible. She carried a jar of garlic powder, pepper and salt with her at all times. Her mother had taught her how to cook when she was six years old. That was how old she was when the rockets came and the Revolution began.

The monsters. The cannibals. The robots.

How long had it taken her to reach Mud Creek? "Get to Mud Creek," were her mother's last words before the fire and the screams sent her running into the forest straight into the claws of a monster. She had told her the coordinates every night before bedtime and what to do when she got inside one of the spaceships. "Go home," her mother said. Sally didn't know where home was. She had to find out though.

She followed him quietly, like an Indian. Mother was an Indian. Maybe. Actually, Sally was not sure what Mother was, just that she was alone and much older than six.

And now seeing her reflection always disturbed her. How did she get so big? Her body had betrayed her. She even bled once a month and that meant she could have a baby. She saw a monster take a baby once. And she didn't want to know what it did with it. It frightened her.

How she wanted to rip it from its claws and protect it.

That was when she got the dog. The dog--a shaggy, golden retriever--became her friend and loyal companion. She knew his breed because her mother once showed her a dog book with wonderful pictures. When she saw him scavenging for food on the outskirts of a city, she called to him with a pang of longing sweeping through her: "Little One!" He came to her as if he had always known her. They slept together at night, Sally's hand often resting on his head. It was better than being alone. But the dog couldn't talk. She wished it could talk, explain to her what had gone so terribly wrong with the world that they had been forced to live like this, so alone, so horribly, hideously alone.

She called the dog Little One even though he wasn't exactly little because someone had once called her that. Maybe her mother or her father had whispered those words--his face was an even-more-distant memory than her mom's, featureless with two dark smudges for eyes and a mouth that never opened except to say, "Goodbye." She was not sure. Maybe she didn't even have a dad.

Sally tracked the boy to the library, a place of rotting books and broken computers, several times. It took all her courage to confront him on the third visit. He rummaged in the librarian's office, squatting in front of an old DVD player. "If I could just figure out how to make a battery or make a generator. I really should study on it some. I think I could do it. . . ." he said out loud, as if he knew she was standing behind him.

"I hate you," she finally said to force him to turn around, her shadow almost touching his. Of course he knew she was there. The light in her lantern glowed.

"Say what?" he turned slowly and looked at her.

"Won't do no good," she said, "that thing can't hear you scream when I kill you.

"I've decided to roast you well done with wild onion and garlic or make me some boy jerky that will last me a year or more. How'd that be? You scared yet?" She set the lantern down with one hand. In the other she held a Glock 19, something she stole from the last cannibal she'd killed.

"I don't think you want to do that," the boy said, eyes wide. The gun always frightened the country boys.

Sally smiled. "Maybe. Maybe not. If you got a knife, show it now. Toss it over here or I'll shoot you right between the eyes."

The knife slid between her feet. "I'm unarmed now. You got me dead to rights. But are you sure you want to kill and eat me? You don't look like a cannibal."

"There ain't much meat on you, I do confess. Some fat makes for better eating when it comes to roast meat."

"I got some carrots, onions, potatoes and I can get some eggs. Wouldn't that taste better?"

"Yeah and I bet you've got some Spam, pork and beans and sardines. Am I right, you lousy, no good, asshole THIEF?"

"And you got a cute T-shirt and some Hanes underwear I think I might like to have. Fair exchange?"

"Not on your life," Sally said, trying to keep a smile from flickering across her lips. The fall weather meant her legs were cold. And the T-shirt wasn't enough to protect her against the cold to come.

"And tea. I got tea back at my sleeping space. Lipton or some Stash spice tea I've been keeping for just the right time. I'll share it with you if you don't kill me. That's a fine piece of gun you got there. I don't reckon I've seen one of them guns before. Not in these parts, anyway.

You from the city?"

"I want my food back."

"I'll give it to you, just put the gun away. Okay? Let's be friends."

Her dog, Little One, had done nothing. He had stood beside her, didn't growl and his tail began wagging.

"Nice dog. What's its name?"

"Little One."

"He's not very little."

"I know and if you are mean to me, one word and you're dead meat."

"Okay."

"So--do you want to go shopping with me? I need me some clothes." Mother and Sally used to go shopping. She would never forget shopping. That was another word for scavenging now.

"Only if you don't kill me if we don't find much. There is this little clothes place that still has some wearable stuff. I bet you're kind of cold."

Sally looked at her torn, smelly T-shirt. "Yeah, I am. Lead the way."

The boy stood. He was a young man with long legs in worn jeans. The bare chest that showed through the opening of his button-less flannel shirt had brown hair on it while his shirt had sleeves that were far too short for his arms. He had some hair on his face, too, not a lot but enough to scare her just a little bit. At least it wasn't a lot and it looked kind of fine. Sally also realized he was a lot taller than she was. She followed him cautiously.

He led her out of the library and down about three blocks or so, to a small department store.

A few mannequins still stood in one display, miraculously sporting the latest in pre-Revolution, post-Republic of Texas fashion, cobwebby and filthy. But the shoes looked intact--sturdy black shoes that might fit. Hands slightly shaking, she snatched them and tried them on. He threw her some socks. She put them on and then tried the shoes. They fit. "This is good," she said. She didn't know how long they'd last but she'd take them.

"The best clothes are at the back in a storeroom most looters miss," the young man said.

"Okay. What's your name?"

"Jim, James Leroy Carver. What's yours?"

"Sally Louise Alice Mistral Corabeth Angelique Kiki Anne Robinson Lewis Thompson Johnson Mason Something or Other. In other words, I haven't the vaguest clue but I think my Mother called me Sally."

"Well, dang, that's a mouthful, Sally." He smiled.

Sally felt suddenly weak. He held out his hand. "Let's get you some new clothes. I could use some new trousers myself. These jeans are getting too tight."

They were tight, she noticed, but didn't think that was such a bad thing.

In the storeroom, the lantern came in handy. They tried on clothes, backs turned, used to nudity and unaware that seeing each other might provoke some strange feelings.

She looked at him like a wolf looked at a wounded pig when his pants slipped to the floor so he could try some gray silky suit pants.

"You don't got any underwear on. How come?"

He seemed stunned and uncomfortable. "Just don't see the point."

"Oh." She pulled on a short red skirt. "This is cute but I guess I need me some pants, too."

He threw her some jeans. She tried them and grinned. "I can wear these. They fit. I want me a shirt with pockets. And a jacket and sweater, too."

He grinned.

"I need me a backpack better'n that thing of yours. How come you carry such a little baby backpack? Don't you need a bigger one now? You're a man, not a kid."

"I guess I should. Never thought about it, really. Hey, thanks."

"Don't mention it."

"What do you mean?"

"I guess we're friends now."

She tried on a jacket after shaking the dust out of it. "This could do with a wash in the creek.

Mud Creek has a creek, doesn't it?"

"Sort of. We can go bathe in the creek, if you'd like, but you can't swim with a gun."

"I'd like that, Jim. But I want my food back first or I'm telling you I'll kill you and roast you for supper." She waved the Glock 19.

"Put that away or we can't be friends," he said.

-*-

Jim had done more talking with Sally than he'd ever done with another human being. She talked so much that it shocked him. He talked so much he got hoarse. They talked at the creek before they got naked and jumped in. He had never seen such a pretty girl in his life, certainly not one his own age and certainly not one with a gun.

He really wanted to look at the gun up close but she wouldn't let him. She made her dog sit on it while they swam.

Jim wanted to touch her so badly he actually ached. It hurt to watch her breasts bob in the water. They swam closer and closer to each other. He shook the cold water out of his ears when he came up for air after a few strokes that brought him right next to her. He suddenly had to do something or burst. He grabbed her and kissed her. She resisted at first and then she kissed him back. They were kind of sloppy at kissing.

It took a few tries before it felt right.

They kissed a lot and then she got scared and swam away. She got into her clothes, whistled to her dog and left. Jim treaded water for a while and then he got out before his skin got all wrinkled. The sun was going down and the warmth of the moment had vanished.

He waited for her to come back and get the food he'd stolen from her but she didn't. He didn't want to go all the way back into town to the SUV so instead he went to the rocket ship where he hid things.

That night he sat alone outside the Rocket and looked at the stars and wondered what she thought about their kisses. Way out in the distance, coming from the mountains, he could see light. Fires. Someone was up there. He wondered if one of the lights belonged to the girl. He wondered if she were still alive or if some other man had her and was enjoying her.

It was not a thing he liked to think about for very long. Then he thought about the ridge and the giant faces.

He told himself that she was most likely not that far away. The lights from the fires looked near, but they were not. Maybe the beasts of the jungle were coming or the monsters or the cannibals. He wondered if they would come to the Rocket and find him. He feared that. He knew that he could stay inside his hiding place and finally figure how to close it up, and it would be impossible for them to come in after him, with him way up high, the hatch closed and air-tight. No one could ever get to him in here.

Maybe that girl Sally had become a cannibal. Let her have that damn Glock 19 and that dog she liked to sleep with. Maybe she had fleas. Maybe if he slept with her he'd get fleas and they'd scratch themselves to death. If he did not get caught outside, nothing could happen. That was the thing to watch out for, not getting caught out where there was a chance of being hurt, captured, killed and eaten. Or maybe just his supplies taken, his rocket ship stolen by a girl who could grow up to be like, well, Mrs.

There were other rockets. Someone like that girl could come along and move in next door.

There could be a lot of people living in the rockets. They could call it Rocket City on Wuthering Heights Street. They could borrow tools and plant gardens and share and work their way straight into a Post-Revolution civilization. They could get that dang DVD player working again and the electric plant and make new Spam and pork and beans that never rotted.

It was a pretty thought, but he knew it was just a thought. If more men and women like Sally came with guns, they would most likely kill him. They had formed their packs, and the packs were what they protected. If you were outside the pack, they wanted you dead; they wanted to eat you.

He wondered if he would eat a human being, and knew, if there was no other food available, he would--easily--with or without potatoes. Sally had mentioned garlic. He liked garlic.

He remembered his garden behind the garage growing in the moonlight. It was fat with vegetables, and he was pleased by the thought of the coming harvest. If he didn't go check on it, what would happen? The garden needed watering.

Seemed like several days went by and he got bored waiting to see if Sally would come find him. She didn't so he decided to go into Mud Creek to just see what she was up to and check on his garden but he was afraid. What if she laughed at him?

He lingered in the rocket ship, at the doorway, after checking his clothes, and he looked out, hoping she'd still come so he wouldn't have to search for her. He had slept poorly the night before, and while it was dark he had released the hatch and sat with his feet dangling out of the opening. Just sat there watching at the sunrise, as bright as red-orange trumpet flowers opening in the morning air.

The air smelled rich with oxygen and the trees around him were bright green and the mountains in the distance shimmered a blue violet capped with white snow. He thought going to the mountains might be nice. It was cold up in the mountains and the air might be thin, still he might be able to breathe better, think better. The beauty might be enough to soothe his itch.

But he decided he had a better chance of coming home if he went into town, and even that was not smart.

He went anyway. He went back to the store where he first saw her.

-*-

Sally hid behind a stack of hardware when she heard him enter the store.

He looked about, didn't see her. It was a large store. She knew he was looking for her. The store, an old Wal-Mart, had mostly been looted, but there were still tools lying about, and any one of them might make a good weapon.

He didn't pick one up. Maybe he didn't want to look aggressive. Still, she couldn't be sure it was safe to be his friend. Could humans be friends now? Was she human? Could anyone be trusted after the Revolution? She crept backwards, trying to reach a back room.

"I'm just lonely," he said out loud, and that surprised her. "I've seen you in your underwear, and you've seen me in less than that. We kind of know each other." He laughed. "We should at least be friends."

And then she stood, at the back, just behind a door. But the door had not pulled back far enough. It had swollen and would only go so far, and he could see her right elbow poking out.

"Look. I don't have a weapon. I know where you are. I don't want to hurt you. Wouldn't you like someone to talk to some more, Sally?"

He stood still, waiting.

She did not move.

He said, "I have more fresh food. I could share it. I have some cocoa powder, too. I have a nice safe place to stay in the rockets. I don't want to hurt you."

-*-

The elbow moved.

An arm appeared. Sally waved. "Hi, Jim."

"Hi," he said.

They embraced. She shivered in his heat.

-*-

He took her not to the rockets, but to the ridge. He wanted her to see the stone faces staring up into the stars that night they finally satisfied their hunger.

The faces watched them make a fire. They ate and they mated like the animals in the jungle.

He felt almost safe in her arms. Then he became frightened. Towards the chill of dawn he slipped from her sleeping form, gently disengaging her arms from his waist and pulling his blue blankie over her to keep her warm. Little One took his place. Sally moaned in her dreams but didn't awaken. He crept to the rocket where he hid things, where he felt truly safe. He fell asleep curled around his ratty backpack, The Jungle Book on his bare chest.

Morning came. Jim rubbed his eyes as he heard something rustling. The hatch he had not been able to secure had betrayed him. She had found a way inside.

Sally stood over him with her Glock 19.

"I should kill you now, but I won't."

Jim tried to snatch the gun. She drew back. Little One growled.

"Go away!" Jim said.

"I intend to do just that."

"Go!" he said.

"Well, I am. But do you want to go with me?" Her large eyes blinked away tears.

Jim shook his head, confused. "This is my rocket. You leave, now!"

"Jim, please--don't you understand? I'm taking this spaceship. I know how to activate it and I'm going home. The second I saw it, I remembered everything I'm supposed to do. Maybe my mother told me or something or somebody else. All I know is I've got to get out of here, now!

I'm leaving this awful place. It's programmed to take us home."

"Us? Home?"

"We don't belong here, you know. We never did. We just got stuck here, that's what Mother said before she died."

"No."

"Yes. Now you must decide. You can either get out of this rocket or I'll kill you and throw you out and let what's left of the damn humans eat you for dinner."

Jim pulled out his pocketknife.

Sally pointed her gun.

Little One whimpered behind her.

Sally put one hand on a dull panel that burst into violet and orange hues that pulsated and hummed. "L21--00-systems go," she whispered.

The rocket thrummed louder, a high-pitched keening. The long dead rocket had come to life, a silver bullet primed to erupt into the heavens.

"You've got to get out if you're staying. You've got to decide. You're either in or you're out."

Jim got to his knees and dropped his knife. He couldn't hurt her. "But this is my home. It's not yours."

"Why can't it be mine, too? Why can't we just share it?"

"You're stealing my safe place, my home." Jim tried to knock the gun out of her hand and she hit him. He grabbed her wrist.

"How dare you?" she said. "Who are you?"

They struggled for possession of the gun.

She kicked him where it hurt the most. He let go, groaning. He had kissed her. He had . . .

...loved her? Love. What did that word mean? Hell, what if she wasn't even human? Was she a lost wanderer? A gypsy? An alien monster?

"I'm sorry. Oh, Jim, did I hurt you?" The gun slid down to the smooth reflective surface and they saw their own scared faces. She kicked the gun and the knife out of the hatch. Their reflections shimmered.

"Yes, you did--but I hurt you first, didn't I?" Then he understood. If Sally was a lost wanderer, maybe he was too.

"I don't want to be alone. I just want to go home."

The hatch slid into place. The strangers stared at each other while the dog licked Jim's hand.

"But where is home? Where are we going?"

Sally didn't know.

He didn't either.

Maybe it was better that way.

At least they could be alone together.

And as far as home went, they'd figure that one out when they got there.

Sally reached for Jim's hand, the one free of dog slobber. A half-smile touched her lips. Jim sighed as his fingers curled around hers. Maybe they were already there.

Home.

COAT

When James saw the man in the streetlights, he hated him on sight because of the coat. It wasn't fashionable. If the man had been unfashionable in all other ways he could have ignored it, but no, this was a man who should have known better. He was a man with a good shirt and slacks and fine tie, and the best shoes available, and yet, he wore a coat out of style and certainly one that did not make for a proper appearance. It was an odd coat of undetermined color and absolutely no substance. It had all the grace of a car wreck. It flopped in the winter wind at the lapels like bat wings flexing, caught up in back and whipped backwards like the tail of a swallow.

There was no excuse for it really.

Sure, he saw plenty of unfashionable people, but this fellow must know better, having acquired the most fashionable and best clothes otherwise. It was not a matter of being uninformed, he was flaunting a disregard for the proper and the respectable, and was therefore insulting the very business James was a part of. Fashion design.

There was no use calling him on it, James was certain. A man like that knew how things ought to be. A man with his hair perfectly cut and perfectly combed, and perfectly dressed, except for that horrid coat.

Still, James found himself following the man, deeply bothered by it all. He was a man that understood fashion, and loved it, and believed it was more than an expression of self. That it was in fact, a kind of religion, and here was an insult to his religion.

The man moved out of the street lights and into a dark alley near a stairwell, and James knew this was a bad place to be walking, but if the man was dull enough to do so, and in that horrid coat, then he would be brave enough to do so and call him on the matter after all. He found he just couldn't let it rest.

James followed as the man took the dark stairs, and when the fellow was halfway down, James called out, "Sir, that is an awful coat. I don't mean to be rude, but really."

The man, nothing but a shadow on the stairs now, paused, looked back. "My coat?"

"Of course," James said. Do I have on a horrid coat? I think not, and nor should you, this is the finest and best of this year's fashion that I'm wearing. Perhaps last year, next year, it will be out of favor, but it is all the rage for now, and you, sir, have plenty of fine fashionable coats to pick from, though I, of course recommend my own brand of coat.."

"What?" said the man in the shadows.

"The coat," James said. "Your coat. It's hideous."

The man came up the stairs and stopped only a few feet from James, looking up at him. "You're kidding, right?"

"I think not. That is one hideous coat."

The man sighed. "I can't believe you're concerned about my coat."

"It's just...how shall we put it, an atrocity against fashion and against mankind."

"It was once fashionable."

"And, I'm quite sure that fig leaves over the testicles were once fashionable, but in our modern society, in our world, fashion is all, and it changes. Someone once thought the tie died tee-shirt and bell bottoms were fashionable, but, times change. Thank goodness."

"Look, not that it's any of your business, but my father was a tailor. He made this coat--"

"Well, it may have been something before electricity," James said, "but now, it's just crude."

"He made it for himself many years back, when he was a young man. He is dead now, gone, and though it's none of your business whatsoever, this is an heirloom. It may not look like much, it may look thin, but it's surprisingly warm, and very comfortable, very flexible. Happy?"

"Not at all. Look, you seem like a nice fellow. It's one thing for someone of...well, the lower classes to wear that coat, but for you to mix fashion like that, that dreadful coat over those fine clothes, it should be a hanging offense."

The man threw up his hands. "I've had enough of you. What business is it of yours?"

"I spend a large part of my time designing fashion, trying to make the world and those who live in it more attractive. Take what I'm wearing for example--"

"I wouldn't take it if you gave it to me," the man said. "I'm quite comfortable with my heirloom coat, and you, sir, are a weirdo who needs to go home and run his head under the shower until it clears, or, until you drown."

The man turned and began walking down the stairs. James felt himself heat up as if a coal had been dropped inside his body to nestle in the pit of his stomach. He let out a sound like a wounded animal and went charging down the stairway, slamming both hands into the man's back, sending him sailing down the steps to bounce on several, and to finally land hard and bloody in a heap at the bottom.

James stood startled, his hands still out in front of him, like a mime pretending to push at an invisible door.

"My God," James said aloud. He eased down the stairs and stood over the man, called out. "Hey, you okay?"

The man didn't move. The man didn't speak. The man didn't moan.

James bent down by the man's head and spoke again, asking if he was okay. Still no answer.

James looked left and right, over his shoulder and up the stairs. No one had seen him. He looked about. No crime cameras. It had all happened suddenly and in darkness. He hadn't meant for it to happen, it had merely been an angry response. Insulting fashion was not acceptable. And now, the man in the unfashionable coat lay dead at the bottom of the stairs.

Well, thought James, dressing like that, talking like that, and knowing better, he deserved to be dead.

James took a deep breath and rolled the man on his stomach and pulled the coat off of him, tucked it under his arm, started up the stairs.

He was looking for the first large trash can to deposit the coat into, but none presented itself. Carrying the ugly coat, even rolled up in a tight bundle, made James feel somewhat ill. The thing was absolutely without design, as unfashionable as a hat made from the mangy skins of dead street rats.

Finally, he saw a trashcan and was about to deposit it, but, there was a police officer. James paused, realized it would mean nothing to the officer to see him toss the coat, but then again, he felt very odd about the matter.

Moments ago he had merely been willing to impart a bit of fashion wisdom to a man that should have known better, and in the end he had killed him. You might even call it murder, though that had not been his intent. The more James thought about it, the more he felt there had been something inside of him brewing all along, all having to do with that ugly coat and the man's blatant insult to fashion.

James passed the officer, still not able to toss the coat, wearing it under his arm like a cancerous tumor. He walked on, not spying another trashcan of correct size, unable to dump it. He thought of giving it to a homeless person. That would be all right. That would fit. No fashion loss there. But no homeless person presented himself, and frankly, he had come to hate the coat so much, that the idea he might give it away to someone and see it worn about the city, even on someone as unfashionable as a homeless drifter, was not appealing. And there was another factor; it would serve as a constant reminder of what he had done. Though, the more he thought about it, the more comfortable he felt with his actions. In fact, it was a kind of prize he had now, a souvenir of the event, a reminder of the moment when he had corrected a horrible wrong.

Sometimes, you just had to take the more direct and deadly route to repair things that were socially wrong, and that coat was wrong, wrong, wrong.

He made it all the way to his plush apartment with the coat, and decided he no longer wanted to toss it. His thoughts earlier were correct. This was an important reminder of a blow struck for the fashionable.

Inside his apartment he unfolded the coat and draped it over the back of a chair. Hideous indeed, and spotted in places with blood. He opened a bottle of wine and sat at his table with bread and cheese and ate, and watched the coat as if he thought it might suddenly leap up and run about the room. He discovered that what he had hated before about the coat, he still hated, but now the sight of it gave him pleasure with the memory of his deed, and the blood on it sweetened his thoughts.

His own father had worn a coat not too unlike that. It suddenly came to him, and the sweetness he had experienced soured somewhat. He thought of his father, the poor old bastard, working the fields and coming home covered in sod, the old coat stained with the dirt of the fields, the same dirt under the old man's fingernails. And his mother, and himself, they had never worn anything but rags. No fashion there. None at all.

But through hard work and part-time jobs, he had finished school and finished his studies at the University, and gone on to study fashion. He found he was quite good at design, and as he became known, and was able to distance himself from his past; he changed his past. He made up his former life, and it was a better one than the one he had actually experienced. Cut himself off from his father and mother and their little dirt farm, and when he heard that the both of them had died, and were buried not far from where his father had turned up the dirt to plant the potatoes and the like, well, he only felt a minor pang of regret. He dove deeper into his work, deeper into design, deeper into fashion, until he hardly remembered his old self at all.

Though that coat, that damnable coat had reminded him. That was it. That was the whole matter of the thing. He had been reminded of his own father, not a tailor, but a farmer, a man for whom fashion did not exist, a man of the earth, a man with dirt under his nails. And his mother, always tired, always frumpy, a face that makeup had not touched, a back that had never felt the softness of silk. He tried not to think of the shapeless clothing he had once worn. Or the coat his father had worn, not too unlike that ugly thing on the back of the chair, a coat perhaps made by the very tailor who had made this. Tailor, a man who could design such a wart on the art of fashion should call himself a butcher, not a tailor.

By the time he went to bed, James felt quite pleased with himself. A man divorced from his old life, a man who had struck a blow for grace and poise, and the wearing of better material.

He lay in bed for awhile, ran the incident over and over in his head, and finally he turned to a book, lay in bed with the reading light behind him, but the words did not form thoughts, they were merely bugs that danced on the page.

Finally, he put the book aside and turned off the light, slowly drifted into sleep.

Until the noise.

It echoed from somewhere distant, and then the echo grew and thundered, and he sat up, only to find that it was raining and that thunder was banging and lightning was jumping, and a very cool and pleasant wind was slipping through his open window, making the curtains flap like gossip tongues. He slipped out of bed and went to the window, stuck his head out of it and looked down at the dark and empty street. He felt rain on his neck.

He pulled back inside, considered closing the window, but decided against it. It was too hot to have the window closed. He hoped that the rain would soon pass, and with it the flashing of lightning and the rolling of thunder.

On his way back to bed, just as he passed the chair over which the coat was draped, he felt himself brush against the sleeve of the coat. He jerked away from it as if it were a serpent that had tried to coil itself around his wrist.

Glancing at the coat, he was surprised to find that the sleeves were hanging loose, and in fact, nothing was touching him but the sleeve of his own pajama top. He had felt certain that out of the corner of his eye he had seen the coat move, and that what he had felt was not the fine softness of his personally designed pajamas, but the coarseness of the coat.

He climbed back in bed, lay with his head propped up on his pillows, and studied the coat in the flashes of the lightning. When the lightning lit things up, it was as if the coat moved, a kind of strobe effect.

"Of course," he said to himself. "That's it. That's what it was. An illusion. "

But that didn't keep him from thinking about the touch on his wrist. He pushed himself down into his covers, like a product being dropped into a bag, and tried to sleep, and did, for a while.

He awoke to a rough feeling on his body. It was as if he were wearing the coat. He rose up quickly, kicking back the covers, only to find that he was in his pajamas, and that the coat was still in its place; one of the sleeves however had been blown by the wind and now it lay in the seat of the chair as if resting an invisible hand in an invisible lap.

James pulled off his pajama top and tossed it on the floor. Tomorrow he would throw the thing away. It had somehow grown stiff, perhaps in the wash, starch or some such thing. Fine pajamas were never to have starch.

Fine cloth of any kind was never to have starch. He would have to speak to the maid about how she did laundry.

Punching his pillows, propping one on top of the other, he put his back to the headboard, and watched the lighting in the window, listened to the rain and the thunder, and then the coat moved.

James jerked his head to the chair. The coat sleeve that had been lying in the seat of the chair had fallen off to the side again. The wind, most likely, but it made him think of the man he had killed, how it had looked on the man as he walked, how it had been caught up in the wind, how the lapels had flapped, how the length of it had blown back behind him. He thought too of the man's father, the poor tailor, working away to make himself a coat, and how he had proudly passed the horrible item onto his son, and then he thought of his own father, and his similar coat, and how it had been caked with dirt, and how the old man had had dirt beneath his nails, and then he thought of his worn-out mother, and how they had died, without him, out there on that god-forsaken property, and how they lay beneath that dirt, the grit of it seeping into their coffins and onto their ivory grins.

He closed his eyes, saw the young man who had owned the coat falling down the stairs, remembered how he had stood on the steps, his hands out in front of him, frozen in position after the act.

The wind picked up and the sleeves of the coat were lifted and they flapped dramatically. James felt a cold chill wrap itself around him, and he knew it was not caused by the wind, and he knew then why he had pushed the man, and why he had taken the coat, because the coat had belonged to him; it was the sort of coat he had been born to wear. He had ran from such a thing all his life, but it was his burden, this coat, and it was his past, and it was his. The coat that should lie on his back, the sleeves that should hang on his arms.

The wind blew harder and the rain came in the window with it. The coat, perhaps caught on the wind, stirred, then seemed to leap off the chair, across the bed, and flapped around James, the sleeve of it catching about his neck.

James leaped from bed, screamed, ran wildly, tripped over a foot stool, clambered to his feet, slammed into a wall. The sleeve was tight around his neck, and the rest of the coat lay against his skin, and it was coarse, so coarse. It was his life, this coarse coat, and it wanted him in it, wanted him to claim what he deserved.

He charged into the chair at the foot of the bed, and stumbled over it, fell toward the window, hit it with tremendous force, went through head first, toward the street below, and then he was jerked upwards, his head snapping back, and then the rough, workingman's sleeve squeezed tight against his throat and stole his breath.

Next morning, bright and early, a homeless man discovered him and pointed up, alerted others. The police came, gave him a look see. The sleeve of the coat was wrapped tight about his neck, had practically tied itself, and the rest of it had caught on a nail in the window, and though the coat had torn severely, the sturdiness of the material maintained, leaving James to hang there in his pajama bottoms which he had soiled in death.

It was most unfashionable.

BESTSELLERS GUARANTEED

Larry had a headache, as he often did. It was those all-night stints at the typewriter, along with his job and his boss, Fraggerty, yelling for him to fry the burgers faster, to dole them out lickity-split on mustard-covered sesame seed buns.

Burgers and fries, typing paper and typewriter ribbons-the ribbons as gray and faded as the thirty-six years of his life. There really didn't seem to be any reason to keep on living. Another twenty to thirty years of this would be foolish. Then again, that seemed the only alternative. He was too cowardly to take his own life.

Washing his face in the bathroom sink, Larry jerked a rough paper towel from the rack and dried off, looking at himself in the mirror. He was starting to look like all those hacks of writer mythology. The little guys who turned out the drek copy. The ones with the blue-veined, alcoholic noses and eyes like volcanic eruptions.

"My God," he thought, "I look forty easy. Maybe even forty-five."

"You gonna stay in the can all day?" a voice yelled through the door. It was Fraggerty, waiting to send him back to the grill and the burgers. The guy treated him like a bum.

A sly smile formed on Larry's face as he thought: "I am a bum. I've been through three marriages, sixteen jobs, eight typewriters, and all I've got to show for it are a dozen articles, all of them in obscure magazines that either paid in copies or pennies." He wasn't even as good as the hack he looked like. The hack could at least point to a substantial body of work, drek or not.

And I've been at this . . .God, twelve years! An article a year. Some average. Not even enough to pay back his typing supplies.

He thought of his friend Mooney-or James T. Mooney, as he was known to his fans. Yearly, he wrote a bestseller. It was a bestseller before it hit the stands. And except for Mooney's first novel, The Goodbye Reel, a detective thriller, all of them had been dismal. In fact, dismal was too kind a word. But the public lapped them up.

What had gone wrong with his own career? He used to help Mooney with his plots; in fact, he had helped him work out his problems on The Goodbye Reel, back when they had both been scrounging their livings and existing out of a suitcase. Then Mooney had moved to Houston, and a year later The Goodbye Reel had hit the stands like an atomic bomb. Made record sales in hardback and paper, and gathered in a movie deal that boggled the imagination.

Being honest with himself, Larry felt certain that he could say he was a far better writer than Mooney. More commercial, even. So why had Mooney gathered the laurels while he bagged burgers and ended up in a dirty restroom contemplating the veins in his nose?

It was almost too much to bear. He would kill to have a bestseller. Just one. That's all he'd ask. Just one.

"Tear the damned crapper out of there and sit on it behind the grill!"

Fraggerty called through the door. "But get out here. We got customers lined up down the block."

Larry doubted that, but he dried his hands, combed his hair and stepped outside.

Fraggerty was waiting for him. Fraggerty was a big fat man with bulldog jowls and perpetual blossoms of sweat beneath his meaty arms. Mid-summer, dead of winter-he had them.

"Hey," Fraggerty said, "you work here or what?"

"Not anymore, Larry said. "Pay me up."

"What?"

"You heard me, fat ass. Pay up!"

"Hey, don't get tough about it. All right. Glad to see you hike."

Five minutes later, Larry was leaving the burger joint, a fifty-dollar check in his pocket.

He said aloud: "Job number seventeen."

The brainstorm had struck him right when he came out of the restroom.

He'd go see Mooney. He and Mooney had been great friends once, before all that money and a new way of living had carried Mooney back and forth to Houston and numerous jet spots around the country and overseas.

Maybe Mooney could give him a connection, an in, as it was called in the business. Before, he'd been too proud to ask, but now he didn't give a damn if he had to crawl and lick boots. He had to sell his books; had to let the world know he existed.

Without letting the landlord know, as he owed considerable back rent, he cleaned out his apartment.

Like his life, there was little there. A typewriter, copies of his twelve articles, a few clothes and odds and ends. There weren't even any books.

He'd had to sell them all to pay his rent three months back.

In less than twenty minutes, he snuck out without being seen, loaded the typewriter and his two suitcases in the trunk of his battered Chevy, and looked up at the window of his dingy apartment. He lifted his middle finger in salute, climbed in the car and drove away.

Mooney was easy to find. His estate looked just the part for the residence of a bestselling author. A front lawn the size of a polo field, a fountain of marble out front, and a house that looked like a small English castle. All this near downtown Houston.

James T. Mooney looked the part, too. He answered the door in a maroon smoking jacket with matching pajamas. He had on a pair of glossy leather bedroom slippers that he could have worn with a suit and tie. His hair was well-groomed with just the right amount of gray at the temples. There was a bit of a strained look about his eyes, but other than that he was the picture of health and prosperity.

"Well, I'll be," Mooney said. "Larry Melford. Come in."

The interior of the house made the outside look like a barn. There were paintings and sculptures and shelves of first-edition books. On one wall, blown up to the size of movie posters and placed under glass and frame, were copies of the covers of his bestsellers. All twelve of them. A thirteenth glass and frame stood empty beside the others, waiting for the inevitable.

They chatted as they walked through the house, and Mooney said, "Let's drop off in the study. We can be comfortable there. I'll have the maid bring us some coffee or iced tea."

"I hope I'm not interrupting your writing," Larry said.

"No, not at all. I'm finished for the day. I usually just work a couple hours a day."

A couple hours a day? thought Larry. A serpent of envy crawled around in the pit of his stomach. For the last twelve years, he had worked a job all day and had written away most of the night, generally gathering no more than two to three hours' sleep a day. And here was Mooney writing these monstrous bestsellers and he only wrote a couple of hours in the mornings.

Mooney's study was about the size of Larry's abandoned apartment. And it looked a hell of a lot better. One side of the room was little more than a long desk covered with a word processor and a duplicating machine. The rest of the room was taken up by a leather couch and rows of bookshelves containing nothing but Mooney's work. Various editions of foreign publications, special collectors' editions, the leather-bound Christmas set, the paperbacks, the bound galleys of all the novels. Mooney was surrounded by his success.

"Sit down; take the couch," Mooney said, hauling around his desk chair.

"Coffee or tea? I'll have the maid bring it."

"No, I'm fine."

"Well then, tell me about yourself."

Larry opened his mouth to start, and that's when it fell out. He just couldn't control himself. It was as if a dam had burst open and all the water of the world was flowing away. The anguish, the misery, the years of failure found expression.

When he had finished telling it all, his eyes were glistening. He was both relieved and embarrassed. "So you see, Mooney, I'm just about over the edge. I'm craving success like an addict craves a fix. I'd kill for a bestseller."

Mooney's face seemed to go lopsided. "Watch that kind of talk."

"I mean it. I'm feeling so small right now, I'd have to look up to see a snake's belly. I'd lie, cheat, steal, kill-anything to get published in a big way. I don't want to die and leave nothing of me behind."

"And you don't want to miss out on the good things either, right?"

"Damned right. You've got it."

"Look, Larry, worry less about the good things and just write your books.

Ease up some, but do it your own way. You may never have a big bestseller, but you're a good writer, and eventually you'll crack and be able to make a decent living."

"Easy for you to say, Mooney."

"In time, with a little patience . . . "

"I'm running out of time and patience. I'm emotionally drained, whipped.

What I need is an in, Mooney, an in. A name. Anything that can give me a break."

"Talent is the name of the game, Larry, not an in," Mooney said very softly.

"Don't give me that garbage. I've got talent and you know it. I used to help you with the plots of your short stories. And your first novel-remember the things I worked out for you there? I mean, come on, Mooney. You've read my writing. It's good. Damned good! I need help. An in can't hurt me.

It may not help me much, but it's got to give me a damn sight better chance than I have now."

Larry looked at Mooney's face. Something seemed to be moving there behind the eyes and taut lips. He looked sad, and quite a bit older than his age. Well, okay. So he was offended by being asked right out to help a fellow writer.

That was too bad. Larry just didn't have the pride and patience anymore to beat around the bush.

"An in, huh?" Mooney finally said.

"That's right."

"You sure you wouldn't rather do it your way?"

"I've been doing it my way for twelve years. I want a break, Mooney."

Mooney nodded solemnly. He went over to his desk and opened a drawer.

He took out a small, white business card and brought it over to Larry.

It read:

BESTSELLERS GUARANTEED

Offices in New York, Texas, Oklahoma

Overseas

The left-hand corner of the card had a drawing of an open book, and the right-hand corner had three phone numbers. One of them was a Houston number.

"I met a lady when I first moved here," Mooney said, "a big name author in the romance field. I sort of got this thing going with her . . . finally asked her for . . . an in. And she gave me this card. We don't see each other anymore, Larry. We stopped seeing each other the day she gave it to me."

Larry wasn't listening. "This an editor?"

"No."

"An agent?"

"No."

"Publisher, book packager?"

"None of those things and a little of all, and a lot more."

"I'm not sure . . . "

"You wanted your in, so there it is. You just call that number. And Larry, do me a favor. Never come here again."

The first thing Larry did when he left Mooney's was find a telephone booth. He dialed the Houston number and a crisp female voice answered:

"Bestsellers Guaranteed."

"Are you the one in charge?"

"No sir. Just hold on and I'll put you through to someone who can help you."

Larry tapped his finger on the phone shelf till a smooth-as-well-water male voice said: "B.G. here. May I be of assistance?"

"Uh . . . yes, a friend of mine . . . a Mr. James T. Mooney-"

"Of course, Mr. Mooney."

"He suggested . . . he gave me a card. Well, I'm a writer. My name is Larry Melford. To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what Mooney had in mind for me. He just suggested I call you."

"All we need to know is that you were recommended by Mr. Mooney.

Where are you now?"

Larry gave the address of the 7-Eleven phone booth.

"Why don't you wait there . . . oh, say . . . twenty minutes and we'll send a car to pick you up? That suit you?"

"Sure, but . . . "

"I'll have an agent explain it to you when he gets there, okay?"

"Yes, yes, that'll be fine."

Larry hung up and stepped outside to lean on the hood of his car. By golly, he thought, that Mooney does have connections, and now after all these years, my thirteenth year of trying, maybe, just maybe, I'm going to get connected, too.

He lit a cigarette and watched the August heat waves bounce around the 7-Eleven lot, and twenty minutes later, a tan, six-door limousine pulled up next to his Chevy.

The man driving the limo wore a chauffeur's hat and outfit. He got out of the car and walked around to the tinted, far backseat window and tapped gently on the glass. The window slid down with a short whoosh. A man dressed in black with black hair, a black mustache, and thick-rimmed black shades, looked out at Larry. He said, "Mr. Melford?"

"Yes," Larry said.

"Would you like to go around to the other side? Herman will open the door for you."

After Larry had slid onto the seat and Herman had closed the door behind him, his eyes were drawn to the plush interior of the car. Encased in the seat in front of them was a phone, a television set and a couple of panels that folded out. Larry felt certain one of them would be a small bar. Air-conditioning hummed softly. The car was nice enough and large enough to live in.

He looked across the seat at the man in black, who was extending his hand. They shook. The man in black said, "Just call me James, Mr.

Melford."

"Fine. This is about . . .writing? Mooney said he could give me a . . .connection. I mean, I have work, plenty of it. Four novels, a couple of dozen short stories, a novella-of course I know that length is a dog to sell, but . . . "

"None of that matters," James said.

"This is about writing?"

"This is about bestsellers, Mr. Melford. That is what you want, isn't it? To be a bestselling author?"

"More than anything."

"Then you're our man and we're your organization."

Herman had eased in behind the wheel. James leaned forward over the seat and said firmly, "Drive us around." Leaning back, James touched a button on the door panel and a thick glass rose out of the seat in front of them and clicked into place in a groove in the roof.

"Now," James said, "shall we talk?"

As they drove, James explained, "I'm the agent assigned to you, and it's up to me to see if I can convince you to join our little gallery. But, if you should sign on with us, we expect you to remain loyal. You must consider that we offer a service that is unique, unlike any offered anywhere. We can guarantee that you'll hit the bestseller list once a year, every year, as long as you're with us.

"Actually, Mr. Melford, we're not a real old organization, though I have a hard time remembering the exact year we were founded-it predated the Kennedy assassination by a year."

"That would be sixty-two," Larry said.

"Yes, yes, of course. I'm terrible at years. But it's only lately that we've come into our own. Consider the bad state of publishing right now, then consider the fact that our clients have each had a bestseller this year-and they will next year, no matter how bad publishing may falter. Our clients may be the only ones with books, but each of their books will be a bestseller, and their success will, as it does every year, save the industry."

"You're a packager?"

"No. We don't actually read the books, Mr. Melford, we just make sure they're bestsellers. You can write a book about the Earth being invaded by giant tree toads from the moon, if you like, and we will guarantee it will be a bestseller."

"My God, you are connected."

"You wouldn't believe the connections we have."

"And what does your organization get out of this? How much of a percentage?"

"We don't take a dime."

"What?"

"Not a dime. For our help, for our guarantee that your books will be bestsellers, we ask only one thing. A favor. One favor a year. A favor for each bestseller."

"What's the favor?"

"We'll come to that in a moment. But before we do, let me make sure you understand what we have to offer. I mean, if you were successful-and I mean no offense by this-then you wouldn't be talking to me now. You need help. We can offer help. You're in your mid-thirties, correct? Yes, I thought so. Not really old, but a bit late to start a new career plan. People do it, but it's certainly no piece of cake, now, is it?"

Larry found that he was nodding in agreement.

"So," James continued, "what we want to do is give you success. We're talking money in the millions of dollars, Mr. Melford. Fame. Respect.

Most anything you'd want would beat your command. Exotic foods and wines? A snap of the fingers. Books? Cars? Women? A snap of the fingers. Anything your heart desires and it's yours."

"But I have to make a small, initial investment, right?"

"Ah, suspicious by nature, are you?"

"Wouldn't you be? My God, you're offering me the world."

"So I am. But no . . . no investment. Picture this, Mr. Melford. You might get lucky and sell the work, might even have a bestseller. But the slots are getting smaller and smaller for new writers. And one reason for that is that our writers, our clients, are filling those slots, Mr. Melford. If it's between your book and one of our clients', and yours is ten times better written, our client will still win out. Every time."

"What you're saying is, the fix is in?"

"A crude way of putting it, but rather accurate. Yes."

"What about talent, craftsmanship?"

"I wouldn't know about any of that. I sell success, not books."

"But it's the public that puts out its money for these books. They make or break an author. How can you know what they'll buy?"

"Our advertising system is the best in the world. We know how to reach the public and how to convince. We also use subliminals, Mr. Melford.

We flash images on television programs, theater films; we hide them in the art of wine and cigarette ads. Little things below conscious perception, but images that lock tight to the subconscious mind. People who would not normally pick up a book will buy our bestsellers."

"Isn't that dishonest?"

"Who's to tell in this day and age what's right and wrong? It's relative, don't you think, Mr. Melford?"

Larry didn't say anything.

"Look. The public pictures writers as rich, all of them. They don't realize that the average full-time writer barely makes a living. Most of them are out there starving, and for what? Get on the winning side for a change, Mr.

Melford. Otherwise, spend the rest of your life living in roach motels and living off the crumbs tossed you by the publishing world. And believe me, Mr. Melford, if you fail to join up with us, crumbs are all you'll get. If you're lucky."

The limousine had returned to the 7-Eleven parking lot. They were parked next to Larry's car.

"I suppose," James said, "we've come to that point that the bullfighters call 'the moment of truth.' You sign on with us and you'll be on Easy Street for the rest of your life."

"But we haven't talked terms."

"No, we haven't. It's at this point that I must ask you to either accept or turn down our offer, Mr. Melford. Once I've outlined the terms, you must be in full agreement with us."

"Accept before I hear what this favor you've talked about is?"

"That's correct. Bestseller or Bohemian, Mr. Melford. Which is it? Tell me right now. My time is valuable."

Larry paused only a moment. "Very well. Count me in. In for a penny, in for a pound. What's the favor?"

"Each year, you assassinate someone for us."

Larry dove for the door handle, but it wouldn't open. It had been locked electronically. James grabbed him by the wrist and held him tightly, so tightly Larry thought his bones would shatter.

"I wouldn't," James said. "After what I've told you, you step out of this car and they'll find you in a ditch this afternoon, obviously the victim of some hit-and-run driver."

"That's . . . that's murder."

"Yes, it is," James said. "Listen to me. You assassinate whomever we choose. We're not discriminating as far as sex, color, religion or politics goes. Anyone who gets in our way dies. Simple as that. You see, Mr.

Melford, we are a big organization. Our goal is world domination. You, and all our clients, are little helpers toward that goal. Who is more respected than a bestselling author? Who is allowed in places where others would not be allowed? Who is revered by public figures and the general public alike? An author-a bestselling author."

"But . . . it's murder."

"There will be nothing personal in it. It'll just be your part of the contract.

One assassination a year that we'll arrange."

"But if you're so connected . . . why do it this way? Why not just hire a hit man?"

"In a sense, I have."

"I'm not an assassin. I've never even fired a gun."

"The amateur is in many ways better than the professional. He doesn't fall into a pattern. When the time comes, we will show you what you have to do. If you decide to be with us, that is."

"And if not?"

"I told you a moment ago. The ditch. The hit-and-run driver."

Suddenly, Herman was standing at the door, his hand poised to open it.

"Which is it, Mr. Melford? I'm becoming impatient. A ditch or a bestseller? And if you have any ideas about going to the police, don't. We have friends there, and you might accidentally meet one. Now, your decision."

"I'm in," Larry said, softly. "I'm in."

"Good," James said, taking Larry's hand. "Welcome aboard. You get one of those books of yours out, pick out a publisher, and mail it in. And don't bother with return postage. We'll take care of the rest. Congratulations."

James motioned to Herman. The door opened. Larry got out. And just before the door closed, James said, "If you should have trouble coming up with something, getting something finished, just let me know and we'll see that it gets written for you."

Larry stood on the sidewalk, nodding dumbly. Herman returned to the driver's seat, and a moment later the tan limo from Bestsellers Guaranteed whispered away.

James was as good as his word. Larry mailed off one of his shopworn novels, a thriller entitled Texas Backlash, and a contract for a half million dollars came back, almost by return mail.

Six months later, the book hit the bestseller list and rode there for a comfortable three months. It picked up a two-million-dollar paperback sale and a big-shot movie producer purchased it for twice that amount.

Larry now had a big mansion outside of Nacogdoches, Texas, with a maid, a cook, two secretaries and a professional yardman. Any type of food he wanted was his for the asking. Once he had special seafood flown in from the East Coast to Houston and hauled from there to his door by refrigerated truck.

Any first-edition book he wanted was now within his price range. He owned four cars, two motorcycles, a private airplane and a yacht.

He could own anything-even people. They hopped at his every word, his most casual suggestion. He had money, and people wanted to satisfy those with money. Who knows, maybe it would rub off on them.

And there were women. Beautiful women. There was even one he had grown to care for, and believed cared for him instead of his money and position. Lovely Luna Malone.

But in the midst of all this finery, there was the favor. The thought of it rested on the back of his mind like a waiting vulture. And when a year had gone by, the vulture swooped in.

On a hot August day, the tan limo from Bestsellers Guaranteed pulled up the long, scenic drive to Larry's mansion. A moment later, Larry and James were in Larry's study and Herman stood outside the closed door with his arms akimbo, doing what he did best. Waiting silently.

James was dressed in black again. He still wore the thick-framed sunshades. "You know what I've come for, don't you?"

Larry nodded. "The favor."

"On March fifteenth, Bestsellers Guaranteed will arrange for an autograph party in Austin for your new bestseller, whatever that may be. At eleven-fifteen, you will excuse yourself to go upstairs to the men's room. Next door to it is a janitor's lounge. It hasn't been used in years. It's locked but we will provide you with the key.

"At the rear of the lounge is a restroom. Lift off the back of the commode and you will discover eight small packages taped to the inside. Open these and fit them together and you'll have a very sophisticated air rifle. One of the packages will contain a canister of ice, and in the middle, dyed red, you will find a bullet-shaped projectile of ice. The air gun can send that projectile through three inches of steel without the ice shattering.

"You will load the gun, go to the window, and at exactly eleven-twenty-five, the Governor will drive by in an open car in the midst of the parade.

A small hole has been cut in the restroom window. It will exactly accommodate the barrel of the rifle and the scope will fit snugly against the glass. You will take aim, and in a manner of seconds, your favor for this year will be done."

"Why the Governor?"

"That is our concern."

"I've never shot a rifle."

"We'll train you. You have until March. You won't need to know much more than how to put the rifle together and look through the scope. The weapon will do the rest."

"If I refuse?"

"The bestselling author of Texas Backlash will be found murdered in his home by a couple of burglars, and a couple of undesirables will be framed for the crime. Don't you think that has a nicer ring to it than the hit-and-run program I offered you before? Or perhaps, as a warning, we'll do something to your lady friend. What's her name, Luna?"

"You wouldn't!"

"If it would offer incentive or achieve our desired goals, Mr. Melford, we would do anything."

"You bastard!"

"That'll be quite enough, Mr. Melford. You've reaped the rewards of our services, and now we expect to be repaid.

"It seems a small thing to ask for your success-and certainly you wouldn't want to die at the hands of other bestselling authors, the ones who will ultimately be your assassins."

In spite of the air-conditioning, Larry had begun to sweat. "Just who are you guys, really?"

"I've told you. We're an organization with big plans. What we sponsor more than anything else, Mr. Melford, is moral corruption. We feed on those who thrive on greed and ego; put them in positions of power and influence. We belong to a group, to put it naively, who believe that once the silly concepts of morality and honor break down, then we, who really know how things work, can take control and make them work to our advantage. To put it even more simply, Mr. Melford, we will own it all."

"I . . . I can't just cold-bloodedly murder someone."

"Oh, I think you can. I've got faith in you. Look around you, Mr. Melford.

Look at all you've got. Think of what you've got to lose, then tell me if you can murder from a distance someone you don't even know. I'll wait outside with Herman for your answer. You have two minutes."

From the March fifteenth edition of The Austin Statesman, a front-page headline:

GOVERNOR ASSASSINATED, ASSASSIN SOUGHT.

From the same issue, page 4B:

BESTSELLING AUTHOR LARRY

MELFORD SIGNS BOOKS.

Six months later, in the master bedroom of Larry Melford's estate, Larry was sitting nude in front of the dresser mirror, clipping unruly nose hairs.

On the bed behind him, nude, dark, luscious, lay Luna Malone. There was a healthy glow of sweat on her body as she lay with two pillows propped under her head; her raven hair was like an explosion of ink against their whiteness.

"Larry," she said. "you know, I've been thinking . . . I mean there's something I've been wanting to tell you, but haven't said anything about it because . . . well, I was afraid you might get the wrong idea. But now that we've known each other a while, and things look solid . . . Larry, I'm a writer."

Larry quit clipping his nose hairs. He put the clipper on the dresser and turned very slowly. "You're what?"

"I mean, I want to be. And not just now, not just this minute. I've always wanted to be. I didn't tell you, because I was afraid you'd laugh, or worse, think I'd only got to know you so you could give me an in, but I've been writing for years and have sent book after book, story after story in, and just know I'm good, and well . . . "

"You want me to look at it?"

"Yeah, but more than that, Larry. I need an in. It's what I've always wanted. To write a bestseller. I'd kill for . . . "

"Get out! Get the hell out!"

"Larry, I didn't meet you for that reason. . . ."

"Get the hell out or I'll throw you out."

"Larry . . ."

"Now!" He stood up from the chair, grabbed her dressing gown. "Just go.

Leave everything. I'll have it sent to you. Get dressed and never let me see you again."

"Aren't you being a little silly about this? I mean . . . "

Larry moved as fast as an eagle swooping down on a field mouse. He grabbed her shoulder and jerked her off the bed onto the floor.

"All right, you bastard, all right." Luna stood. She grabbed the robe and slipped into it. "So I did meet you for an in; what's wrong with that? I bet you had some help along the way. It sure couldn't have been because you're a great writer. I can hardly force myself through that garbage you write."

He slapped her across the cheek so hard she fell back on the bed.

Holding her face, she got up, gathered her clothes and walked stiffly to the bathroom. Less than a minute later, she came out dressed, the robe over her shoulder.

"I'm sorry about hitting you," Larry said. "But I meant what I said about never wanting to see you again."

"You're crazy, man. You know that? Crazy. All I asked you for was an in, just . . . "

Luna stopped talking. Larry had lifted his head to look at her. His eyes looked as dark and flat as the twin barrels of a shotgun.

"Don't bother having Francis drive me home. I'll call a cab from downstairs, Mr. Big-shot Writer."

She went out, slamming the bedroom door. Larry got up and turned off the light, went back to the dresser chair and sat in the darkness for a long time.

Nearly a year and a half later, not long after completing a favor for Bestsellers Guaranteed, and acquiring a somewhat rabid taste for alcoholic beverages, Larry was in the Houston airport waiting to catch a plane for Hawaii for a long vacation when he saw a woman in the distance who looked familiar. She turned and he recognized her immediately. It was Luna Malone. Still beautiful, a bit more worldly looking, and dressed to the hilt.

She saw him before he could dart away. She waved. He smiled. She came over and shook hands with him. "Larry, you aren't still mad, are you?"

"No, I'm not mad. Good to see you. You look great."

"Thanks."

"Where're you going?"

"Italy. Rome."

"Pope country," Larry said with a smile, but at his words, Luna jumped.

"Yes . . . Pope country."

The announcer called for the flight to Rome, Italy. Luna and Larry shook hands again and she went away.

To kill time, Larry went to the airport bookstores. He found he couldn't even look at the big cardboard display with his latest bestseller in it. He didn't like to look at bestsellers by anyone. But something did catch his eye. It was the cardboard display next to his. The book was called The Little Storm, and appeared to be one of those steamy romance novels. But what had caught his eye was the big, emblazoned name of the author: LUNA MALONE.

Larry felt like a python had uncoiled inside of him. He felt worse than he had ever felt in his life.

"Italy, Rome," she had said.

"Pope country," he had said, and she jumped.

Larry stumbled back against the rack of his book, and his clumsiness knocked it over. The books tumbled to the floor. One of them slid between his legs and when he looked down he saw that it had turned over to its back. There was his smiling face looking up at him. Larry Melford, big name author, bestseller, a man whose books found their way into the homes of millions of readers.

Suddenly, Hawaii was forgotten and Larry was running, running to the nearest pay phone. What had James said about moral corruption? "We feed on those who thrive on greed and ego . . . once silly concepts of morality and honor break down . . . we will own it all."

The nightmare had to end. Bestsellers Guaranteed had to be exposed. He would wash his hands with blood and moral corruption no more. He would turn himself in.

With trembling hand, he picked up the phone, put in his change, and dialed the police.

From today's Houston Chronicle, front page headline:

POPE ASSASSINATED.

From the same edition, the last page before the Want Ads, the last paragraph:

BESTSELLING AUTHOR MURDERED IN HOME.

The story follows:

"Police suspect the brutal murder of author Larry Melford occurred when he surprised burglars in the act. Thus far, police have been unable to . . . "

SURVEILLANCE

When Johnson arose from bed he was careful to not scratch himself, and when he went to the bathroom to do his business, he sat on the toilet with his pajama pants down and a towel across his lap. Finally, however, modesty had to be discarded. He finished up on the toilet and undressed quickly and jumped in the shower and pulled the curtain, knowing full well that he could be seen by the overhead camera, but at least the one over the door was not directed at him, and sometimes, he felt that if he could minimize the number of cameras on him, he could count it as some sort of victory.

He toweled off quickly, wrapped the towel around his waist, and then he dressed even more quickly, and went down and had his breakfast. He wanted to have two eggs instead of the one allotted, but the cameras were there, and if he had two, there would be the ticket from headquarters, and the fine. He had the one, and the one cup of coffee allotted, went out to this car and pushed the button that turned it on. It went along the route it was supposed to go, and he could hear the almost silent twisting of the little cameras on their cables as they turned in the ceiling and dash and armrests of the car to get a full view of his face, which he tried to keep neutral.

When the car parked him in the company parking lot, he got out and looked at the cameras in the parking garage, sighed, went to the elevator that took him down to the street. In the elevator he looked at the red eye of the camera there. He didn't even feel comfortable picking his nose, and he needed to.

He could remember before everything was so secure and so safe, when you could do that and not end up as an electrical charge on billions of little chips funneled through billions of little wires, or for that matter, thrown wireless across the voids, to have the impulses collected like puzzle pieces and thrown together in your image, showing all that you did from morning to night.

The only place he had found any privacy was under the covers. He could pick his nose there. He could masturbate there, but he knew the cameras would pick up his moves beneath the covers, and certainly plenty of people had no problem picking their nose or showing their dicks or grunting at stool, knowing full well that eventually some human eye would look at it all and smack its lips over certain things, or laugh at this or that, but he was not amongst them.

He arrived at the street level and stepped off the elevator. All along the street the cameras on the wire snakes moved and twisted every which way. He walked along until he was a block from his office, and he noticed an old building off to the side. He passed it every day, but today he looked at it, and saw there was a doorway set back deep. When he came to it he looked in and saw that it had a little squeeze space inside, a place that had been made to get out of the rain or to place your umbrella.

He looked at the cameras on the street, and they looked at him. He stepped into the alcove and turned so that he was in the little nook and cranny. He stood there for a while, and then he sat down in the space, and knew for the first time in a long time, no camera could see him. The camera knew he had gone there, but it couldn't see him, and that gave him a great moment of peace, and soon he found he didn't want to leave, and he watched as the sunlight changed and moved and people walked by, not noticing. He couldn't see them, but he could hear them and he could see their shadows. He picked his nose and flicked the boogers, and took deep breaths and enjoyed the coolness of the stone on his back.

Come nightfall he was still there, and he felt content. He was hungry, but still he didn't leave. He sat there and enjoyed it. When the lights of the city came on, he still sat there, and wouldn't move, and finally two police officers came. They had seen the cameras, the film, and they had seen where he had gone and that he had not come out. They arrested him and took him downtown and put him in the jail where the cameras worked night and day from every angle in the cell, and when they put him there, he began to scream, and he screamed all night, and into the morning, when they finally came for him and gave him a sedative and put him in a ward with others who had tried to hide from the cameras. The shots they gave him made him sleep, and in his sleep the cameras whirled and twisted on cables throughout the place and took his image and shot it across wireless space and tucked it away on little cells smaller than atoms.

In the next week, the old building was torn down and a new one was put up and the cameras were installed.

Everything worked nicely. No one could hide from the cameras. Everyone's mail was read before they read it, and their phone calls were monitored, and to be safe they made sure no one had the chance to use lawyers or complain, and the world was nice and easy and oh so safe, now that there was nothing left to fear.

HANG IN THERE

I was dreaming about our new home-to-be on Nine World. Trying to imagine just how fast our spaceship was traveling, and how long it would be before we got there, when Dad woke me.

"Son," he whispered, "we've got a problem."

I sat up in my bunk and rubbed my eyes. "Problem?" I asked. "What kind of problem?"

"Son, I want you to listen real close. I wouldn't ask this of you if it wasn't absolutely necessary, or if I thought you couldn't do it."

I eased my legs out over the edge of my bunk and let my feet dangle.

Something in Dad's voice frightened me a little.

"The ship has lost entry power," he said.

"Entry power?"

"That's right. Remember what I told you about this trip?"

"About how we would travel faster than light speed till we hit the Seashell Galaxy?"

"That's right, David. And if you remember, I told you that we would have to cut below light speed upon entering the galaxy so as not to overshoot our destination. We would then proceed to Nine World at a normal cruise speed. Remember?"

"I remember, Dad. We're supposed to orbit Nine World till we get the radio go ahead to break into the gravitational field and land."

"That's right. That's the problem."

"The radio is out?"

"That and one other thing. Something more important. We've lost power to enter into the gravitational field. The main computer controlling entry jets has malfunctioned."

I tried not to gulp. "You mean we're lost in space?"

"Not quite. We know exactly where we are, but we can't land or even contact Nine Base and tell them the problem. Right now we're orbiting.

And without main power, we'll continue to orbit. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Dad. But what can I do?"

"That's what I'm coming to, Son. When we switched from faster-than-light speed to normal cruise speed, an error in the computer led us into a minor collision with a meteor."

"I didn't feel anything."

Dad shook his head. "Neither did I. It didn't make that great an impact, but it did cause some serious damage. "

"The loss of entry power and radio communications?" I asked.

"Exactly. You're old enough that I don't have to sugarcoat the truth. Right now this ship, the lights, the anti-gravitation and the oxygen supply are working off the auxiliary emergency unit. Auxiliary power is restricted to the forefront of this ship. The passenger and the crew section. It's not enough to bring us into port. It will roughly supply twenty-four hours of power. After that..."

"It's quits?"

"Correct. That's where you come in. "

"But what can I do, Dad?"

"Get dressed, quick, and come with me. I'll let the captain explain. Be as quiet as you can. Your mother and the kids don't know a thing about this.

It's best we keep it that way, for now."

I climbed out of my bunk, got dressed, pronto. After that I went quietly with Dad to the Control Room. It was the first time I'd ever been inside. It had always been off limits before. The view glass folded around us to show a wide shield of black space, twinkling stars and a huge, red planet called Nine World. The world that was to be our home. Maybe.

The captain--a tall, thin man with graying hair--walked over to me and stuck out his hand. I took it and we shook. I knew it must be something that depended on me pretty bad. Usually all I got from the captain was a pat on the head. The captain squatted down so that he was face to face with me. He put his hands on my shoulders.

"David. Your dad explained the problem?"

I nodded. "Yes, sir."

"We've thought this thing out backwards and forwards," the captain said, "and I'll be honest with you. It doesn't look good. We know you're young, but your dad says that you can do it. Of course it's up to you."

I tried not to let my voice crack. "What is it you need me to do?" The suspense was about to do me in.

The captain stood up, and with his hand on my shoulder, walked me over to the view glass. Looking out into space was like looking down into a bottomless well sprinkled with glitter. It was beautiful, and breathtaking. It was frightening too. I felt like the smallest speck of dust in the universe.

"Look," the captain said and he pointed a finger. He was gesturing at the very edge of the view glass. I had to lean forward some to see it. A ship half the size of ours, probably a planetary transport, was floating along side us.

"Our speed," the captain said, "is matched with that ship, The Fortune."

I was confused but I didn't say anything. I knew time was growing short and that the captain had to be building up to something. Dad came over to stand with us.

"A year back," the captain continued, "I was commander aboard that space transport. We had a similar problem, only it was a malfunction of a different sort, an explosion.

"It might have been the end of us if not for radio contact with home base.

They sent a rescue ship out to pick us up. We can't do that now since our radio is out."

I was beginning to see what he meant. "But the radio onboard The Fortune works?"

"It should. It's been some time, but unless something came along and knocked that out of whack, it should work. It's unlikely something has."

I didn't say that it was unlikely that a meteor would have come along and knocked our computer out of whack either, but I thought it.

The captain continued. "The Fortune's explosion, and this problem of ours, are the only two major accidents that have occurred since the homesteading of Nine World began."

Dad cut in now. "The problem is, Son, that the main cargo hatch is jammed shut. The rest were automatically locked when the explosion occurred, and the Control Room hatch did the same after the crew of The Fortune made their escape through it."

"It's sort of a safety device," the Captain said. "When the explosion blew out the back, the upper half locked off to maintain oxygen and anti-gravitational power. We've already been out there. I took a lifeline over and tried the door. A laser torch might do the job if we had one. We don't.

There's just one possibility. When I paced our dying ship alongside The Fortune, I never expected to be asking you this.

"You see, that explosion blew a small hole in the ship's side, and that hole opens into the air-conditioning ducts. They lead to the central cabin."

I thought I knew what they wanted me to do. "You're trying to tell me that I'm the only one small enough to get through the hole and crawl down the air-conditioning tube."

The captain nodded. "That's exactly what we're saying. We tried. Each and every one of us. We need to get someone through that hole and into the central cabin. From there he only has to open the door that leads to the Control Room. The radio should still be operative. I hate to put it to someone as young as you, David, but you're our only hope."

I looked at Dad. He was nervously opening and closing his hands. Very slowly he said, "David, can you do it?"

I looked out the view glass, leaned over so I could see The Fortune.

Somehow it didn't look so close anymore.

"I can give it a try," I said.

"This suit will be a little big on you," the captain said as he fastened on my helmet, face plate up. "The bad thing is we can't communicate with you when you leave the ship. We don't even have short-range radio power, and because of that we need to go over your instructions carefully. Can you repeat back?"

I was suddenly very weak and my voice was squeaky.

"I'm to go out the emergency hatch and let my lifeline drift me out far enough to touch The Fortune. I'm not to drift too far so I won't be in The Fortune's path and get hit, or get my lifeline snapped.

"When I get it in sight, I'm supposed to use the belt booster to propel me towards the ship. Then once I'm in the hole," I stuttered over the last part,

"I'm supposed to unclip my lifeline. That should leave me enough oxygen in my reserve tanks to send the radio message.

"After that I'm to take the lifeline from the storage compartment of The Fortune and clip it in the central compartment, then to myself. Then I go back up and out the air-conditioning duct. The line should give me enough slack to make it back here."

The captain nodded. "Very good. Now remember: When you go inside The Fortune and unclip your line, you'll have to use these magnetized gloves to keep you from floating. Be sure and turn them on the second you're inside that hole. You got all that?"

"Yes, sir."

"Son," Dad said bending down to look at me. "I'm proud, very proud, and I know you'll do your best. Remember your instructions and be careful."

"I will, Dad," I said, and I pushed down the dark face shield so Dad couldn't see the little tears that were starting to form at the corners of my eyes.

The first mate came in. "Time in thirty seconds."

"Let's do it," the captain said. He hooked the lifeline clip to my belt and checked the spindle that would feed me the slack. He gave me the thumbs-up sign and then Dad did something he'd never done before. He shook my hand.

They went out of the hatch and left me alone with my thoughts. I didn't have time for many. The airlock whined tight, the exit hatch iris-ed open, and all the blackness of space was ready for me.

With only the sound of my breathing apparatus in my ears, I eased out among the stars and started letting my line adjuster out. I won't kid you. I was so scared I could hardly get my fingers to work.

The Fortune moved toward me like a slow-motion movie. I let out some more line, and realized suddenly that I was feeding too slow. I let out more and moved within range, used my belt boosters.

Close up the hole showed jagged edges that wouldn't do my space suit any good. I got hold of the edges of the opening and pulled myself to it, slipped a leg inside. I switched on my magnetized gloves, then, very reluctantly, unsnapped my lifeline.

Looking back I saw it hang like a thread on black water, drift strangely and move out of reach.

I turned and started down the vent.

It was a tight squeeze but I was making it. I kept inching my way till I came to the grill that had to lead to the central cabin. There was no other way. The duct narrowed in front of me to a size that would have been a close fit for a mouse on a diet.

The grill lifted out easily and I made my way through. The lack of gravity would have started me tumbling and bouncing off the walls, but I used my gloves to go across the ceiling and down the wall like a fly. Any other time, under different circumstances, it might have been fun. Right now I was all business.

I had a little trouble with the Control Room hatch, but after a minute of struggling, got it open. The panel in the Control Room was lifeless. No lights. Nothing. Only the cold blackness of space against the view glass.

Using my gloves, I eased around the wall and up to the panel. I found the switch the captain had told me about.

I held my breath and flicked it.

Nothing happened.

I flicked it back and tried again. This time there was a hum and the lights on the panel lit up like a Christmas tree. I almost cheered. I flicked on the main transmission switch like the captain had showed me and started the message I'd memorized.

"Mayday. Mayday. Marooned. Set fix on this signal. Mayday. Mayday.

Leaving channel wide open. Repeat. Mayday. Mayday. Set fix on this signal."

I left the switch on and the channel open like I had been told. Fixed it so it would record my message minute after minute. I would have liked to hang around till the base responded, but I didn't have the time for that. I started back to the storage area for a lifeline.

I tried the storage hatch. Jammed. I had a sudden queasy feeling, but I braced myself and tried again.

No go. It was lodged shut. I tried it till I was breathing hard, and that reminded me of something else: a limited oxygen supply. Things looked exceptionally bad for the home team.

I went back to the Control Room and checked out the view glass. I'm not sure why. Maybe just to convince myself that our spaceship was still there.

It was, but somehow it looked miles away. This wasn't doing any good.

I made my way back to the central cabin, up the wall and into the air-conditioning duct. By the time I started crawling toward the hole I was feeling very cold and numb. My hands felt like stumps and my breathing was coming in uneven gasps. I was losing not only the pressure in my suit but the temperature regulator as well.

When I got to the opening I had to stop, take some real hard breaths and hold them in.

I could see our ship, The Bova, so close, yet so far away. I didn't like the idea, but my oxygen wouldn't last forever. I braced my feet and pushed out into the deep blackness of space.

Using the belt blaster, I gave myself enough power to reach The Bova, but it was moving away fast. If it should get away, that was the end. It, as well as The Fortune, would fall away, and away, and away. And when it made this position again in orbit, it would be much to late.

There was cold sweat on my face and against the facemask. I gave the belt blaster another jolt and saw I was going to make the ship. That was when a horrible thought struck me.

The side of The Bova was slick, nothing to hang onto. Without a lifeline to guide me into port I didn't have a chance. I would merely hit and bounce off into space. Like a rubber ball--off and out forever.

The Bova was in range and I was closing. There was one possibility, I thought. The Bova was almost within my reach. Six feet away. Five. Four.

Three. I switched the magnetized gloves back on and palmed them both against the side of the ship. I stuck like a fly in syrup.

It was time to take some breaths again. I was sapped. My oxygen was going fast and my head was starting to swim. The blackness of space seemed to be closing in on me, smothering me, draining me.

Right hand then left, I started moving toward the escape hatch. The dizziness continued. I suddenly felt like I'd taken a plunge into the pool back home and had been under too long, needed to come up for air. But there was nowhere to come up and no air. My fingers felt like ice, and even though the magnetized gloves were holding me, as my grip weakened, so would the pressure I was applying with my palms. The gloves worked fine as long as I put out a little effort, a little tension. But if I should pass out, drifting and my body grow slack, then my drifting weight just might conceivably pull me loose from The Bova.

I moved on. Right hand then left. Slower and slower yet. My chest hurt. I felt as if I were drowning. Then my hands grew limp and I felt as if I was falling, falling into the depths of a bottomless well.

"You're all right," Dad said.

I took a breath to make sure I wasn't dreaming. It felt good. I was warm. I lifted up on my elbows. Dad, Mom, the captain, the first mate, even my little brother and sister were there.

"You were very brave," Mom said and she pushed back my hair with her hand.

"I don't remember anything after getting back to The Bova," I said, and I was surprised to find my voice so weak.

"That's because you were unconscious, David," Dad said.

The captain smiled. "We saw you drift off from The Fortune without your lifeline and guessed your problem."

"To tell the truth," the first mate interrupted, "we thought you were a goner."

"That's right," the captain said. "When you came in contact with the ship we were unaware of it. No radar to pick you up. We figured. . . Well, we were pretty sure that you hit and bounced off into space. Except your Dad here. He knew you better than that. He dressed out and went outside, took a lifeline and got you. It's a good thing you remembered the gloves. That was fast thinking."

Dad agreed. "You were hanging by your hands. The rest of you floating in space. I almost lost you when I pulled you free. Even unconscious you were pushing those gloves against the side of the ship with all your might.

You were quite a hero."

"Some hero," I said. "I had to be rescued."

"But you did set off the radio message," the captain added.

"How long ago?" I asked.

"About eight hours," Dad said.

"Eight hours! How much time do we have left?"

"All the time in the world, Son. The rescue ship made it three hours ago.

Look around you. We're onboard."

CHOMPERS

Old Maude, who lived in alleys, combed trashcans, and picked rags, found the false teeth in a puddle of blood back of Denny's. Obvious thing was that there had been a mugging, and some unfortunate who'd been wandering around out back had gotten his or her brains beaten out, and then hauled off somewhere for who knows what.

But the teeth, which had probably hopped from the victim's mouth like some kind of frightened animal, still remained, and the blood they lay in was testimony to the terrible event.

Maude picked them up, looked at them. Besides the blood there were some pretty nasty coffee stains on the rear molars and what looked to be a smidgen of cherry pie. One thing Maude could spot and tell with an amazing degree of accuracy was a stain or a food dollop. Cruise alleyways and dig in trash cans most of your life, and you get skilled.

Now, Maude was a practical old girl, and, as she had about as many teeth in her head as a pomegranate, she wiped the blood off on her dress--high fashion circa 1920--and put those suckers right square in her gummy little mouth.

Somehow it seemed like the proper thing to do.

Perfect fit. Couldn't have been any better than if they'd been made for her. She got the old, blackened lettuce head out of her carpetbag--she'd found the lettuce with a half a tomato back of Burger King--and gave that vegetable a chomp.

Sounded like the dropping of a guillotine as those teeth snapped into the lettuce and then ground it to smithereens.

Man that was good for a change, thought Maude, to be able to go at your food like a pig to trough. Gumming your vittles gets old.

The teeth seemed a little tighter in her mouth than a while ago, but Maude felt certain that after a time she'd get used to them. It was sad about the poor soul that had lost them, but that person's bad luck was her fortune.

Maude started toward the doorway she called home, and by the time she'd gone a block she found that she was really hungry, which surprised her. Not an hour back she'd eaten half a hamburger out of a Burger King trashcan, three greasy fries, and half an apple pie. But, boy howdy, did she want to chow down now. She felt like she could eat anything.

She got the tomato half out of her bag, along with everything else in there that looked edible, and began to eat.

More she ate, hungrier she got. Pretty soon she was out of goodies, and the sidewalk and the street started looking to her like the bottom of a dinner plate that ought to be filled. God, but her belly burned. It was as if she'd never eaten and had suddenly become aware of the need.

She ground her big teeth and walked on. Half a block later she spotted a big alley cat hanging head down over the lip of a trash can, pawing for something to eat, and ummm, ummm, ummm, but that cat looked tasty as a Dunkin' Donut.

Chased that rascal for three blocks, but didn't catch it. It pulled a fade-out on her in a dark alley.

Disgusted, but still very, very hungry, Maude left the alley thinking: Chow, need me some chow.

Beat cop O'Hara was twirling his nightstick when he saw her nibbling the paint off a rusty old street lamp. It was an old woman with a prune face, and when he came up she stopped nibbling and looked at him. She had the biggest, shiniest pair of choppers he had ever seen. They stuck out from between her lips like a gator's teeth, and in the light of the streetlamp, even as he watched, he thought for a moment that he had seen them grow. And, by golly, they looked pointed now.

O'Hara had walked his beat for twenty years, and he was used to eccentrics and weird getups, but there was something particularly weird about this one.

The old woman smiled at him.

Man, there were a lot of teeth there. (More than a while ago?) O'Hara thought: Now that's a crazy thing to think.

He was about six feet from her when she jumped him, teeth gnashing, clicking together like a hundred cold Eskimo knees. They caught his shirtsleeve and ripped it off; the cloth disappeared between those teeth fast as a waiter's tip.

O'Hara struck at her with his nightstick, but she caught that in her mouth, and those teeth of hers began to rattle and snap like a pound full of rabid dogs. Wasn't nothing left of that stick but toothpicks.

He pulled his revolver, but she ate that too. Then she ate O'Hara, didn't even leave a shoe.

Little later on she ate a kid on a bicycle--the bicycle too--and hit up a black hooker for dessert. But that didn't satisfy her. She was still hungry, and, worse yet, the pickings had gotten lean.

Long about midnight, this part of the city went dead except for a bum or two, and she ate them. She kept thinking that if she could get across town to Forty-second Street, she could have her fill of hookers, kids, pimps, and heroin addicts.

It'd be a regular buffet-style dinner.

But that was such a long ways off and she was sooooo hungry. And those damn teeth were so big now she felt as if she needed a neck brace just to hold her head up.

She started walking fast, and when she was about six blocks away from the smorgasbord of Forty-second, her mouth started watering like Niagara Falls.

Suddenly she had an attack. She had to eat NOW--as in "a while ago."

Immediately.

Halfway up her arm, she tried to stop. But my, was that tasty. Those teeth went to work, a-chomping and a-rending, and pretty soon they were as big as a bear trap, snapping flesh like it was chewing gum.

Wasn't nothing left of Maude but a puddle of blood by the time the teeth fell to the sidewalk, rapidly shrinking back to normal size.

Harry, high on life and high on wine, wobbled down the sidewalk, dangling left, dangling right. It was a wonder he didn't fall down.

He saw the teeth lying in a puddle of blood, and having no choppers of his own--the tooth fairy had them all--he decided, what the hell, what can it hurt?

Besides, he felt driven.

Picking up the teeth, wiping them off, he placed them in his mouth.

Perfect fit. Like they were made for him.

He wobbled off, thinking: Man, but I'm hungry; gracious, but I sure could eat.

BEYOND THE LIGHT

It started about three months ago.

We sat before Gardner's mammoth fireplace in his overstuffed chairs and drank wine. Gardner always kidded that the fireplace was large enough to roast a hog in, and it was. It was as large and ornate as the rest of the house.

Gardner had the loot, you see. He was a paperback artist, and a successful one. He had an agent in New York and everything. Big-time fella. I sometimes wondered what he saw in me. I was pretty crude compared to him. Said himself that I had primitive tastes.

An example is, I'm not really a wine man. I like beer. Any kind of beer. Ice-cold to piss-warm. Put it in front of me, I'll drink it.

Gardner said that's because I'm a redneck and an ex-boxer.

Time after time he's said that boxing is a hooligan's way to make a living, and maybe drinking wine will give me a little refinement.

I doubted it at this late stage. Wasn't that much of a boxer anyway, just a payday fighter from San Antonio. I'd spent most of the time with my ass on the canvas, so about two years back I'd given it up. Moved here to Nacogdoches, Texas, where a lot of my relatives live, opened up a janitorial service with my uncle. He does the books; I supervise the folks.

Anyway, Gardner has this sort of oddball Continental charm about him, and wine suits him to a tee. So we drank that.

This particular night we'd had so much of the stuff, I was even starting to like it. He poured us both another glass, put the bottle by his chair, leaned back and said, "You believe in the supernatural, Rocky?" (Rocky's my nickname, after Marciano, of course.) "That sort of came out of left field," I said.

"Just got to thinking. Do you?"

"No," I said. "You know me, old redneck. If I can't see it, hit it or bed it, it doesn't exist."

Gardner smiled and drank a sip from his wine. The fire sputtered in the hearth, lent some flickering shadow to his face, made his eyes look unnaturally bright.

Meko, his scruffy black cat, strolled out of the dark -- we liked to sit in front of the fire with the lights off -- and leaped onto Gardner's lap. He stroked her head solemnly. "I do," he said. "I believe ... in something."

"Not me. No spirits besides those in a bottle as far as I'm concerned. When you're dead you're dead. Just you and the worms for a while, and after a bit, just the worms."

Gardner scratched Meko gently behind the ears. She purred. If there was one thing Gardner really loved, it was that cat.

"Did I ever tell you what I used to do, Rocky? The work I did?"

"No. Guess I thought you were always a painter."

"Well, I've always painted, and I love it, but before I moved here from Houston I was a psychiatrist."

"You're joking?"

"No. I sort of got... drummed out of the business, I guess you could say." He smiled at me with those very white, capped teeth of his. "I enjoyed the psychiatric profession almost as well as my painting."

"Why'd you quit then?"

"I said I was drummed out of the business, and I meant that.

My colleagues thought I was whacko. Don't smile. Lots of psychiatrists are nuts. But don't worry, I'm not one of them. It was my belief, in what we casually refer to as 'the supernatural,' that got me in trouble with the profession.

"You see, Rocky, I thought the supernatural, or as I prefer to call it, the paranormal, was, and is, just another branch of science we've yet to understand or explain."

Outside, the December wind had picked up, and the first tentative fingers of a cold rain scratched at the roof.

"I don't believe in the supernatural," I said, "but I don't see how you believing in it would get you run out of the business."

"It's witch-doctor stuff to them, Rocky. Doesn't mix well with the image. As a psychiatrist, I dealt with all manner of problems.

For all the people who came to see me, who needed help, I was only able to really do a handful some good. That was depressing.

"But what really bothered me were those sent to me by the state. Those that I call 'spontaneous psychopaths.' It was this type that directed me toward my theories."

"Theories?"

"These are the sort of folks that seem like normal citizens, show no sign of abnormal behavior, and suddenly they blow.

They're the Charles Whitmans who climb in towers and rain bullets down on innocent people for no apparent reason. The Mark David Chapmans who step from the shadows to kill public figures against whom they have no grudge. Or the Gary Gilmores who kill and seem totally perplexed at what they've done, even insist that they be killed and put out of their misery, out of the way of society.

These people are often glad to die, and I think there may well be a reason, a clue in that."

"I think I slept through part of this," I said. "Or maybe it's the wine. You're not making sense to me." Gardner laughed. "That's what I like about you, Rocky. You're so damned down to Earth it helps me keep my feet on the ground, my head out of the clouds."

"Thanks... I think."

"What I'm saying is, these people often want to die because they realize that that's the only way they can get rid of ... this thing."

"This thing meaning insanity?"

"Not exactly. There's a lot of badness in the world, Rocky.

Some of it stems from greed, hate... even love. There's badness that develops out of social problems, racial oppression, but what I'm talking about is something altogether different. I'm talking about true evil, Rocky."

"I think maybe if I had another glass of wine this would all start to make sense." I tipped the last of the bottle into my glass.

Gardner got up from his chair and put another log on the fire, took a poker from the rack and pushed it well into the flames.

Outside there was an explosive blast of thunder that shook the house and charged the air with electricity.

"What if outside this world as we know it, something waits,"

Gardner said, hanging the poker in the rack next to the scoop shovel. "A force so elemental it's beyond our understanding. A creature. A thing. Something I've come to call the soul ghoul."

"Soul ghoul?"

Gardner returned to his seat.

"These senseless murders. Why does a normal person spring off the deep end like that, without warning? That's what perplexed me, and I began to pursue the problem, turned to everything I could find for an answer. Even areas where my colleagues refused to look. The occult. I read up on it. Attended seances, examined it inside out.

"A lot of it's crap, Rocky. No doubt. But I came away feeling that the basic belief that something lies beyond has been with us since the beginning of man, and for good reason. Exorcism and possession first led me to my conclusions. How I arrived at them is rather tedious, but suffice to say I began to believe there was a parasite of sorts that fed on the emotional trauma of men, the energy that one expends in the process of performing fearful deeds, and of course, in dying. The more traumatic the situation, the more energy we expend. And what more is the soul than energy from within?

"The soul ghoul is like a mind without a body, a soul in search of a house. It uses a human being much like a rider uses a horse.

"Voodoo has an element of this. When a believer lets down his or her barriers, a spirit enters them. They call it the loa. There are both good and evil loas. Perhaps these evil loas are in fact the manifestation of the ghoul. Call it hysteria if you like, I think not."

"How could a person know what it was going to get? I mean, a good spirit or bad?"

"He can't. But I believe this evil spirit, this ghoul of the soul, is attracted to certain types of people. People whose emotions run deep. Not necessarily intelligent people, or even kind people, but people with odd emotional stirrings that are quite different from their fellows; stirrings that make them game for this... thing.

"Once it possesses an individual it either uses them up until they are an emotionless, zombie-shell like Chapman, or the fear of it within them drives what remains of the persons personality to destroy it by destroying themselves. As in Gilmore's case."

"Interesting theory, but a bit difficult to prove, Gardner"

"Unless one were willing to extend himself, open the way for this ghoul, examine its actions from within."

"If there is such a thing, and I don't believe it for a minute, wouldn't that be risky? Once it was hold of you..."

"Maybe. But there are preparations. Things that have come to be called white magic; spells, diagrams and such for warding off evil spirits. It is my belief that there is some scientific reasoning for these things driving back evil forces, that it's not magic at all, just something we call magic for lack of understanding. Whatever it is, it must work, and I have considerable knowledge of these things."

"You?"

"Yes, I want to open the way."

"All right, you want to open the way. How?"

"Ever play with a Ouija board, Rocky?"

"No. I know what it is though. Nonsense."

"Perhaps." Gardner stood up and motioned to me. "Come, into the dining room. I want to show you something."

Reluctantly, I got out of my chair and followed him to the dining room, which was about the size of my apartment over on Pearl Street. Gardner flipped on the light and except for a table and chairs, and a Ouija board on the far end of the table, it was bare. Of furniture, anyway. The place stank of incense. There were candles of incense in each corner of the room and they sputtered and flickered and gave off an odor like a dog's armpit. On the walls in bold, black lines diagrams had been drawn. A huge circle was drawn around the table in white chalk.

"The candles, the diagrams, the spell I'll chant, they are the most important part of this. The Ouija is merely a doorway."

Meko lazily followed us into the room, and Gardner bent down to scratch her behind the ears. "That'll hold her," he said.

Gardner stepped inside the circle, took a chair in front of the Ouija, placed his fingers on the triangular piece of plastic that serves as the message indicator. I sat on his left.

"Say this is real," I said, "what happens if we just get someone's Aunt Harriet, or one of those mischievous ghosts, what do you call them?"

"Poltergeists. Hey, there may be hope for you yet, Rocky. As for Aunt Harriet, I've been experimenting for the last week now, and I've already made contact with this spirit, the one I call the soul ghoul. I feel certain that it's the ghoul; its evil weighs on me like a boulder"

"Come on, Gardner."

"Therefore, it's easier to contact each time. One thing, Rocky, will you get the lights?"

I got up and turned them out, resumed my seat. I was getting a bit impatient with all th is. "Let's get on with it already," I said.

Gardner began to chant. The words were all nonsense to me.

Maybe it was Greek or Latin, or both, but after a while he said in English, "Are you there?"

Nothing happened. There was only the sound of the storm outside, picking up in ferocity. Beyond the windows, lightning spread needles of gold fire across the sky; rain, whipped by the wind, sputtered against the window panes.

"Are you there?" Gardner repeated. "I am opening the way."

Truth of the matter is, I guess it was getting to me some. I looked at the window directly across from Gardner and saw eyes.

Or what I thought were eyes. They were the beams of some car passing on the road outside, and in a moment they passed on.

"Are you--" and then I heard the scrape of the indicator on the polished wood of the Ouija board. When I looked, the indicator, Gardner's fingers resting lightly on top, was moving toward the left of the board, toward the word YES. It stopped there.

"Who are you?" Gardner asked.

The indicator began to move again, tracing its way over one letter after another, gaining momentum as it went. I AM I AM I AM it repeated.

"What do you want?" Gardner asked.

YOU it spelled out immediately. THEM it spelled out after a short stall. Well, I thought. Ask a silly question, get a silly answer "What are you?".

Suddenly the triangle of plastic slid across the board, stretched Gardner's arms to their full length. The plastic slipped out from beneath his fingers and jetted along the smooth expanse of the table, catapulted through the air and struck the window, shattering it. The tail of the storm slipped in and slapped the room from wall to wall. I hadn't realized it was that cold outside.

"For the love of God," Gardner said softly

I got up, turned on the lights and sat back down.

"Now... now," Gardner said, "do you believe?"

"Nothing to believe. Your subconscious did that, spelled out those words."

"And tossed the indicator out the window?"

"It slipped. You were tense and it slipped. The table is smooth, it skipped along it like a rock on a pond."

"That little plastic thing broke the window by itself?"

"Gained force as it went. Anything, if it's moving fast enough, can pack quite a wallop. Bantam weights for instance. They hit fast, and can hit hard because of it. It's not just weight and muscle, it's momentum."

Gardner put his head down on the Ouija. "Just like them," he said.

"Trying to tell it like I see it is all... I'm a friend."

"I know, Rocky. Sorry."

I sat quietly for a moment and then stood up. "Better get that window patched over. It's going to be a cold one tonight. I'll call you later."

"Sure."

Meko was in the den. She must have found the goings-on in the dining room too silly for her taste. I scratched her behind the ears in agreement and went out to my car.

I'm not big on the sort of crap Gardner was feeding me, but it got me thinking. And besides, I was worried about the scrawny rascal. Thought maybe he was starting to cling to the rim. I even went so far as to go to the public library and study up some.

ound books on ghosts, demons, ghouls, you name it. I went from occult explanations -- which were downright silly -- to scientific ones. What I got out of it from the scientific end was stuff like Ouijas and poltergeists -- which as far as could be told from investigation -- were the results of the mind, the subconscious. Which is just what I thought all along. A sort of mental wish fulfillment, I guess you'd say, or perhaps the results of emotional stress. It was a kind of self-hypnosis, and everyone knows strange things happen under hypnosis. Like a hypnotist telling a subject that they've just poured boiling water on their arm, and suddenly blisters pop up. Strange stuff.

I worried about Gardner for a while, but finally decided he was just under strain. Besides, Gardner was a weird duck anyway. Next time I saw him he'd be off this ghoul stuff.

It was about three weeks before Gardner and I got together again. I never did get around to phoning him, just went over there one night uninvited with a bottle of wine and a six-pack.

There wasn't a light on in the house. At first I thought he wasn't home, but the Buick was in the garage poking its butt out shyly at the night.

I parked, went up the walk and knocked, then remembered the bell. When I was growing up, we lived in the country, and it was rare to find a house with a bell. Everybody knocked. So I'd never quite gotten used to doorbells.

I pushed the bell a couple of times, but no answer After a minute or two had passed, I yelled Gardner's name, and still getting no response, I tried the door. It was unlocked. I went in.

The place had a musty odor, like maybe it had been shut up for a while without sunlight and fresh air. Silence crawled through the house like something alive. It was smoky too. A green log smoldered in the fireplace, churned out black smoke like rubber burning. But that was Gardner. He didn't know softwood from hard, pine from walnut.

"Gardner," I yelled, and my voice seemed to travel uncertainly through the house.

"Rocky?" came Gardner's voice; it was weak and whispery, came from the dining room. I went on in there and found Gardner sitting at the table where I had last seen him.

I turned on the light. The Ouija was in front of him again, only this time it was cracked half in two. Gardner had not fixed the broken window and cold wind whipped into the room and lashed at me like a wet crocodile tail. The hardwood floor in front of the window was warped up a bit from where the rain had blown in, and it looked to have blown away most of the white chalk circle.

Even the diagrams on the walls looked to have faded. The candles were out and the odor in the room was not due to that nasty incense. It was something else. Breeze down from the fertilizer plant, I reckoned. Bad stuff.

Gardner was a changed man. It was as if someone had bleached him. His face was as white as a starlet's teeth, his eyes had more red streaks than a chicken yard had scratches, and his hair had that combed-with-an-egg-beater look.

I walked over to the table and sat down, reached out and touched Gardner's hand. My own hand came away damp... bloody.

Gardner's wrist was cut up pretty bad.

"What happened, Gardner?"

"Meko."

"Meko did this? Why she's as gentle as a..." and then I saw her.

She was lying against the wall on Gardner's right. It was as if she had been flung there like a wet dishrag. Her head was dangling at an impossible angle, as if it had been screwed halfway off, and her tongue drooped from her mouth, looked a foot long.

"What happened?" I asked.

"The ghoul," Gardner said. "It made me do it... just a little cat's soul, but it wanted to feed; it wanted the energy of something alive.

Couldn't help it, Rocky, I swear. I didn't want to, but the ghoul wouldn't leave me alone."

"Take it easy."

"The board... last time I summoned it, then tried to send it back, it split the board... It was showing me I no longer had control." He reached over and took hold of my shirtfront. "It's inside me, Rocky. Fought it all I could, kept it at bay, but it's getting stronger... The spells, the diagrams. They won't hold it."

"Easy, pal." I finally got him out of the dining room and into the den, into one of those big chairs in front of the fireplace. I fixed up the fire some, went out and got the beer and wine. After a glass of the wine he seemed to calm down a bit.

"I've pulled it out of there," Gardner said. "I've unleashed the goddamn parasite and it's feeding on me. I feel like I'm inside a husk looking out sometimes... like I can't control my actions.

Actually saw it... me, take hold of Meko and... God! It's got me, Rocky." Suddenly he was keyed up again.

"Have some more wine." I poured him another glass and he upended it.

"It soaked up Meko's energy like a sponge soaks up water. It was terrible... exhilarating in a way... Evil, Rocky, very evil."

"You're tired, Gardner. Meko scratched you... you're not quite yourself."

"I didn't kill Meko," Gardner said at the top of his lungs.

"You've got to believe me, Rocky. If you don't I'll lose my mind.

It's like that writer, Lovecraft... things are out there, waiting, just waiting to slip through time and space into this world. I've let one through, and my body is the gate. When the emotions are up, the ghoul feeds, and then when the emotions die down, the gate starts to close. It gets sucked back, back to the abysmal darkness beyond this world.

"I was a fool to try and open the way to let myself be a sort of human sacrifice, just because I was curious."

A horrible thing went through my mind: Curiosity killed the cat!

"Listen, Gardner. It feeds off emotional stress, right? Well, if you take it easy, if you let the stress die out cold, can it survive?"

"I don't think so... It can at least be controlled."

"Then try and relax." I knew I was talking crazy, but Gardner wasn't going to listen to logic. He was too flipped out. I poured him another glass of wine, and somehow we managed to slip away from the subject and into other matters.

An hour later we were talking rapidly about anything and everything under the sun -- except the supernatural. When Gardner seemed to have himself pretty well together, we buried Meko and cleaned the blood off the wall and tossed the Ouija board out.

As I was leaving for home Gardner said, "Thanks, Rocky."

"All right," I said. "You've just been working too hard. Stress.

Get some rest."

He gave me a wan smile as I left him at the door. I drove away from there with a chill at my back like the North winds blow.

You've seen those ads about problem drinkers. The ones that ask the question: "If you let him drive home drunk, are you a real friend?"

What the ad's getting at, of course, is being a friend isn't always easy. It isn't a great lot of fun to tell your old pal that he's a goddamned sot and he ought not to drive home; ought not to walk home, for that matter, in a drunken condition. The good friend is supposed to do the driving for him, or make him sleep over, offer help in some sort of way.

That's what I should have done, and I feel guilty now. I blame myself for what happened to Gardner. Maybe I could have gotten him a head shrinker, someone who could have helped him with his problems. I like to think I didn't do that because I don't have much faith in those folks to begin with.

Whatever the excuse, there's no doubt I knew my friend Gardner was losing his grip. I was just foolish enough to think it might go away, like a cold or something. It's hard to admit that a friend's losing it, that his dough isn't done in the middle.

I laid low, didn't call Gardner, didn't go by. Deep down I probably didn't want to see him; didn't want to look at that wild look in his eyes, or hear him ramble on about elemental ghouls from beyond. Truth to tell, if it hadn't been for something I read in the papers, I might not have gone by there the night it happened.

I'm not much of a paper reader, and I guess by the time I got to the article it was a couple days old. Don't really remember.

Out back of this lumber yard they'd found the body of a college girl and her head was twisted on her neck like some sort of rubber doll's head. That made me think of poor Meko, the way she looked lying up against Gardner's dining room wall. The thing got to working in the back of my mind like a dog scratching at a screen door, wanting to be let in.

But still, I didn't go over there.

A few days passed, and like before, a couple days late, I read the newspaper. Found out that there had been two more murders, each as ghastly as the first. One of the victims had been a college boy, the other a little girl. Same method of operation. No obvious motive.

I didn't like what I was thinking, but I couldn't put it out of my mind. Five minutes after I laid the paper down I was in my car, on my way to Gardner's.

The house was dark again. I got out of my Ford, walked on up to the door and started to knock. But didn't. I just didn't want to hear that hollow rap of my knuckles bouncing around inside that big old house -- and maybe that wasn't entirely the reason.

Something deep inside me seemed to say: "Boy, you better be quiet."

I went around to the back of the house and found a window that wasn't latched, pushed it up and crawled inside, just managing not to castrate myself on a nail sticking up in the window sill.

The inside of that room was like being inside someone's wool pocket. Couldn't even see my hand in front of my face.

Although I don't smoke, I carry matches. You use them in odd ways in the janitor business -- checking corners for dust, that sort of thing. I peeled one out of the matchbook I carried and lit it.

I was in Gardner's art studio. I'd only been in there one other time when he'd shown me a painting he was doing for a Western paperback. Canvas made an alley wall on either side of me, and in the flickerings of the match, I could see the door that led into the hall and out into the rest of the house.

I started down between those canvases and something caught my eye. About that time my match went out.

I lit another and held it close to the painting -- for that's what had gotten my attention -- and got a good look. It damn near turned my stomach, and I tell you true, I'm not a squeamish sort of guy. It was a painting of a woman, a man, a little girl and a cat.

Each of them had their heads twisted at a crazy angle, tongues hanging out of their mouths and their eyes popping like huge pockets of puss.

When that match went out I lit another, moved it around to look at the other paintings. They all seemed to be of the same creature, but in different poses. The paintings seemed to represent some sort of huge whirlwind that was equipped with a horrible, toothy mouth. I had an idea what they were supposed to portray.

Poor Gardner had totally lost it. Those people, those horrible murders... I lit another match and moved toward the door that led to the hall.

Gardner stood in the doorway, a poker in his hand.

"Gardner, it's me."

He gritted his teeth and swung. I caught his wrist and pushed him into the hall, up against the wall. His eyes burned into mine like blowtorches. But most amazing was his strength.

Gardner is a slight man, small boned and delicate, but he tossed me off like a dog shaking rain from its coat. I went flying down the length of the hall, smashed into the door that led to the dining room.

Gardner stalked toward me like some sort of great praying mantis, the poker swinging at his side.

I kicked out at him and hit him in the abdomen, knocked him back about a foot. Just enough to give me time to open the door into the dining room. At a dead run I palmed the table and went over it, and behind me came Gardner. He did the same, but with less effort. I didn't wait to see him land.

I went into the den and to the front door, but I couldn't get it open. Either the lock was jammed or I was fumbling.

I turned just in time to avoid the poker. The blow would have smashed my head like a water balloon. It went into the wood of the door and stuck, made an ear-shattering scrape that rocked me from head to heel.

Gardner struggled with the poker, but it was hung. I hit him with a left hook to the gut. Once I'd hit Archie Malone like that in a hard bout in Houston. He'd dropped to his knees like a five-dollar whore, but Gardner, he kept standing. It just seemed to annoy him.

It did get him away from the poker though, and I gave him an overhand right to go with it. Must have broken his nose, but it didn't stop him. He forgot that poker, and as I wheeled away from the door, he came after me barehanded.

Gardner's face was not his own. It seemed as if it had been remolded by crude and uncaring hands. The eyes were like sparks flickering with the firelight -- for that ever-constant fire was blazing and smoking in the hearth. The teeth were drawn back in a horrible, ear to ear grin.

For the first time in my life, I was really scared.

"Gardner, I don't want to hurt you."

He came on quick and silent. I gave him another hook to the middle, landed a right cross above his left ear. It rocked him, but he didn't go down.

"Gardner!" I screamed, and for a moment it was as if he understood me, knew who I was. It was like something from within him was trying to grab the reins and whoa back.

"Rocky," he said weakly, "help me." And then the features that momentarily softened were washed away by a tide of fury and insanity.

I backed away, got around in front of one of those big chairs in front of the fireplace. Gardner reached out, grabbed the heavy chair and flung it halfway across the room, palmed my chest and knocked me up against the fireplace mantle. The flames licked at my back, scorched my hide through jacket and shirt. I swiveled to the left, away from the fire.

My hand touched something metal, and when I looked down, saw it was resting on the fire shovel in the poker rack. I jerked the shovel out of there and laid it hard upside Gardner's head.

Blood trickled down the side of his head, and those eyes blazed like bonfires in the hollows of a skull. They seemed to freeze me.

"Gardner, for the love of God!"

He was on me, his fingers buried in the lapels of my jacket. I tried to hit him with the shovel again, but couldn't get in a good whack. Blood streamed down his face, and that horrible mask of hate was inches from my face, the teeth bared like some rabid dog... and then the face seemed to fold down like a jerked blind, and there was Gardner's face again, his eyes. Maybe it was just the shadows there flickering in the firelight, but the demonic face and that of Gardner seemed to shift from second to second, and then Gardner pushed me from him and turned toward the great hearth.

His legs coiled, and by the time I realized what he was about to do, it was too late. He leaped straight into the fire, and the flames, like fingers, seemed to reach out and grasp him.

I tried to pull him out, but he fought me. The last thing I remember was his face -- Gardner's -- and in spite of the damage the flames had done to it, it seemed at peace. But then maybe I'm just thinking after the fact, being melodramatic.

The fire wrapped him up and took him away, and what I managed to pull from there was hardly recognizable as a man.

That's been a while now, but sometimes I wake up and see that face Gardner wore, or worse yet, I see him looking at me out of those flames, and then his blackened body lies before my eyes and I wake up.

No doubt about it, he wanted to die that way.

After the inquest a lot of stuff came out. Seems Gardner had been a lot worse off than I'd known. Before moving to Nacogdoches he had been a psychiatrist, but he'd also spent time in a mental institution; even back then the idea of a soul ghoul had eaten away his rationality. They released him as cured eventually, but...

It doesn't matter now. Those horrible murders stopped. I put his paintings in the fire the night he died. Couldn't see much use in slandering the man's reputation further. There was some hullabaloo about me murdering him, but that didn't stick. The psychiatric stuff worked in my favor, and some others who knew him said he'd been acting awful strange.

Poor Gardner, he was as crazy as a moth in a jar. But the other day I read the paper, and they think they got the Yorkshire Ripper, a fellow more ghoulish than Jack ever was. Thirteen brutal murders to his credit.

What got me about the article was what was said by those who knew him. "He was a model son, a perfect husband."

Why do normal people fall off the horse?

I don't have any answers, but Gardner's idea, the ghoul ... just too fantastic. Stuff like that just couldn't be.

Could it?

I TELL YOU IT'S LOVE

The beautiful woman had no eyes, just sparkles of light where they should have been--or so it seemed in the candlelight. Her lips, so warm and inviting, so wickedly wild and suggestive of strange pleasures, held yet a hint of disaster, as if they might be fat red things skillfully molded from dried blood.

"Hit me," she said.

That is my earliest memory of her: a doll for my beating, a doll for my love.

I laid it on her with that black silk whip, slapping it across her shoulders and back, listening to the whisper of it as it rode down, delighting in the flat pretty sound of it striking her flesh.

She did not bleed, which was a disappointment. The whip was too soft, too flexible, too difficult to strike hard with.

"Hurt me," she said softly. I went to where she kneeled. Her arms were outstretched, crucifixion style, and bound to the walls on either side with strong silk cord the color and texture of the whip in my hand.

I slapped her. "Like it?" I asked. She nodded and I slapped her again . . . and again. A one-two rhythm, slow and melodic, time and again.

"Like it?" I repeated, and she moaned, "Yeah, oh yeah."

Later, after she was untied and had tidied up the blood from her lips and nose, we made brutal love--me with my thumbs bending the flesh of her throat, she with her nails entrenched in my back. She said to me when we were finished, "Let's do someone."

That's how we got started. Thinking back now, once again I say I'm glad for fate; glad for Gloria; glad for the memory of the crying sounds, the dripping blood and the long sharp knives that murmured through flesh like a lover's whisper cutting the dark.

Yeah, I like to think back to when I walked hands-in-pockets down the dark wharves in search of that special place where there were said to be special women with special pleasures for a special man like me.

I walked on until I met a sailor leaning up against a wall smoking a cigarette, and he says when I ask about the place,

"Oh, yeah, I like that sort of pleasure myself. Two blocks down, turn right, there between the warehouses, down the far end. You'll see the light." And he pointed and I walked on, faster.

Finding it, paying for it, meeting Gloria was the goal of my dreams. I was more than a customer to that sassy, dark mamma with the sparkler eyes. I was the link to fit her link. We made two strong, solid bonds in a strange cosmic chain.

You could feel the energy flowing through us; feel the iron of our wills. Ours was a mating made happily in hell.

So time went by and I hated the days and lived for the nights when I whipped her, slapped her, scratched her, and she did the same to me. Then one night she said, "It's not enough. Just not enough anymore. Your blood is sweet and your pain is fine, but I want to see death like you see a movie, taste it like licorice, smell it like flowers, touch it like cold, hard stone."

I laughed, saying, "I draw the line at dying for you." I took her by the throat, fastened my grip until her breathing was a whistle and her eyes protruded like bloated corpse bellies.

"That's not what I mean," she managed. And then came the statement that brings us back to what started it all: "Let's do someone."

I laughed and let her go.

"You know what I mean?" she said. "You know what I'm saying."

"I know what you said. I know what you mean." I smiled. "I know very well."

"You've done it before, haven't you?"

"Once," I said, "in a shipyard, not that long ago."

"Tell me about it. God, tell me about it."

"It was dark and I had come off ship after six months out, a long six months with the men, the ship and the sea. So I'm walking down this dark alley, enjoying the night like I do, looking for a place with the dark ways, our kind of ways, baby, and I came upon this old wino lying in a doorway, cuddling a bottle to his face as if it were a lady's loving hand."

"What did you do?"

"I kicked him," I said, and Gloria's smile was a beauty to behold.

"Go on," she said.

"God, how I kicked him. Kicked him in the face until there was no nose, no lips, no eyes. Only red mush dangling from shrapneled bone; looked like a melon that had been dropped from on high, down into a mass of broken white pottery chips. I touched his face and tasted it with my tongue and my lips."

"Ohh," she sighed, and her eyes half-closed. "Did he scream?"

"Once. Only once. I kicked him too hard, too fast, too soon. I hammered his head with the toes of my shoes, hammered until my cuffs were wet and sticking to my ankles."

"Oh God," she said, clinging to me, "let's do it, let's do it."

We did. First time was a drizzly night and we caught an old woman out. She was a lot of fun until we got the knives out and then she went quick. There was that crippled kid next, lured him from the theater downtown, and how we did that was a stroke of genius. You'll find his wheelchair not far from where you found the van and the other stuff.

But no matter. You know what we did, about the kinds of tools we had, about how we hung that crippled kid on that meat hook in my van until the flies clustered around the doors thick as grapes.

And of course there was the little girl. It was a brilliant idea of Gloria's to get the kid's tricycle into the act. The things she did with those spokes. Ah, but that woman was a connoisseur of pain.

There were two others, each quite fine, but not as nice as the last. Then came the night Gloria looked at me and said,

"It's not enough. Just won't do."

I smiled. "No way, baby. I still won't die for you."

"No," she gasped, and took my arm. "You miss my drift. It's the pain I need, not just the watching. I can't live through them, can't feel it in me. Don't you see, it would be the ultimate."

I looked at her, wondering did I have it right.

"Do you love me?"

"I do," I said.

"To know that I would spend the last of my life with you, that my last memories would be the pleasure of your face, the feelings of pain, the excitement, the thrill, the terror."

Then I understood, and understood good. Right there in the car I grabbed her, took her by the throat and cracked her head up against the windshield, pressed her back, choked, released, choked, made it linger. By this time I was quite a pro. She coughed, choked, smiled. Her eyes swung from fear to love. God it was wonderful and beautiful and the finest experience we had ever shared.

When she finally lay still there in the seat, I was trembling, happier than I had ever been. Gloria looked fine, her eyes rolled up, her lips stretched in a rictus smile.

I kept her like that at my place for days, kept her in my bed until the neighbors started to complain about the smell.

I've been talking to this guy and he's got some ideas. Says he thinks I'm one of the future generation, and the fact of that scares him all to hell. A social mutation, he says. Man's primitive nature at the height of the primal scream.

Dog shit, we're all the same, so don't look at me like I'm some kind of freak. What does he do come Monday night? He's watching the football game, or the races or boxing matches, waiting for a car to overturn or for some guy to be carried out of the ring with nothing but mush left for brains. Oh yeah, he and I are similar, quite alike. You see, it's in us all. A low-pitch melody not often heard, but there just the same. In me it peaks and thuds, like drums and brass and strings.

Don't fear it. Let it go. Give it the beat and amplify. I tell you it's love of the finest kind.

So I've said my piece and I'll just add this: when they fasten my arms and ankles down and tighten the cap, I hope I feel the pain and delight in it before my brain sizzles to bacon, and may I smell the frying of my very own flesh. . . .

THE JUNKYARD

Where I grew up there were lots of junkyards along the highway. This was before Ladybird Johnson insisted (and probably with good reason) that all junkyards be contained behind fences, and that wildflowers be planted over the entire state of Texas--well, at least along the highways.

My dad was a mechanic, and as a child I often rode with him out to junkyards to buy parts.

Back then, something broke on a car you had to fix it, or replace it, usually with a used part.

There's less and less of that these days. It's actually cheaper to just throw a broken part away and put in a new one than to fix it, and besides, most parts now, like ballpoint pens, can't be fixed.

In these junkyards car parts weren't the only things you saw. There were overturned washers, smoking tires and burning mattresses. This was because when someone bought some junk he wanted from someone who was tossing it out, he often had to buy the whole pile. Meaning then he had to get rid of the stuff he didn't want. Like tires and mattresses.

Sometimes in these junkyards people lived with this mess around them, and to be honest, growing up, a lot of people I knew who didn't run junkyards looked like they lived in one. I seemed to circulate amongst folks with at least one overturned and grass-surrounded washing machine in the yard. Or a car wheel buried in the weeds so that you could bang your ankles on it.

I remember one junkyard trip in particular, though I'm sure since I was a very young child I've made more of it than there was. Way I remember there was this big place full of all manner of junk and a skulking dog that seemed to just want you to turn your back for a moment. I was with my dad, however, so I wasn't overly afraid.

And before I go farther, let me say something about my dad. I know this doesn't fit in exactly, but since this is my book, I don't give a shit. I'm going to talk about my dad, Bud Lansdale. He was, and is, my hero. He wasn't a perfect man. He was flawed like all of us, but he was bigger than life and had about him a sort of Old Testament sense of justice, though not being able to read he had never read the Bible, and to the best of my knowledge had about as much interest in it as a pig does machinery.

My dad was born in 1909 and grew up during the Depression. He made money from hard work and sometimes from traveling town to town to battle in what would now be called Tough Man Contests, or the original Ultimate Fighting Contests. These events primarily took place at fairs back then.

He had a knowledge of boxing and wrestling and had the opportunity to do both professionally, but had to help take care of his father's family. My dad's mother died when he was eight. I don't know which number wife this was for my grandfather Lansdale, but by all accounts he was an asshole who married several times, once to a stepdaughter. He beat my father with a whip when he was a child of eight or nine and made him pick cotton. The scars were visible on my dad's back, like razor cuts. I think it's interesting that my father never so much as spanked me. He was known to raise his voice, but he never spanked me. I can't say the same about myself and my children. I have spanked. Not beaten, but spanked. I don't regret doing it. I think it was the only way to accomplish immediate punishment, and warnings to not do things that could do greater damage to them than a spanking. But my dad never spanked me, and my brother who was seventeen years older was only spanked once for chasing a fire engine.

My mother didn't believe in spanking, though she once lost her cool when I was about eleven and whipped my ass severely with a fly swatter. This was a whipping I not only remember, but deserved. My mother and I laughed about this until the day she died. Which goes to prove spanking isn't necessarily the thing that turns a child to drugs, animal mutilation and voting Republican.

My father believed in spanking, he just never did it. He couldn't bring himself to do it. One look from him was enough. I hated to disappoint my father because I admired him so much. He was honest to a fault, a guy with a Puritan work ethic. Kind as he was to us, he could be violent.

Never improperly, I thought. But he didn't beat around the bush when violence raised its head.

Perhaps my first real memory of my father was him giving me a dog I named Blackie and my dad called Honkeytonk because the dog had belonged to the owner of a honkeytonk just down the hill from where we lived, out by the highway. Across the highway was a drive-in theater. When I was a child my mother and I used to sit at night at the tall windows of our old rickety house, high up on that hill overlooking the honkeytonk, the highway and the drive-in theater beyond, and we'd watch whatever was on at the theater. I only remember the cartoons.

I suppose because that's what a four-year-old would have been interested in at the time.

We couldn't hear the drive-in, but my mother would make up stories to go with the cartoons.

It was pretty neat. Every night we could sit at these big tall windows and watch the cartoons and mom would tell me a story. Those are really good memories.

Maybe because my parents thought I was bored, and because I didn't have anyone to play with, my dad got me a dog. A cute black puppy that was part cocker spaniel. I adored that dog and he and I became the best of friends. More like brothers, really.

One day, out playing, my dog crossed the creek behind our house and went into a yard where he shouldn't have been. I called him, and a man came out of the house and saw Blackie (alias Honkeytonk) digging in his flowerbeds. Blackie and the man were a good distance from me, but I remember that man looking at me and seeing I was calling my dog, and the next thing I knew he had a stick or pipe, I really don't remember, and he beat my dog over the head with it and picked up its still body and tossed it into the creek.

My world collapsed. My best friend had just been murdered. I went screaming to my mother.

I don't remember exactly what happened, I don't know if dad came home then, or if my mother went to a neighbor's house to call him at work, because to the best of my memory we didn't have a phone.

All I know is my dad seemed to appear. He got the dog out of the creek. The dog was alive.

(Died at the ripe old age of 13, I might add, and his death was traumatic to me even then.)

My dad took the dog in the house, crumbled up aspirin in water and encouraged it to drink, then, without a word, he started across the creek.

I followed him, but he sent me back to our property, and from there I watched as he knocked on the back door of the man who had beaned a child's puppy because it was rooting in his flowerbed.

When the man answered the door my father hit him a sharp blow, grabbed him, dragged him out of his house and somehow ended up getting hold of this guy's legs. (Remember, my dad had been a wrestler.) He dragged that fellow face first through his own flowerbed, then pulled him out to the creek and threw him in.

Dad came home then.

The man never bothered me or my dog again.

Nobody sued. Nobody complained. It was over. That all happened about 1955.

This memory, the one about the drive-in, and one about a tornado that I won't discuss here, all go along with the memory about the junkyard because they all happened in such a close proximity of time, and I was at that age when everything was crystal clear, magical, and not completely understood. I didn't even realize until I was a grown man that what my dad had done was ironic. He had treated the man as the man had treated my dog. One day, in my mid-twenties, I thought about this incident for about the millionth time, and suddenly it dawned on me what he had done, and I laughed out loud.

Another short true story before I get back to "The Junkyard." Once, when I was in my teens, my father, who was a mechanic and owned his own garage, finished working on a car, and the lady who had left it with him wouldn't pay. My dad had seen this trick before. From her. He refused to let her have it without payment. The lady sent over her boyfriend.

Now, at the time I was in my late teens and had been in martial arts since I was in my mid-teens, so I was slightly knowledgeable of self-defense. My dad, who looked a bit like Ernest Borgnine crossed over with the older John Wayne with a bit of pit bull and axle grease tossed in, was right at sixty. The young man who had assumed the role of Sir Galahad was probably in his late twenties, possibly mid-thirties. A stout-looking guy looking for trouble.

He pulled up outside our shop, which was in what was then called a bad part of town, and he got out on the edge of the street and called for my dad. He called to him like he was calling up an obstreperous dog.

Dad was in the garage, and it was a warm day, and the doors were wide open, so it was easy for my dad to stroll out to meet the fella, who then went about telling my dad how he was going to release his girlfriend's car and he had no right to hold it, and so on and so on, and how if he didn't do it he was going to beat my dad like a red-headed stepchild, etc.

My dad listened to him, said, "You got money for the work?"

The guy looked at my dad as if he had suddenly sky dived onto the scene, said something smartass. I don't remember what, but smartass.

This guy was leaning on the fender of his car, and when he said his smart remark he pushed off the fender like he was about to come at my old man with his fist, and I thought, I'm going to take care of this shit head, but before I could pounce, my dad turned his shoulder and his fist came up from somewhere below his belt, maybe from as far down as hell, and he connected with said shit head's chin, and I swear to all that is truthful, I had never seen anyone hit that hard before in my life. My dad's fist making contact with this guy's chin sounded like someone had filled a balloon about the size of a beach ball with water and dropped it off a four-story building. I mean a noise like that could make pond water jump.

My dad's blow hit this guy under the chin and lifted him off the ground and onto the hood of the car. Mr. Tough Guy slammed on the hood and rolled off on the ground and stopped rolling face up, one leg jerking like he was trying to start a motor bike, his eyes open, sightless and twitching as if they were those little designs in a slot machine. Panicked, I said, "Oh, my God, Daddy, you've killed him." And, since the guy had stopped kicking, or moving in any way, it certainly seemed that way.

My dad looked over at the guy, watched him for a moment, as if mildly curious, reached in his shirt pocket, took out a stub of a cigar (he saved half-smoked, half-chewed stubs all over the place: pockets, ashtrays, car motors he was working on, you name it), poked it in his mouth. He took out a box of kitchen matches, removed a match, and in no particular hurry, struck the match on the side of the box and lit his cigar, said, "Naw, he'll come around."

Dad went in the garage and went to work, and as was his custom, it wasn't long before he was whistling at his job.

Dad was right, by the way. The fellow did come around.

About fifteen minutes later he rolled over and got to his knees, then his feet, and wobbled off down the street, leaving his car, as well as that of his girlfriend. I don't think the guy remembered how to drive after that blow. He barely remembered how to walk.

Never saw him again.

I asked Daddy about a follow-up later. He said the lady paid off her car and sent some other man, who was very polite, over to get it.

I don't want to give violence too much of a due, but you know what? I think my dad was right.

I never saw him start a fight or pick on anyone in any way, but if you tried to hurt him, threaten him, bother his family, he went immediately to the source. This was not an unusual way then. It made for greater politeness amongst your fellow men. No lawsuits, because nobody would have thought of suing over such a thing in Texas back then, and they damn sure wouldn't have expected to win. It was part of the old adage that a man totes his own water.

Okay. One more. One time at a filling station we stopped for gas, and a guy who owed my Daddy money came out of the filling station. He came out right after a fella whose name I won't mention, but he had EAT PUSSY tattooed on his chest (I've used this in books of mine), and he was bare-chested, of course, and he had a reputation for being so bad the sun didn't shine where he walked, and this guy with him, who's dressed up, was supposed to be badder than him.

So this second guy, he's the guy owes my dad money and has lied about when he's going to pay for some time. My dad looks at him, and this guy who was about six two and two hundred and twenty pounds of solid meat, wearing white pants and white shoes and a white belt and this paisley shirt (this was the rage then) looks at my dad, and I'll tell you, his fucking shoes weren't any paler than his face.

My dad said something like, "Where you been?"

"I been meaning to get by, Bud."

"Yeah," said my dad, who had a plug of Beech Nut chewing tobacco in his jaw about the size of a bale of hay. "Need to see you."

"I'm going to come by."

"You been owing me for months, and you're always going to come by."

"I'm coming by."

My dad spat a stream of tobacco on the guy's white shoes, and this guy didn't move, and the guy with him, he's looking off like he's found an interesting shape in the clouds.

"I think you ought to come by today," Dad said. "Now would be good."

"I can't today."

Another stream of tobacco, down the pants legs this time.

"Come by."

"I got to go to the house and get money."

"Good. You come by. Don't keep me waiting." Another stream of tobacco down the pants legs.

"I'll be there."

And he was, too.

Sorry, I've gotten away from "The Junkyard," but this gives you some idea of the times and where I grew up. That town, for its betterment, I think, is no longer a tough ex-oil town. It's now an ex-oil town that specializes in antiques and crafts.

I could tell you other stories about my dad. Ones about his kindness, his generosity, and one about the time he set the Lindale jail on fire, but those are for another time. The kind of stories I've chosen here somehow fit in with the atmosphere of the junkyards I remember from my childhood, the one I used as inspiration for this story.

All right, let's actually talk about "The Junkyard." I look back on this story with a feeling of warmth. It may not be the first story where I began to find my voice, but I think it was a story that told me clearly that I had turned a corner. And it was the story that made me realize that the basic horror plot, though well loved by me, was apparently not for me as a writer. It was a similar revelation to when I discovered that though I loved science fiction I wasn't a writer of it.

Not true science fiction, anyway.

What was really different here is not that I'm finding my voice, but that I am controlling it better. I'm fighting it less. Letting it flow, though, not entirely unobstructed.

I hope the results are entertaining pulp.

THE PASTURE

Five thirty-eight a.m. Less than an hour before light. Out there in the back-country darkness, great pines on either side, the red clay road winding like a reptile in the headlights, a man couldn't help but feel that he had fallen out of everyday life into a surreal land.

That time of night had an eerie quality the same as twilight, when brilliance slid slowly off the edge of the world and darkness, like some crawling beast, inched gray then black, over the rim.

But now there was a jigger of rose-and-gold morning mixed with the night; and perhaps that, with the heady brew of darkness whipped thick about it, was what gave the air its unnatural look and feel.

Yes, feel, thought Lieutenant Maynard. It was as if one could reach out, hold the air, and work it between the thumb and forefinger like fine gossamer.

The three of them had come out of sleep to the fire bell's ring. The dispatcher, a strawberry blond woman nicknamed Red, had sent them on call.

In the depths of the pines lay a cow pasture where, according to the coon-hunter who had called it in, a small grass fire was burning. After crossing the pasture and threading through woods, he had found his pickup and driven to the nearest phone, in the town of Nacogdoches, Texas, just three miles away.

It wasn't much of a fire, the coon-hunter had said, and perhaps it would die out on its own, but it should be checked. He had given directions. Now they were checking.

Finally they stopped by the side of the road. The lieutenant got out first, went around the truck, and leaned on the top wire of a four-strand barbed wire fence. The other two firemen climbed out of the truck and leaned on either side of him.

"This seems about right," said the lieutenant. "Best as I can tell from the directions."

"Mileage would indicate," said Martin, and he spat a brown stream of snuff over the fence and against a tree.

Ted, the other fireman, said, "I don't see a fire."

"Doesn't mean it's not out there," said the lieutenant.

"How we gonna get a truck in there?" said Martin. "We could spend all night looking for a road."

"We won't worry with the truck for now," said the lieutenant. "Maybe nothing to it. Get me a pump can, would ya, Ted?"

Ted trotted to the truck and returned with the pump can. The lieutenant strapped it on his back. "If it isn't much of a fire this will take care of it. If it is, well, guess the sonofabitch'll burn the whole pasture up before we can get in."

"We could cut the wire," said Ted.

"Uh huh," said Martin, "and then we could squeeze our little red rubber fire truck through the trees and out into the pasture there."

"All right, all right, don't be a smartmouth," said Ted. "Just trying to make a suggestion."

Martin spat on another tree.

"It's sort of wide over there," said the lieutenant, pointing to a gap between the trees. "I think I can get through. I'll go in and head right first. Follow me through the trees with the spot. That way I can tell where you are out here, and I'll keep in touch with the walkie-talkie."

"All right," said Martin. "Find something, then maybe we can snake a hose through."

"Maybe," said the lieutenant. "Well, before the world burns away...." Ted and Martin pushed down the bottom two strands of wire with their booted feet, held the top strands high with gloved hands. The lieutenant, pump can and all, worked his way through, found the opening, and wriggled his way into the pasture.

Behind him Martin called, "Watch for cow plops!"

The lieutenant smiled in their direction. He could barely see them through the trees, the engine behind them, a splotch of clay road. He turned and walked. After a while he turned on the talkie.

"Nothing I can see. Thought you guys were going to start the light?"

He waited. No responding voice. No light.

"Start the light," he repeated.

No light.

"Martin, would you start the light, please?"

Nothing. There wasn't even static on the talkie. "Dead," the lieutenant concluded aloud. He started back to the truck for another communicator.

He would have to start over.

Presently he came to a patch of wood, but could not find the opening. It looked different somehow, but common sense told him this was the right spot.

He took off the pump can, leaned it against a tree, pushed his way into the foliage. Branches picked at his uniform like magpies. He went twenty feet, thirty.

No fence.

No road.

No truck.

The wood seemed to go on forever.

Now how in the world could I have gotten that turned around? he thought.

He navigated back to the pasture, strapped on the pump can, and began to walk along the edge of the pine stand. He tried the walkie-talkie again, but still no soap. He called out by cupping his hands megaphone-style over his mouth and got the same nonresponse.

"Hey, Martin, Ted," he yelled. "I'm turned around out here. Say something. I'm lost."

Silence.

He started across the pasture toward a clutch of pines on the other side.

Like those near him, they seemed to run as far as the eye could see, then mixed with the strange pre-morning darkness.

Perhaps he was completely turned around, so much, in fact, that he had crossed the entire pasture and was trying to get out on the wrong side.

That was a pretty crazy thought, but it was possible. It was early and he was half-asleep, and his wife had always said, "You wake up crummy."

As he neared the other side of the pasture, he noted that it sloped off dramatically to his left, dipping down into the greater darkness. He could hear sounds down there. Ted and Martin, perhaps? He walked that way.

It was too inky to be sure, but something seemed to move down there.

Shapes -- animals, from the way they milled about -- and it looked as if there might be a pond. Yes, thought the lieutenant, that was it, animals drinking from a pond. Cows, most likely.

Behind him came a sound, like a truck. He turned, saw lights. At first he thought it was the fire truck, that they had found a way in after all. But no, the lights were different from that of the fire engine, and the motor sound, now that he listened closely, was different. This vehicle breathed its roar with a smaller set of metallic lungs. Probably a pickup.

Some strange compulsion caused him to stop staring and turn in the direction of the pines at his left. He walked briskly, removed the pump can, and placed it between two pines, easing himself into the concealment of the trees. Fire department or not, uniform or not, it was not wise to wander about in a man's pasture at night. People still rustled cows, and ranchers still shot rustlers. It might be judicious to wait until a more opportune moment to introduce himself. Were they to come upon him suddenly they might shoot first and take names later. In many ways the Old West was still very much alive in this part of the country. Besides, not too long back this area had, like much of the nation, been plagued by oddball cattle mutilations. If they spotted him with this pump can out here, they just might mistake him for a little green man.

He waited silently in the pines.

The lights swelled. It was a pickup, all right. Two men were riding in the truck bed. He could make them out against the gray skyline. There was also something else stacked high in the bed; it looked like bales of hay.

Attached to the truck, and rattling behind it, was a long, narrow trailer made of bars.

So he had been right about the pond and the noise. Cattle. Made sense.

Early morning feeding, and these folks were the sort to start early.

-*-

The truck came even with him, stopped on the slope above the pond. He waited until they killed the engine. He was about to call out from his concealment and explain why he was here, when his mouth froze forming a word. His brain locked up like a frozen brake.

Was it Halloween? Something was very wrong here.

The two men in the truck bed, standing up and looking over the top of the cab, did not look like men at all. In fact, they looked like --No. Couldn't be.

Lieutenant Maynard rubbed his eyes and looked again.

The truck doors opened and two more got out, one on either side. The one on the passenger side took hold of a spotlight fastened to the door and flicked it on. The light was harsh in the near-morning darkness. It gave Lieutenant Maynard a good view of the pond.

Down there by the water, milling about like cattle, were people. Women, men, and children. Black, brown, and white. There must have been two dozen. They were stark naked.

Suddenly one of the men turned to look up the bank. He made a snorting sound, rushed halfway up the incline, threw his massive chest out, opened his mouth, and yelled "Moooooo." He tossed his head from side to side.

Spittle foamed and rolled out of the corners of his mouth. The mooing turned to a loud bellowing.

The others, mostly women, drifted away from the pond and gathered behind him in the same manner the lieutenant had seen cows gather behind the lead bull in a pasture.

The one with the spotlight chuckled softly. "Ferd'nand's a feisty old male, ain't he?"

Lieutenant Maynard looked at the speaker, hoping he would fade away like cotton candy on a hot afternoon and that he himself would wake up on his hard firehouse bed with a stomach ache from the spaghetti they had eaten for supper. It had caused bad dreams before.

But the image did not fade. It was as real as pain. The one with the spotlight, like the others, was dressed in farmer attire: overalls, boots, coarse shirt, and straw hat. One even had a hay strand in his mouth, and he was working it between his leathery lips like old Huck Finn.

However, their resemblance to farmers stopped right there. Horns poked out on either side of the hat crowns and reminded the lieutenant of those ridiculous University of Texas Bevo caps. Only these horns were not attached to the hats, he was certain of that. Below the hat brims were bull heads. Wattles of thick flesh draped their necks; dark snouts glistened with dampness. Their chests were massive.

Lieutenant Maynard trembled. This was the real thing, not a masquerade.

But how? One moment he had been wearing the coat of reality, and now this. It was as if crossing that barbed wire, pushing through those woods, entering this pasture, had plunged him into madness.

Or did something lie catlike and ready to pounce at the turning of twilight to day? Did this coincide with stories he'd read about people starting off across a pasture and suddenly disappearing? Were there rifts in reality, little rips in the tent of life? Did an even bigger and wilder circus lie beyond our everyday world?

Lieutenant Maynard looked down at the pond again. The people did not go away; and when he turned back to the pickup, the bulls who walked and talked like men were still there.

"Jerry Caleb, toss down some hay," said the driver.

"Sure thing," said one of the bulls in the truck bed, and as he swiveled toward the bales, Maynard could see that his back was humped beneath the overalls like a brahma bull's. And God, now that more rosy light had percolated into the morning, he could see the others more clearly. Wasn't the one with the brahma a white-face Hereford? And the other two, with black and white spots on their face and hands -- could they be holsteins?

The brahma cut the hay with his pocket knife, and the little hay squares fell apart like cough lozenges. He cut another. The white-face began tossing the bundles over the cab toward the humans, who, like wild animals, were dropping down on all fours and tearing at the hay with their teeth. Strands of it projected from the corners of their mouths like massive whiskers, wiggling savagely as they chewed.

My God! thought the lieutenant, They're herbivorous! And that means the bulls are...

He didn't like to think about that part.

"How many ya want loaded?" the brahma asked the holstein who'd been driving.

"Aw, better make it four good ones, Caleb. Goin' to be a pretty good sale at the auction barn this afternoon."

Producing four ropes from the truck bed, the bulls uncoiled them and moved down toward the humans, speaking calmly and softly to them as they went. "Easy there, old girl. Easy now."

Maynard considered making a break for it, but where could he run?

Then, as he watched the four bulls drive four humans up from the pond toward the loading trailer, something occurred to him. If he could get turned around topsy-turvy by coming through those woods on the other side, then just maybe, if he went back through, he could find his way home.

If that were possible, he would have to move quickly. Daylight was sticking its bright, pink claws into the gray, and soon he would be spotted.

There was another thing. If daylight came, it just might close the door to his world forever -- the door that may have been opened by twilight.

-*-

One thing was for certain: the idea of being some cow's filet mignon did not appeal to him.

The bulls loaded the humans in the trailer and locked the gate. After tossing their ropes in the pickup bed, the brahma produced a big ice-chest from the cab and set it on the hood of the truck.

"Oh, hell," the white-face said. "You mean to tell me you guys can drink beer this early in the morning?"

The brahma opened the ice-chest and smiled. That smile was a hideous thing to see. He lifted out a beer in his fist and said, "Breakfast of Champions, Jerry."

The bulls got comfy by leaning on the pickup, three of them with beers in their hands, and rode Jerry about not drinking. They laughed and guzzled like Maynard had seen so many of his friends do in the past. Christ, like he himself had done.

Daylight came on pinkly.

It was now or never.

Lieutenant Maynard removed his clothes. He eased silently out of the wood and, creeping low, started for the pond and the humans. The bulls were so wrapped up in joshing one another that they didn't notice him.

And maybe, without his clothes, they would think him one of the herd.

The lieutenant reached the water hole and the other humans. One of the women caught his eye. Except for her tangled hair, she was a beauty --could have been a Playboy foldout. She turned and looked at him with what Maynard could only think of as cow eyes. She sniffed at him curiously.

"I won't hurt you," he said softly

She just looked at him.

"I'm getting out of here. Want to come? Do you understand?"

The woman opened her mouth and mooed.

"Say," Maynard heard the white-face say, "is that one of ours?"

Oh, hell, Maynard thought. He turned and bolted the wood beyond.

"A stray," he heard one of the bulls yell.

"Not when he's branded," another said. Suddenly Maynard heard the roar of the pickup.

He ran as hard as he could go. Damn! If only he had kept his shoes on.

The grass burrs were tearing him up.

"We about got him," someone yelled. Maynard chanced a glance over his shoulder and saw the pickup roaring across the pasture, clattering the trailer behind it.

But now the woods were looming before him. He was going to make it.

Less than ten feet in front of the truck, he entered the woods, felt limbs and branches tear at his naked hide as if it were ancient cheesecloth.

"I'll get 'im," one of the bulls said. Maynard turned to see the brahma hop out of the truck bed and enter the trees after him. Not far behind him came the white-face.

The woods went on and on. Maynard felt himself tiring. His feet hurt and he bled from a score of wounds. He looked over his shoulder again.

The brahma had considerably outdistanced the white-face and was closing in. In an instant the big bull would be on him.

Frantically Maynard spun, and though it was tight going, he managed to land a solid right to the brahma's shiny black nose. The bull went down on one knee. "Take that, and moo to you," Maynard snapped.

The brahma looked up at Maynard, shook his head, and blinked his eyes, but already the fireman was turning and running again. Behind him Maynard heard the white-face crashing his way to the brahma, heard him ask the downed bull, "What happened to you?"

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," the brahma said. "But you're right, it's too early for beer."

"He'll break out on the other side soon," the white-face said. "Boss and Billy have gone around with the pickup. They'll get him."

Oh, God, thought Maynard. They've gone around, and it's almost light. I'm trapped, lost here forever in something right out of the Twilight Zone.

The trees thinned. Maynard began to run. He could see the road before him, dimly illuminated by ever-widening bands of sunlight.

Suddenly he felt a sharp pain and found himself flipping head over heels into the middle of the road. He realized that he had run blindly into a four-strand barbed wire fence and had somersaulted over it.

Shaking his head, he staggered to his feet. His body was crisscrossed with wounds from the barbs, and the punctures stung violently Worst of all was the bee in his bonnet. There was a roaring in his head like -- Wait a minute. It wasn't in his head. It was the sound of the engine.

Terrified, he turned.

Grill and headlights absorbed him...

It was solidly morning when they opened the doors of the truck, climbed out, and stood over Maynard's body.

"Dead," said Ted. "He's dead. We've killed the lieutenant."

"Seemed to just come out of nowhere," said Martin, "like he was tossed."

"Dead," Ted repeated, "and I killed him."

-*-

The lieutenant sat up and held his hand to his head. "Oh, shut up, will you, Ted?"

"You're alive!" Ted yelled.

"No joke," the lieutenant said, and then he remembered the bulls. He looked at the fence he had catapulted over. The sun was bright now, and he could see through the trees to the pasture beyond. Way out there he could make out something moving--a cow, of the real variety. He had made it back home, through the gate of twilight.

Or he'd been sleepwalking, which seemed more likely.

In either case, Lieutenant Maynard felt it would be a while before he could eat a hamburger.

"It was an accident, Lieutenant," Martin said. "The kid couldn't help it.

But why--"

"Uh, did I get hit before I went into the pasture?" Maynard interrupted.

Ted and Martin looked at one another, then back at the lieutenant.

"Never mind," said Maynard. "Well, are you going to just stand there with your mouths open, or are you going to help me up?"

"Sure," Ted said. "But Lieutenant--?"

"Yeah, what?"

"Uh, why are you naked?"

BAR TALK

Hey, what's happening?

Not much, eh?

No, no, we haven't met. But I'm here to brighten your day. I got a story you aren't going to believe ... No, no, I'm not looking for money, and I'm not drunk. This is my first beer. I just seen you come in, and I was sitting over there by my lonesome, and I says to myself, self, there's a guy that could use some company.

Sure you can. Everyone needs some company. And you look like a guy that likes to hear a first-class story, and that's just the kind of story I got: first class.

Naw, this isn't going to take too long. I'll keep it short.

You see, I'm a spy.

No, no, no. Not that kind of spy. No double-ought stuff. I'm not working for the CIA or the KGB. I work for Mudziplickt.

Yeah, I know you never heard of it. Few have.

Just us Martians.

Oh yeah, that's right. I said Martians. I'm from Mars

No, I tell you, I'm not drunk.

Well, it doesn't matter what the scientists or the space probes say. I'm from Mars.

You see, we Martians have been monitoring this planet of your for years, and now with you guys landing up there, saying there's no life and all, we figure things are getting too close for comfort, so we've decided to beat you to it and come down here. I'm what you might call part of the advance landing force. A spy, so to speak. You see, we Martians aren't visible to your satellite cameras. Has to do with light waves, and an ability we have to make ourselves blend with the landscape. Chameleon-like, you might say. And we'd just scare you anyway if you saw us. We'd look pretty strange to you Earthlings.

Oh this. This isn't the real me. Just a body I made up out of protoplasmic energy.

The way I talk? Oh, I know your culture well. I've studied it for years. I've even got a job.

Huh?

Oh. Well, I'm telling you all this for one simple reason. We Martians can adapt to almost everything on this world-even all this oxygen. But the food, that's a problem. We find alcohol agrees pretty well with us, but the food makes us sick. Sort of like you going down to Mexico and eating something off a street vendor's cart and getting ill ... only it's a lot worse for us.

Blood is the ticket.

Yeah, human blood.

Find that funny, huh? Vampires from Mars? Yeah, does sound like a cheap science-fiction flick, doesn't it?

You see-ho, hold it. Almost fell off your stool there. No, I don't think the beer here is that strong. There, just put your head on the bar. Yeah, weak, I understand. I know why you're feeling that way. It's this little tube that comes out of my side, through the slit in my clothing. I stuck it in you when I sat down here. Doesn't hurt. Has a special coating on it, a natural anesthesia, you might say. That's why you didn't notice. Actually, if you could see me without this human shell, you'd find I'm covered with the things. Sort of like a big jellyfish, only cuter.

Just rest.

No use trying to call out. Nothing will work now. The muscles in your throat just won't have enough strength to make your voice work. They're paralyzed. The fluid that keeps the tube from hurting you also deadens the nerves and muscles in your body, while allowing me to draw your blood.

There's some folks looking over here right now, but they aren't thinking a thing about it. They can't see the tube from this angle; just me smiling, and you looking like a passed-out drunk. They think it's kind of funny, actually. They've seen drunks before.

Yeah, that's it. Just relax. Go with the flow, as you people say. Can't really do anything else but that anyway. Won't be a drop of blood left in you in a few seconds anyway. I'll have it all and I'll feel great. Only food here that really agrees with us. That and a spot of alcohol now and then.

But I've told you all that. There, I'm finished. I feel like a million dollars.

Don't know if you can still hear me or not, but I'm taking the tube out now. Thanks for the nourishment. Nothing personal. And don't worry about the beer you ordered. I'll pay for it on the way out. It's the least I can do.

BIG MAN: A FABLE

Tim Burke was the only one to take the experimental pill. Nothing as complex as this pill had ever been invented, but since he was five foot one, his penis was small, he was balding, had flat feet and one leg shorter than the other, and an oversized mole on his nose that made that part of his face looked like an odd-shaped potato, he thought, what the hell?

As it was, his time on earth had been lowdown, sexless, without need of a comb, and much of his free time spent in search of well-fitting shoes, so he took the pill for the promise of all things better, and didn't care if it killed him, which he knew it might. He took the pill and in one day he noted a difference. He didn't get taller or gain hair or grow inches on his penis and his feet were still flat, but he noticed that he looked younger than his forty-five years; the pores in his skin were as smooth as African ivory; even his teeth looked thicker and whiter and the gums pinker and tighter around his teeth.

Within a week he not only looked younger in the face, dark tufts of hair like planted vegetables sprouted on his head, and he was waking up with a hard-on you could use to pop a tire off a rim, not to mention that he was having nightly emissions of the size and quality that might require a mayonnaise jar to contain. The potato had abandoned his face to be replaced by a fine, straight, masculine nose. Sometimes he awakened to the movement of his bones and muscles and nerves in his skin. They crawled, they flexed, the popped, they changed.

Another week and he was taller and more muscular and felt better than he had ever felt. He discovered he could twist a fire poker into a knot without so much as straining. He could pick up the back end of his car, bend and support it on one knee with his hands free.

He had to buy new clothes and new shoes, and the drug had even corrected the flat foot problem. He stood now at six-two, well hung, with a head and chest-full of black hair you could have used to knit a sweater and a throw rug and maybe one mitten.

It was terrific. He went out with women for the first time. In fact, they came to him. He enjoyed sex and he enjoyed the way they squealed when they saw his equipment, and the way they squealed more when they experienced it.

A couple weeks later they didn't squeal, they shrieked. His penis was almost to his knees, flaccid, and erect it was no longer an organ of sensual pleasure-it was a battering ram.

His feet were soon hanging off his bed. He had grown taller and wider. He was in perfect proportion, but there was a lot to be proportioned. He called the doctor and got a quick appointment. The doctor measured and weighed him, stuck a finger up his ass and palmed his balls like a shopper choosing grapefruits.

"Well," the doctor said. "You are now six eight and you weight three hundred and ten pounds, all of it muscle. Your penis, flaccid, is twelve inches long and your testicles weigh four pounds and three ounces each and your feet aren't flat, and frankly, I can hardly recognize you with that face and all that hair. And you're still growing."

"Still growing? I don't want to grow anymore. You said the pill would fix my body, make it healthier, make things work beautifully. That's what you said."

"I said if it worked, and, it has worked. You are a stronger, finer, and better looking specimen than when you came to me.

Tim studied the overweight doctor with the gray patches of hair over his ears, his head shiny as a baby's ass.

"Why don't you take the pill?" Tim asked.

"Side effects."

"You didn't tell me about any side effects. You said it could kill me, things went wrong. Dying is one thing, but this, this isn't dying. This is...Well, this is...it's a mess."

"I told you it was experimental and that you were the only volunteer, and we had no idea what it might do."

Tim remembered this to be true, but he didn't like it. He had been so anxious to try anything to change his life he hadn't embraced the potential for negative possibilities.

Tim thought a moment, said, "Am I through growing?"

"I don't know. I hope so. You should be. Maybe. Can't say."

Tim left the doctor's office feeling confused. The pants he wore were up to his knees and he was barefoot. He had on a triple-X tee-shirt, and it was splitting across his broad shoulders. He could hardly get in the car, it was so small. He drove over to place that sold clothes to big men and bought sizes that fit and sizes that were larger than he was. Within a week, the over-large sizes were too tight. He was seven five in another week, and then it was as if the pill really decided to kick in.

Within a month, he was ten feet high. He was also four feet across and if he dropped his pants his penis coiled out of it like an anaconda descending from an overhanging limb. He had to take a sheet and hitch his testicles up so they wouldn't bang against his legs or swing painfully. He couldn't find any shoes that fit now, and he had taken to making flip-flops out of patches of leather. They were thin and uncomfortable. Hair sprouted from his nose and ears and groin area, and he was covered in a dark pelt from head to toe. He gave up shaving. It was like trying to cut through wire. He tried waxing once, but when he went to have it done, took off his shirt and his dark chest hair sprang free, the lady attendant whirled and vomited into a trash can. He went home.

He had a computer job, so he could stay home easily, which was good in a way, but it was one reason he had taken the pill, to be normal. To go out of the house and meet people and live a life. Now, even though he was healthier, he was a freak. The benefits of the pill had disappeared.

He had been ducking through doors for some time, able only to stand up fully in the living room area with its twenty foot, beamed ceilings. But pretty soon he was brushing his head on the beams and was forced to live outside, in the yard. Which was bad enough, but in rainy weather it was horrible.

Finally, with his bare hands he ripped open the back porch, tearing out the door, and ripped a section wide enough where he could crawl inside and lay down and sleep through the night.

One morning, he awoke with his head, arms and legs, jutting out of the porch's confines. His head was hanging off the end of the porch, and he had a neck ache from it. His left arm had punctured the wall to the house, and his right poked through the side of the porch and was lying out in the yard. His legs and feet were jutting out into his driveway, and they had overturned his car, which was all right. He had traded several times for bigger automobiles, but he hadn't been able to get inside his Hummer for a long time now, let alone drive.

He had taken to wearing only the sheet around his groin, and on this day he took it off and went to town naked, letting his testicles swing like a pendulum, his penis like a bridge support cable; there was no longer any pain. In fact, the rhythm of their swing seemed to balance his walk. People screamed, cars crashed.

Tim went to his doctor's office and ripped the roof off the place and reached in and got his doctor and wadded him up like a piece of aluminum foil. The nurse screamed all the while he did it. He picked her up and bit off her head and sucked out her blood and threw her away. He went to a nearby grocery store and hammered a hole in the roof and drank a whole refrigerated case of orange juice and ate about three thousand packages of sweet rolls, honey buns, chocolate cakes, and four cans of Spam, thinking: Got to have your protein.

On the way back to his house he stepped on cars, kicked a young woman with her child about a thousand yards, and by the time he was home, helicopters were buzzing overhead and there were police and sheriff's cars and people in black vehicles wearing black suits with megaphones.

He grabbed up cars and people and chunked them high and far, tore the roof off of his own house and dropped it on them. It looked like a busy ant farm below, watching all the law scrambling about, and he realized that during his trip to town, he had grown once again, this time not in inches, but in feet. He had to be twenty-five to thirty feet high, and he was broad as a barn. He marched off and left them and they followed, buzzing overhead like bees, below like ants and beetles. He walked by a skyscraper that was slicked out with solar panels. He saw his reflection there; he looked like a giant of legend. Long haired, bearded, the beard matted with brains and blood from the nurse he had eaten, as well as all manner of slop from his meal at the grocery store. His penis and testicles swung like god's own mallet.

Stalking on through town, he ripped the tops off buildings, and finally squatted over the roof of one and shit in it, filling it up. He grabbed up some of the police and wiped his ass on them and flung them to all points of the compass. He went on through town and down to the lake and got down on his knees and drank it dry, feeling a prod in his ass as he did.

When he stood up, he felt something between his butt cheeks, pulled out a hand launched missile that had failed to go off. He crushed it in his fist, and it exploded. He felt nothing; it was as if there was nothing to feel.

They kept after him all day, shooting him with this, shooting him with that. They even dropped a small tactical nuke on him. All that did was take out some countryside and make his eyes water. This went on for days. Finally, they just gave up for a while and went home and left him where he had ended up, on a mountain, contemplating his situation.

From time to time the army regrouped and tried to take him out, jets with napalm even. But all it did was burn some hair off his head and skin. He had grown impervious. Soon he was so big that at night he slept lying down in a valley. If it rained, he had to take it. If it got cold, he had to take it. But the thing was, it was nothing now. He could hardly feel anything anymore.

He grew larger and larger, found that his eyesight had improved; he could see like a goddamn eagle, for miles. He saw towns in the distance, cities. He went to them and he tore them up; he pissed on their downtowns and shit in their reservoirs, continued to wipe his ass on humans, but he had grown so big and they were so small, there was too much break through. For awhile, cows were good.

He was so large now, he found he could walk across much of the Atlantic Ocean, swim the rest with ease. Sharks would attack. They broke their teeth. He slapped whales around, he sucked in and chewed up dolphins.

When he got to Africa he stalked through the country and ate what he could find and the people starved in his wake, and sometimes he ate them. He fornicated with holes in the sides of mountains; had Kilimanjaro been a woman, she would have been pregnant ten times over. He killed anything he saw, people, animals, vegetation. He breathed air so deeply, other living things died from lack of oxygen.

Soon the messes he made, the piles of shit he left, the urine he pooled, took their toll. The world stunk, and he, who merely thought of himself now as Big Man, didn't give a flying fuck through a rolling doughnut about the world, or about himself. It was all a matter of the now and not the tomorrow.

He had always wanted to see Paris, and did, ripping the EiffelTower out of the ground, using it to pick his teeth. In England the army came out and a man on a tall trailer gave a speech over a megaphone saying how the English would like to live in peace. He sat on Picadilly Circus, listened intently. When they were finished, he ate the speaker and any of the others he could catch. In Ireland they just said, "Go fuck yourself." He ate them too.

Big Man walked across Europe. He was still growing, his head was poking up near the empty black of outer space. He had trouble breathing. He walked with his head ducked, and finally he crawled, crushing Rome and Athens and everything in his path. He crawled all the way to China, wrecking it. Nuclear bombs were tried there, not tactical nukes, but the big boys. They made his skin itch and made him mad. He destroyed everything in his path. He had a large Chinese dinner.

He took to hanging out in the oceans, floating there to keep from standing. It gave him a feeling of comfort. He didn't bother to leave the ocean when he relieved himself, one or two. He didn't wipe anymore. He just filled the oceans with his waste. Pretty soon, he lay in piles of his own shit.

Finally, he stood, wobbled, walked, his head bent low. It was uncomfortable to walk. Crawling was uncomfortable. To do almost anything was uncomfortable, and he had wrecked what there was of earth worth having.

Big Man took a deep breath and stood. His head was in outer space, and he could see all manner of man-made debris whirl by. He felt himself growing even as he stood. He ducked his head back into the atmosphere and sucked in a tremendous breath. Anything that breathed air nearby died from lack of oxygen.

Standing, his chest full, he discovered that his upper body felt light. He bent his knees and sprang. He went up, and up, and up. It was fun. It was glorious. And then he didn't drop. No gravity. He was floating in the black, star-specked void of space. And he kept growing. His air ran out. He stopped breathing. He stopped knowing. He stopped being. Still he grew. His body became so big that from earth below, what was left of mankind could see his shape against the sun; he looked like a tremendous paper doll cut from black velvet.

Big Man entered the gravitational pull of the sun. He shot toward it like a rocket. He grew so big his body blocked out its rays, and on earth it went dark and cold and people and animals and vegetation died. And still Big Man grew and grew and drifted toward the burning hot light of ole sol. And when he came to the sun, he was so big, with his arms outstretched, if there had been anyone left to see him, they might have thought the big dark man was about to catch a huge yellow ball.

The sun greeted him with fire, and it was all over for BigMan. He was a huge puff of flame. Below, the cold, dead ball of the earth continued to turn and whirl around the weight of the hungry sun.

THE COMPANION

They weren't biting.

Harold sat on the bank with his fishing pole and watched the clear creek water turn dark as the sunlight faded. He knew he should pack up and go. This wonderful fishing spot he'd heard about was a dud, but the idea of going home without at least one fish for supper was not a happy one. He had spent a large part of the day before bragging to his friends about what a fisherman he was. He could hear them now, laughing and joking as he talked about the big one that got away.

And worse yet, he was out of bait.

He had used his little camp shovel to dig around the edge of the bank for worms. But he hadn't turned up so much as a grub or a doodlebug.

The best course of action, other than pack his gear on his bike and ride home, was to cross the bank. It was less wooded over there, and the ground might be softer. On the other side of the creek, through a thinning row of trees, he could see an old farm field. There were dried stalks of broken-down corn and tall dried weeds the plain brown color of a cardboard box.

Harold looked at his watch. He decided he had just enough time to find some bait and maybe catch one fish. He picked up his camp shovel and found a narrow place in the creek to leap across. After walking through the trees and out into the huge field, he noticed a large and odd-looking scarecrow on a post. Beyond the scarecrow, some stretch away, surrounded by saplings and weeds, he saw what had once been a fine two-story farmhouse. Now it was not much more than an abandoned shell of broken glass and aging lumber.

As Harold approached the scarecrow, he was even more taken with its unusual appearance. It was dressed in a stovepipe hat that was crunched and moth-eaten and leaned to one side. The body was constructed of hay, sticks, and vines, and the face was made of some sort of cloth, perhaps an old tow sack. It was dressed in a once expensive evening jacket and pants. Its arms were outstretched on a pole, and poking out of its sleeves were fingers made of sticks.

From a distance, the eyes looked like empty sockets in a skull. When Harold stood close to the scarecrow, he was even more surprised to discover it had teeth. They were animal teeth, still in the jawbone, and someone had fitted them into the cloth face, giving the scarecrow a wolflike countenance. Dark feathers had somehow gotten caught between the teeth.

But the most peculiar thing of all was found at the center of the scarecrow. Its black jacket hung open, its chest was torn apart, and Harold could see inside. He was startled to discover that there was a rib cage, and fastened to it by a cord was a large faded valentine heart. A long, thick stick was rammed directly through that heart.

The dirt beneath the scarecrow was soft, and Harold took his shovel and began to dig. As he did, he had a sensation of being watched. Then he saw a shadow, as if the scarecrow were nodding its head.

Harold glanced up and saw that the shadow was made by a large crow flying high overhead. The early rising moon had caught its shape and cast it on the ground. This gave Harold a sense of relief, but he realized that any plans to continue fishing were wasted. It was too late.

A grunting noise behind him caused him to jump up, leaving his camp shovel in the dirt. He grabbed at the first weapon he saw - the stick jammed through the scarecrow. He jerked it free and saw the source of the noise - a wild East Texas boar. A dangerous animal indeed.

It was a big one. Black and angry-looking, with eyes that caught the moonlight and burned back at him like coals. The beast's tusks shone like wet knives, and Harold knew those tusks could tear him apart as easily as he might rip wet construction paper with his hands.

The boar turned its head from side to side and snorted, taking in the boy's smell. Harold tried to maintain his ground. But then the moonlight shifted in the boar's eyes and made them seem even brighter than before. Harold panicked and began running toward the farmhouse.

He heard the boar running behind him. It sounded strange as it came, as if it were chasing him on padded feet. Harold reached the front door of the farmhouse and grabbed the door handle. In one swift motion, he swung inside and pushed it shut. The boar rammed the door, and the house rattled like dry bones.

The door had a bar lock, and Harold pushed it into place. He leaped back, holding the stick to use as a spear. The ramming continued for a moment, then everything went quiet.

Harold eased to a window and looked out. The boar was standing at the edge of the woods near where he had first seen it. The scarecrow was gone, and in its place there was only the post that had held it.

Harold was confused. How had the boar chased him to the house and returned to its original position so quickly? And what had happened to the scarecrow? Had the boar, thinking the scarecrow was a person, torn it from the post with its tusks?

The boar turned and disappeared into the woods. Harold decided to give the animal time to get far away He checked his watch, then waited a few minutes. While he waited, he looked around.

The house was a wreck. There were overturned chairs, a table, and books. Near the fireplace, a hatchet was stuck in a large log. Everything was coated in dust and spider webs, and the stairs that twisted up to the second landing were shaky and rotten.

Harold was about to return to his fishing gear and head for the bike when he heard a scraping noise. He wheeled around for a look. The wind was moving a clutch of weeds, causing them to scrape against the window. Harold felt like a fool. Everything was scaring him.

Then the weeds moved from view and he discovered they weren't weeds at all. In fact, they looked like sticks... or fingers.

Hadn't the scarecrow had sticks for fingers?

That was ridiculous. Scarecrows didn't move on their own.

Then again, Harold thought as he looked out the window at the scarecrow's post, where was it?

The doorknob turned slowly. The door moved slightly, but the bar lock held. Harold could feel the hair on the back of his neck bristling. Goose bumps moved along his neck and shoulders.

The knob turned again.

Then something pushed hard against the door. Harder.

Harold dropped the stick and wrenched the hatchet from the log.

At the bottom of the door was a space about an inch wide, and the moonlight shining through the windows made it possible for him to see something scuttling there - sticks, long and flexible.

They poked through the crack at the bottom of the door, tapped loudly on the floor, and stretched, stretched, stretched farther into the room. A flat hand made of hay, vines, and sticks appeared. It began to ascend on the end of a knotty vine of an arm, wiggling its fingers as it rose. It climbed along the door, and Harold realized, to his horror and astonishment, that it was trying to reach the bar lock.

Harold stood frozen, watching the fingers push and free the latch.

Harold came unfrozen long enough to leap forward and chop down on the knotty elbow, striking it in two. The hand flopped to the floor and clutched so hard at the floorboards that it scratched large strips of wood from them. Then it was still.

But Harold had moved too late. The doorknob was turning again. Harold darted for the stairway, bolted up the staircase. Behind him came a scuttling sound. He was almost to the top of the stairs when the step beneath him gave way and his foot went through with a screech of nails and a crash of rotten lumber.

Harold let out a scream as something grabbed hold of the back of his coat collar. He jerked loose, tearing his jacket and losing the hatchet in the process. He tugged his foot free and crawled rapidly on hands and knees to the top of the stairs.

He struggled to his feet and raced down the corridor. Moonlight shone through a hall window and projected his shadow and that of his capering pursuer onto the wall. Then the creature sprang onto Harold's back, sending both of them tumbling to the floor

They rolled and twisted down the hallway. Harold howled and clutched at the strong arm wrapped around his throat. As he turned over onto his back, he heard the crunching of sticks beneath him. The arm loosened its grip, and Harold was able to free himself. He scuttled along the floor like a cockroach, regained his footing, then darted through an open door and slammed it.

Out in the hall he heard it moving. Sticks crackled. Hay swished. The thing was coming after him.

Harold checked over his shoulder, trying to find something to jam against the door, or some place to hide. He saw another doorway and sprinted for that. It led to another hall, and down its length were a series of doors. Harold quickly entered the room at the far end and closed the door quietly. He fumbled for a lock, but there was none. He saw a bed and rolled under it, sliding up against the wall where it was darkest.

The moon was rising, and its light was inching under the bed. Dust particles swam in the moonlight. The ancient bed smelled musty and wet. Outside in the hall, Harold could hear the thing scooting along as if it were sweeping the floor. Scooting closer.

A door opened. Closed.

A little later another door opened and closed.

Then another.

Moments later he could hear it in the room next to his. He knew he should try to escape, but to where? He was trapped. If he tried to rush out the door, he was certain to run right into it. Shivering like a frightened kitten, he pushed himself farther up against the wall, as close as possible.

The bedroom door creaked open. The scarecrow shuffled into the room. Harold could hear it moving from one side to the other, pulling things from shelves, tossing them onto the floor, smashing glass, trying to find his hiding place.

Please, please, thought Harold, don't look under the bed.

Harold heard it brushing toward the door, then he heard the door open. It's going to leave, thought Harold. It's going to leave!

But it stopped. Then slowly turned and walked to the bed. Harold could see the scarecrow's straw-filled pants legs, its shapeless straw feet. Bits of hay floated down from the scarecrow, coasted under the bed and lay in the moonlight, just inches away.

Slowly the scarecrow bent down for a look. The shadow of its hat poked beneath the bed before its actual face. Harold couldn't stand to look. He felt as if he might scream. The beating of his heart seemed as loud as thunder.

It looked under the bed.

Harold, eyes closed, waited for it to grab him.

Seconds ticked by and nothing happened.

Harold snapped his eyes open to the sound of the door slamming.

It hadn't seen him.

The thick shadows closest to the wall had protected him. If it had been a few minutes later, the rising moonlight would have expanded under the bed and revealed him.

Harold lay there, trying to decide what to do. Strangely enough, he felt sleepy. He couldn't imagine how that could be, but finally he decided that a mind could only take so much terror before it needed relief - even if it was false relief. He closed his eyes and fell into a deep sleep.

When he awoke, he realized by the light in the room that it was near sunrise. He had slept for hours. He wondered if the scarecrow was still in the house, searching.

Building his nerve, Harold crawled from under the bed. He stretched his back and turned to look around the room. He was startled to see a skeleton dressed in rotting clothes and sitting in a chair at a desk.

Last night he had rolled beneath the bed so quickly that he hadn't even seen the skeleton. Harold noticed a bundle of yellow papers lying on the desk in front of it.

He picked up the papers, carried them to the window, and held them to the dawn's growing light. It was a kind of journal. Harold scanned the contents and was amazed.

The skeleton had been a man named John Benner. When Benner had died, he was sixty-five years old. At one time he had been a successful farmer. But when his wife died, he grew lonely - so lonely that he decided to create a companion.

Benner built it of cloth and hay and sticks. Made the mouth from the jawbone of a wolf. The rib cage he unearthed in one of his fields. He couldn't tell if the bones were human or animal. He'd never seen anything like them. He decided it was just the thing for his companion.

He even decided to give it a heart - one of the old valentine hearts his beloved wife had made him. He fastened the heart to the rib cage, closed up the chest with hay and sticks, dressed the scarecrow in his old evening clothes, and pinned an old stovepipe hat to its head. He kept the scarecrow in the house, placed it in chairs, set a plate before it at meal times, even talked to it.

And then one night it moved.

At first Benner was amazed and frightened, but in time he was delighted. Something about the combination of ingredients, the strange bones from the field, the wolf's jaw, the valentine heart, perhaps his own desires, had given it life.

The scarecrow never ate or slept, but it kept him company. It listened while he talked or read aloud. It sat with him at the supper table.

But come daylight, it ceased to move. It would find a place in the shadows - a dark corner or the inside of a cedar chest. There it would wait until the day faded and the night came.

In time, Benner became afraid. The scarecrow was a creature of the night, and it lost interest in his company. Once, when he asked it to sit down and listen to him read, it slapped the book from his hand and tossed him against the kitchen wall, knocking him unconscious.

A thing made of straw and bones, cloth and paper, Benner realized, was never meant to live, because it had no soul.

One day, while the scarecrow hid from daylight, Benner dragged it from its hiding place and pulled it outside. It began to writhe and fight him, but the scarecrow was too weak to do him damage. The sunlight made it smoke and crackle with flame.

Benner hauled it to the center of the field, raised it on a post, and secured it there by ramming a long staff through its chest and paper heart.

It ceased to twitch, smoke, or burn. The thing he created was now at rest. It was nothing more than a scarecrow.

The pages told Harold that even with the scarecrow controlled, Benner found he could not sleep at night. He let the farm go to ruin, became sad and miserable, even thought of freeing the scarecrow so that once again he might have a companion. But he didn't, and in time, sitting right here at his desk, perhaps after writing his journal, he died. Maybe of fear, or loneliness.

Astonished, Harold dropped the pages on the floor. The scarecrow had been imprisoned on that post for no telling how long. From the condition of the farm, and Benner's body, Harold decided it had most likely been years. Then I came along, he thought, and removed the staff from its heart and freed it.

Daylight, thought Harold. In daylight the scarecrow would have to give up. It would have to hide. It would be weak then.

Harold glanced out the window. The thin rays of morning were growing longer and redder, and through the trees he could see the red ball of the sun lifting over the horizon.

Less than five minutes from now he would be safe. A sense of comfort flooded over him. He was going to beat this thing. He leaned against the glass, watching the sunrise.

A pane fell from the window and crashed onto the roof outside.

Uh-oh, thought Harold, looking toward the door.

He waited. Nothing happened. There were no sounds. The scarecrow had not heard. Harold sighed and turned to look out the window again.

Suddenly, the door burst open and slammed against the wall. As Harold wheeled around he saw a figure charging toward him, flapping its arms like the wings of a crow taking flight.

It pounced on him, smashed him against the window, breaking the remaining glass. Both went hurtling through the splintering window frame and fell onto the roof. They rolled together down the slope of the roof and onto the sandy ground.

It was a long drop - twelve feet or so. Harold fell on top of the scarecrow. It cushioned his fall, but he still landed hard enough to have the breath knocked out of him.

The scarecrow rolled him over, straddled him, pushed its hand tightly over Harold's face. The boy could smell the rotting hay and decaying sticks, feel the wooden fingers thrusting into his flesh. Its grip was growing tighter and tighter. He heard the scarecrow's wolf teeth snapping eagerly as it lowered its face to his.

Suddenly, there was a bone-chilling scream. At first Harold thought he was screaming, then he realized it was the scarecrow.

It leaped up and dashed away. Harold lifted his head for a look and saw a trail of smoke wisping around the corner of the house.

Harold found a heavy rock for a weapon, and forced himself to follow. The scarecrow was not in sight, but the side door of the house was partially open. Harold peeked through a window.

The scarecrow was violently flapping from one end of the room to the other, looking for shadows to hide in. But as the sun rose, its light melted the shadows away as fast as the scarecrow could find them.

Harold jerked the door open wide and let the sunlight in. He got a glimpse of the scarecrow as it snatched a thick curtain from a window, wrapped itself in it, and fell to the floor.

Harold spied a thick stick on the floor - it was the same one he had pulled from the scarecrow. He tossed aside the rock and picked up the stick. He used it to flip the curtain aside, exposing the thing to sunlight.

The scarecrow bellowed so loudly that Harold felt as if his bones and muscles would turn to jelly. It sprang from the floor, darted past him and out the door.

Feeling braver now that it was daylight and the scarecrow was weak, Harold chased after it. Ahead of him, the weeds in the field were parting and swishing like cards being shuffled. Floating above the weeds were thick twists of smoke.

Harold found the scarecrow on its knees, hugging its support post like a drowning man clinging to a floating log. Smoke coiled up from around the scarecrow's head and boiled out from under its coat sleeves and pant legs.

Harold poked the scarecrow with the stick. It fell on its back, and its arms flopped wide. Harold rammed the stick through its open chest, and through the valentine heart.

He lifted it from the ground easily with the stick. It weighed very little. He lifted it until its arms draped over the cross on the post. When it hung there, Harold made sure the stick was firmly through its chest and heart. Then he raced for his bike.

Sometimes even now, a year later, Harold thinks of his fishing gear and his camp shovel. But more often he thinks of the scarecrow. He wonders if it is still on its post. He wonders what would have happened if he had left it alone in the sunlight. Would that have been better? Would it have burned to ashes?

He wonders if another curious fisherman has been out there and removed the stick from its chest.

He hopes not.

He wonders if the scarecrow has a memory. It had tried to get Benner, but Benner had beat it, and Harold had beat it too. But what if someone else freed it and the scarecrow got him? Would it come after Harold too? Would it want to finish what it had started?

Was it possible, by some kind of supernatural instinct, for the scarecrow to track him down? Could it travel by night? Sleep in culverts and old barns and sheds, burying itself deep under dried leaves to hide from the sun?

Could it be coming closer to his home while he slept?

He often dreamed of it coming. In his dreams, Harold could see it gliding with the shadows, shuffling along, inching nearer and nearer

And what about those sounds he'd heard earlier tonight, outside his bedroom window? Were they really what he had concluded - dogs in the trash cans?

Had that shape he'd glimpsed at his window been the fleeting shadow of a flying owl, or had it been- Harold rose from bed, checked all the locks on the doors and windows, listened to the wind blow around the house, and decided not to go outside for a look.

DRAGON CHILLI

This recipe is in response to the one I posted here on Share Your Recipes a week ago that proved to be more popular than I expected. I have been asked by so many readers to post another, and as I am not immune to flattery or persuasion-even mild persuasion-I am back with culinary enthusiasm and this time out I would like to post my recipe for dragon chili.

I know dragons are not normally thought of as an ingredient in chili, but trust me, they are an excellent source of protein, are low in fat, and the meat is very clean and low caloric and it does not taste like chicken or the more popular chili meat.

Dragon meat has gotten a bad reputation due to a misunderstanding about dragons. First off, for the meat to be good, and for it to work in my chili recipe, it is necessary that you acquire a very young dragon. The younger, the meat the sweeter.

You should also avoid the green dragons, as there is nothing you can do at any time or any age to make that meat serviceable. The brown dragons are the best. At an early age, when they are no more than three feet long, they are perfect. Their eyes are just open (which is a sign the toxins in the blood have passed, which is the way of brown dragons), and the meat, especially in the tail, is ready to be harvested. The head meat, though darker, is also tasty, and is best made into ground patties. The body meat is fine as well, but riddled with bones, so extreme care should be taken, lest you get one of the small bones that litter the dragon's torso and appear to accomplish nothing towards locomotion or the firmness of the body and are extraordinarily hard to detect during a simple cleaning.

Also, the hearts (remember browns have two hearts instead of one like green dragons, and like both kinds of dragons, they are large and eight chambered) and the fatty livers are delicacies and require a different approach to preparation than I am going to provide here, and some people suggest that for them to be enjoyed one has to persevere, as they are something of an acquired taste.

For chili, we are going to consider the head meat and the tail meat. I prefer the tail meat, as I like my chili meat to be sliced and then chopped, as opposed to ground. And once again, the white meat of a dragon tail is so vastly superior to the darker meat of the head.

It is also necessary to prepare the dragon alive. Dragons, the moment they die, begin to go bad. This is true of all meat, but with the dragon it is a much faster process than with any other meat known. Within a few hours, unless cooked, the meat becomes foul.

If the meat is cut from the dragon quickly, and deep fried, or in the case of other kinds of recipes, boiled or baked, etc., for whatever reason, the meat ceases to spoil and retains its sweetness, and will keep permanently, though other ingredients in your recipe can go bad and make the meat inedible.

The way to prepare the meat is to, well, catch the dragon, of course. You should do this with a net. They can often be found shortly after birth when the mother dragon is away, searching out cattle or other foods it digests and then regurgitates into the baby dragons' mouths. At this early age, if you watch and make sure the mother is away, the dragons are fairly harmless and the net is the best way to capture them. The net should be of strong wire. The dragon's ability to breathe fire does not kick in until the creature reaches the age of a year or so, but even at an early age their tail can thrash violently and they have more than a passing semblance to adult claws. Even the beating of their little wings can cut you like a knife.

When the dragon has been captured, it is desirable to calm it for a couple of days. After a day or two of calming the dragon down, it should be placed on a diet of fresh milk and soft vegetables for about a week. Then it can be stroked. Once its confidence is gained, it should be removed gently from the holding pen. Do not excite the dragon, as its claws and tail and wings could be dangerous. I know I have mentioned this, and I don't mean to overemphasize it, but it is an important thing to consider.

Keep the beast calm. This isn't hard to do as the dragon is by nature trusting. The best way to prepare the dragon is to lay it length-wise on a sturdy board as wide and as long as the dragon. A neat trick to help with the preparation is to coat the board with vegetable oil. Dragons will be attracted to this and will begin to lick it. Very carefully place a long spike at the back of the dragon's head, where the neck joins, and with a well timed and well placed strike with a hammer, drive the nail through the dragon's spine and into the board.

It is advisable to slip a rope over the tail of the dragon before this strike, and to gently pull it taut while it is preoccupied with licking the board. The strike, if properly performed, should sever the dragon's spine, and its ability to thrash its tail. The sounds it makes will be excruciating, and it will be tempting to put the dragon out of its misery quickly, but this will ruin the meat.

The thing to do is to whack off the tail at the base, saving that bit of meat from contamination should your nail be slightly off the spine. The head meat does not contaminate as long as the animal is alive, so it is best to use a sharp and sturdy blade and pliers to slowly strip the skin from the head before cutting into the bone with an electric bone saw, and then into the brain. I should also add that wiring the wings together carefully before binding the tail gently and striking the dragon with the nail or spike is advisable. As I said, the wings can be as dangerous as the teeth or the tail.

But, I was saying about the stripping of the meat. Only at this point, should the animal be allowed to die. They are sturdy and can withstand having their skin removed. You can just let them bleed out, or you can finish them with a few strokes of your mallet. I find wielding a mallet a messy endeavor, and generally just let them bleed and die.

Let us return our attentions to the recipe. We now have the tail, and the head meat. It is suggested that if dragons are not available, that the meat of small children is equally satisfying and tasty, and they are much easier to handle. With the large number of children being born, due to restrictions in the laws, and those that are being placed in orphanages, this is a perfect way to take care of them, and there are some butcher shops that specialize in children already butchered and prepared, though this is not as true of the dragon. Children are perfect substitutes for many dishes, and they can suffice to duplicate, or at least take the place of, anything from pork to chicken to beef to fish or dragon. It depends on the parts of the children you use. It all begins to taste a bit like beef or pork if the child becomes too old, so keep that in mind. And of course when they are adults they are free to make their own choices. Eating adults is definitely out, as anyone in their right minds should know.

Children as meat have become quite popular, and frankly, it is a way the population can be lowered without it being an unnecessary death, or some form of stem cell usage which goes against the laws of God and man. Food is not a waste, and I say here, and without fear, we are all creatures of God, and God believes we are the rulers of the earth, and though all life is precious, and all babies should be preserved, it is obviously okay for them, up until that certain age, to be eaten, as this activity, nourishing one's self, is in God's plan.

Abortion clinics of the past gave women a choice, but there should be no choice. All life is sacred and should be preserved until that moment that it becomes meat, or it becomes an adult. No babies of dragons or of human persuasion were killed in the womb for any dish I have ever prepared, and I am proud of that. I use only fresh out-of-the-womb meat that no one wants, or has abused, or taken a limb from.

I stress this because there are underground recipes that make use of aborted embryos, and this is a foul blow against God, and I would not want to be thought one of their ilk.

Forgive me my distraction, but since this cookbook is designed for the church, I suppose its dictates and concerns were on my mind. Hail to him that is love. Hail to God who knows all and loves all and wants us to protect the defenseless children.

And remember, dragon chili, with the occasional substitute, is one of the finest and tastiest meals that one can digest, for it, like the child, comes from the egg of a female and the seed of male, and none of it has been spilled and none of it has been violated in the womb. It is all meat, fresh and clean and unwanted and unloved, except prepared in the manner that I have suggested, adding plenty of black pepper and a smidgen of salt and lots of chili pepper to taste.

Cook on.

Brother Canefield: Chef for the Church of ReligiousUnion and Harmony and The Home of The One True God and his Minions.

THE FULL COUNT

I

The scarred face, bulky body, gnarled knuckles and go-to-hell look seemed out of place with the green-and-yellow plain sports coat, lavender slacks, white shoes and blue-and-grey striped tie the man was wearing.

He closed the door of his shiny, black Lincoln, put a nickel in the meter, and made his way up the hot mid-day sidewalk to a little bar with a sign overhead that read The Idle Hour Lounge.

It was cool dark inside, just right for groping couples. Not many couples were there to grope at the moment, however. Just one old man who should have been with his wife and TV set, was putting the clutch on the plump thigh of a bleached blonde working girl about twenty years past her prime. Her plastic giggles were shrill enough to shatter a beer mug.

A couple of not-so-young, executive types with loose ties and tired eyes were sitting alone at booths looking as if they might break down and cry in their beer at any moment. A pot-bellied patron in a green leisure suit with more quarters than good sense or musical taste was keeping the jukebox in business.

The bartender, a young blond man in a red-and-white pinstripe shirt with black elbow garters and a matching bow tie, was leaning over the bar with a rag dangling from his right hand and a look as distant as the Sahara in his eyes.

In the rear booth, Raymond Slater, private detective, was passing an idle hour with a lukewarm beer and a cigarette. It was almost time for the evening stampede and elbow war, coupled with the seemingly endless coinage of the music lover, and Slater decided to break his routine a little early. He was finishing up his beer when the big man in the expensively mismatched outfit came in.

Slater wasn't the only one who noticed him. The ill-clad bruiser pushed his six-three, 240 pounds up to the bar and called for a beer. His voice sounded as if it had been fished from the bottom of a deep barrel.

He was interesting enough for the old man and the hooker to stop their play for a look. The two lonely executive types checked him out. Even Music Lover lost a few foot-pats over it.

The bartender brought him a beer, snapped up the change, fed the register and went back to his bar leaning. The old man and the hooker returned to the business at hand. The sad boys returned to the bottom of their glasses for comfort, and Music Lover clacked two more quarters.

Beer in hand, the man went directly to Slater's table and sat down across from the detective.

The neon light was dim, but not so dim for Slater to get a look at the man's features. They looked as if they had been chiseled out of a coral reef. He had a flat nose, wadded ears and dark, liquid eyes that looked eerie in the pulsating blue and white of the neon sign that blinked BEER. Later, in better light, Slater would see that the man's close-cropped black hair was peppered with grey.

"You Raymond Slater?" he asked.

"Uh-huh," Slater said cautiously, "You're...?"

"Yank Callahan, Ray," the bottom of the barrel voice said. "Call me Yank." He shoved a hand the size of a catcher's mitt at Slater. They pumped. Slater thought it was like shaking hands with a mechanic's vise.

"How do you know me?" Slater asked.

Yank drank the beer down almost in one glug, licked his lips. "Burn down at the cop-shop told me this is where I'd most likely find you this time of day. Gave me a good description. Said you looked like a well dressed street fighter."

"Flattering!"

"You see, Slater, I checked with the cops in GulfCity and here in Pasadena about advising me on a private dick. When I found out that my buddy Burn worked for the Pasadena bunch, I asked his advice and quit looking. We used to be pretty tight buddies, me and Burn. He told me this was a Monday through Friday routine with you. Want a beer?"

Slater said that he did. Yank turned and yelled over the wailing of the jukebox-no minor feat-at the bartender for two beers.

A skinny waitress who had just come on duty brought them over with an exaggerated wiggle and a smile that would have looked more at home in a beaver's mouth. Yank gave her a bill. She set the beers down, took his empty glass and went away, the wiggle still at work.

Slater drank some beer, got out another cigarette, offered Yank one. Yank declined.

Slater lit up.

"What exactly do you have in mind?" Slater asked.

"I need you to find someone, Slater. My trainer, Jason Krim."

"Trainer?"

"Uh-huh. I'm a fight manager. Do a little promoting, too. Maybe you've heard of my man. Anibal Martinez."

Indeed Slater had. Martinez had been a nothing until recently. His surprise victory over the number-two contender for the crown had jumped his ratings by more than a few notches, and since he was a Pasadena, Texas, fighter, the papers had been chock full of it.

"I've heard of him," Slater said. "Seen him fight on TV a couple of times. He's good. Probably got a good shot at the championship."

Yank nodded. "Real good chance. Listen, Slater, Burn told me you were the best private detective in Pasadena-Houston for that matter."

"Burn told you that?"

"Sure did. But I don't imagine he wants you to know. He doesn't like to let on he likes anybody."

"Doesn't do a bad job of it, either."

Yank laughed shortly. "That he don't." Then: "About the job, Slater?"

"I'm listening."

"You see, I got my own gym. It ain't much, but I'm proud of it. I used to fight some-hell, a lot. I didn't get this mug from tennis. Wasn't ever a number-one contender or nothing, but I was pretty good. I had the size and the strength, a little talent. I was good enough so that when I retired from the ring I got some training jobs. Trained some pretty good fighters. Remember Kit Miller, Miller the Killer? Ted Niven?"

Slater nodded. "I remember. They your boys?"

"Yep. I trained those pugs. Made some pretty good bread on account of it. Bought this gym in GulfCity. It ain't much, but it's paid for and I've lined up some pretty good local talent."

"One of them is Anibal Martinez."

"That's right. Anyway, I've done okay, and I got myself one fine trainer, Jason Krim."

"And Krim's missing?"

"Almost a week now. The police haven't found a single lead, least not anything that's helped."

"And you saw him last, when?"

"A week ago Tuesday."

"Krim ever do this before?"

"Plenty, but not for this long. That's why I waited a couple of days to report it. He's a pretty temperamental guy, very apt to do this sort of thing-and, to tell the truth, he and Anibal don't get along so good. Least not outside of the ring. That might have had something to do with it. When Jason feels pushed, he does funny stuff."

"Like walks out?"

"Uh-huh. Odd thing, though, is, when it comes to boxing, things are different. They respect each other there, least on how a fight is won. They've just got the kind of personalities that grate on one another.

"I don't think there's a trainer alive that can work with and get more out of Anibal than Jason." Yank paused and drank the rest of his beer. "Yeah, he's done it before, but it's only three weeks before the fight, and there isn't any way in hell Jason would do anything to hurt the fight."

"You said that he and Anibal didn't get along very well. Wouldn't this be a good time for him to get even? Say they had an argument, and-"

Yank threw up a hand. "No way. Jason and Anibal can go at each other like starved rats, but there ain't no way you could get Jason to hurt a fight. He may not like Anibal in ways, but the guy's his handiwork.

"It's like a car in a way. You may not like the paint job, but if you tuned the engine it holds something special for you." Yank gave Slater a stiff look. "Whatayasay, Slater? Burn said that you could probably find him before they did on account of how busy they are."

Slater was still thinking, humorlessly, about Yank's car-tuning analogy. "All right, Yank," he said. "I'll find him. But I won't guarantee he'll come back. That's his decision."

Yank nodded. "That's fair enough, Slater." With that, he groped a huge wallet from his pocket and picked three hundreds from an ample collection of same. "This do for a retainer?"

Slater managed not to lick his lips. "Quite."

"You can bill me for the rest," Yank held out his hand. They shook and Slater got the address of Yank's gym. After that, they went out into the glaring sunshine together.

"Tomorrow at nine," Slater said.

"Right. Nine."

Yank went to his sleek, black Lincoln and drove away. Slater got into his red '65 Chevy with the stuffing leaking out of the seats and drove home.

II

Early the next morning Slater showered, dressed, had a grease-and-egg sandwich and drove over to the address Yank had given him. He spotted the Lincoln right off. It looked conspicuous in this dreary neighborhood. He parked, got out, took a look at the gym. It appeared overdue for the wrecking ball. He lit a cigarette and went inside.

The interior was unexpectedly slick. All new equipment, all shiny to the eye. Never judge a gym by its cover, Slater thought.

There were Nautilus weight machines, speed bags, heavy bags, racks of jump ropes and lots of people scuttling about making shadow moves and noises like boxers. On a raised platform, between the ropes, a stylish boxer Slater recognized as Anibal Martinez was slamming the hell, left and right, out of his puffing sparring partner.

No doubt about it the kid had the moves. There was champ written all over him. A half dozen men were gathered about the ring, hanging on the ropes. One of them was Yank. Slater went over and stood by him.

"Ain't he somethin'!" Yank said after shaking hands with Slater. The big detective agreed that he was in fact something all right. A real hell of a boxer.

"That's enough," Yank yelled to Anibal, and the grateful sparring partner dropped his tired hands for a rest.

Anibal spit his mouthpiece into a gloved hand. A short man wearing a grey sweatshirt and sweat pants slid through the ropes and untied his gloves, took off the head protector. That done he made his way over to the sparring partner. Anibal slid between the ropes, flopped down next to Slater and Yank.

"You the detective Yank hired to find Krim?" The boxer asked with just the slightest trace of a Mexican accent.

"That's me," Slater said.

"If I was you, I'd do my looking in the bars. Under some bar stool preferably."

"Something serious could have happened," Yank cut in. "For goodness sake..."

Anibal tossed Yank a cold stare. "Could be the best thing that ever happened to us," he said slowly. With that he went over to the speed bag and put his taped knuckles to work.

Nice fellow," Slater said.

"Foolish pride, Slater," Yank said. "He won't admit it, but without Jason he just ain't the same."

"Could have fooled me."

"I tell you, Slater, it's pride. The kid's got a chip on his shoulder for some reason and Jason is his prime target. Got some fool notion Jason's pushing him too fast."

"Is he?"

"No way. Won all his fights. He just can't stand the fact that he has to depend on the man so much. Likes to think he can do it all by himself."

"He doesn't have him to depend on now."

Yank nodded. "And it shows."

"Yeah, he's all torn up."

"Just believe me, Slater. I know him."

"All right," Slater said, "you know him." With that he took the folded contract from his pocket. "Shall we fill this out, and then I've got a few questions."

"Let's go back to the office."

The office, unlike the interior of the gym, was not the Ritz. It was so small that the two big men were almost enough to overload the straining air conditioner.

When the contract was completed and Slater had folded it away in his coat pocket, he asked for a list of the people who worked with Jason. None of the names, other than Anibal and Yank, were familiar to him. He gave Slater a newspaper clipping with Anibal and Krim's picture. They were both smiling.

Krim was a fiftyish black man with a once-muscular body now coated with fat. Even in the picture he maintained a certain air of reserve and capability. Slater put the clipping in his pocket with the contract. Last, but not least, Slater had Yank write out a list of Jason's hangouts. He could only think of three.

Yank and Slater shook hands, expressed hopes that Krim would be found soon and Slater left the office.

On the way out he stopped by the speed bag that Anibal was flogging. The bag thumped to a stop. Anibal looked at the burly detective with flat, brown eyes.

"Yank says you need Krim," Slater said, not trying to be the least bit cagey, watching carefully for the fighter's reaction.

"I don't need nothing but time. Krim don't give a damn about me and the feeling's mutual. He treats me like a side of beef. He only wants me to do well so he can pat his own goddamn self on the back. To hell with that! To hell with him!" Scowling, Anibal turned to the bag and slammed it a hard one.

"I don't need Krim," he snapped, looking back at Slater's impassive face.

"See you later," Slater said and moved away.

When he reached the door Anibal yelled, "If you find that sonofabitch, tell him not to come back. I don't need him. I don't want him."

Slater nodded in a disinterested way, pushed out the door. Behind him, even through the closed door, he could hear the speed bag. Anibal Martinez was going at it to kill.

He had driven two blocks when he decided that the late-model grey Plymouth was following him. Not too close. Not too far away. Just about right. Coincidence, maybe.

Slater took a few quick lefts, a right, then gassed it till he hit Earl Street.

He eased up to a YIELD sign and waited.

He didn't see the Plymouth.

Deciding maybe that he was becoming paranoid in his old age-too much TV and Watergate-he chalked it up to stupidity. Feeling like a Junior G-Man, he drove the 25 miles from GulfCity to Pasadena and his office on Strawberry Street.

III

Slater sat in his office, heels on desk, looking at the paint-peeling walls till four o'clock, then locked up and drove back to GulfCity and one of Jason's hangouts, Happy's Good Time Bar.

Happy's was an ugly building with more beer and wine advertisements splattered on the outside than the off-white paint that showed between them. Red neon curlicue writing in a large, dirty window announced that there was live entertainment inside. Strippers.

Inside, it was the usual seedy little honkytonk with sticky tables, an unpolished bar, rows of bottles, a beer tap, a huge mirror that looked as if someone had deliberately wiped it with a greasy rag, and a small stage for the strippers.

The place stank of stale cigarette smoke and alcohol.

Behind the bar was a bored bartender with black curly hair, a lantern jaw and eyes like a lynx. It was too early for the strip show, and only one die-hard drunk was present. He sat at the table in the back, contemplating the empty glass before him.

Slater went up to the bar, perched on a stool and ordered a beer. The bored bartender squeezed one out of the tap and slammed it down hard enough for some to slosh out on Slater's hand. The bartender saw it happen, but if it bothered him he didn't let on.

Slater showed him his grillwork. "You look kind of bored, Curly. Maybe you'd like to talk."

He gave Slater a sour look. "The name's not Curly and talk from drunks I don't need. It's that that makes me bored."

Touchy, Slater thought. He showed him the nice smile again. "I haven't even had a beer yet, so how come I'm a drunk. Maybe I could even salt up the conversation some." Slater took out his wallet, removed a one, put it on the counter.

The bartender gave it the experienced eye. "Nothing but the big time, huh, Charlie?"

Slater pursed his lips, took a fin from his wallet, put it with the single, kept his fingers on them, but just lightly. "Nice job you got here," Slater said. "Bet you even make some money. But not off the joint."

He gave Slater a sigh and a smile. Neither was exactly first rate. "Something I can do for you, Charlie?"

Slater took his fingers off the bills and watched the bartender palm them with the professional ease of a sleight-of-hand artist. The bills disappeared into his shirt pocket. He looked at Slater out of the corner of his eye.

He said, "You just giving them away or have you got questions?"

Slater drank some of his beer. It was bad enough to spit out, but the big detective restrained himself. "I've got questions," Slater said, a bit tired of the cat and mouse. "Ever hear of a guy named Jason Krim?"

The bartender lifted his eye brows, wiggled his mouth from side to side, said, "Nope. Sorry."

"For six bucks you didn't give the question a whole lot of thought."

"Don't know any Jason Krim. It's as simple as that."

"Maybe I can refresh your memory. He's been in here quite a lot. Trains fighters, Anibal Martinez in particular. Krim's a big black guy about fifty. Here."

Slater got the clipping out of his pocket and laid it on the bar.

The bartender picked up a glass and a rag, made like he was polishing the glass, looked down at the clipping.

"Maybe I've seen him," he said.

Slater let out a sigh. "Either you've seen him or you haven't. Which is it?"

Very carefully, as if it were fine china, the bartender set down the glass, put the rag away beneath the counter, kept his left hand there. "You a cop or something?"

"Private investigator. I'm looking for Krim," Slater said, all the while watching the hidden hand. "How about it? You seen him?"

The bartender brought his hand from beneath the counter. It was empty. He picked up the clipping and looked at it. "Okay. Yeah, I've seen him. Used to come in here a couple of times a week, drink himself bananas and watch the strip show."

"You told the cops about this?"

"Now why should I do that?"

"Surely they've been around asking. He's on the missing persons list."

"Not to me, they haven't. Cops I don't need, Charlie. Look, I'm telling you, I used to see the guy a couple of times a week. Last time was a week ago, a Tuesday night, and that's the truth." He held up his hand. Slater had the feeling that if a stack of bibles had been available, he would have sworn an oath on them.

"Seem awful nervous about cops. Wouldn't be running some kind of action out of this joint, would you?"

"I just work here. As far as I know the joint's as straight as Robins arrow."

"Uh-huh."

"I'm not kiddin'. Anything that goes on illegal here, I don't know nothing about it."

"Sure, the joint's a regular Sunday school." Slater looked at the bartender hard enough to crack an ice block. "Okay, preacher, wouldn't be more you'd want to tell me about this Krim fellow?"

"Okay now, don't get sore. It's just that chatty bartenders don't do an establishment any good. Weather and dames is one thing but..."

"I get the picture." Slater picked another five from his wallet, handed it to the bartender. It went, quickly, into the shirt pocket with the other bills.

He licked his lips, leaned over the bar, said to Slater in an almost whisper, "This Krim fellow is a regular. Like I said, a couple of times a week."

"That line's starting to sound like an echo."

"Just listen. He sits over there." Slater turned to look where he was pointing. A corner table next to the stage. "He drinks like a fish and watches the strip show. Passes a lot of bills around to the girls."

"The last time you saw him-leave with anybody?"

The bartender put an elbow on the bar, leaned close to Slater. "Just between you, me and the wall, I did see him leave with someone, more or less."

"How do you leave with someone more or less?"

"This Mexican, the one here in the picture, came in and did some yelling at the old guy, finally jerks up the old dude by the shirt."

"What were they yelling?"

The bartender threw up his hands. "What am I, a tape recorder? This place was crowded and noisy. Ain't nothing worse than a bunch of noisy drunks."

"So what else happens?"

"Nothing. I go out back and empty the garbage, bottles and stuff. Out back I see the Mexican putting the old man in the back seat of a Lincoln. Can you believe that? The geezer's got a god-damned Lincoln! I drive a sixty-eight Ford. Well, anyway, the old man's as drunk as Cooter Brown, I reckon. The Mex puts him in the back, gets behind the wheel and drives off."

"Anyone with the driver?"

"Might have been. Wasn't paying that close attention."

"I guess you see that sort of thing every day? Often enough not to bother with calling the police."

"You see everything here after a while."

"Customers make a habit of parking out back?"

"They park anywhere the tires will set."

"Think the Mexican could have clouted the old guy?"

"Could have. A passed-out drunk and a punched-out one look a whole hell of a lot alike. If you know what I mean."

"The old man talk to anyone else that night?"

"Hell, I don't remember. I mean I wasn't keeping tabs on the guy."

"Give it some real deep thought. I mean, I could have the cops start checking around."

"Okay, okay, don't start with the cop talk. He did talk to Leona Blue some. She's a stripper here."

"Blue her real name?"

"No. Stage. I don't know what her real name is. What's it matter?"

"Maybe it doesn't. She here now?"

"No. Comes on at six-thirty, has her act at seven."

"Thanks."

The bartender didn't tell Slater he was welcome. The detective left Happy's and went to the other two places on his list. There was someone at both who had seen Jason, but not after Monday. It looked like Happy's was the last spot before his vanishing act.

Slater made a phone call to Yank, and in as casual a manner as possible, confirmed that Anibal sometimes drove his Lincoln, and that it was quite possible that he drove it the night in question. With that information in tow, Slater ended the conversation by telling Yank not to worry and that things were shaping up.

At six-thirty he drove back to Happy's.

IV

Leona Blue was not a movie queen, but she certainly had sex appeal. She was voluptuously built, and her costume, if you can call a G-string and a handful of sequins and gauze a costume, did nothing to conceal the fact.

She had nice things to go with the body-shoulder-length brown hair, beautiful smoky blue eyes and a quick smile that showed just the slightest trace of wrinkles at the corners. Slater quickly deduced that she wasn't old, but she was certainly not as young as she appeared at first glance.

After he made it clear that he wasn't a cop or one of the local lechers, Leona agreed to talk to him. She pulled a man's shirt over her "outfit" and sat with Slater at the table the bartender had said was Jason's usual spot.

After taking in the view for a period that Slater felt was just within being polite, he said, "How long have you known Jason?"

"Almost a year," she said. Her voice was soft and musical, the sort that could whisper sweet passion in the dark.

"Last saw him when?"

Her full lips quivered slightly. She leaned forward and said in a low voice. "He's not in some kind of trouble, is he?"

"None that I know of," Slater said. "I'm a private detective. His employer, Yank, hired me to find him. He's a little worried, that's all."

Leona nodded, bobbed her brown hair in a manner Slater thought was sensual. "I know about Yank. Jason speaks highly of him." She picked a pack of cigarettes out of her shirt pocket, shook one out. Slater took out his lighter and lit it for her, lit one of his own.

"To tell the truth," she said, "I'm a little worried myself."

"That right?"

"Uh-huh. He's done this sort of thing before, going off for awhile without letting anyone know-but somehow, I'm really worried this time. I've called his place and even went by. Nothing. Locked, and the landlady claims she hasn't seen him. Not that she'd care to help anyway."

"I take it you and Jason are better than friends."

She rested her elbow on the table top, her head in her palm. The cigarette drooped languidly from her fingers, soft, grey ash floated down across the table.

"That's right," she said. "Much better than friends. I suppose you don't approve?"

Slater shrugged his shoulders. "Why should I approve or disapprove. What's it to you, anyway? It's your business, not mine."

She lifted her head from her palm, stretched both arms out on the table top. "Sorry. I get to hear so many lectures about how nice, white girls ought not to run around with the niggers, I'm a little touchy. Bitter, too, I guess."

"You won't be hearing that from me."

"I can believe that," she said. "I'm just a little touchy, that's all."

"I can see how you would be. GulfCity isn't exactly the culture spot of the world, and the work you do doesn't cater to the upper crust. No offense intended."

"Nor your work."

"Touche. Right you are, present company excluded, of course."

They laughed, then Leona became solemn. She said, "Do you think Jason's all right?"

"I don't know what to think," Slater said truthfully. "From the way you talk, I take it no policemen have been around to ask you questions."

She wrinkled up her pretty face with concern. "Police? I thought you said he wasn't in any kind of trouble."

"I did. The police have a missing persons report on him. Yank hired me as insurance."

"No police," she said. "I haven't talked to any cops and the only cops I know are the two that show up here regularly for their payoffs. They must have a racket with half the dives in this area and no telling what else."

"Prostitution?"

"No. Drugs is my suspicion, and it's just that, a suspicion. I think James, that's the bartender, and the owner deal a lot of stuff from this joint. The cops are in on it. Just guessing, mind you, but when you've been around these places enough, you get to be a pretty good guesser. As it is, I just keep my mouth shut." She took a hard look at Slater. "Do you think you can find him?"

"If I didn't, I wouldn't be looking," Slater said, and for a rare moment his rugged face looked almost soft and vulnerable.

Leona blew smoke out with a sigh. "You know," she began, and she didn't really seem to be talking to Slater in particular, just addressing gentle memories, "Jason's a very special kind of guy. Tough, but gentle. That means something to me. I don't go for the old fashioned make-it-or-break-it kind of guy.

"You know what he likes to do?" She smiled briefly. "He likes to have me drive him down by the gulf. He has a special spot there. It's just an old ragged stretch with a little pier that sticks out in some oily junk-filled water. But that's where he has me take him.

"We always take my car because Jason doesn't drive, takes a taxi wherever he goes, one of his quirks. Anyway, he has me drive him out there and we park and look out over that ugly stretch of water and talk. He tells me that he used to go there as a kid to sort out his problems and he has a lot of childhood memories about that place.

"It's almost like an honor to share it with him." She looked out from her dreams and cigarette smoke. "Damn!" she said. "I must be getting old and sentimental. I sound like a fool."

"Not hardly," Slater said. "Not hardly."

They sat for a moment in awkward silence, then Slater said, "Leona, you were here the night of the argument?"

"Argument? Oh!" she said. "You mean with Anibal? How'd you know about that?"

"Bartender. You know Anibal very well?"

"No. I've never really met him. Matter of fact, the night of the argument was the only time I've ever seen him in the flesh. I've seen pictures of him, but that's it. Why Jason worries about that fool kid I'll never know. It bothers him to no end that the kid dislikes him. It's almost like a father-son generation-gap thing."

"That might be putting it lightly from what I've heard. Tell me about the argument."

She put her cigarette out in the ashtray. "Not much to tell. The kid got steamed up about the way he thought Jason was pushing him, had a few beers too many and came to tell Jason what he thought of him.

"Jason gave him hell for drinking, breaking training, something like that, and Anibal got mad enough to jerk him up from the table. They shouted at each other a bit, then Anibal let go and stomped out."

"No blows?"

"No. Just a lot of yelling. Jason told me after the kid left that he was going out back for some fresh air and that he'd see me at closing time. He didn't come back. It worried me, but not a lot. Jason was a temperamental guy and did that sort of thing now and then, often enough that I was used to it and didn't worry too much. Till now. Right now I'm worried."

"The night of the argument, the bartender tells me Jason was pretty drunk. That right?"

"He'd been drinking, but he wasn't drunk. I've never seen him drunk. James would tell you that though. He thinks I should stick with young white men, like him. James isn't my type by a long shot. He loves to think Jason is a no-good drunk. It builds his ego."

"A little thing. James tells me that Anibal went out the front way. What about that?"

"Uh-huh. And Jason went out the back. They didn't leave five seconds apart of each other."

"Okay. Another thing. James says Jason passes out a lot of bucks. That true?"

"Yeah. He's a heavy tipper. I've told him that sort of thing could get him in trouble. I hope..."

The lights went suddenly dim. A redheaded woman with a movie starlet's build, if not a starlet's face, came out on the little stage wrapped in a Chinese-style robe and yelled, "Five minutes, Leona." The redhead's voice was as sharp as a knife.

Leona waved a hand at her, turned back to Slater. "Head honcho. I've got to get a move on."

"One more thing, and I'll make it quick."

"Shoot."

"This spot where the two of you go-the pier. Could you tell me where it is?"

She had stood up from the table to go, now she sat back down, clasped her hands together, said, "May I ask why?"

"No particular reason. Just following a few hunches. Nothing really."

Leona stared at Slater's trained impassiveness for a long moment. "Got a pen?" she finally said.

Slater picked an old ballpoint from his coat pocket, gave it to her.

"It's easy to find," she said, and she pulled a napkin from the holder and started drawing. When she was almost finished, the redhead came out and screamed at her again. The knife-edged voice was sharper than before. Over his shoulder Leona said, "Coming, coming."

She handed Slater the map and pen. The shadows clung to her face like spiders. She said, "Listen, I love Jason, very much. I know it sounds silly but I'm telling you this because when you find him, even if it's bad, I want to know. My phone number is there on the napkin."

Slater looked at it, folded it away in his pocket.

"Promise me you'll let me know," she said. "Promise me that."

"I promise," Slater said.

"Good." She wiped at her eyes. "Contacts. I never have gotten used to them. Find him, please."

Slater nodded.

Leona turned and walked away quickly. Slater watched her go up the stage steps, across to the once dark-blue curtains and disappear behind them. He got up and made his way through the gathering crowd and out to the car, drove away feeling strangely small and very, very alone.

It was about a five-block drive to the place on Leona's map. More than a rock's throw, but no real trek. Slater eased his Chevy down an embankment made by recent bull-dozing, and parked near a rickety weather-chewed stretch of pier. He took a flashlight from the glove box and got out.

The salt spray blew cold against his cheek and stung his nostrils. The timber pilings of the pier creaked with the rolling motion of the water. Paper and other debris discarded by beach lovers blew up around his ankles and crunched underfoot.

He went down to the pier and walked out on it. It creaked ominously. There was an odor of decaying fish closer to the water, and when Slater played the beam on the shadowed sea, it looked dead, dirty and forgotten. Across the way, the lights of some factory's night shift showed their smoke rising into the blackness of the night, fading the moon. Down on the water the lights cast murky shadows. Behind him, over the rise, he could hear the hurry of traffic.

He flashed the light all around, turned, walked off the pier and went up and down the beach with the same lack of results.

Then he had a hunch. He didn't know what else to call it-just a thought, a strong thought. He went back to the pier and walked out on the lip, got down on his stomach, hung his upper body over and worked the flash around.

It was a good hunch.

It floated in the shallow brine halfway between the embankment and the shabby creosote piling that held up the left rear of the pier. Only half of it was showing. The torso bloated. The shirt that covered it was black from water and stuffed as tight as a German sausage. The head was grey, shapeless, with a lot of flesh missing. The arms were the same. Most likely crabs had been feeding. The body seemed to be held in place by the debris collected beneath the pier-a bobbing cork once human.

Slater flicked off the flash and vomited in the water.

V

It was hard to tell positively at such quick notice, as no identification was on the body, but the GulfCity cops agreed with Slater that it was most likely what was left of Jason Krim. As to the cause of death-too early to tell. But neither the police nor Slater thought it an accidental drowning.

Slater refused to tell how he found out about the pier or about Anibal Martinez and the borrowed Lincoln. He told them it was coincidence. He didn't think they believed him for a moment. Slater and the GulfCity cops were not on the best of terms.

Slater wanted to talk to Yank first before he tipped his hand. Of course the cops would get to Yank first. That's why he wanted to wait. Yank, solid as he was, might be inexperienced in these matters and let slip more than the cops need know at the moment. Besides, Slater decided, he needed time to think and rest.

After the usual hard time, the cops surprised him and let him go with a promise to stay in touch. Getting while the getting was good, Slater drove away from the station at just the proper speed, made sure to use his signals.

He tried to sort the whole business out in his mind. He decided he should feel pretty relieved about the whole matter, but somehow the decision wasn't enough. The missing persons case had been wrapped up in less that 24 hours and the cops, for some unknown generous reason, weren't holding him for withholding information, downright lying, in fact. As for the reason behind Krim's death...

Not his worry-Slater tried to convince himself. His job was to find Krim, nothing more. That he had done. It didn't help the image of Krim's bloated mutilated body fade from his thoughts however. He wasn't looking forward to sleep and dreams.

Maybe, if Slater had not been so intent on his thoughts, he would have noticed earlier than he did that a grey late-model Plymouth was following him. It looked just like the one he had seen after leaving Yank's gym. He could see it clearly beneath the street lights.

The Plymouth swung up behind Slater with a sudden burst of power, hung on his tail so close he felt as if he were pulling it with a chain. He gave the Chevy the gas, darted in and out of traffic, which was reasonably heavy, and scared the hell out of more than a few motorists. One of them gave Slater her middle finger to look at. The pursuing Plymouth received the same salute.

Slater made a quick turn in front of a brake-screeching Volkswagen, darted off the main drag onto a lightless street called Pleasant. In the rearview mirror, he saw the Plymouth make the same corner, still hot on his trail.

The Chevy was making a sound like a strangled pig, but Slater kept pushing it. He took a quick right, almost on two wheels, then a quicker left, certainly on two wheels, then a more reserved right up a residential street.

He almost ran over a luminous DEAD END sign. Slamming hard on the brakes, he slid slightly to a stop, killed the lights, put it in reverse. He checked the rearview mirror for lights. Nothing. He backed a hundred feet, caught a flick of lights out of the corner of his eye. Jerking it in D, he pulled up in a driveway and sat.

No dogs barked. No lights in the house came on.

Beams that might have belonged to the Plymouth paused at the intersection, then went on. After sitting for another 20 minutes, avoiding the cigarette he was dying to have, he eased out of the drive with his lights off. He had the window down and his ears cocked. Straining his eyes into the darkness, he eased up to the intersection.

The Plymouth wasn't hiding around the corner.

Slater turned on his lights and drove home.

Old age, Slater figured, was probably not a very good excuse, but it just might have been part of the reason he drove home not expecting them to be waiting for him. They had done their homework.

He pulled the Chevy up the drive and parked it in front of the garage and got out. He was starting up the walk when the metal door to the garage flew up with a shrieking sound.

A big man with a shaved head, grey squinty eyes and a nose that could have pecked its way through a cement block stood where the door had been. He held a.45 automatic in his hand. It was pointing at Slater's chest.

"Hi, sugar," the bald man said. "We've been waiting for you."

Slater raised his hands slowly. Even if he had been wearing a gun it would have been of no avail. Baldy had him dead to rights. Behind him he heard a car pull up the drive and park behind his Chevy.

Baldy waved the.45. "Turn around and move."

Slater turned toward the grey Plymouth. The man behind the wheel looked every bit as bright and handsome as a lobotomized gorilla. Almost as big, too.

Moving before the prod of the.45, Slater walked around to the passenger side and got in. Baldy sandwiched Slater in between himself and Gorilla. "Let's go," Baldy said.

Gorilla backed the Plymouth out on Mulberry and drove over to Southmore. From there he made a left off Southmore and down a dark narrow street that led away from the sights, sounds and lights of Pasadena proper. Slater realized that pretty soon they'd be out in the boondocks. The thought did not cheer him.

"Guess where we're taking you, snooper?" Gorilla asked sweetly.

"The drive-in movies?" Slater answered.

"Hey!" Gorilla growled across to Baldy. "The snooper's got a sense of humor."

Baldy threw a heavy arm around Slater's shoulders. "Good. That's real good, snoop, 'cause you're gonna need a sense of humor for what we've got in mind. We're gonna give you somethin' to scream about."

Slater sat quietly, thinking, weighing his chances. Baldy removed his arms, put his fingers together and cracked his knuckles.

"Impatient?" Slater asked.

Baldy just smiled.

Gorilla turned off at a dark dirt road decorated with storage buildings and an all-too-occasional burglar light. When they had gone a little less than half a block, he pulled over next to a row of aluminum warehouses and parked. Baldy got out and waved Slater to follow with the barrel of his.45. Gorilla got out on his side and went around to meet them.

Gorilla said, "You know, snooper, we could make this easy on you. Just one shot between the peepers and no more snooper." Gorilla showed the detective a tight grin. "But me and Sol don't go for no cheap way out.

"You see, I sort of enjoy my work, if you know what I mean. What's the fun of blowing a guy's brains out and making a lot of noise, when I can beat them out and enjoy myself a whole lot better."

He was cracking his knuckles now, warming up to the task. The knuckle-cracking, Slater thought dryly, must be something of a trademark for the pair.

Sol moved up close on Slater's right side.

Slater said, "Sol's going to hold me while you prove how tough you are, or is he going to shoot a leg out from under me so I won't be able to play rough?"

Gorilla scowled. "You like playing the tough guy, don't you, peeper?"

"It's not like I have a lot of competition in you boys."

"Ahhh!" Gorilla growled. "Okay, snooper, I'm gonna give you your big break, if you catch my drift. I hate you snoopers. Always with your big nose where it don't belong. So instead of beating your brains in real quick, I'm gonna make it hurt so bad you're gonna wish I would kill you."

"Your mouth is doing that now.

Gorilla snarled and threw up his big fist.

"The hell with this, Jerry," Sol said. He pointed the.45 at Slater. Slater winced.

Gorilla reached out and slapped his hand over Sol's gun and pushed it down. "Naw, let me have my fun."

Sol sighed, looked at his watch. "Make it quick. Put him away.

"Unh-unh, I'm gonna make him beg some first."

Gorilla took a boxer's stance and shuffled forward.

VI

Even while picking a fight with Gorilla, Slater had used the distraction to examine his surroundings. To the right of him was a row of storage stalls. To the left was a dirt road, a pasture and, in the distance, a few anemic house lights. Behind him was a chest-high chain-length fence and, behind that, a small stock pond that the moon showed to be below the water line.

Across the way was another fence and, opposite it, lightless houses. The only remaining direction was forward, and in that path lay the Plymouth, Gorilla, and Sol with his worthy companion, Colt.45. That was Slater's last choice.

Gorilla was three feet away from Slater, bobbing and weaving. It looked as if he knew something about the fight game.

So did Slater.

Slater went up on his toes, started shuffling.

Gorilla went for him like a heat-seeking missile.

Slater sidestepped nimbly and lashed out with a roundhouse kick to the burly man's groin. It struck Gorilla with a whap. He stumbled, blew out some air. Slater stepped in deep and slammed an elbow down, hard, into the small of the man's back. He made sure the blow wasn't too hard. He didn't want to put him away quick. That would mean a.45 slug in the head. Slater had other plans. He stepped back.

Gorilla got his back straight, blew out some short, choppy breaths, took in a few deep ones.

"Something take your breath away?" Slater chided.

The injured man got his back straight, said through wheezes, "I'm gonna... huhhuh... tear you... huhuhu... apart."

"Do tell," Slater said and the moonlight flicked off his smile. He stepped in quick and popped a few sucker punches at the big man's face.

Bulling his way forward, the Gorilla flicked out a lucky left and nipped Slater on the cheek. Slater managed to slip it well enough so as to get only a buzz from the blow. It got Gorilla excited, however. He thought he was moving in for the kill.

Slater let him come, flicked two stinging lefts to his eyes, went for the same combination of lefts. This time Gorilla parried. That was what Slater wanted.

He faked another left and, when the big man's hands went up to protect his face, the detective surprised him with a sharp kick to the kneecap by a sizzling right cross that staggered the enraged behemoth, but didn't send him down for the full count.

Slater slacked off, danced a little. Gorilla followed.

Slater's snazzy footwork was gradually moving him backward, carrying him eventually to the fence. He pressed his back tight against it, put up his hands and looked determined to hold his ground.

Gorilla smiled. He felt he had the detective penned now, and without room to move he concluded that his size and strength would win the day.

Slater had other plans. When Gorilla was nearly on top of him, he bent his knees, ducked his head and kicked back and up with all his might. The effort sent him over the fence backwards. He hit on his side and rolled to his feet running.

"Sonofabitch," Sol, or Baldy, as Slater unaffectionately thought of him, said.

"What the...?" Gorilla said.

"Out of my way," Sol yelled and jerked the.45 up to fire. His aim was dead on target.

But Slater suddenly became a zigging target. The shot missed by inches, sang off into the night. Another blast and Slater's neck burned, but it was only a graze.

Slater zigged and zagged all the way to the other fence, went over it like a professional high jumper and landed in an unprofessional heap on the far side.

The two goons jumped into the Plymouth, turned it around with a screech of tires and headed around the other way, hoping to cut their prey off.

Slater stumbled to his feet, realized he was in someone's backyard. He veered wide of the house. He had no intention of drawing innocent bystanders into this. Crossing the blacktop road in front of the dwelling, he melted into a thick clump of trees that a real estate sign said was ready to be bought and contracted.

He caught the lights of the Plymouth out of the corner of his eye when he dove into the undergrowth. The grey car came by slowly and Sol hung a flashlight out the window, bobbed it into the trees.

Slater was lying behind a clump of thick foliage, making like ground moss. The beam didn't hit him.

They made several passes flashing the light. Finally they stopped, got out of the car and went down into the trees for a looksee.

Slater inched his way into a wet ditch that smelled of sewer or something equally rank, pressed himself down tight in the mulch and held his breath.

He listened to the crunching of leaves and the talking of hushed voices for what seemed like an hour but could have been only minutes. Then, when the sounds stopped, he listened some more. Silence reigned for another hour or so. Finally, he heard grumbled cursing, the sound of leaf-crunching feet about their business again.

They came right up to him, flashed their beam into the ditch once, but the shadows and Lady Luck protected him. He didn't breathe.

More time passed and the cursing began again, and he heard the sound of heavy feet going away. Car doors slammed, and engine coughed to life.

Slater crawled out of the ditch and elbowed his way back to where he could get a good look. The moonlight showed the Plymouth pulling away lickety split for Pasadena. It seemed that the goons had given him up.

Perhaps, thought Slater, they would have looked longer had they known he had memorized their license plates, and of course, he knew their first names, Sol and Jerry. Obviously these were not things that would have worried them earlier. That sort of information doesn't help a dead man.

Brushing himself off as best he could, Slater made his stealthy way over to the house next to the fence. He wrote a nice note of signed explanation on a check stub, stuffed it in the screen door of the house, hot-wired the '69 Galaxy in the drive with his pocket knife and drove the long way back to Strawberry Street.

Keeping an eye out for the Plymouth, he parked a block from his office and walked back. He used his key and took the stairs up. He unlocked his office door and went inside cautiously. No one was waiting.

He got some fresh clothes out of the closet, washed up in the bathroom, and changed. Next he got the.38 out of the desk drawer and loaded it. He put it in his coat pocket, went back down to the Galaxy and drove over to GulfCity and Happy's Good Time Bar, stopping along the way to make a phone call.

VII

Happy's wasn't closed but preparations were being made. All the outside lights were off, even the neon, curlicue beer, wine and stripper signs. The inside lights were on. That meant the crowd had cleared or was clearing rapidly. Honkytonkers don't honkytonk under the glare of lights. It cramps the style.

The last couple in the place was coming out as Slater went in. James the bartender was wiping off tables, pushing chairs around. Slater didn't see any other employees. It seemed they had all gone home. James looked up.

"Closing, Mr. Private Eye," James sneered.

Slater got out a cigarette and lit it, slowly. Said, "Do I denote a touch of sarcasm in your voice?"

James shrugged, balled up the rage and started back for the bar, scooping up a couple of empty beer mugs as he went. He eased around behind the bar, plumped down the beer mugs.

"I said, I'm closing."

"So you did," Slater said and he walked over to a stool, sat down across the bar from James.

"Shall I call the cops?"

"That won't be necessary. I've already taken care of that. They ought to be here at any moment." For emphasis, Slater glanced at the clock on the wall. "I think you and I have the time we need, however."

"Time for what?"

"Chit-chat. Wouldn't want to draw us up a couple of beers, would you?"

James didn't move.

"You know," Slater continued, "I really had my doubts about who murdered Krim." Slater looked at James for a reaction. He looked bored.

James put both hands on the bar top with the rag stretched out nicely between them. "Say your little piece if it'll make you feel better-then, get out!"

Slater put his cigarette out on the bar top and watched James frown.

"You see," Slater said, "I thought Martinez was the man at all times. I mean he was right for it, and with your telling me how you saw him lead Krim into the Lincoln... well, that was good, James, real good.

"But no, it wasn't Martinez. The persons responsible for that were a couple of cops. I met them personally. You knew I would, I'm sure of that. Actually, you're kind of surprised to see me, aren't you?" James didn't look surprised. Slater continued.

"The only bad thing is the cops slipped. I got away with their descriptions, the car's description and their license number. They didn't try to keep that stuff concealed. Why would they? With me dead, it wouldn't matter.

"Now, I don't know it for positive, but when I called the police, which was right before I came here, I left that license number with them. I'm sure when they run it down, it'll belong to a plain-clothes, GulfCity cop that looks like a gorilla. I'm sure, too, that discovery will lead to the identification of his egghead friend.

"You see, James, they have to be cops-the same cops this place passes the payoff money to. That's why there wasn't any investigation in this area. Those two were the officers in charge. Slick, James, real slick."

"And why am I hearing all this?"

Slater ignored him. "Oh yeah, they have to be cops. How else would they know Yank was hiring himself a private detective. He asked around at the GulfCity and the Pasadena stations, that's how. I'll even narrow it down a little more. They were GulfCity cops. I know that because, when I left the GulfCity station tonight and started home, these two goons show up and try to do me in."

"Like I said, Slater. Why am I hearing all this?"

"What I'm getting at is the murder of Jason Krim."

"Can't pin that on me. I was right here all the time."

"Oh, I believe you were here. Like I said, the cops did it." Slater glared into the bartender's eyes. "But I think you paid them to lean on the old man."

James flipped the rag from under his hands and draped it over the edge of the bar, got a cigarette out and lit it with a disposable lighter. He put the cigarette pack and the lighter back in his pocket. Slater thought maybe his hands were shaking just a little.

James said, "Atso?"

"Uh-huh, atso."

James took some puffs on his weed, smiled around it. "You're not sticking me with no bum rap."

"I figured maybe you didn't mean for them to kill him," Slater admitted. "Just teach him a lesson. Too bad. Those guys like their work. Maybe the old warhorse put up a bigger fight than they expected. He was old, but no pushover."

"If you're trying to scare me to death," James said, "you're doing a lousy job." He moved down the bar toward the spot where his hand had disappeared during his and Slater's first heart-to-heart talk.

Slater eased his.38 out of his pocket and laid it on the bar, kept his hand on top of it.

Slater said, "My memory's better than that. Both hands on deck."

James put his hands where Slater could see them, opened and closed them. He tried to maintain his confident air, but there was sweat on his upper lip and the sarcastic smile was a little crooked now.

"May I have a drink," he asked.

"Sure. Why not-but do be careful. I'm very excitable."

James turned to the counter slowly, picked up a shot glass and a bottle, poured himself a healthy one, went back to his station at the bar.

"Remember the hands," Slater advised.

"And just why should I go to all this trouble?" James asked, then tossed off half the drink.

It would be nice if it were really complex, some kind of boxing-world scandal, drugs, that sort of thing. It's a lot older and less complicated, however. Jealousy, or, maybe more directly, rejection. You couldn't stand that Leona turned you down for an older man, and a black one at that."

"You can't prove a damn thing."

"Now I'll grant you that a lot of this is guesswork, but when the cops start looking, I bet they find a lot of juicy material to work with. Not that they'll need it. Those two-bit cops will probably sing to high heaven. You'll be in the song, James."

James turned his shot glass around and around in his hand. His eyes were hooded, his lips drawn.

Slater went on, "Here's how I got it figured. Jason comes in and makes a hit with Leona. Too bad for James-boy. He's not quite the romancer he thought and, worse yet, in your mind, it's a turndown for an inferior. What a blow to the ego!

"Now let's take two crooked cops who like the long green and, since they don't mind stretching the rules to get it, and, since you're onto their little racket here, maybe you have a little talk with them.

"Maybe you tell them that if they'll lean on the old man, you'll see that they get a few extra bucks. You know Jason's routine, so, you point him out and they wait for him to leave. You might even be hoping that Leona will be with him, most likely would be since he doesn't drive.

"Anyway, damned if things don't work out better than expected. You even get your fall guy. Martinez comes in, gives Jason a hard time and stomps out mad in plain sight of everybody. Your cop friends are posted nearby and they spot him leaving, know who he is.

"That's when they catch that he's driving the Lincoln, and that little piece of information is good for later. That makes a nice believable touch when you tell me you saw Martinez loading the old man in the back seat.

"Okay, Jason goes out and decides to take a walk. Why not? He hasn't got a car and he hasn't called a taxi. He wants to walk off his anger. His favorite meditating place is nearby. Okay, he walks down into the boonies and the cops couldn't have planned it better themselves, so they follow him down to the pier, and zap! The old man's out for the full count.

"That's the mess-up. It's unlikely that Martinez would have enough time to beat it around back and clobber Krim just in time for you to take out the garbage. But I'll give you that possibility.

"What I won't give you is the coincidence that the spot Anibal chooses to dump the body is Krim's one special spot. I suppose you could have lied about the Lincoln, and he could have still followed Krim and done him in, but in that case the cops wouldn't be on my tail.

"Too many things, James. Far too many. You were reluctant to talk to me, worried about the cops. Then I learned this place has a couple of cops on the payroll and two guys start following me around. Well, it just started to add up.

"You know, James, maybe if you'd kept those cops off me the three of you might have gotten away with it."

"Might yet," James snapped and there was a blur of glass and whisky whirling in Slater's face. The detective ducked left, caught sight of James' hand snaking out from beneath the bar. There was a revolver in it.

Slater's move carried him down and behind the bar just as the shot slammed into the wood and sent splinters into his face.

The worse part about it was Slater had left his.38 on the bar top. In the movies, he would have leapt up, grabbed it at a roll and shot the culprit between the eyes. This wasn't the movies. Slater had made a frightened, stupid move and that was all there was to it.

James palmed himself over the bar top and pointed the revolver at Slater's head. His smile was as chill as the arctic wind. "Goodbye, Mr. Private Eye." He cocked back the hammer.

The room was a cannon roar.

VIII

James threw up his left hand like a man tossing confetti to the wind. The revolver flew up and into the bottles behind the bar. The sound of tinkling glass seemed every bit as loud as an avalanche. James' feet went out from under him and he fell against the bar and began to slide languidly to the floor. A red stream blew high and wide from his shoulder and seemed to come down in slow, mesmerized droplets. In the doorway, gun in hand, stood Homicide dick Randle Burney. Two blue suits came in behind him. He walked over to Slater, putting the gun away. He picked a yellow handkerchief that was supposed to be white from his pocket and wiped his perspiring forehead with it. His hand was shaking ever so slightly.

"You know, Slater," he said. "You're a lot of trouble."

Slater let himself breathe, got up and went over to the bar for his.38. "I seem to have misplaced this in a moment of crisis," he said in a voice calmer than he felt.

Burney turned to the blue suits who were hovering over James. One of them said, "Nice shooting. Put the shoulder out of commission."

"Swell," Burney lied. "I was aiming for his head."

The blue suit smiled at him. "No notch this time. This one will live. I'll radio an ambulance."

Burney turned back to Slater, who had gone around behind the bar and poured himself a stiff one. "What was the idea of calling and telling us to meet you here pronto?" That was crazy, Slater. Why?"

"I don't know for sure. I had to talk it out, get some kind of result. I just had a few clues and a lot of hunches."

"Uh-huh, and if we'd been one second later we'd have been picking you off the floor with a vacuum cleaner."

"The license number I left with you. Was it what I thought?"

"Halfway here we got the radio message. It's the number belonging to a GulfCity cop, just like you thought. We've already got feelers out for him and whoever his partner is. It shouldn't be hard, considering they aren't expecting us to know."

Slater nodded, went over to look at James. He was mercifully unconscious and breathing heavily. The blue suit had stopped the flow of blood with simple first aid. "I think it hit the bone and went out the back of his arm," the cop said.

"It's up to the ambulance now," Burney said. "I've got my car outside. I think we better go down to the station, Slater."

"Fine," the detective said. "But first I need to return a stolen car."

By the time Slater had finished with the cops and talked with Yank it was almost daybreak. He went home and sat in the dying dark, drank a beer, smoked a cigarette and thought about poor old Jason and the sweet stripper named Leona Blue who loved him.

He kept rolling the napkin with her phone number on it around and around between his fingers, wishing that when he finally got up the nerve to keep his promise, there would be something comforting he could say.

He picked up the phone and dialed.

HIDE AND HORNS

I was recovering from some knife wounds, and was mostly healed up and hoping I wasn't gonna come up on anything that might get me all het up and cause me to tear open my cuts. I was chewin' on some jerky, riding a pretty good horse on the plains of Texas, when I seen something in the distance. I pulled my mount up and got out my long glasses and took me a look.

There was a colored fella like myself lying out there under a horse, had one leg jammed under it, and the horse was deader than a rock. The colored fella was wearing a big sombrero and a red shirt and he wasn't movin'. I figured he was dead like the horse, cause there was some buzzards circlin', and one lit down near the man and the horse and had the manner of a miner waiting for someone to ring the dinner bell. There was a little black cloud above the fella I took to be flies that was excited about soon crawling up the old boy's nose holes.

I rode on over there, and when I got near, the colored fella rolled on his side and showed me the business end of an old Sharp's fifty rifle, the hole in the barrel looked to me to be as big as a mining tunnel.

"Hold up," I said, "I ain't got nothin' agin ya."

"Yeah," he said in a voice dry as the day, "but there's them that do." He rolled over on his side again and lay the rifle across his chest. He said, "You give me any cause, I'll blow your head off."

I got down off my horse and led it over to where the fella and his dead cayuse lay. I said, "So, just restin'?"

"Me and my horse here thought we'd stop in the middle of the goddamn prairie, under the goddamn sun, and take a goddamn nap."

"Good a place as any," I said, squatting down to look the man over, "cause I don't see one spread of shade nowhere."

"And you won't for some miles."

"Course, that sombrero could cover an acre in shade."

"It does me good from time to time," he said.

I could see that the horse had a couple of bullet holes in its side, and the fella had one too, in his right shoulder. He had stuffed a rag in the hole and the rag was red, and the red shirt looked to have been a lighter color before it had sucked up all that blood.

"I ain't feelin' so good," he said.

"That would be because you got a bullet hole in you and a big old dead horse lyin' on your leg."

"And I thought he was just nappin'. I didn't want to disturb him." I bent down and looked at where the leg was trapped. The fella said, "You know, I don't know how much blood I got left in me."

"Way you look," I said, "not much. There's a town not too far from here I've heard of. Might be someone there that can do some fixin's on ya."

"That'd be right good," the fella said. "My name is Cramp, or that's what people call me anyway. I don't remember how I got the name. Something back in slave days. I think the man got my mama's belly full of me was called that, so I became Cramp too. Never knowed him. But, I got to tell you, I ain't up to a whole lot of history."

I got hold of his leg and tried to ease it out from under the horse, but that wasn't workin' went back to my horse, got a little camp shovel I had when I was in the Buffalo Soldiers, and dug around Cramp's leg, said, "They call me Nat."

He said, "That diggin' is loosin' me up, but I don't know it's gonna matter. I'm startin' to feel cold."

"You've quit loosin' blood for now," I said, "otherwise, you'd already be scratchin' on heaven's door."

"Or hell's back door."

"One ta other."

I got hold of his leg and pulled, and it come free, and he made a barking sound, and I looked at him. His face was popped with sweat, and it was an older face than I'd realized, fifty or so, and it looked like an old dark withered potato. I got him under the shoulders and pulled him away and lay him down, went back to his horse and cut one of the saddle bags off with my knife, and put it under his noggin' for a pillow. His sombrero had come off, and I went and got that and brought it over to him, and was about to lean it on his head, when I looked up and seen four riders comin' in the distance.

Cramp must have seen the look on my face, cause he said, "Did I mention that there's some fellas after me?"

"That didn't come up. Just said there was folks had somethin' agin you."

"That would be them. They're mad at me."

"They have a reason?"

"They don't like me."

"Are you normally likeable?"

"I'm startin' to pass out, son."

"Hang in there."

"Can't...Don't let me be buried in no lonesome ground."

He closed his eyes and lay still.

I got my long glasses and gave them a look. It was four white fellas, and one of them looked to be damn near as big as the horse he was ridin'. They all had the look of folks that would like to hang someone so they could get in the mood to do somethin' really bad. They was looking right at me, the big cracker with his hand over his eyes, studying me there in the distance.

I got hold of Cramp and dragged his big ass on the other side of the horse and stretched him out so that his head was against the saddle and his feet was stretched out toward the North, which was the direction I wanted to go. Actually, I kind of wanted to go any direction right then, and it crossed my mind that I could get on my horse and just ride off, fast as I could go, leave Cramp to the buzzards, the flies, and the ants, but havin' been partly ruint by too much good raisin', and being of too much character, it just wasn't in me. But I didn't have so much character I didn't think about it.

I went around and picked up the Sharps and looked in the saddle bag I had cut off, and found some loads in there, a whole batch of handmade shells. I studied the situation awhile, decided that when things was over there'd either be me and Cramp dead, or there would be some spare horses, so I led my nag over near where the other horse lay, grabbed his nose and pulled him down, way I had been taught in the cavalry, pulled out my pistol and shot him through the head. He kicked once and was still, and now I had me a V shaped horse fort. It was an old trick I'd learned fightin' Indians. The other thing I'd learned was not to get too sentimental about a horse, you never knew when you might have to eat one or make a fort out of him. The one horse I'd really liked, me and a woman I cared about had eaten him, but I don't want to get side tracked and off on that. It's a sad story and doesn't end well for any of the three of us involved.

Lying down on my belly beside Cramp, I laid out the rifle across his horse and took me a bead. A Sharps fifty, which is what Cramp's rifle was, can cover some real ground, but it takes some fine shootin' to know how to get the windage and judge the way the bullet will fall from a distance. I was a fine shooter, but that didn't stop me from worrying, especially now that they were ridin' toward me fast.

I beaded down on the big man, but another rider moved in front of him, so he became my target. I had him good in my sights, but I stopped and sucked my finger wet, stuck it up in the air and got me the pull of the wind, then I beaded again. I took a deep breath and let it out slow as I pulled the trigger. The rifle popped. I knew that from where they were, it wouldn't sound like much, and if they didn't know their business, it would seem to them I'd missed, cause it was a long damn ways.

The man I shot at was riding right along and it seemed that a lot of time passed before he threw out his hands and I seen some dark wet leap out of his chest and he fell off his horse.

I thought: What if ole Cramp here deserves what he's gonna get? That went through my head for a moment, but then I thought, even if he does, he ought not to get it when he's about dead, least not like this by a bunch of angry peckerwoods.

They started firing at me with Winchesters, like the one on my dead horse, and the bullets fell well short. They had stopped, but they hadn't shot their horses. They had dismounted and were standing by their horses firing away, the bullets plopping well in front of me. I knew right then, them not shooting their horses, they weren't as committed as I was.

I said to myself, "You boys hold that position."

I loaded another round in the Sharps and laid it back across the dead horse and took a deep breath and cracked my neck the way I can by moving my head a little sharply, and took aim. I was feelin' frisky, so even though I should have aimed for my target's chest, I sighted a little high of his forehead and fired. The shot knocked him off his feet, causin' a puff of dust to throw up, and I figured I'd gotten him right between the peepers, thought that was guess work, because all I saw were the soles of his boots comin' up.

The other two, mounted up, and with the big man leading, they went back in the other direction. I popped a load after them, knocking the big man's horse out from under him, throwing the bastard for a few loops. He was on his feet quick and he got down behind the dead horse, and the other fella kept on ridin', like someone had stuck a lighted corn shuck up his horse's ass. I took a shot at him, but he kept ridin', leaning low over his horse like he was tryin' to mix himself into it.

A moment later, he was out of sight, and I turned my attentions back to the big fella.

I loaded again and raised up this time, on one knee, and shouldered the rifle and took a long deep breath, and fired. This one plopped into the dead horse. After that, I lay down behind Cramp's horse with my head barely up, and watched. The big man didn't move until the day wore down and it got near dark. He got up then and took off at a run in the other direction. I could have let him go, because it was a hard shot, it being dark and all with just some moonlight, but I was kind of worked up, them tryin' to kill me and all, so I raised up, and aimed, and fired, and got him. He went down like a three hundred pound sack of shit.

"Asshole," I said.

I wasn't sure how to go from there, or where I was goin', less it was that town I told Cramp about, but one thing was certain, Cramp wouldn't be going with me, least not alive. He was colder than a wedge and stiff as horse dick at breedin' time.

When I felt wasn't no one circlin' in on me, I got up and walked out a pace, carrying my Winchester with me, leavin' the Sharps, but bringin' the loads with me, least they surprise me, come back, get hold of his rifle and pick me off from a distance.

I walked in the direction I'd seen one of the horses go, and when it was good and dark, I seen his shape outlined by the moon. I was able to cluck to him and get him to come over, not mentionin' to him I'd killed two of his kind on this day.

I rode him back to where Cramp lay, got my saddle out from under my horse, and swapped it onto the horse I'd rustled up. I got hold of Cramp and threw him over the horse. He was so stiff, he rocked there for a moment and nearly fell off. I climbed on board with the Winchester back in the boot, and the Sharps, now loaded, across my lap, and started in the direction of the town I knew was supposed to be out there, a place called Hide and Horns, if memory served me. I hadn't never been there, but I'd been told about it. Before most of the buffalo was killed out in the area, it had been a place for selling hides and horns and bones for fertilizer.

As I rode along, I didn't let myself get too sure of things. I kept my eyes open and my ears perked.

So far, I hadn't torn open any of my cuts, and I determined they had healed up good. I guess there was some things goin' my way.

Hide and Horns, out there in the moonlight, looked like a place you went to shit, not a place you went to live. But there was folks there and the street was full of them, and a lot of them looked drunk. Thing was, I was still wearin' my army jacket from when I was in with the Buffalo Soldiers, and this bein' the panhandle of Texas, that blue jacket was bound to cause some former rebel to come unhitched and want to kill him a nigger. I had not removed it because of pride, but now as I neared Hide and Horns my pride was growing smaller and my feelin's about not gettin' skinned for an incident of birth was growin' larger.

I decided to ride around the street, out back of the town with my dead companion, and see what was on the far side, which is where I figured the colored would be collected, if there was any. I rode around there, taking it long and slow, and when I got to the other end, there was some shacks and a lot of tents there. No coloreds to be seen, but there was four or five Chinamen and some China girls outside next to a big fire and a boiling pot of laundry, which one of them, a young China girl was movin' around with a board. Beyond her, I could see the town proper, lit up with lanterns and such, and drunk cowboys crossin' and wanderin' around in the street like they really had some place to go.

I got off my horse and led it toward the China folk, Cramp rockin' back and forth, and when I got up close to the pot, the girl, who turned out to be a woman, only small, and beautiful in the firelight, looked at me like I'd come from hell to borrow a cup of sugar. A Chinaman walked out into the firelight with an axe. He was pretty big for a Chinaman. He said, "Do for you?"

"Not if you're plannin' on choppin' on me."

He shook his head and his pigtail slapped from side to side. "Do for you?"

"I got a fella here needs a place in the dirt."

The Chinaman, maybe not sure what I meant, or just wanting to satisfy his own curiosity, came over and took hold of Cramp's boot and pulled on it, said, "Dead nigger."

"Yeah," I said, "he won't be havin' dinner. But, I'd like some. I got Yankee dollars."

"How much dollars?"

"Enough."

"Pussy?"

"Beg your pardon."

"Sell pussy. You want?"

"Oh."

I looked around. Four of the China girls had bunched up near one of the larger tents, and they were looking at me, smiling. Two of them were right smart lookin', one was so ugly she could chase a bob cat up a tree, and there was one pretty good looker with her leg cut off at the knee. She had a wooden leg strapped on and had a crutch under her arm, and from what I could make out in the firelight, she appeared to be missin' a tooth on the far right side.

"Half a woman," the Chinaman said pointing at the wooden leg gal, "she cheaper."

"Actually, she's more than half," I said. "Way more."

"She five penny."

"Well, they are all as lovely as the next," I said," tryin' not to look at the ugly one least I get struck by lightnin' for lyin', "but I'm gonna pass. I'm hungry."

I looked at the other one, at the wash pot. The Chinaman, figurin' I might be sizin' her up for a mattress, said: "Daughter, not sale."

"Okay," I said. "About that food?"

"Chop suey?" he said. "Cheap."

"What?"

"Chop suey," he said again.

"That'll work. Whatever that is."

"Bury dead nigger?"

"He ain't in no hurry," I said. "I'll tend to the horse and eat before I bury him."

As I was starting to remove my saddle from the horse, the Chinaman walked by the China girls, and reached out and cuffed the cripple, knocking her down. He said something in China talk. I went over and grabbed his shoulder and shoved him back, and wagged a finger at him. "Hey," I said. "Ain't no call to slap a woman around."

The Chinaman still had the axe in one hand, and he eyed me and clenched the axe a little tighter. "She go to work."

"All right," I said. "Give her time. And lighten up on that axe, or you'll wake up with it up your ass."

I reached down and picked up the crutch she had dropped, then I reached down and pulled her up and put the crutch under her arm. She smiled that missing tooth smile. She looked pretty damn good, even if she could suck a pea through that hole in her chompers with the rest of her teeth clenched.

"Chop suey," the Chinaman said to the cripple, and she limped away into a tent on her crutch.

What Chop suey was, was warm and delicious, though right then it might have seemed better than it really was cause I was hungry enough to eat the ass out of dead mule and suck blood out of a chicken's eye.

I sat on my ass on the dirt floor under a tent roof and ate up and kept an eye on my Chinaman, as he had never let go of that there axe, and he had a way of lookin' at me that made me nervous. I had pulled Cramp off the horse and stretched him out on some hay that was off to the side of the tents, next to a cheap corral which was mostly dirt, wind, a frame of wood, and a spot of tarp. I unsaddled the horse and bought it some hay and water, and had a China boy curry him down. I paid for the service, and then I went in and ate.

The four whores didn't depart. They sat nearby and looked at me and giggled. The Chinaman said, "They want see black come off."

"It doesn't."

"They think you, dead nigger, painted. They not know things."

"Tell one of them they can rub my skin, see if it comes off."

The Chinaman told them somethin' in Chinese talk, and one of the girls, who now that I was closer, looked pretty young to me, came over and rubbed on my arm.

"No come off," she said.

"Not so far," I said.

"Let see dick," she said.

"Now what?"

"Let see dick."

"She want know its black," the Chinaman said.

"She can take my word on that one, and maybe later I can show it to her in private."

"That be two bits," the Chinaman said.

"For the woman?"

He nodded. "Two bits."

I looked at the China girl, said, "What's your name?"

"Sally," she said.

"Really?"

"Sally," she said.

"They all Sally," the China man said, holding the axe a little too comfortably. "You can call Polly or whatever, you buy pussy."

"I'll think that over. First things first, where's the graveyard?"

The Chinaman pointed. "Back of town, that side. No niggers."

"He's dead. What does it matter?"

"No nigger. No Chinaman."

"Well, that puts a hitch in my drawers," I said. "Promised him I'd bury him somewhere wasn't lonesome."

"Bury in pig pen, but deep. Not deep. Pigs will eat him."

"No, I had something different in mind. Like a graveyard."

"White fellas, not like. Shoot black dick off."

"That wouldn't be good."

I got up and went outside and walked over to Cramp. He wasn't lookin' too good. Startin' to bloat. I got my knife and slipped it under his ribs and jabbed hard and let some of the bloat out, which was as bad air as you ever smelled. I stood over to the side while he deflated a mite.

The Chinaman had followed me out, still carrying his axe. He said, "Damn. Dead nigger smell plenty bad."

"Dead anything smells plenty bad...You think maybe you could put that axe down? You're makin' me a nervous."

"Chinaman like axe."

"I see that."

The girls had come out now.

I saddled up my horse and put poor old Cramp over the saddle again. He had loosened up some, and his head and legs hung down in a sad kind of way. I had his sombrero on the saddle horn, and I got on the horse and said, "I need to borrow a shovel and a lantern."

"Two bits," the big Chinaman said.

"I said borrow."

"Two bits."

"Shit." I dug in my pocket for two bits and gave it to him, and the one legged whore, moving pretty good for a wooden leg and a crutch, carried the shovel and unlit lantern over to me. I reached down from the horse and took it, rode in the direction the Chinaman said the graveyard was.

The graveyard was on a hill to the east side of the town, and I rode over there and got off the horse and lit the lantern, held it out with one hand and led the horse with the other. There was some stone markers, but mostly they was wood, and some of them was near rotted away or eaten away by bugs.

I looked until I found a place that was bare, tied up the horse to one of the wooden markers, put the lantern next to my burying spot, got the shovel off the saddle, and started to dig.

I had gotten about two feet into the ground, and about two feet wide, ready to make it six feet long, when I heard a noise and turned to see lights. Folks were comin' up the hill, and they were led by the Chinaman, still carrying his axe. The others were white folks, and they didn't look happy. Now and again, I'd like to run up against just one happy white folk.

I stuck the shovel in the dirt, left the lantern where it was, walked over and stood by my horse, cause that's where my Winchester was. I tried not to look like a man that liked being near his Winchester, but being near it gave me comfort, and of course, I had my revolver with me. It had five shots in a six shot chamber, which is the way I carry it most of the time, least I shoot my foot off pullin' it loose from its holster. But five shots wasn't enough for eight men, which there was, countin' the Chinaman with his axe. A couple of them were carrying shotguns, and one had a rifle. The rest had pistols on them.

When they were about twenty-feet from me, they stopped walking.

The Chinaman said, "I tell him. No niggers. No Chinaman."

"You scoundrel," I said, "you rented me the shovel and the lantern."

"Make money. Not say bury nigger."

"The chink here," one of the shotgun totin' white men said, stepping forward a step, "is right. No niggers in Christian soil."

"What if he's a Christian?"

"He's still a nigger. So are you."

I was wondering how fast I could get on my horse before they rushed me. I said, "Chinaman, what problem was this of yours?"

"My town."

I thought, you asshole. Just a half hour ago you were trying to sell me pussy, sold me food and feed for my horse, and rented me a shovel and a lantern. His problem was simple, I had stopped him from slapping his property around, and now that he had my money, he was getting even. Or, from my way of lookin' at it, more than even."

"All right, gentleman," I said. "I'll take my dead man and go."

"That there jacket," one of the men said, and my heart sank, "that's a Yankee soldier jacket."

"I was in the army, not the war," I said. "I didn't shoot at no Southerners."

"You still got on a Yankee jacket."

"I was chasin' Indians," I said, figurin' most of them wouldn't care for Indians either, and that might put me on their side a bit."

"You and them ain't got a whole lot of difference, except you can pick cotton and sing a spiritual."

"That ought to be a mark in my favor," I said.

They didn't think that was funny, and it didn't do any endearing.

"Shootin' a nigger ain't half the fun as lynchin' one," one of the charming townspeople said.

I pulled my revolver quick like and shot the closest man carryin' a shotgun, shot him right between the eyes, and then I turned and shot the other shot gunner in the side of the head, and just to make me happy, I shot the Chinaman in the chest. Bullets whizzed around me, but them fellas was already backin' down the hill. I'd learned a long time ago, you can't out shoot eight determined and brave people fair, but you can outshoot eight cowards if you get right at it and don't stop. You can't hesitate. You got to be, as I learned in the army, willin'.

I ran to the edge of the hill and popped off my last shot, and now shots were comin' back up the hill at me at a more regular pace. I grabbed my horse and took off, leavin' Cramps lyin' there. I rode on up through the cemetery and topped it out and rode down the other side as bullets whizzed around me.

I got to a clearin' and gave the horse a clear path, and it could really run. I had caught me a good one back there on the prairie, and it covered ground like a high wind. I looked back and seen that there were some lanterns waggin' back there, and then I heard horses comin', and I bent low over my pony and said, "Run, you bastard," and run he did.

We went like that, full out for a long time, and I knew if I didn't stop, the horse was gonna keel over, so I pulled up in a stand of wood and got off of him and let him blow a little. I put my hand on his heaving side and came away with it covered in salt from sweat. I heard the sound of their horses, and I hoped they didn't have no tracker amongst them, and if they did, I tried to figure that the night was on my side. Course, it would stand to reason they'd want to look in the only area where a man might hide, this little patch of woods.

I led the horse deeper in the trees, and then I led him up a little rise, which was one of the few I'd seen in this part of the country, outside of the cemetery. The trees wasn't like those in East Texas where I'd come from. They were bony lookin' and there was just this little patch standing.

I got the Sharps and the Winchester off the horse and took my saddle bag off of it, and throwed it over my shoulder. I led the horse down amongst the thickest part of the trees and looped the reins over a limb and went back to where I could see good and lay down with the Sharps. I opened the saddle bag and felt around in there for a load and opened the breech on the Sharps and slid in a round and took a deep breath and waited. They came riding up, pausing at the patch of trees, having a pretty good guess I was in there.

They was in range, though they didn't know it, not figurin' on me havin' the Sharps, and they was clutched up good. A bunch had joined them from the town, and I counted twelve. Not a very smart twelve, way they was jammed up like that, but twelve none the less, and there wasn't no surprise goin' now. They had me treed like a possum.

After a moment, I seen one horse separate from the others, and the rider on it was sitting straight up in the saddle, stiff. He come on out away from the others and there didn't seem to be a thing cautious or worried about him.

As he closed in, I took a bead on him, and in the moonlight, as he neared, I noted he was a colored fella, and I figured they had grabbed some swamper in town and brought him with them, thinkin' he'd talk me into givin' myself up, which he couldn't. I knew how it would end if they got their hands on me, and me puttin' a bullet in my own head was better than that.

Then I seen somethin' else. It was Cramps. He was tied up on his horse, an stick or somethin' worked into the back of the saddle, and he was bound up good so he wouldn't fall off. He had his sombrero perched on his head.

I lowered the rifle and seen that the crowd of horses behind Cramp was spreadin' out a bit. I was about to put a bead on one of them, when a white man rode out and said, "You don't come back, nigger. Stay out of our town, hear? We're gonna give you this one so you don't come back."

Well, now, I got to admit, I wasn't plannin' on goin' back for Cramps no how. I had tried to do my good deed and it hadn't worked out, so I figured the smartest thing I could do was wish him the best and ride like hell. But now, here he was. And there they were.

The horse with Cramp on it ambled right into the woods, and come up toward me like it was glad to see me. I stood up and got hold of its reins and led it behind me and tied it off on a limb and went back and lay down. I watched the white folks for awhile.

"You don't come back," the fella who'd spoken before said, and they all turned and rode back toward town.

I didn't believe they'd given up on me anymore than they'd given up on breathin'.

Way I had it reckoned, was they was gonna slow me down by givin' me Cramps to worry about, and then when they thought I figured they was gone, they was gonna get me. I knew they was worried about me, cause they had had no idea I could shoot like I could until that moment on the hill when I killed a few of them, and their snotty Chinaman too. So now, caution had set in. They were probably waiting out there until I felt safer, or got so hungry and thirsty, I had to leave out of the grove, then they was gonna spring on me like a tick on a nut sack. If I waited until daylight I could see them better, but, of course, they could see me better too, so I didn't think that was such a sterlin' plan.

I lay there and listened and was certain I could hear them ridin' in different directions, and that convinced me I was right about that they had in mind. They was gonna surround me and wait until they got their chance to shoot more holes in me than a flour sieve.

I lay there with the Sharps and strained my thinkin, and then I come up with a plan. I reloaded my revolver and went and pulled Cramps into the thickest of the trees, and there in the dark I cut him loose from that pole they had fixed up to the back of the saddle by lacin' a lariat through it, and pulled him off the horse.

Cramp stunk like a well used outhouse and his face was startin' to wither. I put his sombrero on my head, pulled off his jacket and tossed mine across his horse. I got my guns and the things I wanted from my saddle bags, packed them up, climbed on his horse and rested my back against that pole they had tied up, put my Winchester and the Sharps across my lap, tuckin' them as close as possible, and then I clucked softly to the horse and left the other one tied back there in the trees. I had a moment of worrying about the horse, him tied and all, but I figured they'd eventually come in here after me if I managed to get away, and they'd take the horse. Thing was, though I gave the nag a thought, I was more worried about my ass than his. I tried to sit good and solid and hope anyone seein' me would think I was just that dead fella on a pony, tied to a post.

I pretty much let the horse go how he intended, except I had hold of the reins and was ready to snap them into play if a reason come up. I hadn't gone far when I seen that there were a couple of white fellas, about twenty feet apart, sittin' their horses, rifles at the ready. It was all I could do to play my part. One of the white fellas said. "There's the dead nigger. That other coon didn't want him no how."

Then the other one said somethin' that made my butt hole grab at the saddle.

"Let's see we can shoot that hat off of him."

That gave me pause.

The other one said, "Naw, we got to be quiet," even though they was about as quiet as two badgers wrestlin' in a hole.

The horse I was ridin' went between them, and it was all I could do not to put my heels to that nag and ride like hell, but I stuck to my plan. I rode right on through and nobody shot at me.

hen I was out of their range, about twenty minutes, I figure, I took the reins and gave the horse a little nudge, so that he'd move out faster but not take to runnin'. I went on like that for awhile, and when I was clear enough, I put my heels to the horse and rode right on out of there, kind of gigglin' to myself and feelin' smarter than a college fella. I figured sometime come mornin', they might even get brave enough to go up there and find Cramps takin' his long nap, the other horse tied and waitin'.

The horse I had wasn't up to snuff, and pretty soon it was limpin'. They probably knowed that was the case when they tied Cramp on it. I got off and took the reins and led it and tried to figure on a new plan. The plains out there went on and on, and pretty soon I'd have to slow down more for the horse, and maybe shoot it and eat some of it, but then I'd be on foot with miles in front of me.

I stopped leading the horse, bent down and looked at its foot. He wasn't in bad shape, but he wasn't in good ridin' shape either. I found a wash and led him down in there, and with the reins wrapped around my hand, I lay down and slept.

It was high noon when I awoke, and hotter than a rabid dog's breath. I walked the horse out of the draw, and then I did the only thing I could think to do. I started leadin' the horse back toward Hide and Horns, takin' the long way around.

It was night when I come up on the town. I could see it laid out down there and there were lights from lanterns and it looked even bleaker to me now than it had at first.

I went on down there, coming up the back way, where the Chinamen were gathered. I found a little scrub bush and I tied the horse up there so he wouldn't wander into town, and then I got my saddle and guns and such, and threw the saddle bag over my shoulder and toted the saddle with the Winchester and the Sharps tied off on it, my free hand near my revolver. I walked on down into the Chinatown part, and veered toward the tent where I had seen the crippled China girl go in to make my food. I strolled in like I had good sense. It was dark in there, and I fumbled around in my pocket lookin' for a match, until I realized I was wearin' Cramp's jacket and mine was tied to the saddle I was carryin'. A light went on in the place suddenly, and I dropped the saddle and the revolver sort of hopped into my hand, but it was a lit match with a China girl face behind it. The cripple. She was down on one knee and her nub, about waist high to me lookin' up.

I said, "I don't want no trouble."

"Black man," the cripple said.

"That's me," I said.

Then there was movement, and she was crawlin' across the floor cause she didn't have her leg strapped on. She lit a lantern and the room jumped bright, and there were all the Chinese girls. The wash pot girl and the other four, includin' the cripple.

It was a pretty big tent, but it was stuffed with all manner of stuff, includin' pallets where the girls did the rest of their work, which was haulin' all the men's folk's ashes, as they say.

"I need a good horse," I said, "and I need ya'll not to say nothin', cause I'd rather not shoot a woman. You savvy."

"Savvy," said the most beautiful of the girls, who seemed too small and delicate to be real, and far too young.

"I got Yankee dollars to pay for it, and I got my own saddle."

"We go too," the little one said.

"What?"

"We go too. Get horse. We take wagon."

"Wagon? Why don't you just bring a goddamn band and a clutch of clowns. No."

"We get horse, we go too," the cripple said.

"Damn," I said. "Listen. Tell you what. You get me a horse and I'll ride out, and then you bring the wagon along, and I'll be waitin' on you. Riders don't come with you, and I end up havin' to shoot it out, then I'll travel with you until I can get you to another town. Course, what's the difference between there and here?"

"We go back to China," said the cripple. I had come to realize the other two girls didn't speak enough English to even understand what I was sayin'. The cripple was the valedictorian of their class.

"Got news for you ladies, it's a long ride to the Pacific, and I don't think you can sail that wagon across."

"Get to San Francisco," the cripple said. "Figure from there."

"You know San Francisco?"

"We come there," the cripple said. "Think we have Chinese husbands. Big trick. We have to do big fuckin'. Not let us go. I try to go. Man shoot leg off with a shotgun, knock out a tooth."

I thought, damn, a leg ain't enough, he had to have a tooth too.

I sighed. "All right. I'll go back to what I said. I'm in a tough spot here, and you may think I'll ride away and leave you, but I try to keep my word unless there just ain't no way it can be kept. I can get out of town easier by myself, and then you can bring the wagon. But how you gonna do that? What's the excuse?"

It took them awhile to process that, talkin' to each other in Chinese, and I had to tell it different a couple times before they understood me. But it come down to me gettin' a horse, and them waitin' until daylight and sayin' they had to go out to the prairie to gather up dried buffalo shit for fires. Buffalo shit will burn pretty good, it's dried a fair amount, but it has one drawback. It smells like burning buffalo shit. Still, it'll keep a person warm.

Then again, I reckon I didn't set out to tell you this story so you could know how to warm yourself and cook with dried buffalo plops.

"You think they'll believe you?" I asked.

"We do all time," the cripple said.

"All right," I said. "That'll do. Just don't try and trick me, cause I won't like it."

"No trick," she said.

They got me a good horse, and I got rid of Cramp's jacket and put on a brown shirt the girls gave me. I put my saddle on the horse, and took my guns and rode on out. I went way out, like I told them, givin' them a kind of guide to where I planned to go.

I wasn't an entirely trustin' soul, so I actually went a little farther east than I told them, found a place where I could sit a horse down in a draw and see up over the lip of it. That way I could make sure they didn't send someone else out to get me for some payment.

It got along mornin', and I had dozed on the ground with the reins of the horse clutched in my fist, and when I awoke it was already turnin' off hotter than a stove fire.

I heard hooves movin' in my direction, and I got up and looked between that little gap in the draw and seen it was the bunch that had ridden out after me, and they was leadin' the horse I had left, and they had Cramp's body tied behind it with a long rope bound to his ankles, and they was draggin' him along face down.

At first I thought the China girls had done me in, and that this bunch was lookin' for me, and then I got it figured right. They was just now comin' in, finally snoopin' out that I had snuck off on them in the night, disguised as Cramp. I counted them. There was twelve.

Now, I tell you, I try to be practical, but lookin' out there and seein' Cramp being dragged along that, even though I didn't know him even a little, made my blood boil. I knew all I had to do was let them ride out of sight, back to town, then I could either wait on the China girls or not. It was the way to go, and the truth of the matter was, Cramp wasn't any of my business and I didn't know what he'd done to get folks mad at him in the first place, but I knew it didn't take much when you was a colored man. It could be lookin' at a white woman, or cuttin' a surprise fart in the street, and that's all it took for you to be thought of as uppity, and if there's one thing a lot of white folks can't tolerate, it's an uppity nigger. We was supposed to know our place, and I was thinkin' on all of this, and get madder and madder, and most of my common sense began to leak out of my head like water. Without realizin' what I was doin', I got on my horse and put the reins in my teeth, put the Sharps under one arm and the Winchester under the other.

Now, they'll tell you can't hit shit shootin' like that, and I'll tell you right off, that's mostly true, but most shooters ain't me. I've gotten so good with a gun I can shoot right smart with any kind of weapon under almost any kind of condition. That don't mean I don't miss, but I hit a lot too, and if I got a still shot, I can knock the dick of a horse fly.

I rode out and dug my heels into the horse, went to ridin' right at them, takin' them from the side. There was twelve of them, but they didn't' see me until my guns barked, and the first shot with the Sharps hit one of their horses, which was an accident, I might add, and the horse went down, throwing him. I dropped the Sharps, since it just had that one load, flipped the Winchester into my right hand, and took to firin'. With four shots I killed three. They started poppin' off shots then, the ones that had figured out what was happenin', and by then I had come in amongst them. I twisted my head, and with those reins in my teeth, I made my horse twirl, and using both hands on that Winchester, I fired as fast as I could, and four more was down, and one horse was limpin' off with a bullet in his head, another unintentional, I might add.

I fired the Winchester until it was empty, and then I rode up on one of them that had fired six shots off and hadn't hit me or even come near me. He looked like he was about to scream with fear and he was snappin' the empty revolver like bullets might suddenly appear in the chambers. I swung the empty rifle and clipped him off his horse. I wheeled, and then there was a barrage of shots, and my horse went down and I went to rollin'. When I come up, I had my revolver in my hand, and I started firing, dropping two more, hittin' them both as they rode up on me. I fired at the others, not hittin' anyone else, which meant I was probably tired.

The ones that was left bolted and rode off, which was good, cause my revolver was empty.

I ran over to my dead horse and got a couple loads for the Sharps out of the saddle bags, and ran back to where I'd dropped the Sharps, scrounged around till I found it. Then I ran got down on a knee and loaded the Sharps and leveled it off.

They were far out now, but I took windage with a wet finger, beaded that fifty caliber, called them sonofabitches, and fired. As is often the case, it seemed like a long time before the bullet hit. In fact, I was already startin' to reload, when one of the riders threw up his hands and went flying off. The other just kept ridin'. He was way out there, but I had the Sharps ready, and I aimed high to let the bullet drop. I fired. I got him somewhere near the back of the head and he fell off, his horse still runnin'.

I know all this makes me sound a mite god like, but, true story. No lie. I killed everyone of them sonofabitches. It made me wonder how I'd managed to let one of them that had come up on me with Cramp get away. But, hell, even the gods nod.

But the gods don't bleed. I did. I had been hit. Didn't know it right off, but I started hurtin', and looked down at my side and seen I was bleedin'. I lay down on the ground suddenly, and closed my eyes and the sun didn't feel all that warm anymore.

"You not dead," the crippled China girl said.

"No?" I said. "I feel dead, and maybe buried, but I still seem to be among the livin' Chinese."

I was lyin' under a wagon and the cripple was down there with me. I tried to sit up, but couldn't. She said, "No. Sit. Stay."

I had a dog I talked to like that. I felt my side. It was bandaged up.

"We got to go," I said. "They'll be after me."

"You all shot up," the cripple said.

"That I am," I said.

"Rest a day. Have chop suey. Pussy. Feel better."

"I'm sure. But that rest a day part, not such a good idea."

I lay for awhile anyway, not having the strength to do much else. I probably laid there much longer than I thought, but finally I woke up and crawled out from under the wagon. The other Chinese girls had pulled a tarp over the frame of the wagon, and made a kind of traveling tent out of it. They had two horses tied on the back. One of the girls was missin'. I asked the cripple about that.

"Washie girl. She stay," said the cripple. "She make good money washie clothes."

I managed to walk around and gather up my goods, saddle and saddle bags and weapons, and found the horse that had been draggin' Cramp. I cut the old boy loose and looked at him. He had asked me not to bury him out in the lonesome, but the thing was, he was lookin' pretty ripe, and I come to the conclusion I had done my best, and he wouldn't know the prairie from a place under a church pew. The girls helped me dig a hole, as they had shovels and all manner of equipment in the wagon, and I wrapped him in a blanket and put him down.

I was bleeding pretty good by the time I quit, and I had been wrong about them knife wounds being all healed up. A couple of them was leakin'. I said, "We got to get movin."

As we walked away, I looked back at Cramp's grave, said, "Sorry, Cramp. I done my best. It beats bein' dragged around till your hide comes off."

I climbed in the back of the wagon and lay down and slept while the little China girl who looked about twelve years old drove. In the back, the cripple tended me, and the other two looked on. We rode on through the day and into the night, the wagon bumpin' along, those two horses tied to the back of it, trottin' to keep up, and finally we stopped near a little run of creek, and the girls got out and made a fire from some dried buffalo shit. They fixed up some food, which was pretty good and had a lot of hot peppers in it. I didn't ask what it was, cause I couldn't identify the meat and figured I might not want to know.

Later that night, the cripple showed me how she could move around under me good as a two legged girl, and then I had to show all of them that my pecker was black and the color didn't come off in their little nests. I showed that to all of them to be polite, and to prove I wasn't showin' no favoritism, even though I was wounded good and bleedin'. A man has to have some priorities, I always say, and if a bunch of Chinese girls beg to see your dick, you should be willin' to show it to them.

Now, them townsfolk had to have figured out their men weren't comin' back, and in time I'm sure they found them. Maybe they sent someone out after us. But if they did, we never seen them. Jumpin' ahead a bit, I should say the story about the gunfight began to spread, and since there wasn't no one livin' who'd seen it besides me, I knew the stories I heard about survivors who could tell it like it was, wasn't true in any kind of way. Thing was, the stories didn't mention I was colored. I just became a mysterious gunman, and in some of the stories I was a hero, and in others a villain. Cause of that, and some other things happened in my life, there was some dime novels written about me, basing themselves on true events at first, but not afraid to add a lie in when it made the story better, and then later, the stories was just dadgum windies. And though the stories didn't mention I was colored, they did call the books stories about The Black Rider of The Plains, and named me Deadwood Dick on account of some things happened there in Deadwood, including a shootin' contest where I shot against Buffalo Bill and Annie Oakley. But, again, that there is another story, and though it's been told a thousand times, ain't nobody told it right yet. I live long enough I plan to tell it the way it was, just like I'm tellin' you how this was.

As for me and the China girls, we rode on across that prairie for days, and when we got to the peak of the Texas panhandle, we turned northwest, across Oklahoma toward Colorady, with a plan to go on out to San Francisco so the China girls could catch a boat to China.

Now there's one more thing that's kind of interestin', and goes with this story, and if I'm lyin' I'm dyin'. When we was four or five days out, headin' up to the tip of the panhandle, we seen a scrawny horse grazin', and as we bounced the wagon closer, we seen there was a fella with his foot in the stirrup being dragged along, and even from a distance it was easy to see he was deader than a wind wagon investment.

Feelin' a bit spry, now that my wounds had had a few days to heal, I got out of the wagon and walked over and caught the horse and looked at the dead man. His boot was twisted up good in the stirrup, and he'd been dragged around for days, cause a lot of his skin had come off and ants and such had been at him. His eyes were gone and his lips had started to curl, showin' his teeth. He had a pretty large hole comin' out of his shirt on the right side of his breast, and when I seen that, it all tumbled together for me.

Back when I had found Cramp, and had a shootout with those folks who come to finish him off, one of them had got away. I had taken a shot at him, and figured I'd missed. But I hadn't. He'd just been able to ride some, and then he'd keeled over and got his foot hung in the stirrup, and his horse had been draggin' him around for damn near a week.

I worked the fella's foot out of the stirrup and let his leg drop to the ground. Tell you true, just like them other fellas I shot, I didn't have no urge to bury him and say words over him, cause buryin' someone I didn't have no feelin's for was stupid, and sayin' words that didn't seem to do nothin' but waste my breath, wasn't exactly appealin' either. I was glad he was dead, and I left him lyin' out there on the prairie with the sun on his face and ants in his ears.

His horse we took with us and fed grain the gals had in the wagon, and we fattened him up a mite, and sold him and the saddle in Amarillo, before going on up into Oklahoma, and turnin' west toward Colorady.

THE HONEYMOON

It was his sixth honeymoon, her first.

The night was clear and cold, the moon full, and he was eager.

The couple checked into a little motel just off I-20. He unlocked the door and looked at her. She was radiant. He hadn't lost his touch. He still knew how to pick them, how to get them. He could hardly wait.

The bit about carrying her over the threshold was a little silly, but always effective. Impressed them. Made them giggle. To do this right, humor was necessary. Laughter removed inhibition-and suspicion-more than any other emotion.

She was still giggling when he put her down, and another hard look at her assured him that she was undoubtedly the loveliest of his six brides. A beautiful blonde with brown, liquid eyes like a faithful pup. And she was stacked like a magazine fold-out. Everywhere you looked she offered delightful diversions to the hands. And she was compassionate. Worked with The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Somehow that was very important to him, knowing that she was compassionate. It made what was to come all the better.

Of all his brides, she had been the easiest to woo. She had had that husband-shopping look in her eyes, a look he knew well. He also knew exactly what to say and when to say it. Three weeks after they met she fell for him hook, line and sinker and accepted his proposal. Piece of cake. Tonight she became Mrs. O'Sullivan.

O'Sullivan. Nice name. He hated to give it up. It had been his favorite of all his aliases. The last two had been so, so plain. Smith and Jones. Grief!

Angela leaned forward and kissed him. Her lips burned with passion. God, he couldn't wait to get on with it.

When they finished kissing, he held her at arms length and smiled, drank in her beauty once more. For a moment he wished her complexion were not so milky. Maybe that was one flaw with her. The others had been darker skinned and the bruises hadn't shown. With her they might, and he always liked them to look like an unmarred work of art when he was finished.

For a moment he contemplated another technique, but finally decided to stick to the old tried and true thumbs behind the windpipe. It was the only method he had had success with, and now with his most beautiful specimen, there was no need to risk all by deviation. As for the bruises, he'd just have to hope for the best. Or perhaps he could tie an attractive ribbon around her throat, sort of a gift-wrapped body for the police. Yes, that definitely had possibilities. In fact, that was a perfect idea. When it was all over he'd go out for some ribbon, fix her up before leaving to call the cops.

"Why don't you get ready for bed, darling," Angela said, breaking his train of thought. "I'll change into something more comfortable."

He smiled at her. Passion stretched his veins. Soon she would be his, and during that moment when they were riding the crest of the wave, just when she thought ecstasy was hers, he'd fasten his thumbs behind her windpipe and watch the fear swell into her eyes as she realized she was on the descending end of a totally different sort of orgasm.

Oh yeah, it was his night to howl.

Angela blew him a kiss and hip-swung seductively toward the bathroom. The light went on, the door closed. He took off his clothes and slipped into bed, waited.

Beneath the sheet his hands opened and closed. A thick slab of moonlight edged through the sheer curtains. That was good. He'd be able to see her face. That was one reason he waited for a full moon. The papers had caught on to it, and referred to him as THE FULL MOON STRANGLER or THE HONEYMOON STRANGLER. He preferred the latter title, it was more romantic. Besides, he wasn't responsible for those sloppy ripper jobs that took place on the full moon, the ones that were sometimes blamed on him. He'd have to write the police about that and set them straight. Seemed to him a drastically different M.O. like that would make them realize that the killers were not one and the same, in spite of the coincidence of the full moon. Why, they had even tried to blame him for some silly killings over in Dallas that had turned out to be nothing more than husband and wife squabbles.

The bathroom door opened and Angela stood framed in the light. She was magnificent. No, that description was too cheap. There were no words to describe her.

The light shone through her gown and outlined her body-110 pounds of sexual dynamite! With the light hitting her hair that way, it made it look like a golden mane, and even from where he lay he could see her eyes sparkling with passion.

"Well," he said, "I see you've changed into something more comfortable."

She smiled and walked to the bedside. Moonlight washed in over her. Suddenly she grunted. Her face began to twist and her mouth opened impossibly wide. Her nose and lips stretched out and thickened into a snout. Ropy saliva dripped from between her sharp, bared teeth. There was a sound like snapping sticks as her body writhed, grew. The negligee burst into flimsy strands that dangled from a thick, gnarled, hairy body-the body of a huge, blonde, upright wolf!

Her voice became a hoarse parody of human speech. "Now, darling, I've changed into something more comfortable."

As she bent toward him, and the cry he wanted to make hung in his throat, he realized to his horrible dissatisfaction, that it was not, in fact, his night to howl.

HUITZILOPOCHTLI

Night's chill breath whispered across the woodland and licked the pines with ice and flicked snow throughout until they looked like tombstones rising in the moonlight.

Two hikers, packs on backs, made their way through the ankle-deep snow, stopped to observe and rest less than fifty feet from an old weather-beaten house. The two-story structure creaked in the wind. The moon draped shadows like gaunt, clutching fingers across it.

The female hiker, long red hair appearing strawberry in the moonlight, snow resting in it like powdered sugar, said, "That's the place, Kevin." She shifted her pack for comfort.

"Creepy enough," Kevin said. "You know, Dag, you get some crazy notions. How long's this shack been in your family?"

"It's not exactly a shack, Kevin. Old, yes. But a shack? No. There was a house here on this site before the Civil War. Not this one, but a house. I believe this one was built in the early 1900s, but don't quote me on that. But, you don't like the view, so let's get inside. It's cold."

Kevin smiled, pushed at his unruly brown hair with a gloved hand. "You're the one that wanted to rough it a little. So don't say it's cold. 'Any fool can hike in the springtime,' you said. 'Where's your sense of adventure?' Remember?"

"I remember," Dag said. "I wasn't cold then. I meant it would be more exciting."

"The word's cold, not exciting."

"All right. If you want to go home, there's the trail... somewhere beneath the snow."

"You've got me trapped," Kevin said grinning. "Guess I'll have to go through with it."

"Thought you might, tenderfoot. Besides," Dag said, showing him a narrow smile, "I thought we might be able to think of something to do besides sleep. Something to wile away the time, help us forget the cold."

Kevin looked curious. "You brought cards?"

Dag slapped his shoulder playfully. Her gloved hand popped up flecks of snow from his thick flannel coat. "Silly. C'mon. The snow is nearly to our butts."

Laughing they trudged toward the house.

The wind picked up, blew a gusty popsicle wind against them, chewed through their clothes and pricked their flesh with goose bumps. The house, a cold, gray corpse, capped and slashed with white, rattled its termite riddled bones.

When they were on the long encircling porch, Kevin said, "This is the damnedest snowstorm I've seen for this part of the country. It's really getting deep out there." He slung his pack off his shoulder. "This porch go all the way around?"

"All the way," Dag said, and she removed a key from her jeans pocket.

"You keep this old joint locked?"

"For what good it does. It's been in the family for years. Some pretty nice antiques in here. That's why all the windows are boarded up. Even have an old Edison in here with those big thick platter-looking records."

"What a treat."

"No sense of history," Dag said, and she unlocked the door. It was as dark as the sea bottom inside.

"Charming," Kevin said, and he took out his flashlight. They went inside, Kevin led with the light, slashed at clinging cobwebs and swirling dust.

"Damn," Dag said as she thrashed cobwebs from her face and hair. "You're supposed to knock them out of the way, not on me!"

"Pardon me, Masser Dag... God, but it's dark in here, and cold as a polar bear's foot."

"It's the high ceilings that do it," Dag said. "Hard as hell to heat."

Dag slipped off her pack and frame, leaned them against the wall; Kevin, who had been carrying his in his hand, tossed it next to Dag's pack.

Dag bent over her pack and removed a Coleman and a handful of candles. She lit the candles, and with Kevin guiding her with the flashlight, placed them about the room in a circle. They lit the candles on the old fireplace mantle last.

"Don't throw out a lot of light, do they?" Kevin said.

"Reddi Kilowatt they're not," Dag agreed.

"And they smell funny."

"Cheap."

"Tell you what," Kevin said. "I'll go out and see if I can scrape up a bit of firewood. Provided I can find something that isn't snow covered."

"There's a little shed out back. Used to be a pump house. There's some wood there. Some of it might be rotten, but it'll do for tonight, throw off a little light and heat."

"Sounds like my best bet."

"Yep."

"You coming?"

"No, I'll stay here and make sure these cheap candles don't go out."

"Don't talk to any ghost while I'm gone."

"Don't even say that, Kevin."

"Hey, sweetheart. This was your idea."

"Don't remind me. Go on before I tag along in your shoes."

Kevin kissed her on the forehead, said, "Right back."

He went outside and around to the old pump house. The wind howled through the pines like a dying wolf.

The fire crackled pleasantly. Kevin and Dag sat together, Kevin's flannel jacket draped over their knees. Strobe shadows and orange-red glints filled their faces.

"Not so bad, huh?" Dag said resting her head on Kevin's shoulder.

"Well, the rooming isn't great, but it isn't as bad as the food."

"Last time I ever buy Spain."

"This old house," said Kevin, "didn't you say something at school about it being haunted?"

"No. I said there was an old legend about it. Not exactly a haunting. No ghost. Let's don't talk about it. I'd forgotten about it."

"Crying out loud. You talk me into this and won't even tell me the ghost story that goes with it?"

"It's a silly story."

"It'll entertain me."

"Roll out those bedrolls and I'll entertain you!"

Kevin laughed, took Dag's hand. "Come on, tell me."

Dag sighed, lifted her head from his shoulder. "It's just a bunch of nonsense. It'll give you nightmares. Worse yet, it'll give me nightmares and I'm the one that thought up this screwy idea."

"The cold does take some of the charm out."

"Uh huh."

"Very well. You talked me into this, so that puts you on the spot. Dag, spill the story."

"All right, but it's screwy. My grandfather, who owned this house last, was as rich as they come. He could do what he damned well pleased. He pleased to explore the world, and did. Down in South America he found Huitzilopochtli, or so he claimed."

"Who?"

"Huitzilopochtli. Let me tell you a bit of the background behind that. It helps for understanding the story."

"Are you making this up?"

Dag held up her hand. "Girl Scout's honor. This is for the family legend. I've heard it all my life. I was interested in it enough to do some reading on it. There really isn't much about Huitzilopochtli, or witchy-wolves, as the Spanish called him. As far as I can tell the witchy-wolves stuff had nothing to do with werewolves and that sort of thing. Some other connotation altogether.

"The Aztec, as the Spanish called them, supposedly, early in their history, found in a grotto an idol. This idol was Huitzilopochtli, and through the idol a god lived. The god offered the Aztec advice. It was a constant oracle if they would satisfy certain conditions. They were to carry the idol with them like a banner and feed it on fresh hearts ripped from the breast of recently sacrificed victims. This was part of the Aztec preoccupation with human sacrifice, the satisfaction of Huitzilopochtli."

"And your uncle found Huitzilopochtli?"

"So goes the legend. After the Spanish came and destroyed the Aztec, the idol was hidden, and eventually when its keepers died it was forgotten. Without human sacrifices it became nothing more than stone again.

"While exploring some ancient caves my uncle came upon the idol. All this was recorded in his diary. What happened after the discovery of the idol was also recorded, and when his diary was read it was determined he claimed the idol made him a promise."

"He claimed the idol made him a promise..."

"The same promise it made the Aztec. He brought the idol home with him. Here. Used it to make things better for himself than they were. Not that he needed it. He was rich, remember? But you see, the neighbors started missing."

"I got it. He was killing them for Huitzilopochtli."

"On the dot. He kept a diary of it all. How he killed them and flayed their skin to wear as a robe."

"Yetch!"

"In this very house he killed and cut the hearts out of his victims. The diary goes into great detail. It tells how he fed them to the idol, a small black statue not over six-inches high with a leering face, ruby-red eyes, and one of its hands holding an upturned plate."

"A plate?"

"That's where the heart went, and once it was placed there, still dripping blood, the statue would begin to come to life. The diary tells how its eyes would be the first thing to reveal its life. Blood red they would become, and then the statue, plate and all, would grow to the height of eight feet."

"Jesus, that's one tall tale. He was losing his marbles!"

"When the heart was devoured, the statue would return to normal size."

"And lifelessness?"

"Right. Well, it was never entirely lifeless. Just limited in mobility."

"Why the skins? Why did he flay the victims?"

"That was another part of the Aztec custom. To flay the victims and wear the skin to impersonate a deity."

"What happened to your grandfather?"

"That's the interesting part. He went to prison. For one night he was in the middle of one of his ceremonies when the law broke down the door. They found grandfather wearing the unfortunate victim's skin. The body was on the floor, it's chest torn open."

"The idol?"

"Nowhere to be found."

"Then it was all in his mind?"

"The victim's heart was never found either, and according to legend, there were deep grooves dug in the wooden floor planks as if by something heavy being dragged across it."

"Huitzilopochtli making his escape."

"The scrapes got smaller outside, and they said they tracked the scrapes for some distance till they disappeared into a stream. They dragged the stream a couple of times, but decided the current must have carried it out to the river."

"And your grandfather? You said he went to prison for awhile."

"He did. He began to age radically. You see he was 65 then and looked 40. He'd looked 40 ever since he found the idol. He claimed that was part of his agreement with the god. Fresh hearts for eternal life and youth.

"He spent about six months in jail and looked 70 by the end of that time, and then, by a stroke of luck he managed to escape."

"They catch him?"

"Never even saw him again. But legend goes that some folks saw him, and that he was as young as before, and the story goes on to say that when the heat died down he came back here, and off and on, it's been his headquarters."

"And the diary?"

"The police took it, turned it over to the family eventually. That's how we all know about it."

"Grisly!"

Dag nodded. "But you have to admit, eternal life is quite a prize."

"I suppose," Kevin agreed.

That night they made love and Kevin could not remember it ever being so passionate. Not even the first time when the thrill of sneaking into her dorm room added to the pleasure. This was something else altogether. Hot, unrestrained passion.

When they were through he slept with Dag close in his arms, her sweet breath tickling his flesh.

It was the smell of the candles that first alerted him to wakefulness, and then the sound of chanting. He blinked. Dag was gone. He raised up on one elbow, and gasped. Before the fireplace, back turned, was a figure, and on the figure's back was a tattered skin. Enough of it remained so that there was no doubt as to what type of skin. It was human flesh. Through rips and rents in the skin the flesh of another showed. It was from this figure the chanting came.

And as Kevin watched, frozen, the figure turned.

It was a man, about 40. But the eyes were much older, and very wicked. Kevin found the courage to struggle out of his bedroll and to his feet.

The man moved toward him. Kevin could see that the face of the skin was thrown back like a hood. The man reached up and took it, pulling it down over his face.

"Kevin."

He turned quickly. Behind him, wearing the same ghoulish garb as the old man, was Dag.

"Dag... What?" And then he noticed what was in her hand and what set on the floor beside her.

"Eternity is worth most anything," Dag said and she lunged toward him with the obsidian knife.

He had just enough time to scream before the old man grabbed his hair and Dag planted the dagger in his chest. But before the blade ripped his heart free, the thing that had been at Dag's feet, a little, black, grotesque statuette, moved on stone legs and feet toward him. In one hand, balanced in the middle of its palm, it held a black, obsidian plate.

Empty.

For now.

ISLAND

"He's really a very nice boy," the father said, shifting in his chair, adding, "when he's asleep."

The man behind the desk laughed. "Yes, we have a lot of them here on the island."

The boy, uncomfortable in short pants, white shirt, black tie and sporty little jacket, squeaked his dress shoes on the floor when he moved, said, "Sorry."

It's just his mother and I, well, we don't have a lot of time to ourselves, and he causes...trouble."

I understand. We all understand here."

"He has problems at school. Bullies pick on him. He doesn't fight back. He always wants books and such. Not much for sports, you see. It's not just the bullies. There's other things. He wants lots of attention. We've tried medication. Doesn't help much."

"Well, there's good attention, and there's bad attention. And seldom think medication is such a good idea. As for good attention and bad attention, here he'll sort them out."

I saw as soon as we got off the boat, as we were driven in, that this could be the right place for him. I can see it's the kind of place that can mature a boy quickly."

"Daddy, I don't want to stay here."

"It'll be okay, son."

"I don't like it here."

"It's not about liking it, son. Is it Mr. Vesty?"

"No. Not at all. It's about learning to stand on your own two feet and becoming a man. Many have come here who were, well, weak, a bit sissy. Some left here strong and powerful young men. That's our hope for you. And, if it doesn't work out that way, I assure you, my boy, everyone is better off."

"But, daddy."

"No, son. This is it. We've tried all the conventional methods, but you stay the same."

"I can change."

"You always say that."

"But, Daddy, I just-"

"Enough. We've been over it."

"You'll need to sign here," Mr. Vesty said.

The father picked up the pen and signed the sheet of paper. The scratching of the pen sounded very loud in the little room.

Finished, Mr. Vesty walked with father and son to the door.

"You'll be escorted out the way you came in," Mr. Vesty said to the father.

"And, your boy, we'll start on him immediately."

"If it doesn't work out...you'll call me?"

"Of course. And we take care of all arrangements. Your fee covers that."

Father turned to his son, said, "Do your best. This is the way it should be, and the best for everyone all the way around. You pay attention to things, keep yourself alert, you'll...probably be okay. And I'll come to see you in a few years...to pick you up."

"But, Daddy, I'm small...I, don't know."

"Good, bye, son. I wish you luck."

The father took his son's hand and shook it. "Keep your hands up. Anything goes in life, so you have to be ready. Hands up, now."

The door to the armored car was opened and the father went out between two armed guards who had been waiting. They guided him into the vehicle and the father closed the door without looking back. The guards climbed in up front.

The car drove off.

Mr. Vesty put his hand at the boy's back, said, "Good, luck. And don't come back here. No one will answer the door."

All about, boys were running wild, naked, with sticks and stones. Fighting each other. One child lay on the ground with his eye poked out, the stick that had done the deed was still in his face. He quivered and groaned, finally lay still.

Smoke rose up in the distance.

"But, I'm not a fighter," the boy said.

"You better try and be. This place is about survivors"

Mr. Vesty stepped briskly behind the boy, and placing his foot to the seat of the child's pants, shoved him face down into the dirt.

Mr. Vesty stepped back inside the bunker, and closed the door.

The boy rose up on hands and knees. His nose was bloody where it had scraped the ground. From his four point position, he saw a clutch of grinning, yelling boys, all of them carrying sticks and clubs, rushing right for him.

IT WASHED UP

In the moonlight, in the starlight, the churning waves seemed white with laundry soap. They crashed against the shore and the dark rocks there, and when they rolled back they left wads of seaweed and driftwood and all the tossed garbage and chunks of sewage that man had given the sea.

All the early night and into the midnight hour, the junk washed up, and then, a minute past one, when the sea rolled out and took its laundry soap waves with it, a wad of seaweed from which clinging water dripped like shiny pearls, moved. It moved and it stood up and the shiny pearls of water rolled over the seaweed, and the sewage clung tight and the thing took shape, and the shape was that of a man, featureless and dark and loose as the wind.

The seaweed and sewage man, gone shiny from the pearl drops of sea foam, walked toward town, and in the town it heard the clang and clatter of automobiles out on the brightly lit street, and it saw the street from its position in a dark alley, watched the cars zoom by and heard the people shout, and it chose to stick to the dark.

It went along the dark alley and turned down an even more narrow and darker alley, and walked squishing along that path until it came to the back of a theater where an old man with a harmonica and a worn-out hat sat on a flattened cardboard box and played a bluesy tune until he saw the thing from the ocean shuffle up.

The thing twisted its head when the music stopped, stood over the man, reached out and took the hat from the man's head and put it on its own. Startled, the man stood, and when he did, the thing from the ocean snatched his harmonica. The man broke and ran.

The thing put the harmonica in its mouth and blew, and out came a toneless sound, and then it blew again, and it was a better sound this time; it was the crash of the sea and the howl of the wind. It started walking away, blowing a tune, moving its body to a boogie-woogie rhythm and a two-step slide, the moves belying the sound coming from the instrument, but soon sound and body fell in line, swaying to the music, blowing harder, blowing wilder. The notes swept through the city like bats in flight.

And out into the light went the thing from the ocean, and it played and it played, and the sound was so loud cars slammed together and people quit yelling, and pretty soon they were lining up behind the thing from the ocean, and the thing played even louder, and those that fell in line behind it moved as it moved, with a boogie-woogie rhythm and a two-step slide.

Those who could not walk pushed the wheels of their wheel chairs, or gave their electric throttles all the juice, and there were even cripples in alleyways who but minutes before had been begging for money, who bounced along on crutches, and there were some without crutches, and they began to crawl, and the dogs and the cats in the town followed suit, and soon all that was left in the town were those who could not move at all, the infants in their cribs, the terminally sick, and the deaf who couldn't hear the tune, and the thing from the ocean went on along and all of the townspeople managed after.

It went out of the town and down to the shore, and over the rocks and into the sea, and with its head above water, it rode the waves out, still playing its tune, and the people and animals from the town went in after, and it took hours for them to enter the ocean and go under and drown, but still the head of the thing from the sea bobbed above the waves and the strange music wailed, and soon all that had come from the town were drowned. They washed up on the beach and on the rocks, water swollen, or rock cut, and lay there in the same way that the garbage from the sea had lain.

And finally the thing from the sea was way out now and there was just the faint sound of the music it played, and in the houses the infants who had been left could hear it, and they didn't cry as the music played, and even those who could not move, and those in comas, heard or felt the music and were stirred internally. Only the deaf were immune. And then the music ceased.

The thing from the sea had come apart from the blast of the waves and had been spread throughout the great, deep waters, and some of the thing would wash up on the beach, and some of it would be carried far out to sea, and the harmonica sunk toward the bottom and was swallowed by a large fish thinking it was prey.

And in the town the infants died of starvation, and so did the sick ones who could not move, and the deaf, confused, ran away, and the lights of the town blared on through day and night and in some stores canned music played and TVs in houses talked, and so it would be for a very long time.

THE LAST OF THE HOPEFUL

High up, on the edge of the cliff, green wings strained, gathered the wind and held it. But the breeze-bloated device did not lift the girl who wore it aloft. Two men, one old, one young, stood on either side of her, held her, served as an anchor for her lithe, brown body. They were her father and brother.

"Will I fly like a bird, father?" the young girl asked. Her voice was weak with fear. The wind seemed to clutch the words from her mouth and toss them out over the glistening green land of Oahu.

"No," her father said, "you will not fly like a bird and you must not try. Do not flap the wings. Let the wind rule and take you where it wants you to go. Glide. Do you understand?"

"Yes father," she said, "I understand."

"Good. Now tell me one more time what you know."

"I know all the songs of our people. I know all the hulas. I know where we lived and how it was when we lived our own way and were not controlled by others. I know all of this. I know of all the things before the coming of Kamehameha."

"You are the last of us, daughter. You are the last of our hope. I have long expected this day, dreamed once that we would be driven here and forced over the side, down to death on the rocks. But in the dream we did not scream, and we will not scream this day."

"And the bird, father," the young boy said.

"Yes, and there was a great bird in the sky, green and brown, and I came to understand what it meant. This day could not be avoided, but there was still hope for our people. That is why I built the wings and taught you all these things, some are things that women have never been taught before."

"But maybe," the young girl said, "it was only a bird in your dream-a real bird."

The old man shook his head. "No."

"Perhaps it was my brother?"

"No. You are the lightest, you are our hope. If the wings bear anyone, it is you, the daughter of the king."

"Maybe we will win this day and there will be no need."

The old man smiled grimly. "Then you will not fly and things will be as they were, but I do not expect that. The time of our people has come to an end, but you will carry our thoughts, our dreams, our hopes with you."

The young girl's long black hair whipped in the wind. "Oh father, let me die with you. I do not want to be the only one left, the only one of us still alive."

"While you live," her brother said softly, "while you hold all the old songs and stories to your heart, we all live and we will never die. Somehow, someway, you must pass these things on."

"But there are none left to pass them to," the young girl said.

"The war will end this day," her father said. "You must make a boat in the manner I have taught you, sail to one of the other islands and wait until the hate and fear have died. Then return. You will find a young man among them, one too young to know their hate, and he will give you children and you will teach them the ways of our people. Not so that these things will rule again, for that time is passed, but so that the memory of us will not die."

"Hold me," she said.

Brother and father pulled closer.

Down below, moving up toward the cliff, came the sound of battle, the cries of men, the smashing of clubs against clubs and clubs against flesh.

"These wings," the old man said, "they will make you a goddess in the sun. You will soar over the valley and turn with the wind toward the sea, and down there, far from them, you can hide."

"Yes father." The wind strained at the wings, tried to lift the girl up.

"Lift the wings," her father said.

She did as he asked.

The sound of yelling warriors was very close.

From where they stood, the trio could see a fine line of brown warriors falling back, being forced toward the edge of the cliff.

"Soon," the old man said, "we go over the cliff with the others."

"But not before we fight," said the boy. He looked into the face of his sister. "You are the last of the hopeful. Carry our hope far and wide."

Tears were in her eyes. "I will."

The warriors were very close now. You could smell the sweat of battle, feel the heat of hate and anger.

"Ride the wind," the old man said.

She turned to look out over the beautiful green valley. She spread the wings. The wind billowed them.

"You must go now," her brother said.

"Our hopes go with you," her father said.

And they released her into the wind.

It was a powerful wind. It caught the great green wings and pulled her up and out over the valley. For a moment her father and brother watched, then, picking up their war clubs, they turned to join the last of the battle.

A moment later, along with the rest of the warriors, the old man, who was known to his people as King Kalanikupule, went over the cliff and down into the green valley without a scream.

And moving out over the valley, slave to the wind, went his daughter.

Kamehameha, the sweat and blood of war coating his body, watched her soar. Clubs were tossed at her, but all fell short.

The wind whipped her up high again, and then seemed to let go.

She plummeted like a stone.

But only for a moment, an updraft caught her, took her up again, and even as the victorious forces of Kamehameha stood on the cliff's edge and watched in awe, the slim brown girl glided down and over the tree tops, around their edge toward the shore line, shining in the sun like a great, green and brown bird before coasting behind tall trees and out of sight.

On the wind, for a brief instant, there floated the sound of her sweet, hopeful laughter.

LISTEN

The psychiatrist wore blue, the color of Merguson's mood.

"Mr.... uh?" the psychiatrist asked.

"Merguson. Floyd Merguson."

"Sure, Mr...."

"Merguson."

"Right. Come into the office."

It was a sleek office full of sleek black chairs the texture of a lizard's underbelly. The walls were decorated with paintings of explosive color; a metal-drip sculpture resided on the large walnut desk. And there was the couch, of course, just like in the movies. It was a chocolate-brown with throw-pillows at each end. It looked as if you could drift down into it and disappear in its softness.

They sat in chairs, however. The psychiatrist on his side of the desk, Merguson on the client's side. The psychiatrist was a youngish man with a fine touch of premature white at the temples. He looked every inch the intelligent professional. "Now" the psychiatrist said, "what exactly is your problem?"

Merguson fiddled his fingers, licked his lips, and looked away.

"Come on, now. You came here for help, so let's get started."

"Well," Merguson said cautiously. "No one takes me seriously."

"Tell me about it."

"No one listens to me. I can't take it anymore. Not another moment. I feel like I'm going to explode if I don't get help. Sometimes I just want to yell out, Listen to me! "

Merguson leaned forward and said confidentially, "Actually, I think it's a disease. Yeah, I know how that sounds, but I believe it is, and I believe I'm approaching the terminal stage of the illness. I got this theory that there are people others don't notice, that they're almost invisible. There's just something genetically wrong with them that causes them to go unnoticed. Like a little clock that ticks inside them, and the closer it gets to the hour hand the more unnoticed these people become.

"I've always had the problem of being shy and introverted-and that's the first sign of the disease. You either shake it early or you don't. If you don't, it just grows like cancer and consumes you. With me the problem gets worse every year, and lately by the moment.

"My wife, she used to tell me it's all in my head, but lately she doesn't bother. But let me start at the first, when I finally decided I was ill, that the illness was getting worse and that it wasn't just in my head, not some sort of complex.

"Just last week I went to the butcher, the butcher I been going to for ten years. We were never chummy, no one has ever been chummy to me but my wife, and she married me for my money. I was at least visible then; I mean you had to go to at least some effort to ignore me, but my God, it's gotten worse...

"I'm off the track. I went to the butcher, asked him for some choice cuts of meat. Another man comes in while I'm talking to him and asks for a pound of hamburger. Talks right over me, mind you. What happens? You guessed it. The butcher starts shooting the breeze with the guy, wraps up a pound of hamburger and hands it over to him!

"I ask him about my order and he says, 'Oh, I forgot.'"

Merguson lit a cigarette and held it between unsteady fingers after a long deep puff. "I tell you, he waited on three other people before he finally got to me, and then he got my order wrong, and I must have told him three times, at least.

"It's more than I can stand, Doc. Day after day people not noticing me, and it's getting worse all the time. Yesterday I went to a movie and I asked for a ticket and it happened. I mean I went out completely, went transparent, invisible. I mean completely. This was the first time. The guy just sits there behind the glass, like he's looking right through me. I asked him for a ticket again. Nothing. I was angry, I'll tell you. I just walked right on toward the door. Things had been getting me down bad enough without not being about to take off and go to a movie and relax. I thought I'd show him. Just walk right in. Then they'd sell me a ticket.

"No one tried to stop me. No one seemed to know I was there. I didn't bother with the concession stand. No one would have waited on me anyway.

"Well, that was the first time of the complete fadeouts. And I remember when I was leaving the movie, I got this funny idea. I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror. I swear to you, Doc, on my mother's grave, there wasn't an image in the mirror. I gripped the sink to keep upright, and when I looked up again I was fading in, slowly. Well, I didn't stick around to see my face come into view. I left there and went straight home.

"That afternoon was the corker. My wife, Connie, I know she's been seeing another man. Why not? She can't see me. And when she can I don't have the presence of a one-watt bulb. I came home from the movie and she's all dressed up and talking on the phone.

"I say, 'Who you talking to?'"

Merguson crushed his cigarette out in the ashtray on the psychiatrist's desk. "Doesn't say doodly squat, Doc. Not a word. I'm mad as hell. I go upstairs and listen on the extension. It's a man, and they're planning a date.

"I broke in over the line and started yelling at them. Guess what? The guy says, 'Do you hear a buzzing or something or other?' 'No,' she says. And they go right on with their plans.

"I was in a homicidal rage. I went downstairs and snatched the phone out of her hand and threw it across the room. I wrecked furniture and busted up some lamps and expensive pottery. Just made a general wreck out of the place.

"She screamed then, Doc. I tell you she screamed good. But then she says the thing that makes me come here. 'Oh God,' she says. 'Ghost! Ghost in this house!'

"That floored me, and I knew I was invisible again. I went upstairs and looked in the bathroom mirror. Sure enough. Nothing there. So I waited until I faded back and I called your secretary. It took me five tries before she finally wrote my name down, gave me an appointment. It was worse than when I tried to get the meat from the butcher. So I hurried right over. I had to get this out. I swear I'm not going crazy, it's a disease, and it's getting worse and worse and worse.

"So what can I do, Doc? How can I handle this? I know it's not in my head, and I've got to have some advice. Please, Doc. Say something. Tell me what to do. I've never been this desperate in my entire life. I might fade out again and not come back."

The psychiatrist took his hand from his chin where it had been resting.

"Wha... ? Sorry. I must have dozed. What was it again, Mr.... uh?"

Merguson dove across the desk, clawing for the psychiatrist's throat.

Later when the law came and found the psychiatrist strangled and slumped across his desk, his secretary said, "Funny, I don't remember anyone coming in or leaving. Couldn't have come in while I was here. He had an appointment with a Mr.... uh." She looked at the appointment book. "A Mr. Merguson. But he never showed."

MR. BEAR

Jim watched as the plane filled up. It was a pretty tightly stacked flight, but last time, coming into Houston, he had watched as every seat filled except for the one on his left and the one on his right. He had hit the jackpot that time, no row mates. That made it comfortable, having all that knee and elbow room.

He had the middle seat again, an empty seat to his left, and one to his right. He sat there hoping there would be the amazing repeat of the time before.

A couple of big guys, sweating and puffing, were moving down the aisle, and he thought, Yep, they'll be the ones. Probably one of them on either side. Shit, he'd settle for just having one seat filled, the one by the window, so he could get out on the aisle side. Easy to go to the bathroom that way, stretch your legs.

The big guys passed him by. He saw a lovely young woman carrying a straw hat making her way down the center. He thought, Someone has got to sit by me, maybe it'll be her. He could perhaps strike up a conversation. He might even find she's going where he's going, doesn't have a boyfriend. Wishful thinking, but it was a better thing to think about than big guys on either side of him, hemming him in like the center of a sandwich.

But no, she passed him by, as well. He looked up at her, hoping she'd look his way. Maybe he could get a smile at least. That would be nice.

Of Course, he was a married man, so that was no way to think.

But he was thinking it. She didn't look and she didn't smile. Jim sighed, waited. The line was moving past him. There was only one customer left. A shirtless bear in dungarees and work boots, carrying a hat. The bear looked peeved, or tired, or both.

Oh shit, thought Jim. Bears--they've got to stink. All that damn fur. He passes me by, I'm going to have a seat free to myself on either side. He doesn't, well, I've got to ride next to him for several hours.

But the bear stopped in his row, pointed at the window seat. "That's my seat."

"Sure," Jim said, and moved out of the middle seat and out into the aisle to let the bear in. The bear settled in by the window and fastened his seat belt and rested his hat on his knee. Jim slid back into the middle seat. He could feel the heat off the bear's big hairy arm. And there was a smell. Nothing nasty or ripe. Just a kind of musty odor, like an old fur coat hung too long in a closet, dried blood left in a carpet, a whiff of cigarette smoke and charred wood.

Jim watched the aisle again. No one else. He could hear them closing the door. He unfastened his seat belt and moved to the seat closest to the aisle. The bear turned and looked at him. "You care I put my hat in the middle seat?"

"Not at all," Jim said.

"I get tired of keeping up with it. Thinking of taking it out of the wardrobe equation."

Suddenly it snapped. Jim knew the bear. Had seen him on TV. He was a famous environmentalist. Well, that was something. Had to sit by a musty bear, helped if he was famous. Maybe there would be something to talk about.

"Hey," the bear said, "I ask you something, and I don't want it to sound rude, but..'. can I?"

"Sure."

"I got a feeling, just from a look you gave me, you recognized me."

"I did."

"Well, I don't want to be too rude, sort of leave a fart hanging in the air, though, I might. . . deer carcass. Never agrees. But I really don't want to talk about me or what I do or who I am, and let me just be completely honest. I was so good at what I do ... well, I am good. Let me rephrase that. I was really as successful as people think, you believe I'd be riding coach? After all my years of service to the forest, it's like asking your best girl to ride bitch like she was the local poke. So I don't want to talk about it."

"I never intended to ask," Jim said. That was a lie, but it seemed like the right thing to say.

"Good. That's good," said the bear, and leaned back in his seat and put the hat on his head and pulled it down over his eyes.

For a moment Jim thought the bear had gone to sleep, but no, the bear spoke again. "Now that we've got that out of the way, you want to talk, we can talk. Don't want to, don't have to, but we can talk; just don't want to talk about the job and me and the television ads, all that shit. You know what I'd like to talk about?" "What's that?"

"Poontang. All the guys talk about pussy. But me, I'm a bear, so it makes guys uncomfortable, don't want to bring it up. Let me tell you something, man, I get plenty, and I don't just mean bear stuff. Guy like me, that celebrity thing going and all, I can line them up outside the old motel room, knock 'em off like shooting ducks from a blind. Blondes, redheads, brunettes, bald, you name it, I can bang it."

This made Jim uncomfortable. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had sex with his wife, and here was a smelly bear with a goofy hat knocking it off like there was no tomorrow. He said, "Aren't we talking about your celebrity after all? I mean, in a way?"

"Shit. You're right. Okay. Something else. Maybe nothing. Maybe we just sit. Tell you what, I'm going to read a magazine, but you think of something you want to talk about, you go ahead. I'm listening."

Jim got a magazine out of the pouch in front of him and read a little, even came across an ad with the bear's picture in it, but he didn't want to bring that up. He put the magazine back and thought about the book he had in the overhead, in his bag, but he hated to bother. Besides, the book was the usual thriller, and he didn't feel like bothering.

After a while the flight attendant came by. She was a nice-looking woman who looked even nicer because of her suit, the way she carried herself, the air of authority. She asked if they'd like drinks.

Jim ordered a diet soda, which was free, but the bear pulled out a bill and bought a mixed drink, a Bloody Mary. They both got peanuts. When the flight attendant handed the bear his drink, the bear said, "Honey, we land, you're not doing anything, I could maybe show you my wild side, find yours."

The bear grinned, and showed some very ugly teeth.

The flight attendant leaned over Jim, close to the bear, and said, "I'd rather rub dirt in my ass than do anything with you."

This statement hung in the air like backed-up methane for a moment, then the flight attendant smiled, moved back and stood in the aisle, then looked right at Jim and said, "If you need anything else, let me know," and she was gone.

The bear had let down his dining tray and he had the drink in its plastic cup in his hand. The Bloody Mary looked very bloody. The bear drank it in one big gulp. He said, "Flight drinks. You could have taken a used Tampax and dipped it in rubbing alcohol and it would taste the same."

Jim didn't say anything. The bear said, "She must be a lesbian. Got to be. Don't you think?"

The way the bear turned and looked at him, Jim thought it was wise to agree. "Could be."

The bear crushed the plastic cup. "No 'could be.' Is. Tell me you agree. Say, is."

"Is," Jim said, and his legs trembled slightly. "That's right, boy. Now whistle up that lesbian bitch, get her back over here. I want another drink."

When they landed in Denver, the bear was pretty liquored up. He walked down the ramp crooked and his hat was cocked at an odd angle that suggested it would fall at any moment. But it didn't.

The plane had arrived late, and this meant Jim had missed his connecting flight due to a raging snowstorm. The next flight was in the morning and it was packed. He'd have to wait until midafternoon tomorrow just to see if a flight was available. He called his wife on his cell phone, told her, and then rang off, feeling depressed and tired and wishing he could stay home and never fly again.

Jim went to the bar, thinking he might have a nightcap, catch a taxi to the hotel, and there was the bear, sitting on a stool next to a blonde with breasts so big they were resting on the bar in front of her. The bear, his hat still angled oddly on his head, was chatting her up.

Jim went behind them on his way to a table. He heard the bear say, "Shid, darlin', you dun't know whad yer missin'. 'Ere's wimen all o'er 'is world would lige to do it wid a bear."

"I'm not that drunk yet," the blonde said, "and I don't think they have enough liquor here to make me that drunk." She got up and walked off.

Jim sat down at a table with his back to the bar. He didn't want the bear to recognize him, but he wanted a drink. And then he could smell the bear. The big beast was right behind him. He turned slightly. The bear was standing there, dripping saliva as thick as sea foam from his teeth onto his furry chest.

"Eh, buddy, 'ow you doin'.'' The bear's words were so slurred, it took Jim a moment to understand.

"Oh," he said. "Not so good. Flight to Seattle is delayed until tomorrow."

"Me, too," the bear said, and plopped down in a chair at the table so hard the chair wobbled and Jim heard a cracking sound that made him half expect to see the chair explode and the bear go tumbling to the floor. "See me wid dat gal? Wus dryin to roun me ub sum, ya know." "No luck?"

"Les'bin. The're eberyware."

Jim decided he needed to get out of this pretty quick. "Well, you know, I don't think I'm going to wait on that drink. Got to get a hotel room, get ready for tomorrow."

"Naw, dunt do 'at. Er, led me buy ya a drank. Miz. You in dem tidht panss."

So the waitress came over and the bear ordered some drinks for them both. Jim kept trying to leave, but no go. Before he knew it, he was almost as hammered as the bear.

Finally, the bear, just two breaths short of a complete slur, said, "Eber thang 'ere is den times duh prize. Leds go ta a real bar." He paused." Daby Crogett killed a bar." And then the bear broke into insane laughter.

"Wen e wus ony tree . . . three. Always subone gad ta shood sub bar subware. Cum on, eds go. I know dis town ligh duh bag ob muh 'and."

They closed down a midtown bar. Jim remembered that pretty well. And then Jim remembered something about the bear saying they ought to have some companionship, and then things got muddled. He awoke in a little motel room, discovered the air was full of the smell of moldy bear fur, alcohol farts, a coppery aroma, and sweaty perfume.

Sitting up in bed, Jim was astonished to find a very plump girl with short blonde hair next to him in bed. She was lying facedown, one long, bladderlike tit sticking out from under her chest, the nipple pierced with a ring that looked like a washer.

Jim rolled out of bed and stood up beside it. He was nude and sticky. "Shit," he said. He observed the hump under the sheet some more, the washer in the tit. And then, as his eyes adjusted, he looked across the room and saw another bed, and he could see on the bedpost the bear's hat, and then the bear, lying on the bed without his pants. There was another lump under the blanket. One delicate foot stuck out from under the blanket near the end of the bed, a gold chain around the ankle. The bear was snoring softly. There were clothes all over the floor, a pair of panties large enough to be used as a sling for the wounded leg of a hippopotamus was dangling from the light fixture. That would belong to his date.

Except for his shoes and socks, Jim found his clothes and put them on and sat in a chair at a rickety table and put his head in his hands. He repeated softly over and over, "Shit, shit, shit."

With his hands on his face, he discovered they had a foul smell about them, somewhere between working-man sweat and a tuna net. He was hit with a sudden revelation that made him feel ill. He slipped into the bathroom and showered and redressed, this time putting on his socks and shoes. When he came out the light was on over the table and the bear was sitting there, wearing his clothes, even his hat.

"Damn, man," the bear said, his drunk gone, "that was some time we had. I think. But, I got to tell you, man, you got the ugly one."

Jim sat down at the table, feeling as if he had just been hit by a car. "I don't remember anything."

"Hope you remembered she stunk. That's how I tracked them down, on a corner. I could smell her a block away. I kind of like that, myself. You know, the smell. Bears, you know how it is. But, I seen her, and I thought, Goddamn, she'd have to sneak up on a glass of water, so I took the other one. You said you didn't care."

"Oh God," Jim said.

"The fun is in the doing, not the remembering. Trust me, some things aren't worth remembering."

"My wife will kill me."

"Not if you don't tell her."

"I've never done anything like this before."

"Now you've started. The fat one, I bet she drank twelve beers before she pissed herself."

"Oh, Jesus."

"Come on, let's get out of here. I gave the whores the last of my money. And I gave them yours."

"What?"

"I asked you. You said you didn't mind."

"I said I don't remember a thing. I need that money."

"I know that. So do I."

The bear got up and went over to his bed and picked up the whore's purse and rummaged through it, took out the money. He then found the other whore's purse on the floor, opened it up, and took out money.

Jim staggered to his feet. He didn't like this, not even a little bit. But he needed his money back. Was it theft if you paid for services you didn't remember?

Probably. But...

As Jim stood, in the table light, he saw that on the bear's bed was a lot of red paint, and then he saw it wasn't paint, saw too, that the whore's head was missing. Jim let out a gasp and staggered a little.

The bear looked at him. The expression on his face was oddly sheepish.

"Thought we might get out of here without you seeing that. Sometimes, especially if I've been drinking, and I'm hungry, I revert to my basic nature. If it's any consolation, I don't remember doing that."

"No. No. It's no consolation at all."

At this moment, the fat whore rolled over in bed and sat up and the covers dropped down from her, and the bear, moving very quickly, got over there and with a big swipe of his paw sent a spray of blood and a rattle of teeth flying across the room, against the wall. The whore fell back, half her face clawed away.

"Oh Jesus. Oh my God."

"This killing I remember," the bear said. "Now come on, we got to wipe everything down before we leave, and we don't have all night."

They walked the streets in blowing snow, and even though it was cold, Jim felt as if he were in some kind of fever dream. The bear trudged along beside him, said, "I had one of the whores pay for the room in cash. They never even saw us at the desk. Wiped down the prints in the room, anything we might have touched. I'm an expert at it. We're cool. Did that 'cause I know how these things can turn out. I've had it go bad before. Employers have got me out of a few scrapes, you know. I give them that. You okay, you look a little peaked."

"I... I..."

The bear ignored him, rattled on. "You now, I'm sure you can tell by now, I'm not really all that zood with the ladies. On the plane, I was laying the bullshit on. Damn, I got all this fur, but that don't mean I'm not cold. I ought to have like a winter uniform, you know, a jacket, with a big collar that I can turn up. Oh, by the way. I borrowed your cell phone to call out for pizza last night, but before I could, I dropped it and stepped on the motherfucker. Can you believe that? Squashed like a clam shell. I got it in my pocket. Have to throw it away. Okay. Let me be truthful. I had it in my back pocket and I sat my fat ass on it. That's the thing. . . . You a little hungry? Shit. I'm hungry. I'm cold."

That was the only comment for a few blocks, then the bear said, "Fuck this," and veered toward a car parked with several others at the curb. The bear reached in his pocket and took out a little packet, opened it. The streetlights revealed a series of shiny lock pick tools. He went to work on the car door with a tool that he unfolded and slid down the side of the car window until he could pull the lock. He opened the door, then said, "Get inside." The bear flipped a switch that unlocked the doors, and Jim, as if he were obeying the commands of a hypnotist, walked around to the other side and got in.

The bear was bent under the dash with his tools, and in a moment, the car roared to life. The bear sat in the seat and closed the door, said, "Seat belts. Ain't nobody rides in my car, they don't wear seat belts."

Jim thought: It's not your car. But he didn't say anything. He couldn't. His heart was in his mouth. He put on his seat belt.

They tooled along the snowy Denver streets and out of town and the bear said, "We're leaving this place, going to my stomping grounds. Yellowstone Park. Know some back trails. Got a pass. We'll be safe there. We can hang. I got a cabin. It'll be all right."

"I ... I ..." Jim said, but he couldn't find the rest of the sentence.

"Look in the glove box, see there's anything there. Maybe some prescription medicine of some kind. I could use a jolt."

"I.. ."Jim said, and then his voice died and he opened the glove box. There was a gun inside. Lazily, Jim reached for it.

The bear leaned over and took it from him. "You don't act like a guy been around guns much. Better let me have that."The bear, while driving, managed with one hand to pop out the clip and slide it back in. "A full load. Wonder he's got a gun permit. You know, I do. 'Course, not for this gun. But, beggers can't be choosers, now can they?"

"No. No. Guess not," Jim said, having thought for a moment that he would have the gun, that he could turn the tables, at least make the bear turn back toward Denver, let him out downtown.

"See any gum in there?" the bear asked. "Maybe he's got some gum. After that whore's head, I feel like my mouth has a pair of shitty shorts in it. Anything in there?"

Jim shook his head. "Nothing."

"Well, shit," the bear said.

The car roared on through the snowy night, the windshield wipers beating time, throwing snow wads left and right like drunk children tossing cotton balls.

The heater was on. It was warm. Jim felt a second wave of the alcohol blues; it wrapped around him like a warm blanket, and without really meaning to, he slept.

"I should be hibernating," the bear said, as if Jim were listening. "That's why I'm so goddamn grumpy. The work. No hibernation. Paid poon and cheap liquor. That's no way to live."

The bear was a good driver in treacherous weather. He drove on through the night and made good time.

When Jim awoke it was just light and the light was red and it came through the window and filled the car like bloodstained streams of heavenly piss.

Jim turned his head. The bear had his hat cocked back on his head and he looked tired. He turned his head slightly toward Jim, showed some teeth at the corner of his mouth, then glared back at the snowy road.

"We got a ways to go yet, but we're almost to Yellowstone. You been asleep two days."

"Two days."

"Yeah. I stopped for gas once, and you woke up once and you took a piss." "I did."

"Yeah. But you went right back to sleep." "Good grief. I've never been that drunk in my life." "Probably the pills you popped." "What?"

"Pills. You took them with the alcohol, when we were with the whores."

"Oh, hell."

"It's all right. Every now and again you got to cut the tiger loose, you know? Don't worry. I got a cabin. That's where we're going. Don't worry. I'll take care of you. I mean, hell, what are friends for?"

The bear didn't actually have a cabin, he had a fire tower, and it rose up high into the sky overlooking very tall trees. They had to climb a ladder up there, and the bear, sticking the automatic in his belt, sent Jim up first, said, "Got to watch those rungs. They get wet, iced over, your hand can slip. Forest ranger I knew slipped right near the top. We had to dig what was left of him out of the ground. One of his legs went missing. I found it about a month later. It was cold when he fell so it kept pretty good. Wasn't bad, had it with some beans. Waste not, want not. Go on, man. Climb."

Inside the fire tower it was very nice, though cold. The bear turned on the electric heater and it wasn't long before the place was toasty.

The bear said, "There's food in the fridge. Shitter is over there. I'll sleep in my bed, and you sleep on the couch. This'll be great. We can hang. I got all kinds of movies, and as you can see, that TV is big enough for a drive-in theater. We ain't got no bitches, but hell, they're just trouble anyway. We'll just pull each other's wieners."

Jim said, "What now?"

"I don't stutter, boy. It ain't so bad. You just grease a fellow up and go to work."

"I don't know."

"Nah, you'll like it."

As night neared, the light that came through the tower's wraparound windows darkened and died, and Jim could already imagine grease on his hands.

But by then, the bear had whetted his whistle pretty good, drinking straight from a big bottle of Jack Daniel's. He wasn't as wiped-out as before, not stumbling drunk, and his tongue still worked, but fortunately the greased weenie pull had slipped from the bear's mind. He sat on the couch with his bottle and Jim sat on the other end, and the bear said:

"Once upon a goddamn time the bears roamed these forests and we were the biggest, baddest, meanest motherfuckers in the woods. That's no shit. You know that?"

Jim nodded.

"But, along come civilization. We had fires before that, I'm sure. You know, natural stuff. Lightning. Too dry. Natural combustion. But when man arrived, it was doo-doo time for the bears and everything else. I mean, don't take me wrong. I like a good meal and a beer"--he held up the bottle--"and some Jack, and hanging out in this warm tower, but something has been sapped out of me. Some sort of savage beast that was in me has been tapped and run off into the ground ... I was an orphan. Did you know that?"

"I've heard the stories," Jim said. "Yeah, well, who hasn't? It was a big fire. I was young. Some arsonists. Damn fire raged through the forest and I got separated from my mom. Dad, he'd run off. But, you know, no biggie. That's how bears do. Well, anyway, I climbed a tree like a numb nuts cause my feet got burned, and I just clung and clung to that tree. And then I seen her, my mother. She was on fire. She ran this way and that, back and forth, and I'm yelling, 'Mama,' but she's not paying attention, had her own concerns. And pretty soon she goes down and the fire licks her all over and her fur is gone and there ain't nothing but a blackened hunk of smoking bear crap left. You know what it is to see a thing like that, me being a cub?" "I can't imagine."

"No, you can't. You can't. No one can. I had a big fall, too. I don't really remember it, but it left a knot on the back of my head, just over the right ear. . . . Come here. Feel that."

Jim dutifully complied.

The bear said, "Not too hard now. That knot, that's like my Achilles' heel. I'm weak there. Got to make sure I don't bump my head too good. That's no thing to live with and that's why I'm not too fond of arsonists. There are several of them, what's left of them, buried not far from here. I roam these forests and I'll tell you, I don't just report them. Now and again, I'm not doing that. Just take care of busi ness myself. Let me tell you, slick, there's a bunch of them that'll never squat over a commode again. They're out there, their gnawed bones buried deep. You know what it's like to be on duty all the time, not to be able to hibernate, just nap? It makes a bear testy. Want a cigar?"

"Beg your pardon?"

"A cigar. I know its funny coming from me, and after what I just told you, but we'll be careful here in my little nest."

Jim didn't answer. The bear got up and came back with two fat black cigars. He had boxed matches with him. He gave Jim a cigar and Jim put it in his mouth, and the bear said, "Puff gently."

Jim did and the bear lit the end with a wooden match. The bear lit his own cigar. He tossed the box of matches to Jim. "If it goes out, you can light up again. Thing about a cigar is you take your time, just enjoy it, don't get into it like a whore sucking a dick. It's done casual. Pucker your mouth like you're kissing a baby."

Jim puffed on the cigar but didn't inhale. The action of it made him feel high, and not too good, a little sick even. They sat and smoked. After a long while, the bear got up and opened one of the windows, said, "Come here."

Jim went. The woods were alive with sounds, crickets, night birds, howling.

"That's as it should be. Born in the forest, living there, taking game there, dying there, becoming one with the soil. But look at me. What the fuck have I become? I'm like a goddamn circus bear." "You do a lot of good." "For who, though? The best good I've done was catching those arsonists that are buried out there. That was some good. I'll be straight with you, Jim. I'm happy you're going to be living here. I need a buddy, and, well, tag, you're it."

"Buddy."

"You heard me. Oh, the door, it's locked, and you can't work the lock from inside, 'cause it's keyed, and I got the key. So don't think about going anywhere."

"That's not very buddy-like," Jim said.

The bear studied Jim for a long moment, and Jim felt himself going weak. It was as if he could see the bear's psychosis move from one eye to the other, like it was changing rooms. "But, you're still my buddy, aren't you, Jim?"

Jim nodded.

"Well, I'm sort of bushed, so I think I'll turn in early. Tomorrow night we'll catch up on that weenie pull."

When the bear went to the bedroom and lay down, Jim lay on the couch with the blanket and pillow the bear had left for him, and listened. The bear had left the bedroom door open, and after a while he could hear the bear snoring like a lumberjack working a saw on a log.

Jim got up and eased around the tower and found that he could open windows, but there was nowhere to go from there except straight down, and that was one booger of a drop. Jim thought of how easily the bear had killed the whore and how he admitted to killing others, and then he thought about tomorrow night's weenie pull, and he became even more nervous.

After an hour of walking about and looking, he realized there was no way out. He thought about the key, but had no idea where the bear kept it. He feared if he went in the bear's room to look, he could startle the bear and that might result in getting his head chewed off. He decided to let it go. For now. Ultimately, pulling a greased bear weenie couldn't be as bad as being headless.

Jim went back to the couch, pulled the blanket over him, and almost slept.

Next morning, Jim, who thought he would never sleep, had finally drifted off, and what awoke him was not a noise, but the smell of food cooking. Waffles.

Jim got up slowly. A faint pink light was coming through the window. The kitchenette area of the tower was open to view, part of the bigger room, and the bear was in there wearing an apron and a big chef's hat. The bear turned, saw him. The apron had a slogan on it: If Momma Ain't Happy, Ain't Nobody Happy!

The bear spotted him, gave Jim a big-fanged, wet smile. "Hey, brother, how are you? Come on in here and sit your big ass down and have one of Mr. Bear's waffles. It's so good you'll want to slap your momma."

Jim went into the kitchenette, sat at the table where the bear instructed. The bear seemed in a light and cheery mood. Coffee was on the table, a plate stacked with waffles, big strips of bacon, pats of butter, and a bottle of syrup in a plastic bear modeled after Mr. Bear himself.

"Now you wrap your lips around some of this stuff, see what you think."

While Jim ate, the bear regaled him with all manner of stories about his life, and most were in fact interesting, but all Jim could think about was the bear biting the head off that hooker, and then slashing the other with a strike of his mighty paw. As Jim ate, the tasty waffles with thick syrup became wads of blood and flesh in his mouth, and he felt as if he were eating of Mr. Bear's wine and wafer, his symbolic blood and flesh, and it made Jim's skin crawl.

All it would take to end up like the whores was a misstep. Say something wrong. Perhaps a misinterpreted look. A hesitation at tonight's weenie pull. . . . Oh, damn, Jim thought. The weenie pull.

"What I thought we'd do is we'd go for a drive, dump the car. There's a ravine I know where we can run it off, and no one will see it again. Won't even know it's missing. Excuse me while I go to the shitter. I think I just got word there's been a waffle delivery called."

The bear laughed at his own joke and left the room. Jim ate a bit more of the waffle and all the bacon. He didn't want the bear to think he wasn't grateful. The beast Was clearly psychotic. Anything could set him off.

Jim got up and washed his hands at the sink, and just as he was passing into the living room, he saw the gun they had found in the car, lying on a big fluffy chair. Part of it, the barrel, had slipped into the crack in the cushions. Maybe the bear had forgotten all about it, or at least didn't have it at the forefront of his mind. That was it. He'd been drunker than a Shriners' convention. He probably didn't even remember having the gun.

Jim eased over and picked up the weapon and put it under his shirt, in the small of his back. He hoped he would know how to use it. He had seen them used before. If he could get up close enough--

"Now, that was some delivery. That motherfucker probably came with a fortune cookie and six-pack of Coke. I feel ten pounds lighter. You ready, Jimbo?"

In the early morning, the forests were dark and beautiful and there was a slight mist, and with the window of the car rolled down, it was cool and damp and the world seemed newborn. But all Jim could think about was performing a greased weenie pull and then getting his head chewed off.

Jim said, "You get rid of the car, how do we get back?"

The bear laughed. "Just like a citizen. We walk, of course."

"We've gone quite a distance."

"It'll do you good. Blow out the soot. You'll like it. Great scenery. I'm gonna show you the graves where I buried what was left of them fellows, the arsonists."

"That's all right," Jim said. "I don't need to see that."

"I want you to. It's not like I can show everyone, but my bestest bud, that's a different matter, now ain't it?"

"Well, I don't..."Jim said.

"We're going to see it."

"Sure. Okay."

Jim had a sudden revelation. Maybe there never was going to be a weenie pull, and as joyful as that perception was, the alternative was worse. The bear was going to get rid of him. Didn't want to do it in his tower. You don't shit where you eat. . . . Well, the bear might. But the idea was you kept your place clean of problems. This wasn't just a trip to dump the car, this was a death ride. The bear was going to kill him and leave him where the arsonists were. Jim felt his butthole clench on the car seat.

They drove up higher and the woods grew thicker and the road turned off and onto a trail. The car bumped along for some miles until the trees overwhelmed everything but the trail, and the tree limbs were so thickly connected they acted as a kind of canopy overhead. They drove in deep shadow and there were spots where the shadows were broken by light and the light played across the trail in speckles and spots, and birds shot across their view like feathered bullets, and twice there were deer in sight, bounding into the forest and disappearing like wraiths as the car passed.

They came to a curve and then a sharp rise and the bear drove up the rise. The trail played out, and still he drove. He came to a spot, near the peak of the hill, where the sun broke through, stopped the car, and got out. Jim got out. They walked to the highest rise of the hill, and where they stood was a clean, wide swath in the trees. Weeds and grass grew there. The grass was tall and mostly yellow but brown in places.

"Spring comes," the bear said. "There will be flowers, all along that path, on up to this hill, bursting all over it. This is my forest, Jim. All the dry world used to be a forest, or nearly was, but man has cut most of it down and that's done things to all of us and I don't think in the long run much of it is good. Before man, things had a balance, know what I mean? But man ... oh, boy. He sucks. Like that fire that burned me. Arson. Just for the fun of it. Burned down my goddamn home, Jim. I was just a cub. Little. My mother dying like that... I always feel two to three berries short of a pie." "I'm sorry."

"Aren't they all? Sorry. Boy, that sure makes it better, don't it. Shit." The bear paused and looked over the swath of meadow. He said, "Even with there having been snow, it's dry, and when it's dry, someone starts a fire, it'll burn. The snow don't mean a thing after it melts and the thirsty ground sucks it up, considering it's mostly been dry all year. That one little snow, it ain't nothing more than whipped cream on dry cake." The bear pointed down the hill. "That swath there, it would burn like gasoline on a shag carpet. I keep an eye out for those things. I try to keep this forest safe. It's a thankless and continuous job___Sometimes I have to leave, get a bit of recreation ... like the motel room ... time with a friend."

"I see."

"Do you? The graves I told you about. They're just down the hill. You see, they were bad people, but sometimes, even good people end up down there, if they know things they shouldn't, and there have been a few."

"Oh," Jim said, as if he had no idea what the bear was talking about.

"I don't make friends easily, and I may seem a little insincere. Species problems, all that. Sometimes even people I like, well... it doesn't turn out so well for them. Know what I'm saying?"

"I... I don't think so."

"I think you do. That motel room back there, those whores. I been at this for years. I'm not a serial killer or anything. Ones I kill deserve it. The people I work for. They know how I am. They protect me. How's it gonna be an icon goes to jail? That's what I am. A fuckin' icon. So I kinda get a free ride, someone goes missing, you know. Guys in black, ones got the helicopters and the black cars.

They clean up after me. They're my homies, know what I'm saying?" "Not exactly."

"Let me nutshell it for you: I'm pretty much immune to prosecution. But you, well... kind of a loose end. There's a patch down there with your name on it, Jimbo. I put a shovel in the car early this morning while you were sleeping. It isn't personal, Jim. I like you. I do. I know that's cold comfort, but that's how it is."

The bear paused, took off his hat and removed a small cigar from the inside hat band, then struck a match and took a puff, said, "Thing is, though, I can't get to liking someone too good, 'cause--"

The snapping sound made the bear straighten up. He was still holding his hat in his paw, and he dropped it. He almost made a turn to look at Jim, who was now standing right by him, holding the automatic to the bump on the bear's noggin. The bear's legs went out. He stumbled and fell forward and went sliding down the hill on his face and chest, a bullet snuggling in his brain.

Jim took a deep breath. He went down the hill and turned the bear's head using both hands, took a good look at him. He thought the bear didn't really look like any of the cartoon versions of him, and when he was on TV he didn't look so old. Of course, he had never looked dead before. The eyes had already gone flat and he could see his dim reflection in one of them. The bear's cigar was flattened against his mouth, like a coiled worm. Jim found the bear's box of matches and was careful to use a handkerchief from the bear's paw to handle it. He struck the match and set the dry grass on fire, then stuck the match between the bear's claws on his left paw. The fire gnawed patiently at the grass, whipping up enthusiasm as the wind rose. Jim wiped down the automatic with his shirt tail and put it in the bear's right paw using the handkerchief, and pushed the bear's claw through the trigger guard, closing the bear's paw around the weapon so it looked like he had shot himself.

Jim went back up the hill. The fire licked at the grass and caught some more wind and grew wilder, and then the bear got caught up in it as well, the conflagration chewing his fur and cackling over his flesh like a crazed hag. The fire licked its way down the hill, and then the wind changed and Jim saw the fire climbing up toward him.

He got in the car and started it and found a place where he could back it around. It took some work, and by the time he managed it onto the narrow trail, he could see the fire in the mirror, waving its red head in his direction.

Jim drove down the hill, trying to remember the route. Behind him, the fire rose up into the trees as if it were a giant red bird spreading its wings.

"Dumb bear," he said aloud. "Ain't gonna be no weenie pull now, is there?" And he drove on until the fire was just a small bright spot in the rearview mirror, and then it was gone and there was just the tall, dark forest that the fire had yet to find.

LONG DEAD DAY

She said a dog bit her, but we didn't find the dog anywhere. It was a bad bite, though, and we dressed it with some good stuff and wrapped it with some bandages, and then poured alcohol over that, letting it seep in, and she, being ten, screamed and cried. She hugged up with her mama, though, and in a while she was all right, or as all right as she could be.

Later that evening, while I sat on the wall and looked down at the great crowd outside the compound, my wife, Carol, called me down from the wall and the big gun. She said Ellen had developed a fever, that she could hardly keep her eyes open, and the bite hurt.

Carol took her temperature, said it was high, and that to touch her forehead was to almost burn your hand. I went in then, and did just that, touched her forehead. Her mother was right. I opened up the dressing on the wound and was amazed to see that it had turned black, and it didn't really look like a dog bite at all. It never had, but I wanted it to, and let myself be convinced that was just what it was, even if there had been no dog we could find in the compound. By this time, they had all been eaten. Fact was, I probably shot the last one around: a beautiful Shepard that, when it saw me, wagged its tail. I think when I lifted the gun he knew, and didn't care. He just sat there with his mouth open in what looked like a dog's version of a smile, his tail beating. I killed him first shot, to the head. I dressed him out without thinking about him much. I couldn't let myself do that. I loved dogs. But my family needed to eat. We did have the rabbits we raised, some pigeons, a vegetable garden, but it was all very precarious.

Anyway, I didn't believe about the dog bite, and now the wound looked really bad. I knew the real cause of it, or at least the general cause, and it made me sick to think of it. I doctored the wound again, gave her some antibiotics that we had, wrapped it and went out. I didn't tell Carol what she was already thinking.

I got my shotgun and went about the compound, looking. It was a big compound, thirty-five acres with a high wall around it, but somehow, someone must have breached the wall. I went to the back garden, the one with trees and flowers where our little girl liked to play. I went there and looked around, and found him sitting on one of the benches. He was just sitting. I guess he hadn't been the way he was for very long. Just long enough to bite my daughter. He was about her age, and I knew then, being so lonely, she had let him in. Let him in through the bolted back door. I glanced over there and saw she had bolted it back. I realized then that she had most likely been up on the walk around the wall and had seen him down there, not long of turning, looking up wistfully. He could probably still talk then, just like anyone else, maybe even knew what he was doing, or maybe not. Perhaps he thought he was still who he once was, and thought he should get away from the others, that he would be safe inside.

It was amazing none of the others had forced their way in. Then again, the longer they were what they were, the slower they became, until finally they quit moving altogether. Problem with that was, it took years.

I looked back at him, sitting there, the one my daughter had let in to be her playmate. He had come inside, and then he had done what he had done, and now my daughter was sick with the disease, and the boy was just sitting there on the bench, looking at me in the dying sunlight, his eyes black as if he had been beat, his face gray, his lips purple.

He reminded me of my son. He wasn't my son, but he reminded me of him. I had seen my son go down among them, some--what was it?--five years before. Go down in a flash of kicking legs and thrashing arms and squirting liquids. That was when we lived in town, before we found the compound and made it better. There were others then, but they were gone now. Expeditions to find others, they said. Whatever--they left, we never saw them again.

Sometimes at night I couldn't sleep for the memory of my son, Gerald, and sometimes in my wife's arms, I thought of him, for had it not been such a moment that had created him?

The boy rose from the bench, stumble-stepped toward me, and I shot him. I shot him in the chest, knocking him down. Then I rushed to him and shot him in the head, taking half of it away.

I knew my wife would have heard the shot, so I didn't bother to bury him. I went back across the compound and to the upper apartments where we lived. She saw me with the gun, opened her mouth as if to speak, but nothing came out.

"A dog," I said. "The one who bit her. I'll get some things, dress him out and we'll eat him later."

"There was a dog," my wife said.

"Yes, a dog. He wasn't rabid. And he's pretty healthy. We can eat him."

I could see her go weak with relief, and I felt both satisfied and guilty at the same time. I said, "How is she?"

"Not much better. There was a dog, you say."

"That's what I said, dear."

"Oh, good. Good. A dog."

I looked at my watch. My daughter had been bitten earlier that day, and it was almost night. I said, "Why don't you go get a knife, some things for me to do the skinning, and I'll dress out the dog. Maybe she'll feel better, she gets some meat in her."

"Sure," Carol said. "Just the thing. She needs the protein. The iron."

"You bet," I said.

She went away then, down the stairs, across the yard to the cooking shed. I went upstairs, still carrying the gun.

Inside my daughter's room, I saw from the doorway that she was gray as cigarette ash. She turned her head toward me.

"Daddy," she said.

"Yes, dear," I said, and put the shotgun against the wall by the door and went over to her.

"I feel bad."

"I know."

"I feel different."

"I know."

"Can anything be done? Do you have some medicine?"

"I do."

I sat down in the chair by the bed. "Do you want me to read to you?"

"No," she said, and then she went silent. She lay there not moving, her eyes closed.

"Baby," I said. She didn't answer.

I got up then and went to the open door and looked out. Carol, my beautiful wife, was coming across the yard, carrying the things I'd asked for. I picked up the shotgun and made sure it was loaded with my daughter's medicine. I thought for a moment about how to do it. I put the shotgun back against the wall. I listened as my wife came up the stairs.

When she was in the room, I said, "Give me the knife and things."

"She okay?"

"Yes, she's gone to sleep. Or she's almost asleep. Take a look at her."

She gave me the knife and things and I laid them in a chair as she went across the room and to the bed.

I picked up the shotgun, and as quietly as I could, stepped forward and pointed it to the back of my wife's head and pulled the trigger. It was over instantly. She fell across the bed on our dead child, her blood coating the sheets and the wall.

She wouldn't have survived the death of a second child, and she sure wouldn't have survived what was about to happen to our daughter.

I went over and looked at Ellen. I could wait, until she opened her eyes, till she came out of the bed, trying for me, but I couldn't stomach that. I didn't want to see that. I took the shotgun and put it to her forehead and pulled the trigger. The room boomed with the sound of shotgun fire again, and the bed and the room turned an even brighter red.

I went outside with the shotgun and walked along the landing, walked all the way around, came to where the big gun was mounted. I sat behind it, on the swivel stool, leaned the shotgun against the protecting wall. I sat there and looked out at the hundreds of them, just standing there, looking up, waiting for something.

I began to rotate and fire the gun. Many of them went down. I fired until there was no more ammunition. Reloaded, fired again, my eyes wet with tears. I did this for some time, until the next rounds of ammunition were played out. It was like swatting at a hive of bees. There always seemed to be more.

I sat there and tried not to think about anything. I watched them. Their shapes stretched for miles around, went off into the distance in shadowy bulks, like a horde of rats waiting to board a cargo ship.

They were eating the ones I had dropped with the big gun.

After awhile the darkness was total and there were just the shapes out there. I watched them for a long time. I looked at the shotgun propped against the retaining wall. I looked at it and picked it up and put it under my chin, and then I put it back again.

I knew, in time, I would have the courage.

MASTER OF MISERY

Six o'clock in the morning, Richard was crossing by ferry from the Hotel on the Quay to Christiansted with a few other early-bird tourists, when he turned, looked toward shore, and saw a large ray leap from the water, its blue-gray hide glistening in the morning sunlight like gunmetal, its devil-tail flicking to one side as if to slash.

The ray floated there in defiance of gravity, hung in the sky between the boat and the shore, back grounded by the storefronts and dock as if it were part of a painting, then splashed almost silently into the purple Caribbean, leaving in its wake a sun-kissed ripple.

Richard turned to see if the other passengers had noticed. He could tell from their faces they had not. The ray's leap had been a private showing, just for him, and he relished it. Later, he would think that perhaps it had been some kind of omen.

Ashore, he walked along the dock past the storefronts, and in front of the Anchor Inn Restaurant, the charter fishing boat was waiting.

A man and a woman were on board already. The man was probably fifty, perhaps a little older, but certainly in good shape. He had an aura of invincibility about him, as if the normal laws of mortality and time did not apply to him.

He was about five-ten with broad shoulders and, though he was a little thick in the middle, it was a hard thickness. It was evident, even beneath the black, loose, square-cut shirt he was wearing, he was a muscular man, perhaps first by birth, and second by exercise. His skin was as dark and leathery as an old bull's hide, his hair like frost on scorched grass. He was wearing khaki shorts and his dark legs were corded with muscle and his shins had a yellow shine to them that brought to mind weathered ivory.

He stood by the fighting chair bolted to the center of the deck, and looked at Richard standing on the dock with his little paper bag containing lunch and suntan lotion. The man's crow-colored eyes studied Richard as if he were a pile of dung that might contain some kernel of rare and undigested corn a crow might want.

The man's demeanor bothered Richard immediately. There was about him a cockiness. A way of looking at you and sizing you up and letting you know he wasn't seeing much.

The woman was quite another story. She was very much the bathing beauty type, aged beyond competition, but still beautiful, with a body by Nautilus. She was at least ten years younger than the man. She wore shoulder-length blond hair bleached by sun and chemicals. She had a heart-shaped face and a perfect nose and full lips. There was a slight cleft in her chin and her eyes were a faded blue. She was willowy and big breasted and wore a loose, white tee shirt over her black bathing suit, one of the kind you see women wear in movies, but not often on the beach. She had the body for it. A thong, or string, Richard thought the suits were called. Sort of thing where the strap in the back slid between the buttocks and covered them not at all. The top of the suit made a dark outline beneath her white tee shirt. She moved her body easily, as if she were accustomed to and not bothered by scrutiny, but there was something about her eyes that disturbed Richard.

Once, driving at night, a cat ran out in front of his car and he hit it, and when he stopped to see if there was hope, he found the cat mashed and dying, the eyes glowing hot and savage and terrified in the beam of his flashlight. The woman's eyes were like that.

She glanced at him quickly, then looked away. Richard climbed on board.

Richard extended his hand to the older man. The man smiled and took his hand and shook it. Richard cursed himself as the man squeezed hard. He should have expected that. "HugoPeak," the older man said, then moved his head to indicate the woman behind him. "My wife, Margo."

Margo nodded at Richard and almost smiled. Richard was about to give his name, when the captain, Bill Jones, came out of the cabin grinning. He was a lean, weathered fellow with a face that was all nose and eyes the color of watered meat gravy. He was carrying a couple cups of coffee. He gave one to Margo, the other to Hugo. He said, "Richard, how are you, my man."

"Wishing I'd stayed in bed," Richard said. "I can't believe I let you talk me into this, Jones."

"Hey, fishing's not so bad," said the captain.

"Off the bank at home in Texas it might be all right. But all this water. I hate it."

This was true. Richard hated the water. He could swim, had even earned lifeguard credentials as a Boy Scout, some twenty-five years ago, back when he was thirteen, but he had never learned to like the water. Especially deep water. The ocean.

He realized he had let Jones talk him into this simply because he wanted to convince himself he wasn't phobic. So, okay, he wasn't phobic, but he still didn't like the water. The thought of soon being surrounded by it, and it being deep, and above them there being nothing but hot blue sky, was not appealing.

"I'll get you some coffee and we'll shove off," Jones said.

"I thought it took five for a charter?" Richard said.

Jones looked faintly embarrassed. "Well, Mr. Peak paid the slack. He wanted to keep it down to three. More time in the chair that way, we hit something."

Richard turned to Peak. "I suppose I should split the difference with you."

"Not at all," Peak said. "It was my idea."

"That's kind of you, Hugo," Richard said.

"Not at all. And if it doesn't sound too presumptuous, I don't much prefer to be called by my first name, unless it's by my wife. If I'm not fucking the person, I want them to call me Mr. Peak. Or Peak. That all right with you?"

Richard saw Margo turn her face toward the sea, pretend to be watching the gulls in the distance. "Sure," Richard said.

"I'll get the coffee," Jones said, and disappeared into the cabin. Peak yelled after him. "Let's shove off."

The sea was calm until they reached the Atlantic. The water there was blue-green, and the rich purple color of the Caribbean stood in stark contrast against it, reaching out with long purple claws into the great ocean, as if it might tug the Atlantic to it. But the Atlantic was too mighty, and it would not come.

The little fishing boat chugged out of the Caribbean and onto the choppier waters of the Atlantic, on out and over the great depths, and above them the sky was blue, with clouds as white as the undergarments of the Sacred Virgin.

The boat rode up and the boat rode down, between wet valleys of ocean and up their sides and down again. The cool spray of the ocean splattered on the deck and the diesel engine chugged and blew its exhaust across it and onto Richard, where he sat on the supply box. The movement of the water and the stench of the diesel made him queasy.

After a couple of hours of pushing onward, Jones slowed the engine, and finally killed it. "You're up, Mr. Peak," Jones said coming down from his steering. He got a huge, metallic chest out of the cabin and dragged it onto the deck and opened it. There were a number of small black fish inside, packed in ice. Sardines, maybe. Jones took one and cut it open, took loose one of the rods strapped to the side of the cabin, stuck the fish on the great hook. He gave the rod to Peak.

Peak took the rod and tossed the line expertly and it went way out. He sat down in the fighting chair and fastened the waist belt and shoulder straps and put the rod butt in the gimbal. He looked relaxed and professional. The boat bobbed beneath the hot sunlight and the minutes crawled by.

Margo removed her tee shirt and leaned against the side of the boat. The bathing suit top barely managed to cover her breasts. It was designed primarily to shield her nipples. The top and sides of her bathing suit bottom revealed escaped pubic hair, a darker blond than the hair on her head.

She got a tube of suntan lotion out of a little knit bag on the deck, pushed the lotion into her palm, and began to apply it, slowly and carefully from her ankles up. Richard tried not to watch her run her hand over her tanned legs and thighs, finally over her belly and the tops of her breasts. He would look away, but always his eyes would come back.

He had not made love to a woman in a year, and for the first six months of the year had not wanted to. Now, looking at MargoPeak, it was all he could think about.

Richard glanced at Peak. He was studying the ocean. Jones was in the doorway of the cabin, trying not to be too obvious as he observed the woman. Richard could see that Jones's Adam's apple rode high in his throat. Margo seemed unaware or overly accustomed to the attention. She was primarily concerned with getting the suntan lotion even. Or so it seemed.

Then the line on the rod began to sing.

Richard looked toward the ocean and the line went straight and taut as the fish hit. The line sang louder as it jerked again and cut the air.

"I'm gonna hit him," Peak said. He tightened the drag, jerked back on the rod, and the rod bent slightly. "Now I've got him."

The fish cut to the right and the line moved with him, and Peak hit him again, said, "He's not too big. He's nothing."

Peak rapidly cranked the fish on deck. It was a barracuda. Jones took hold of a metal bar and whacked the flopping barracuda in the head. He got a pair of heavy shears off the deck and opened them and put them against the barracuda's head, and snapped down hard. The head came part of the way off. Jones popped the head again, and this time the head hung by a strand. He cut the head the rest of the way off, tossed it in the ocean, put the decapitated barracuda in the huge ice chest. "Some of the restaurants buy them," he said. "Probably sell them as tuna or something."

"Good catch," Richard said.

"A barracuda," Peak said. "That's no kinda fish. That's not worth a damn."

"Sometimes that's all you hit," Jones said. "Last party I took out, that was it. Three barracuda, back to back. You're next, Mrs. Peak."

Jones baited the hook and cast the line and Margo strapped herself into the fighting chair and slipped the rod into the gimbal. They drifted for an hour and finally Jones moved the boat, letting the line troll, but nothing hit right away. It was twenty minutes later and they were all having a beer, when suddenly the gimbal cranked forward and the line whizzed so fast and loud it sent Goosebumps up Richard's back.

Margo dropped the beer and grabbed the rod. The beer foamed out of the can and ran over the deck, beneath Richard's tennis shoes. The line went way out. Jones cut the engine back plenty, and the line continued to sing and go far out into the water.

"Hit him, Margo," Peak said. "Hit him. He's not stuck, he's just got the bait and the line. You don't hit, the sonofabitch is gone."

Margo tightened the drag, pushed her feet hard against the chair's footrests, and jerked back viciously on the line. The line went taut and the rod bent forward and Margo was yanked hard against the straps.

"Loosen the goddamn drag," Peak said, "or he'll snap it."

Margo loosened the drag. The line sang and the fish went wide to starboard. Jones leaped to the controls and reversed the boat and slowed the speed, gave the fish room to run. The line slacked and the pole began to straighten.

"Hit him again," Peak said, and Margo tried, but it was some job, and Richard could see that the fish was putting a tremendous strain on her. The sun had not so much as caused her tanned body to break a sweat, but the fish had given her sweat beads on her forehead and cheeks and under the nose. The muscles in her arms and legs coiled as if being braided. She pressed her feet hard against the foot rests.

"It's too big for her," Richard said.

"Mind your own business, Mr. Young," Peak said.

Young? How had Peak known his last name? He was pondering that, and about to ask, when suddenly the fish began to run. Peak yelled, "Hit him, Margo, goddamn you! Hit him!"

Margo had been working the drag back and forth, and it was evident she had done this before, but the fish was too much for her, anyone could see that, and now she hit the big fish again, solid, and it leaped. It leaped high and pretty, full of color, fastened itself to the sky, then dived like an arrow into the water and out of sight. It was a great swordfish, and Richard thought: when we drag him onto the deck, immediately it will begin to lose its color and die. It will become nothing more than a dull gray dead fish to harden in some taxidermist's shop, later to be hung on a wall above a couch. It seemed a shame, and Richard suddenly felt shamed for coming out here, for wanting to fish at all. At home, on the banks, he caught a fish, it got eaten. Here, there was no point to the fishing but to garner a trophy.

"I want him, Margo," Peak said. "You hear me, you don't lose this fish. I mean it, goddamnit."

"I'm trying," Margo said. "Really."

"You know how it goes, you screw it up," Peak said. "You know how it works."

"Hugo... I can't hold him. I'm hurting."

"You'll hold him, or wish you had," Peak said. "You just think you're hurting."

"Hey," Richard said, "that's ridiculous. You want the goddamn fish, take over."

Peak, who was standing on the other side of Margo, looked at Richard and smiled. "She'll land it. It's her fish, and she'll land it."

"It's ripping her apart," Richard said. "She's just not big enough."

"Please, Hugo," Margo said. "You can have it. It could have been me caught the barracuda."

"Look to the fish," Peak said.

Margo watched the water and her face went tight; she suddenly looked much older than she had looked. Peak reached out and laid a hand on Margo's breast and looked at Richard, said, "I say she does something, she does it. That's the way a wife does. Her husband says she does something, she does it."

Peak ran his hand over Margo's breast, nearly popping her top aside. Richard turned away from them and called up to Jones. "Cut this out. Let's go in."

Jones didn't answer.

"He does what I want," Peak said. "I pay him enough to do what I want."

The boat slowed almost to a stop, and the great fish began to sound. It went down and they waited. The rod was bent into a deep bow. Margo was beginning to shake. Her eyes looked as if they might roll up in her head. She was stretched forward in the straps so that her back was exposed to Richard, and he could see the cords of muscle there; they were as wadded and tight as the Gordian knot.

"She can't take much more of this," Richard said. "I'll take the fish, if you won't."

"You won't do a goddamn thing, Mr. Young. She can take it, and she will. She'll land it. She caught it, she'll bring it in."

"Hugo," Margo said. "I feel faint. Really."

Peak was still holding his beer, and he poured it over Margo's head. "That'll freshen you."

Margo shook beer from her hair. She began to cry silently. The rod began to bob up and down and the line on the reel was running out. The fish went down again.

Jones appeared from the upper deck. "I've killed the engine. The fish will sound and keep sounding."

"I know that," Peak said. "It'll sound until this bitch gives up, which she won't, or until she hauls it in, which she will."

Richard looked at Jones. The watered gravy eyes looked away. Richard realized now that not only was Jones a paid lackey, he had actually made sure he, Richard Young, was on this boat with HugoPeak. He had known Jones a short time, since he'd been staying on St. Croix, and they had drunk a few together, and maybe he'd told Jones too much. Not that any of it mattered under normal circumstances, but now some things came clear, and Richard wished he had never known this Captain Jones.

Until now, he had considered Jones decent company. Had told him he was staying in the Caribbean for a few months to rest, really to get past some disappointments. And over one too many loaded fruit drinks, had told him more. For a brief time, two defenses, he had been the Heavyweight Kickboxing Champion of the World.

Trained in Kenpo and Tae Kwon Do, he had gone into kickboxing late, at thirty, and had worked his way up to the championship by age thirty-five, going at a slow rate due to lack of finances to chase all the tournaments. It wasn't like professional kickboxing paid all that much. But he had, by God, been the champion.

And on his second defense, against Manuel Martinez, it had gone wrong. Martinez was good. Real good. He gave Richard hell, and Richard lost sight of the rules in a pressed moment, snapped an elbow into the side of Martinez's temple. Martinez went down and never got up. The blow had been illegal and just right, and Martinez was dead and Richard was shamed and pained at what he had done.

He had the whole thing on videocassette. And at night, back home, when he was drunk or depressed, he sometimes got out the cassette and tormented himself with it. He had done what he had done on purpose, but he had never intended for it to kill. It was an instinctive action from years and years of self-defense training, especially Kenpo, which was fond of elbow strikes. He had lost his willpower and had killed.

He had told this to Jones, and obviously, Jones, most likely under the influence of drink, had told this to Peak, and Peak was the kind of man who would want to know a man who had killed someone. He would want to know someone like that to test himself against him. He would see killing a man in the ring as positive, a major macho achievement.

And those glowing yellow shins of Peak's. Callus. Thai boxers built their shins up to be impervious to pain. Used herbs on them to deaden feeling, so they could slam their legs against trees until they bled and scabbed and finally callused over. Peak wore those shins like a badge of honor.

Yeah, it was clear now. Peak had wanted to meet him and let it lead up to something. And Jones had made at least part of that dream possible. He had supplied Richard, lured him like an unsuspecting goat to the slaughter.

Richard began to feel sick. Not only from the tossing of the sea and the smell of the diesel, but from the fact that he had been handily betrayed, and that he had to see such a thing as a man abuse his wife over a fish, over the fact that Peak had caught a lowly barracuda, and his wife, through chance, had hooked a big one.

Richard moved to the side of the boat and threw up. He threw up hard and long. When he was finished, he turned and looked at Peak, who had slid his hand under Margo's top and was massaging her breast, his head close to her ear, whispering something. Margo no longer looked tan; she was pale and her mouth hung slack and tears ran down her face and dripped from her chin.

Richard turned back to look at the sea and saw a school of some kind of fish he couldn't identify, leaping out of the water and back in again. He looked at the deck and saw the bloodstained shears Jones had used on the barracuda. As he picked them up, and turned, the line on the rod went out fast again, finishing off the reel. Peak began to curse Margo and tell her what to do. Richard walked quickly over to the rod, reached up with the clippers, and snapped the line in two. The rod popped up, the line snapped away, drifted and looped, then it was jerked beneath the waves with the fish. Margo fell back in the chair and sighed, the harness creaking loosely against her.

Tossing the shears aside, Richard glared at Peak, who glared back. "To hell with you," Richard said.

Two days later Richard moved out of the Hotel on the Quay. Too expensive, and his savings were dwindling. He got a room over a fish market overlooking the dock and the waters of the Caribbean. He had planned to go home by now, back to Tyler, Texas, but somehow the thought of it made him sick.

Here, he seemed outside of the world he had known, and therefore, at least much of the time, outside of the event that had brought him here.

The first night in his little room, he lay fully dressed on the bed and smelled the fish smell that still lingered from the closed-up shop below. Above him, the ceiling fan beat at the hot air as if stirring chunky soup, and he watched the shadows the moonlight made off the blades of the fan, and the shadows whirled across him like some kind of alien, rotating spider.

After a time, he could lie there no more. He rose and began to move up and down the floor beside the bed, doing a Kenpo form, adjusting and varying it to suit the inconvenience of the room's size, the bed, and the furniture, which consisted of a table and two hardback chairs.

He snapped at the air with his fists and feet, and the fan moved, and the smell of the fish was strong, and through the open window came the noise of drunks along the dock.

His body became coated with sweat, and, pausing only long enough to remove his drenched shirt, he moved into new forms, and finally he lay down on the bed to try and sleep again, and he was almost there, when there was a knock on his door.

He went to the door, said through it: "Who is it?"

"MargoPeak."

Richard opened the door. She stood beneath the hall light, which was low down and close to her head. The bugs circling below the light were like a weird halo for her, a halo of little winged demons. She wore a short summer dress that showed her tan legs to advantage and revealed the tops of her breasts. Her face looked rough. Both eyes were blacked and there was a cut on her upper lip and her cheeks had bruises the color and size of ripe plums.

"May I come in?" she asked.

"Yes." He let her in and turned on the bare bulb that grew out of a tall floor lamp in the corner.

"Could we do without that?" she said. "I don't feel all that presentable."

"Peak?" he asked, turning off the light.

She sat on the edge of the bed, bounced it once, as if to test the springs. The moonlight came through the window and settled down on her like something heavy. "He hit me some."

Richard leaned against the wall. "Over the fish?"

"That. And you. You embarrassed him in front of me and Captain Jones by cutting the line on the fish. He felt belittled. For a moment he lost power over me. I might have been better off you'd stayed out of it and let me land the fish."

"Sorry. All things considered, you shouldn't be here. Why are you here?"

"You didn't work out like he wanted you to."

"I don't get it."

"He wants to fight you."

"Well, I got that much. I figured that's why Jones got me on the boat. Peak had plans for a match. He knows about me, I know that much. He knew my last name."

"He admires your skill. He has videos of your fights. It excites him you killed a man in the ring. He wants to fight a man who's killed a man. He thought he could antagonize you into something."

"A boat's no place to fight."

"He doesn't care where he fights. Actually, he wanted to get you mad enough to agree to come to his island. He has a little island not far out. Owns the whole thing."

"He thinks he can take me?"

"He wants to find out... Yes, he thinks he can."

"Tell him I think he can, too. I'll mail him one of my trophies when I get home."

"He wants it his way."

"He's out of luck."

"He sent me here. He wanted you to see what he'd done to me. He wanted me to tell you, if you don't come to the island, he'll do it again. He told me to tell you that he can be a master of misery. If not to you, then to me."

"That's your problem. Don't go back. You go back, you're a fool."

"He's got a lot of money."

"I'm not impressed with his money, or you. You're a fool, Margo."

"It's all I've got, Richard. He's not nearly as bad as my family was. He at least gives me money, attention. Being an attractive trophy is better than being your father's plaything, if you know what I mean. Hugo got me off drugs. I'm not turning tricks anymore. He did that."

"Just so he'd have a healthy punching bag. A good-looking trophy. 'Course, he's not treating you so good right now, is he? Listen, Margo, it's your life. Turn it around, you don't like it. Don't come to me like it's my fault you're getting your ass kicked."

"I could leave a man like Peak, I had another man to go to."

"You sound like you're shopping for cars. You see what kind of money I got. You'd leave Peak for this? You want a dump like this? A shared toilet?"

"You could do better. You've got the skill. The name. You've got the looks to get into movies. Martial arts guys can make lots of money. Look at Chuck Norris. Christ, you actually killed somebody. The media would eat that up. You're the real McCoy."

"You know, you and Peak deserve each other. Why don't you just paint bull's-eyes on yourself, give Peak spots to go for next time he gets pissed."

"He knows the spots already."

"Sorry, Margo, but good-bye."

He opened the door. Margo stood and studied him. She moved through the doorway and into the hall and turned to face him. Once again the bugs made a halo above her head. "He wants you to come out to his island. He'll have Captain Jones bring you. Jones is taking me back now, but he'll be back for you. It's a short trip where you need to go. Hugo told me to give you this."

She reached into a loose pocket on her dress and brought out a piece of folded paper, shoved it toward him. Richard took it but did not look at it. He said, "I'm not coming."

"You don't, he'll take it out on me. He'll treat me rough. You see my face. You should see my breasts. Between my legs. He did things there. He can do worse. He's done worse. What have you got to lose? You used to do it for a living. We could do all right together, you and me."

"We don't even know each other."

"We could fix that. We could start knowing one another now. We knew each other, you might not want to let me go."

She moved toward him and her arms went around his neck. He reached out and held her waist. She felt solid, small, and warm.

Richard said, "I've said it. I say it again. You can leave anytime you like."

"He'd have me followed to the ends of the earth."

"I'd rather run like a dog, than heel like one."

"You just don't know," she said, pushing away from him. "You don't know anything."

"I know you're still turning tricks, and Peak's a kind of pimp, and you're not even aware of it."

"You don't know a goddamn thing."

"All right. Good luck."

Margo didn't move. She held her place with the bugs swarming above her head. Richard stepped inside his room, and closed the door.

Richard lay on the bed with the note in his hand. He lay that way for a full fifteen minutes. Finally, he rolled on his side and unfolded the note and read it in the moonlight.

MR. YOUNG:

COME TO THE DOCK AND TAKE JONES' BOAT BY MIDNIGHT. HE'LL BRING YOU OUT TO MY ISLAND. WE'LL FIGHT. NO RULES. WE FIGHT, IT'S BEST FOR

MARGO. YOU WIN, I'LL GIVE YOU TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS. I'LL GIVE YOU MARGO. I'LL GIVE YOU A RESTAURANT COUPON FOR FIVE DOLLARS OFF. YOU

DONT COME, MARGO WILL BE UNHAPPY. I'LL BE UNHAPPY AND THE COUPON WILL EXPIRE. AND YOU'LL NEVER KNOW IF YOU COULD HAVE BEAT ME.

HUGOPEAK

Richard dropped the note on the floor, rolled onto his back. It's that simple for Peak, Richard thought. He says come, and he thinks I'll come. He's nuts. Margo's nuts. She thinks I owe her something and I don't even know her. I don't want to know her. She's a gold digger. It's not my problem she hasn't the strength to do what she should do. It's not my fault he'll kick her head in. She's a grown woman and she has to make her own decisions. I'm no hero. I'm not a knight on a white charger. I killed a man once by accident, by not staying with the rules, and I'll not fight another man without rules on purpose. The goddamn sonofabitch must think he's a James Bond villain. I won't have anything to do with him. I will never fight a man for sport again.

Richard lay in the dark and watched the fan. The shadows the fan cast were growing thicker. Soon there would be no shadows at all, only darkness, because the moonlight was fading behind clouds. A cool, wet wind came through the open window. The smell of the fish market below was not as strong now because the smell of the sea and the damp earth had replaced it. Richard held his arm up so that he could see his watch. The luminous dial told him it was just before ten o'clock. He closed his eyes and slept.

When he awoke, rain was blowing in through the window and onto the bed. The rain felt good. He didn't get up to shut the window. He thought about HugoPeak, waiting. He looked at his watch. It was 11:35.

Peak would be starting to warm up now. Anticipating. Actually thinking he might come. Peak would believe that because he would consider Richard weak. He would think he was weak in that he wanted to protect a woman who had no urge to protect herself. He would think Richard's snipping the fishing line was a sign of weakness. He wouldn't think Richard had done it to make things easier on Margo. He would think he did it as some sort of spiteful attack, and that Richard really wanted to fight him. That was what Peak would be thinking.

And Richard knew, deep down, Peak was not entirely wrong.

He thought: If I were to go, I could make it to the boat in ten minutes. It's not that far. I could be there in ten minutes easy, I walked fast. But I'm not going, so it doesn't matter.

He sat on the side of the bed and let the rain slice into him. He got up and went around the bed and opened the closet and got out his martial arts bag. He unzipped and opened it. The mouthpiece and safety gear were there. He zipped it back up. He put it in the closet and closed the door. He sat on the side of the bed. He picked the note up and read it again. He tore it into little pieces and dropped the pieces on the floor, frightening a roach. He tried not to think about anything, but he thought about Margo. The way her face had looked, what she said Peak had done to her breasts, between her legs. He remembered the eyes of that dying cat, and he remembered Margo's eyes. The same eyes, only she wasn't dying as fast. She was going slowly, piece by piece, committing suicide. He remembered the horror of killing the man in the ring, and he remembered, in some hidden, primitive compartment of himself, the pleasure. It was a scary thing inside of him; inside of humankind, especially mankind, this thing about killing. This need. This desire. Maybe, he got home, he'd go deer hunting this year. He hadn't been in over ten years, but he might go now. He might ought to go.

Richard got up and took off his clothes and rubbed his body down with ICY-HOT and took six aspirin and downed them with a glass of water. He put on a jockstrap and cup and loose workout pants and pulled a heavy sweatshirt on. He put on his white tennis shoes without socks and laced them tight. He got his bag out of the closet. He walked to the door and turned around and looked at the room. It looked as if no one had ever lived here. He looked at his watch. He had exactly ten minutes. He opened the door and went out.

As he walked, the ICY-HOT began to heat up and work its way into his muscles. The smell of it was strong in his nostrils. Another fifteen minutes, and the aspirin would take effect, loosen his body further. The rain came down hard as steel pellets and washed his hair into his face, but he kept walking, and finally he began to run.

He ran fast until he came to the Anchor Inn Restaurant. He slowed there and went around the corner, and there was Jones' fishing boat. He looked at his watch. He was right on time. He walked up to the fishing boat and called out.

Jones appeared on the deck in rain hat and slicker. Water ran off the hat and fell across his face like a beaded curtain. He helped Richard aboard. Jones said, "It's just that I needed the money. I owe on the boat. I don't pay on the boat, they're gonna take it away from me."

"Everyone needs something," Richard said. "Take me out, Jones, and listen up. After this, you better hope I go home to Texas. I'm here, walking around, I see you on the dock, anywhere, you better start running. Got me?"

Jones nodded.

"Take me out."

The wind picked up and so did the rain. Richard's stomach began to turn over. He tried to stay in the cabin, but he found that worse. He rushed outside and puked over the side. Finally, he strapped himself into the fighting chair and rode the boat like a carnival ride, taking great waves of water full blast and watching lightning stitch the sky and dip down and touch the ocean in spots, as if God were punishing it.

It wasn't long before the lights of the boat showed land. Jones moved them in slowly to the little island, finally came to a dock and tied them up. When Richard went to get his bag out of the cabin, Jones came down from the wheel and said, "Here, take this. You'll need it for strength, all that pukin' you done."

It was a thick strip of jerky. "No thanks," Richard said.

"You don't like me, and I don't blame you. Take the jerky though. You got to have some kind of energy."

"All right," Richard said, took it and ate. Jones gave him a drink of water in a paper cup. When Richard was finished, he said, "Water and jerky don't change anything."

"I know," Jones said. "I'm going back to St. Croix before it gets worse. I'd rather be docked there. I think it's a little better protected for boats."

"And how do I get back?"

"Good luck," Jones said.

"So that's how it is? You're all through?"

"Soon as you get off the boat." Jones stepped back a step and produced a little .38 from somewhere under his shirt. "It's nothing personal. It's just the money. Margo was pretty convincing too. Peak likes her to be convincing. But it was the money did it. Margo was just a fringe benefit. The money was enough."

"He really wants to fight to the death, doesn't he?"

"I don't ask about much of what he wants. You got to see it from my side, taking big shots out in boats all the time, getting by on their tips. It costs to take out a charter, wear and tear on the boat. I'm thinking about doing something else, going somewhere else. I might hire some goon like me to take me out fishing. I might go somewhere where the biggest pool of water around is in a glass."

"You're that easy for money?"

"You bet. And remember, I didn't make you come. Get off."

Richard went out of the cabin and climbed down to the dock. When he looked up through the driving rain, he could see Jones looking down at him from the boat, the .38 pointed at him.

"You go up the dock there, toward the flagstones. Follow those. They lead around a curve through the rocks and trees. Where you need to go is back there. You'll see it. Now, go on so I can cast off. And good luck. I mean it."

"Yeah, I know. Nothing personal. Well, you know what you can do with your luck." Richard turned and started up the dock.

The directions led him up through a cut in the rocks and around a curve, and there, built into the side of the mountain, was a huge house of great weathered lumber, glass, and stone. The house seemed like part of the island itself. Richard figured, you were inside, standing at one of the great windows, on a good day, you could look out and clearly see fish swimming deep in the clear Caribbean waters, see them some distance off.

He followed the trail, tried to get his mind on what it was he was going to do. He tried to think about Thai boxers and how they fought. He was sure this was how Peak had trained. Peak's shins were a giveaway, but that didn't mean he hadn't done other things. He might like grappling too, ground work. He had to think about all this, but mostly, he had to think about the Thai boxing. Thai boxers were not fancy kickers like Karataka, or Kung Fu people, but they were devastating because of the way they trained. The way they trained was more important than what they knew. They trained hard, for endurance. They trained themselves to take and accept and fuel themselves off pain. They honed their main weapons, their shins, until the best of them could kick through the thick end of a baseball bat. He had to think about that. He had to think that Peak would be in good condition, and that, unlike himself, he hadn't taken off a few years from rigorous training. Oh, he wasn't all washed-up. He practiced the moves and did exercises and his stomach was flat and his reflexes were good, but he hadn't sparred against anyone since that time he had killed a man in the ring. He had to think about all that. He had to not let the bad part of what he was thinking get him down, but he had to know what was bad about himself and what was good. He had to think of some strategy to deal with Peak before Peak threw a punch or kick. He had to think about the fact that Peak might want to kill him. He had to not think too hard about what kind of fool he'd been for coming here. He had to not think about how predictable he had been to Peak. He had to hope that he was not predictable when they fought. He had to realize that he could kill a man if he wanted to, if the opening was there. He'd already done it once, not meaning to. Now he had to mean to.

At the top of the slope there was an overhang porch of stone, and a warm orange light glowed behind the glass positioned in the thick oak door. Before Richard could touch the buzzer, the door opened, and there stood Margo. She had on the dress she had worn earlier. Her hair was pinned up now. She looked at him with those dying cat eyes. The wind and the sea howled behind him.

"Thanks," she said.

Richard stepped past her, inside, dripping water.

The house was tall as a cathedral, furnished in thick wood, leather furniture, and the heads of animals, the bodies of fish. They were everywhere. It looked like a taxidermist's shop.

Margo closed the door against the rain and wind. She said, "He's waiting for you."

"I should hope so," Richard said.

He dripped on the floor as he walked. She took him into a large, lushly furnished bedroom. She went into an adjacent bathroom and came out with a beach towel and a pair of blue workout pants and kicking shoes. "He wants you to wear these. He wants to see you right away, unless you feel you need to rest first."

"I came here to do it," Richard said. "So, the sooner the better." He took the towel and dried, removed his clothes, except for the jock, and, paying Margo no mind, dried again. He put on the pants and shoes.

Margo led him to a gymnasium. It was a wonderful and roomy gym with one wall made of thick glass overlooking rocks and sea; the windows he had seen from the trail. There was little light in there, just illumination from glow strips around the wall. HugoPeak sat on a stool looking out one of the windows. He was dressed in red workout pants and kicking shoes. His back, turned to Richard, held shadows in the valley of its muscles.

"He's waiting," Margo said, and faded back into the shadows and leaned against the wall.

Richard turned and looked at her, a shape in the darkness. He said, "I just want you to know, I'm not doing this for you. I'm doing this for me."

"And for the money?" she said.

"That's icing. I get it, that's good. I'll even take you with me, get you away from here, you want to go. But I won't argue with you to go."

"You win, I might go. But ten thousand dollars isn't a lot of money. Not considering the way I can live now."

"You're right. Keep that in mind. Keep in mind that the ten thousand isn't yours. None of it is. I said I'd take you with me, but that means as far as the island, after that, you're on your own. I don't owe you anything."

"I can make a man happy."

"I got to be happy somewhere else besides below the belt."

"It's not fair. You win, I go with you, I don't get any of your money, and I don't get Hugo's."

"Then you better root for Hugo."

Richard left Margo in the shadows, went over and stood near Peak, and looked out the glass. The sea foamed high and dark with whitecaps against the rocks. Richard saw that the dock he had walked along was gone. The sea had picked it up and carried it away. Or most of it. A few boards were broken and twisted on the shore, lodged between rocks. The great windows vibrated slightly.

"There's going to be a hurricane," Peak said, not looking at Richard. "I believe that's appropriate."

"I want you to write the ten-thousand-dollar check now," Richard said. "Let Margo hold it. I lose, she can tear it up. I win, we'll see someone gets us off the island. Jones isn't coming back, so it'll have to be someone else."

"I'll write the check," Peak said, still looking out the window, "but you won't need to worry about getting off the island. This is your last stop, Mr. Young. You see that prominent rock closest to the house, on the left side of the trail."

"Yeah. What about it?"

Peak sat silent for a long time. Not answering. "Did you know, in the Orient, some places like Thailand, India, they have death matches? I studied there. I studied Thai boxing and Bando when I was stationed there in the army. I've fought some tough matches. People brought here from Thailand, champion Thai boxers. They came here to win money, and they went home hurt. Some of them crippled. I never killed anyone though. I've never fought anyone that's killed anyone. You'll be the first. You know I intend for this one to go all the way?"

"What's that got to do with the rock?" Richard said.

"Oh, my mind wandered. At the base of it, Hero is buried. He was my dog. A German shepherd. He understood me. That's something I miss, Mr. Young. Being understood."

"You're certainly breaking my heart."

"I think maybe, since you came here, on some level, you understand me. That's something worth having. Knowing a worthy opponent understands you. There aren't many like you and me left."

"Whatever you say."

"Death, it's nothing. You know what Hemingway said about death, don't you? He called it a gift."

"Yeah, well, I haven't noticed it being such a popular present. Shall we do it, or what? You were so all-fired wanting to do it, so let's do it."

"Warm up, and we shall. While you start, I'll get a check."

Richard began to stretch and Peak came back with the check. He showed it to Richard. Richard said, "How do I know it's good?"

"You don't. But you don't really care. This isn't about money, is it?"

"Give it to Margo to hold."

Peak did that, then he began to stretch. Fifteen minutes later, Peak said, "It's time."

They met in the center of the gym, began to move in a circular fashion, each looking for an opening. Peak stuck out a couple of jabs, and Richard moved his head away from them. He gave Peak a couple with the same results. Then they went together.

Peak threw hard Thai round kicks to the outside of Richard's right thigh, tried to spring off those for higher kicks to the neck, but Richard faded away from those. Thai boxers were famous for breaking the neck, Richard knew that. He was amazed at how hard the kicks were thrown. They were simple and looked almost stiff, but even though he managed to lift his leg to get some give in the strike, they still hurt.

Richard tried a couple of side kicks, and both times Peak blocked them by kneeing Richard's shin as the kicks came in, and the second time Peak blocked, he advanced and swung an elbow and hit Richard on the jaw. It was an elbow strike like the one Richard had used when he killed Martinez. It hit pretty hard, and Richard felt it all the way down to his heels. When he moved back to regroup, he looked at Peak and saw that he was grinning.

Then they really went to it. Richard threw a front kick to get in close, nothing great, just a front kick, more of a forward stomp to the groin, really, and this brought him into Peak's kill zone, and he tried a series of hand attacks, from backfist to the head, reverse punch to the solar plexus, an uppercut up under Peak's arm, solid to the ribs. It was like hitting a hot water heater.

Peak hit him with another elbow shot, jumped, grabbed Richard's hair, jerked his head down, brought his knee up fast and high. Richard turned his head and the knee hit him hard on the shoulder and the pain went all the way down Richard's arm, such pain that Richard couldn't maintain a fist. His hand flew open like a greedy child reaching for candy.

Richard swung his other arm outside and back and broke the grab on his hair, but lost some hair in the process. He kicked Peak in the knee, a glancing blow, but it got him in to use a double swinging elbow on either side of Peak's head, and for a moment, he thought he was in good, but Peak took the shots and did a jumping knee lift, hit Richard on the elbow, and drove him back with a series of fast round kicks and punches.

Richard felt blood gushing from his nose and over his lips and down his chin. He had to be careful not to slip in the blood when it got on the floor. Damn, the man could hit, and he was fast. Richard already felt tired, and he could tell his nose was broken. It was hot and throbbing. He had been a fool to do this. This wasn't any match. There wasn't going to be any bell. He had to finish this or be finished.

Richard kicked twice to Peak's legs. Once off the front leg, followed with a kick off the rear leg. Both landed, but Peak twisted so he took them on his shins. It was like kicking a tree. Richard began to see the outcome of this. He was going to manage to hit Peak a lot, but Peak was going to hit him a lot too, and in the long run, Peak would win because of the conditioning, because he could take full contact blows better to the body and the shins.

Richard faded back a bit, shook his injured arm. It felt a little better. He could make a solid fist again. The storm outside had gotten busy. The windows were starting to shake. The floor beneath them vibrated. Richard began to bob and weave. Peak held his hands up high, Thai boxer style, closed fists palm forward, set that way to throw devastating elbows.

Richard came in with a series of front kicks and punches, snapped his fingers to Peak's eyes. Managed to flick them, make them water. That was his edge, a brief one, but he took it, and suddenly he was in with a grab to Peak's ear. He got hold of it, jerked, heard it rip like rotten canvas. Blood flew all over Richard's face.

Peak screamed and came in with a blitz of knees and elbows. Richard faded clockwise, away from the brunt of the attack. When Peak stopped, breathing hard, Richard opened his fist. He held Peak's ear in his hand. He smiled at Peak. He put the ear between his teeth and held it there. He bobbed and weaved toward Peak. Richard understood something now. Thai boxers trained hard. They had hard bodies, and if you tried to work by their methods, fists and feet, and you weren't in the same condition, they would wear you down, take you.

But that was the advantage that a system like karate had. He was trained to use his fingers, use specific points, not just areas you could slam with kicks and elbows. True, anywhere Peak kicked or hit him hurt, but no matter how tough Peak was, he had soft eyes, ears, and throat. The groin would normally be a soft target, but like himself, Richard figured he had on a cup. That wouldn't make it so good to hit, and there was the fact a trained fighter could actually take a groin shot pretty well, and there was that rush of adrenaline a groin blow could give a foe, a few seconds of fired energy before the pain took over. It was like a shot of speed. Sometimes, that alone could whip you.

Okay, watch yourself-don't get cocky. He can still take you out and finish you with one solid blow. Richard glanced toward Margo. She was just a shape in the shadows.

Richard spit the ear out and they came together again. A flurry. Richard didn't have time to try anything sophisticated. He was too busy minimizing Peak's attack. He tied Peak up, trapped his hands down, but Peak shot his head forward and caught Richard a meaty one in the upper lip. Richard's lip exploded. Richard shifted, twisted his hip into Peak, turned and flipped him. Peak tumbled across the floor and came up on his feet.

And then Richard heard the great windows rattling like knucklebones in a plastic cup. He glanced out of the corner of his eye. The hurricane was raging. It was like the house was in a mixer. The glass cracked open in a couple of spots and rain blew in.

"None of that matters," Peak said. "This is the storm that matters." He moved toward Richard. The side of his head leaking blood, one of his eyes starting to close.

Richard thought, Okay, I do better when I don't play his game. I'll look as if I'm going to play his game, then I won't. Then suddenly he remembered the ray. How it had leaped out of the water and flicked its tail. It was an image that came to him, and then he knew what to do. The ray's tail reminded him of a flying reverse heel kick. In a real fight, the jump kick wasn't something you actually used much. No matter what the movies showed, you tried to stay on the ground, and you kicked low, and Peak would know that. He would know it so strongly he might not expect what Richard could do.

Richard threw a low front kick off the front leg, followed with a jab as he closed, followed with a reverse punch, and then he threw his back leg forward, as if about to execute a leaping knee, but he used the knee to launch himself, twisted hard, took to the air, whipped his back leg around into a jump heel kick, whipped it hard and fast the way the ray had whipped its tail.

He caught Peak on the side of the head, above the temple, felt the bones in Peak's skull give way to his heel. Peak fell sideways like a dipping second hand, hit the floor.

As Richard stepped in and kicked Peak with all he had in the throat, the windows blew in and shards of glass hit Richard, and a wall of water took the room and all its occupants, carried them through the other wall as if it were wet cardboard. Richard felt a blow to his head, a timber striking him, and then the water carried him away and everything was dark.

When Richard awoke he was in darkness, and he was choking to death. He was in the sea. Under it. He swam up, hard, but he couldn't seem to make it. The water kept pushing him down. He continued kicking, fighting, and finally, when he thought his lungs would explode, he broke up and got a gulp of air and went under again. But not so far this time. A long, dark, beam of wood hit him in the head, and he got hold of it. It had been an overhead beam in the gym. It was thick, but it floated just fine. He realized the storm had struck and moved on, like a hit-and-run driver, leaving in its wake stormy seas, but an oddly clear sky lit up by a cool, full moon that looked like a smudgy spotlight.

Richard looked down the length of the beam and shuddered. The beam had broken off to a point down there, and the point was stuck through Margo's chest, dead center, had her pinned like an insect to a mounting board. Her head was nodding to one side, and as the water jumped and the wind lashed, her head rolled on her neck as if on a ball bearing, rolled way too far and high to the left, then back to the right. It was like one of those bobbing, toy dog heads you see in the back of cars. Her tongue hung out of her mouth as if trying to lick the last drop of something sweet. Her hair was washed back from her bruised face. A shard of glass was punched deep into her cheek. Her arms washed back and forth and up and down, as if she might be frantically signaling.

The beam rolled and Richard rolled with it. When he came out of the water and got a grip on it again, Margo's head was under the waves and her legs were sticking up, spread wide, bent at the knees, flopping, showing her panties to the moonlight.

Richard looked for the island, but didn't see it. The waves were too high and choppy. Maybe the damn island was underwater. Maybe he was washed way away from it. He had probably gone down below and fought his way up a dozen times, but just didn't remember. All reflex action. God, he hated the sea.

And then he saw Peak. Peak was clinging to a door. He was hanging on the door with one hand, gripping the doorknob. The door was tilted toward him, and Peak looked weak. His other arm hung by his side, floated and thrashed in the water, obviously broken. He didn't see Richard. His back was to him. He was about ten feet away. Or he was every few seconds. Waves would wash him a little farther away, then bring him back.

Richard timed it. When the waves washed Peak away, Richard let go of the beam and swam toward him, then when the waves washed him back, Richard was there. He came up behind Peak, slipped an arm around Peak's neck, and used his other to tighten the choke. It was the kind of choke that cut the blood off to the brain, didn't affect the wind.

Peak tried to hang on to the door, but he let go to grab Richard's arm. The waves took them under, but still Richard clung. They washed up into the moonlight and Richard rolled onto his back, keeping Peak on top of him. He held his head out of the water with effort. Peak's hand fluttered weakly against Richard's arm.

"You know what Hemingway said about death," Richard said. "That it's a gift. Well, I give it to you."

In a moment, Peak's hand no longer fluttered, and Richard let him go. Peak went directly beneath the waves and out of sight.

Richard swam, got on top of the door, clung to the knob, and bucked with the waves. He looked for the beam with Margo on it. He spotted it far out, on the rise of a wave, Margo's legs dangling like a broken peace symbol. The beam rolled and Margo's head came up, then it rolled again, went down into a valley of waves and out of sight. Nearby, Richard saw the check Peak had written ride up on a wavelike a little flat fish, shine for a moment in the moonlight, then go down, and not come up.

Richard laughed. He no longer felt frightened of the sea, of anything. The waves rolled over him with great pressure, the door cracked and shifted, started to break up, then the knob came away in his hand.

THE MUMMY BUYER

Nayland Jones wondered, as he picked his way through the Cairo streets, if he was wearing the proper clothes for purchasing a mummy. He felt certain that he looked like an escapee from one of those sweat-and-gin movies that Sidney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Humphrey Bogart had appeared in so often. He was even wearing a pith helmet, the crowning touch to his uniform.

Through the Muski he strolled, long legs carrying him over streets mercilessly baked and cracked by the sun. Past peddlers, beggars and merchants.

One beggar squatted at the edge of the street, his back against a crumbly clay wall. As Nayland passed, the beggar plucked his milky dead eyeball from its socket, let it descend on well-worn tendons and dangle on his cheek. It looked like some sort of long-tentacled jellyfish reaching out and groping for the edge of a small, dark cavern, preparing to pull itself up into the black interior.

The beggar held out a hard, dirty palm.

More out of disgust than charity, Nayland put a coin in the beggar's palm. The beggar put the coin in his pouch, and his eye in its socket.

Nayland thought: "Disgusting country." He remembered what he had been told about such beggars. From birth the man had probably been prepared for his "profession." He had been taught to massage the eyeball daily, until the sight died and it became nothing more than a rubbery pulp that could be pulled from its socket and dangled on the cheek at will.

Nayland shivered. The whole country was full of crazies. Civilization had touched the place, but just barely. It was still a country of backward savages as far as he was concerned.

But he hadn't come to Cairo to study the people. He had come to purchase items for his unusual collection. Already he had compiled such rare things as a supposed Yeti's scalp from Tibet; shrunken heads from the wilds of New Guinea; spears and shields from Africa; and a number of other rare articles.

He kept all of these locked away in his private museum for his own personal pleasure. No one was allowed to see his goodies. They were his and his alone. And at night, he gloated over them.

But one thing of importance was missing from his collection: a mummy. Well, he intended to remedy that. He had obtained a very substantial lead concerning a man who would sell him a mummy-a mummy from a Pharaoh's tomb.

The address he was seeking was off the main street-what was main about the street, Nayland failed to see-and down a dark alley bordered by leaning buildings that cast shadows on the cobbles below.

Nayland didn't like the idea of the dark doorways that bordered the alley on either side like hungry mouths, but he was determined to get his mummy.

He walked along the alleyway counting doors. He was looking for the fifteenth on the right. On either side of him, partially hidden by shadow, were rows of beggars, cripples, eye-pluckers, and a few (Nayland couldn't honestly tell if they were male or female) so infested and pocked with sores they churned his breakfast, which he nearly lost.

But he came to the fifteenth door and his repulsion faded to enthusiasm as he entered the dark, foul smelling shop. It contained all manner of jarred and bagged items; a sort of apothecary shop. But from the looks of things, Nayland doubted if he'd buy anything for a headache here.

A little man who seemed very much a part of the place shuffled forward from a corner, hands clasped together, head tilted to one side. The man's face was very aged, or perhaps ravaged by some exotic disease. The flesh looked leathery. No, actually it looked wooden. The little man seemed to move with great difficulty, as if the old legs were too stiff or the bones too dry.

"Might I help you," the man said in perfect English, recognizing Nayland for an American immediately. The little man's voice was very deep, as if brought up from the insides of a hollow log.

"Why... why, yes... I was told by a man named Jauhur that I could find someone here who would sell me... " His voice got very low as the purchasing of such an item was illegal, "... a mummy."

"That is correct," the little man said. "For a price," he smiled his blackened stubs, "we can get you almost anything."

"A mummy for my collection, that will do."

"Yes. Shall we talk money... American dollars?"

"I'm willing to pay a proper price, but not be cheated, mind you."

"Of course, but a mummy is... shall we say, a rarity. They are scarce. Most of the tombs have long since been robbed... "

"But you have one for sale?"

The little man nodded his head.

"I would like to see it first, before we discuss price."

"Very well." The little man turned, shuffled toward the back of the shop, stopped and beckoned Nayland to follow.

They went through a dark, curtained doorway and into a large room where half a dozen sarcophagi rested against the wall.

Nayland licked his lips. The little man clutched the corner of one sarcophagus and opened it. "Inspect, but do not touch too much," the little man said. "They are fragile, very fragile."

Nayland nodded, unable to speak. He walked carefully to the case and inspected the wrapped figure inside. The cloth that bound the mummy was yellowed with age, even black in places.

"If it were unwrapped," the little man warned, "the air would soon crumble it. It would be advisable to put it in a glass case of some sort, and never move it or touch it."

"Yes," Nayland said absently. He looked the mummy up and down, greedily. A mummy for his collection; for him to feast his eyes on alone. No one would ever know...

Hello! Nayland thought. What's this?

On the left hand of the mummy, where the arms were pulled across its chest, was a break in the cloth, a slight bulge on the left ring finger.

Nayland looked over his shoulder at the little man who was watching him with patient, black, bird eyes.

"Perhaps you would rather be alone," the little man offered, sensing Nayland's nervousness.

"Yes... yes, if you don't mind."

"No problem." The little man turned and shuffled away.

When Nayland was alone with the mummy, he returned his attention to the bulge on the mummy's finger. Perhaps he had found something of importance, like a ring; a ring of priceless gold and jewels; a ring that had resided on a dead man's finger for centuries. If the proprietor became aware of it, he might drive the price up; if not, Nayland felt certain he could make a nice purchase. He'd have the mummy for his collection, and the ring to sell for no telling how much.

Carefully, he reached up and touched the bulge. It was very hard. He saw through the break in the wrappings that something glinted. Yes, by golly, he'd found a mummy equipped with a ring. Of course, it could be bone, nothing more.

Nayland leaned forward and peered at the rent in the wrapping. Still uncertain, he carefully reached up and began to peel back the wrappings from a finger, and then he saw it.

Yes, a ring... a... He looked closely. God! No! But there was no denying it. It was a ring all right, and on it he read: SENIOR, '69, GLADEWATERHIGH SCHOOL.

Nayland, suddenly aware that someone was behind him, turned.

Too late.

Nayland saw the little man s arm and the hatchet descend in a blur, and then he saw no more.

The hunchback brought Nayland's nude body out of the steaming vat of chemicals with a long-handled hook, pulled the corpse onto the wrapping slab with expert ease.

He was about to begin the wrapping when the little man came into the smoky chamber.

The hunchback hoped he wasn't still angry.

The little man said, "I hope you inspected this one, Kuda. No rings or watches... and remember the one you wrapped still wearing his glasses? What am I to do with you? We have to sell these mummies to stay in business. We can't keep making them out of potential customers just because of your idiot mistakes."

"Yes, master."

"Remember the bulge those glasses made beneath the wrappings? And if I hadn't looked in on the American, I might not have seen him or the ring you forgot. Had I not caught him in time it might have led to the police. Robbing graves is a nice neat method of supply, but making our own corpses first could get us in trouble, Kuda. You understand?"

"Yes, Master. Forgive me, Master. I understand."

The little man shook his head. "The help these days." He turned and shuffled back to the front of the shop. A man was coming soon to buy a mummy.

NIGHT DRIVE

It had been a very bad night. The rain was blasting away and the wipers and lights were hardly worth the trouble. It had been a sudden rain, and I had failed to check the weather report. That had been stupid of me. It should have been a priority.

I was considering this bit of stupidity when I noticed the man.

He was little more than a blur in the night. He stood beside the road with his thumb extended, a sloppy leather hat washed down over his face. For some reason I had a gut urge against it, but I had picked up hitchhikers in the past, and was not overly sensitive to the fears generally associated with them. Not me.

I pulled over just past him and braked. He would have a distance to run because I had hesitated a bit before stopping. I didn't back up to make it easier for him. I sat and half reconsidered. There was something about this guy that bothered me. Perhaps it was just the surprise of seeing him out in this kind of rain, but then again it had been sudden. It had taken me by surprise, why not him. Nothing mysterious in that.

I put my arm over the backseat and looked through the rear glass. In the fuzzy, pink glow of the brakelights I could see that he was a huge man, made to look all the larger by the blurring effect of rain and light. Rain and light or not, he was larger than I was. If he meant harm...

I had considered too long. The deed was done. In one smooth motion the door was open and he was sliding wetly against the seat on the passenger's side. Cold wind and rain blew in with him.

The overhead light, the brief instant that it glowed while the door was open, showed him to have a leathery, Indian-type face. Hawk nose, high cheek bones, a full but hard mouth. His age could have been thirty or fifty. He had that kind of face. The coat he wore was thick and ankle length, the wet blanket odor of it carried in with him. His leather hat drooped and dripped water.

Something about him made my skin crawl.

He shut the door. A car went by, tires whining, cast its lights across my Plymouth, winked on and away. The man said, "Thank you."

Simple enough, but I almost went through the roof of the Plymouth. The words were kind, but that voice...

I managed to reply kindly enough--some nonsense about where are you going, the usual chatter, and his answers were civil... but that voice.

Another car went by with its tires singing and threw water against my door with a sound like scuttling claws. I checked the rearview and pulled back onto the highway.

The man sat silent, hands in his pockets... perhaps he was plotting... waiting for the right moment.

Hell, I told myself, and gave that part of my brain that frightens so easily a few mental lashes. Look straight ahead and drive carefully, I thought. Don't be silly.

But my gaze wandered often to the stranger, and on one of my peripheral glances I saw that he was staring at me.

Just sitting there like a big wooden doll with its head cranked my way. His hands were still buried deep in his pockets. I wondered what those pockets contained. A razor? A knife? A gun?

With as much calm as I could muster, I took my right hand from the wheel and rolled my fingers together in a manner that suggested that I was trying to shake cold or numbness from them. That didn't keep my hand from trembling as I casually dipped it into my GI jacket, traced my fingers over the fine, bone handle of the razor I kept there.

Now! I told myself.

With one swift motion I brought the razor out, flicked it open as I leaned away from the wheel towards him. Its expertly honed edge caught his throat and passed through, deep. The man fell back against the door.

I closed up the razor and put it away, pulled the car over to the side of the road, got out and rushed around to the passenger's side. I jerked the door open and drug him out on the roadside. His throat was a scarf of blood now.

I used his hat to clean a few drops of blood off the seat, then checked his pockets. No weapons. Christ! I was getting jumpy as of late. This damn weather.

I got his wallet out and picked the two dollars out of it and slung the wallet as far away into the blackness as I could. I got my camera out of the backseat floorboard and took a few flash shots of him for my collection and put it away. They probably wouldn't be among my best pictures. I put the camera away and went around to climb in behind the wheel.

Laughing at myself, I started up the Plymouth. He hadn't been a bit different than the others. A piece of cake. "To hell with your imagination," I said aloud and drove away from there trying to shake the chill of the rain.

OLD CHARLIE

Hi there. Catching much?

Well, they're in there. Just got to have the right bait and be patient. You don't mind if I sit down on the bank next to you, do you?

Good, good. Thanks.

Yeah, I like it fine. I never fish with anything but a cane pole. An old-fashioned way of doing things, I guess, but it suits me. I like to sharpen one end a bit, stick that baby in the ground, and wait it out. Maybe find someone like yourself to chat with for a while.

Whee, it's hot. Near sundown, too. You know, every time I'm out fishing in heat like this, I think of Old Charlie.

Huh? No, no. You couldn't really say he was a friend of mine. You see, I met him right on this bank, sort of like I'm meeting you, only he came down and sat beside me.

It was hot, just like today. So damned hot you'd think your nose was going to melt off your face and run down your chin. I was out here trying to catch a bite before sundown, because there's not much I like better than fish, when here comes this old codger with a fishing rig. It was just like he stepped out of nowhere.

Don't let my saying he was old get you to thinking about white hair and withered muscles. This old boy was stout-looking, like maybe he'd done hard labor all his life. Looked, and was built, a whole lot like me, as a matter of fact. He comes and sits down about where I am now and smiles at me. That was the first time I'd ever seen that kind of smile, sort of strange and satisfied. And it looked wavery, as if it was nothing more than a reflection in the water. After he got settled, got his gear all worked out, and put his bait on, he cast his line and looked at me with that smile again. "Catching much?" he asked me.

"No," I say, "Nothing. Haven't had a bite all day."

He smiled that smile. "My name's Charlie. Some folks just call me Old Charlie."

"Ned," I say

"I sure do love to fish," he says. "I drive out every afternoon, up and down this Sabine River bank, shopping for a fresh place to fish."

"You don't say," I says to him. "Well, ain't much here."

About that time, Old Charlie gets him a bite and pulls in a nice-size bass. He puts it on a chain and stakes it out in the water.

Then Old Charlie rebaits his hook and tosses it again. A bass twice the size of the first hits it immediately and he adds it to his chain.

Wasn't five minutes later and he'd nabbed another.

Me, I hadn't caught doodlysquat. So I sort of forgot about the old boy and his odd smile and got to watching him haul them in. I bet he had nine fish on that chain when I finally said, "That rod and reel must be the way to go."

He looked at me and smiled again. "No, don't matter what you fish with, it's the bait that does it. Got the right bait, you can catch anything."

"What do you use?"

"I've tried many baits," he said smiling, "but there isn't a one that beats this one. Came by using it in an odd way, too. My wife gave me the idea. Course, that was a few years back. Not married now. You see, my wife was a young thing, about thirty-two years younger than me, and I married her when she was just a kid. Otherwise, she wouldn't have been fool enough to marry an old man like me. I knew I was robbing the cradle, impressing her with my worldly knowledge so I could have someone at home all the time, but I couldn't help myself.

"Her parents didn't mind much. They were river trash and were ready to get shed of her anyway. Just one more mouth to feed far as they were concerned. I guess that made it all the easier for me.

"Anyway, we got married. Things went right smart for the first few years. Then one day this Bible-thumper came by. He was something of a preacher and a Bible salesman, and I let him in to talk to us. Well, he talked a right nice sermon, and Amy, my wife, insisted that we invite him to dinner and buy one of his Bibles.

"I noticed right then and there that she and that Bible-thumper were exchanging looks, and not the sort to make you think of church and gospel reading.

"I was burned by it, but I'm a realistic old cuss, and I knew I was pretty old for Amy and that there wasn't any harm in her looking. Long as that was all she did. Guess by that time, she'd found out I wasn't nearly as worldly as she had thought. All I had to offer her was a hardscrabble farm and what I could catch off the river, and neither was exactly first-rate. Could hardly grow a cotton-pickin' thing on that place, the soil was so worked out, and I didn't have money for no store-bought fertilizer-and didn't have no animals to speak of that could supply me with any barnyard stuff, neither. Fishing had got plumb rotten. This was before the bait.

"Well, me not being about to catch much fish was hurtin' me the most. I didn't care much for plowing them old hot fields. Never had. But fishing... now that was my pride and joy.

That and Amy.

"So, we're scraping by like usual, and I start to notice this change in Amy. It started taking place the day after that Bible-thumper's visit. She still fixed meals, ironed and stuff, but she spent a lot of time looking out the windows, like she was expecting something. Half the time when I spoke to her, she didn't even hear me.

"And damned if that thumper didn't show up about a week later. We'd already bought a Bible, and since he didn't have no new product to sell us, he just preached at us. Told us about the ten commandments and about hellfire and damnation. But from the way he was looking at Amy, I figured there was at least one or two of them commandments he didn't take too serious, and I don't think he gave a hang about hellfire and damnation.

"I kept my temper, them being young and all. I figured the thumper would give it up pretty soon anyway, and when he was gone Amy would forget.

"But he didn't give it up. Got so he came around often, his suit all brushed up, his hair slicked back, and that Bible under his arm like it was some kind of key to any man's home. He even took to coming early in the day while I was working the fields, or in the barn sharpening my tools.

"He and Amy would sit on the front porch, and every once in a while I'd look up from my old mules and quit plowing and see them sitting there in the rocking chairs on the porch. Him with that Bible on his knee-closed-and her looking at him like he was the very one that hung the moon.

"They'd be there when I quit the fields and went down to the river in the cool of the afternoon, and though I didn't like the idea of them being alone like that, it never really occurred to me that anything would come of it-I mean, not really.

"Old men can be such fools.

"Well, I remember thinking that it had gone far enough. Even if they were young and all, I just couldn't go on with that open flirting right in front of my eyes. I figured they must have thought me pretty stupid, and maybe that bothered me even more.

"Anyway, I went down to the river that afternoon. Told myself that when I got back I'd have me a talk with Amy, or if that Bible-thumper was still there amoonin' on the porch, I'd pull him aside and tell him politely that if he came back again I was going to blow his head off.

"This day I'm down at the river there's not a thing biting. Not only do we need the food, but my pride is involved here. I'd been a fisherman all of my life, and it was getting so I couldn't seine a minnow out of a washtub. I just couldn't have imagined at that time how fine that bait was going to work... But I'm getting ahead of myself.

"Disgusted, I decided to come back from the creek early, and what do I see but this Bible fella's car still parked in our yard, and it getting along toward sundown, too. I'll tell you, I hadn't caught a thing and I wasn't in any kind of friendly mood, and it just went all over me like a bad dose of wood ticks. When I got to the front porch I was even madder, because the rockers were empty. The Bible that thumper always toted was lying on the seat of one of them, but they weren't anywhere to be seen.

"Guess I was thinking it right then, but I was hoping that I wasn't going to find what I thought I was going to find. Wanted to think they had just went in to have a drink of water or a bite to eat, but my mind wouldn't rightly settle on that.

"Creeping, almost, I walked up on the porch and slipped inside. The noises I heard from the bedroom didn't sound anything like water-drinking, eating, or gospel-talking.

"Just went nuts. Got the butcher knife off the cabinet, and I don't half remember.

"Later, when the police came out there looking for the thumper, they didn't find a thing. Turned out he was a real blabbermouth. Everyone in town knew about him and Amy before I did-I mean, you know, in that way. So they believed me when I said I figured they'd run off together. I'm sure glad they didn't seine the river, or they'd have found his car where I run it off in the deep water.

"Guess that wouldn't have mattered much though. Even if they'd found the car, they wouldn't have had no bodies. And without the bodies, they can't do a thing to you. You see, I'd cut them up real good and lean and laid me out about twenty lines. Fish hit that bait like it was made for them. Took me maybe three days to use it up-which is about when the police showed up. But by then the bait was gone and I'd sold most of the fish and turned myself a nice dollar. Hell, rest of the mess I cooked up and ate. Matter-of-fact, them officers were there when I was eating the last of it.

"I was a changed man after that. Got to smiling all the time. Just couldn't help myself. Loved catchin' them fish. Fishing is just dear to my heart, even more so now. You might say I owed it all to Amy.

"Got so I started making up more of the bait-you know, other folks I'd find on the river, kind of out by themselves. It got so I was making a living off fishing alone."

That's Old Charlie's story, fella... Hey why are you looking at me like that?

Me, Old Charlie?

No sir, not me. This here on my right is Old Charlie.

What do you mean there's no one there? Sure there is...

Oh yeah, I forgot. No one else seems to see Old Charlie but me. Can't understand that.

Old Charlie tells me it used to be no one could see me. Can you believe that? Townsfolks used to say Old Charlie had gone crazy over his wife running off and all. Said he'd taken to talking to himself, calling the other self Ned.

Ain't so. I'm Ned. I work for Old Charlie now. Odd thing is, I can't remember ever doing anything else. Old Charlie has got to where he can't bring himself to kill folks for the bait anymore. Says it upsets him. So he has me do it. I mean, we've got to go on living, don't we? Fishing is all we know. You're a fisherman. You understand, don't you?

You sure are looking at me odd, fella. Is it the smile? Yeah, guess it is. You see, I got it, too. Once... Wait a minute. What's that, Charlie?... Yes, yes, I'm hurrying. Just a minute.

You see, once you get used to hauling in them fish, using that sort of bait, it's the only kind you want to use from then on. Just keeps me and Charlie smiling all the time.

So when we see someone like yourself sitting out here all alone, we just can't help ourselves. Just got to have the bait. That's another reason I keep the end of this cane pole so sharp.

ONCE UPON A TIME

Once upon a time, Ug said to Gar, let me tell you a story.

This was around a campfire, you see, people sitting around with their naked asses hanging out, maybe a bearskin over their shoulders, or when that wasn't available, a dog or wolf skin, something that might have given the camp dog pause from time to time, lying there beside the fire, listening to Ug tell Gar a story, trying to determine if that dog skin looked like a relative or friend.

But I, as omniscient narrator, have departed from what I first intended to do. This is common to me, and must be forgiven, and if not forgiven, what can I say, I'll most likely do it anyway.

So Ug, he says to Gar, says it soft so his voice seems part of the night and the high full moon, the not-so-distant howl of a wolf, says: Once upon a time, I was down in the valley, the valley way low, over there where the big thickets grow and the brambles twist and the trails are thin, way down there, I heard a noise. We're not talking your usual noise, some wolf or bear or tiger or such, but something that moved silent from tree to tree, in the dark. It was like the shadows of the moon came unglued, swung swift and silent through trees. And when I saw it, I said, Damn, that don't look good, and I started moving away, slow like at first, then with a trot, carrying the rabbits I'd killed, and then I realized that this shadow, this thing in the trees, was following from limb to limb and gaining on me rapidly, and so, to keep it at bay, I began tossing one rabbit back at a time, and when I looked over my shoulder, lo and behold, that thing, that shadow, would drop from the trees and stop to maul the little hopper I had tossed back, and when it did, in the moonlight-and it was less light than tonight-I could see it had big white teeth and big yellow-green eyes, the color of pus in a wound, and I ran and ran, dropping rabbits as I went, and soon, way too soon, I had but one rabbit left.

What did you do? Gar asked.

I tossed it, too. What could I do, and I looked back, and it stopped to eat it, and I ran faster, until I thought my sides would break, and then, over my breathing, which was loud and pained, my friend, I heard it breathing, right down my neck, and its breath smelled of rabbit flesh and blood and dirt and bone and all the death you could imagine, and up ahead of me I saw a break in the trees, and somehow, somehow, I knew if I could get out of the trees, out of the shadows they made, I'd be home free.

Wow! How would you know that?

I felt it. In my heart. I just knew. But just before I reached the opening, the way out of the trees, I tripped.

Dog Butt! Gar said.

You said it, and when I fell it grabbed my ankle, pulled at me, tried to yank me back deeper into the shadows of the trees, but there was a stone in the field, and I took hold of it, and it held, and I used it to pull myself forward, but just when I thought I had it made, it came loose.

Oh no.

You said it. But I turned, rolled on my back as I was being dragged, and I threw that stone as hard as I could, threw it at its open mouth, and the stone went in, and it gagged and swallowed, and let me go. I stood up to run, but before I turned I saw it choking, rolling all over the leaves, thrashing up against trees and bushes, twisting in brambles 'til it was wrapped in them thick as this skin over my shoulders.

And then it coughed, my friend. Coughed. And out burst the rock, like it was thrown. And it slowly turned its head and looked at me and came for me and I ran, boy, did I run, even though I thought my sides would explode.

But when I looked back it stood on the edge of the forest, looking at me, not able to go out into the full moonlight, away from the trees and shadows. So I stopped and I yelled and it hopped up and down and I laughed and called it all sorts of names and finally it quit hopping and just looked at me, as if to say, brother, you had better not come back. And then, it turned and it took to the trees, climbing up and away, fast as a spear flies. Faster.

And it was gone.

Damn, Gar said.

ONE DEATH, TWO EPISODES

First Episode:

"One minute he's all right, then the little fucker cut a fart and he was out of here, gone for good, like the five-cent candy bar."

"Shit. He was what? Twelve. Kid like that, you'd think he could stand a kick or two to the head."

"You don't know your own strength."

"That begging stuff. I couldn't stand the begging."

"He ain't begging now."

"Naw he ain't. It just went all over me, him begging like that. Them cigarette burns wouldn't have killed him. He didn't have to beg like that."

"You always got to push your fun, son."

"I don't know what it is. Guess him being a nigger and talking the way he did, all educated and everything, being young and talking better than a grown man, his family having all that money. It just went all over me. Hell, we're the ones, the chosen people, not this jigaboo."

"I don't know who'd choose him now. And the Jews that are chosen are Yankee Jews. It's all right they hate niggers, long as they don't talk with a Southern accent. They must think them Yankee vowels don't hurt a person's ear. Well, they hurt mine plenty."

"I guess I kissed twenty thousand goodbye, didn't I?"

"Next time you kidnap somebody, don't kidnap a nigger, no matter how much money they got. A nigger seems to get on your nerves worse than anybody. And stay away from women. I don't think I'd like you to kidnap a woman."

"Oh hell, Mama, you know you're the one for me. You're always the one for me."

"Yeah, I'm all the woman there is when your root's talking, and your root's talking right now. Doing things to niggers, it always did get you hard."

"Oh, Mama, it ain't that. It ain't that way."

She goes into his arms and they kiss: "What kind of way is it, baby? Show Mama what kind of way it is."

Second Episode:

A big guy is bouncing a basketball, taking some shots. A younger guy comes out drinking a beer. He says: "There's a nigger swelled up in the living room."

"Yeah. I killed him."

"Y'all kidnap him?"

"Uh huh."

"You know how you are about niggers. You should have got a white boy."

"I don't care for gentiles all that much neither."

"Yeah, but their color doesn't excite you."

"He died easy. Mama wasn't too happy."

"Hell, she wasn't. I bet you killed that nigger she got wet, probably fucked your brains out."

"Yeah, well, she did me pretty good."

"Where is she?"

(Grins) "Sleeping it off."

"Whatcha gonna do?"

"Thought we'd take the nigger and dump him."

"You could still get the money."

"Whattaya mean?"

"Tell 'em he's dead, but they want the body back, they still got to pay."

"I hadn't thought of that. Hey, I take after daddy. I think a little."

"Yeah, he was a good thinker all right. He wasn't thinking so good the night they cut his balls off."

"Well, he let the drink get ahead of him. Said some things to those Mexes when he thought he had a gun."

"I'd like to seen his face when he reached for it and didn't find nothing."

"Yeah, that would have been something. He's up there looking down on things now, I bet he'd think what happened to him was funny."

"I can just see the way his mouth used to do. You remember." (Mimics)... "But you're right. A nigger dead ought to be worth as much as one alive."

"Don't ask me what I'd pay. They ask me to pay for him he'd be a nigger in a ditch somewhere. I wouldn't give you five cents for his pecker to feed my dog with."

QUACK

The thunder pulled Pete out of sleep. He rolled over in bed and looked out the window. Great bolts of lightning stitched the sky. The rain pounded on the roof like nuts and bolts.

He made a mental note that tomorrow he would move his bed to the far wall, away from the window. Mildred was the one who had wanted it here, and that no longer mattered. He could do as he pleased now. Being this close to the glass was too creepy, always had been for him.

Thunder boomed and caused Pete to jump. Lightning, bright as mid-day, lit up his yard, the street and his neighbor's garage, which was directly across from his drive. His stupid neighbor had forgotten to close his garage up again. In that flash he had been able to see their station wagon and their kid's toys strung out on their drive. Dumb kid never remembered to put up anything. And with them being uphill, and him living on an incline, about half the time it rained, the kid's junk washed up in his yard. He told himself that next time it happened, he was going to burn the stuff.

"Damn," Pete muttered. If there was one thing he needed right now it was sleep. It had been one hell of a day. Work had been lousy. The board had rejected his idea after he had invested six months of hard work on it, and then he came home to Mildred's goodbye note. He had been expecting her to run off with their dentist ever since she had come back from having her teeth capped with more than a proud smile on her face. That did not concern him. He was glad to be rid of her. The fact that she had left before fixing dinner did concern him. He had been forced to eat out at a pizza joint, one of those quickie-service places, and that damn pepperoni had been wrestling with him every since.

And now this. A storm complete with bass drums and light show. Grumbling, Pete rolled out of bed, went to the bathroom to fix himself a seltzer for his stomach. When he went back to bed he saw a peculiar thing. So peculiar he shook his head to see if he were dreaming. No. He was wide awake.

On the tail of a lightning flash, Pete felt certain that he had seen something fall from the sky and land in his yard. It looked as if it had hit at the tip of his drive, just off the cement and on the grass, but he couldn't make it out.

Lightning flashed again, and Pete was positive that the object was closer now, perhaps a couple of feet. And it looked to be bigger than he remembered. But the flash was so brief he could not make it out.

He climbed back into bed, put his face to the window and watched for a long time, but he could see nothing, the rain had grown so thick.

Just getting jumpy, he decided. What with a day like this one, and then that pizza, it was no wonder he was imagining things. He hoped Mildred's caps fell off her teeth.

Pete pulled the covers up around his neck, and at that moment the lightning flashed. Out of the corner of his eye he felt certain he had seen something, movement, and the object was considerably bigger now. Maybe a foot long and half a foot wide.

He was reminded of a science fiction film he had once seen, Invaders from Mars. A kid had seen a space ship fall from the sky one night and land in a sandlot in back of his house. Of course no one believed him, and one by one, the aliens turned his family into zombies.

Lightning again, and Pete saw it this time, recognized it. A wave of relief washed through him. Halfway between his neighbor's house and his own was a large rubber duck. The biggest he had ever seen, but nonetheless, a rubber duck.

It was clear to him now. The neighbor's kid had left the duck out with his other toys and the water had washed it into his yard. That was why it had seemed larger with each lightning flash. Optical illusion. It was slowly sliding down the incline, getting closer, and since lightning can play tricks on the senses, it only seemed to be growing. It was merely getting closer at a faster rate than he had realized.

The lightning flashed again.

Pete blinked. The duck was very big now, too damned big to be any optical illusion. It was less than a yard away from his window.

It was some kind of trick, had to be. Someone had inflated a huge rubber duck and . . .

Lightning flashed again.

The duck's rubbery bill punched through the glass not less than an inch from Pete's face. Fragments of glass flew every which way. Pete opened his mouth, froze. He could not move. The duck was as big as a cow.

"Quack," it said, revealing dagger-size teeth in its otherwise duck-like countenance.

And then it grabbed Pete by the head, pulling him through the window before he had time to scream or see the other rubber-like ducks falling from the sky, growing rapidly as they touched ground.

THE SHADOWS, KITH AND KIN

"...and the soul, resenting its lot, flies groaningly to the shades."

The Aeneid, by Virgil

There are no leaves left on the trees, and the limbs are weighted with ice and bending low. Many of them have broken and fallen across the drive. Beyond the drive, down where it and the road meet, where the bar ditch is, there is a brown, savage run of water.

It is early afternoon, but already it is growing dark, and the fifth week of the storm raves on. I have never seen such a storm of wind and ice and rain, not here in the South, and only once before have I been in a cold storm bad enough to force me to lock myself tight in my home.

So many things were different then, during that first storm.

No better, but different.

On this day, while I sit by my window looking out at what the great, white, wet storm has done to my world, I feel at first confused, and finally elated.

The storm. The ice. The rain. All of it. It's the sign I was waiting for.

--

I thought for a moment of my wife, her hair so blonde it was almost white as the ice that hung in the trees, and I thought of her parents, white-headed too, but white with age, not dye, and of our little dog Constance, not white at all, but all brown and black with traces of tan; a rat terrier mixed with all other blends of dog you might imagine.

I thought of all of them. I looked at my watch. There wasn't really any reason to. I had no place to go, and no way to go if I did. Besides, the battery in my watch had been dead for almost a month.

--

Once, when I was a boy, just before nightfall, I was out hunting with my father, out where the bayou water gets deep and runs between the twisted trunks and low-hanging limbs of water-loving trees; out there where the frogs bleat and jump and the sun don't hardly shine.

We were hunting for hogs. Then out of the brush came a man, running. He was dressed in striped clothes and he had on very thin shoes. He saw us and the dogs that were gathered about us, blue-ticks, long-eared and dripping spit from their jaws; he turned and broke and ran with a scream.

A few minutes later, the sheriff and three of his deputies came beating their way through the brush, their shirts stained with sweat, their faces red with heat.

My father watched all of this with a kind of hard-edged cool, and the sheriff, a man Dad knew, said, "There's a man escaped off the chain gang, Hirem. He run through here. Did you see him?"

My father said that we had, and the sheriff said, "Will those dogs track him?"

"I want them to they will," my father said, and he called the dogs over to where the convict had been, where his footprints in the mud were filling slowly with water, and he pushed the dog's heads down toward these shoe prints one at a time, and said, "Sic him," and away the hounds went.

We ran after them then, me and my dad and all these fat cops who huffed and puffed out long before we did, and finally we came upon the man, tired, leaning against a tree with one hand, his other holding his business while he urinated on the bark. He had been defeated some time back, and now he was waiting for rescue, probably thinking it would have been best to have not run at all.

But the dogs, they had decided by private conference that this man was as good as any hog, and they came down on him like heat-seeking missiles. Hit him hard, knocked him down. I turned to my father, who could call them up and make them stop, no matter what the situation, but he did not call.

The dogs tore at the man, and I wanted to turn away, but did not. I looked at my father and his eyes were alight and his lips dripped spit; he reminded me of the hounds.

The dogs ripped and growled and savaged, and then the fat sheriff and his fat deputies stumbled into view, and when one of the deputies saw what had been done to the man, he doubled over and let go of whatever grease-fried goodness he had poked into his mouth earlier that day.

The sheriff and the other deputy stopped and stared, and the sheriff said, "My God," and turned away, and the deputy said, "Stop them, Hirem. Stop them. They done done it to him. Stop them."

My father called the dogs back, their muzzles dark and dripping. They sat in a row behind him, like sentries. The man, or what had been a man, the convict, lay all about the base of the tree, as did the rags that had once been his clothes.

Later, we learned the convict had been on the chain gang for cashing hot checks.

--

Time keeps on slipping, slipping. . . Wasn't that a song?

--

As day comes I sleep, then awake when night arrives. The sky has cleared and the moon has come out, and it is merely cold now. Pulling on my coat, I go out on the porch and sniff the air, and the air is like a meat slicer to the brain, so sharp it gives me a headache. I have never known cold like that.

I can see the yard close up. Ice has sheened all over my world, all across the ground, up in the trees. The sky is like a black-velvet backdrop, the stars like sharp shards of blue ice clinging to it.

I leave the porch light on, go inside, return to my chair by the window, burp. The air is filled with the aroma of my last meal: canned Ravioli, eaten cold.

I take off my coat and hang it on the back of the chair.

--

Has it happened yet, or is it yet to happen?

Time, it just keep on slippin', slippin', yeah it do.

--

I nod in the chair, and when I snap awake from a deep nod, there is snow blowing across the yard and the moon is gone and there is only the porch light to brighten it up.

But, in spite of the cold, I know they are out there.

The cold, the heat, nothing bothers them.

They are out there.

--

They came to me first on a dark night several months back, with no snow and no rain and no cold, but a dark night without clouds and plenty of heat in the air, a real humid night, sticky like dirty undershorts. I awoke and sat up in bed and the yard light was shining thinly through our window. I turned to look at my wife lying there beside me, her very blonde hair silver in that light. I looked at her for a long time, then got up and went into the living room. Our little dog, who made his bed by the front door, came over and sniffed me, and I bent to pet him. He took to this for a minute, then found his spot by the door again, laid down.

Finally I turned out the yard light and went out on the porch. In my underwear. No one could see me, not with all our trees, and if they could see me, I didn't care.

I sat in a deck chair and looked at the night, and thought about the job I didn't have and how my wife had been talking of divorce, and how my in-laws resented our living with them, and I thought too of how every time I did a thing I failed, and dramatically at that. I felt strange and empty and lost.

While I watched the night, the darkness split apart and some of it came up on the porch, walking. Heavy steps full of all the world's shadow.

I was frightened, but I didn't move. Couldn't move. The shadow, which looked like a tar-covered human-shape, trudged heavily across the porch until it stood over me, looking down. When I looked up, trembling, I saw there was no face, just darkness, thick as chocolate custard. It bent low and placed hand shapes on the sides of my chair and brought its faceless face close to mine, breathed on me--a hot languid breath that made me ill.

"You are almost one of us," it said, then turned and slowly moved along the porch and down the steps and right back into the shadows. The darkness, thick as a wall, thinned and split, and absorbed my visitor; then the shadows rustled away in all directions like startled bats. I heard a dry, crackling leaf sound amongst the trees.

My God, I thought. There had been a crowd of them.

Out there.

Waiting.

Watching.

Shadows.

And one of them had spoken to me.

--

Lying in bed later that night I held up my hand and found that what intrigued me most were not the fingers, but the darkness between them. It was a thin darkness, made weak by light, but it was darkness and it seemed more a part of me than the flesh.

I turned and looked at my sleeping wife.

I said, "I am one of them. Almost."

--

I remember all this as I sit in my chair and the storm rages outside, blowing snow and swirling little twirls of water that in turn become ice. I remember all this, holding up my hand again to look.

The shadows between my fingers are no longer thin.

They are dark.

They have connection to flesh.

They are me.

--

Four flashes. Four snaps.

The deed is done.

I wait in the chair by the window.

No one comes.

As I suspected.

The shadows were right.

You see, they come to me nightly now. They never enter the house. Perhaps they cannot.

But out on the porch, there they gather. More than one, now. And they flutter tight around me and I can smell them, and it is a smell like nothing I have smelled before. It is dark and empty and mildewed and old and dead and dry.

It smells like home.

--

Who are the shadows?

They are all of those who are like me.

They are the empty congregation. The faceless ones. The failures.

The sad empty folk who wander through life and walk beside you and never get so much as a glance; nerds like me who live inside their heads and imagine winning the lottery and scoring the girls and walking tall. But instead, we stand short and bald and angry, our hands in our pockets, holding not money, but our limp balls.

Real life is a drudge.

No one but another loser like myself can understand that.

Except for the shadows, for they are the ones like me. They are the losers and the lost, and they understand and they never do judge.

They are of my flesh, or, to be more precise, I am of their shadow.

They accept me for who I am.

They know what must be done, and gradually they reveal it to me.

The shadows.

I am one of them.

Well, almost.

--

My wife, my in-laws, every human being who walks this earth, underrates me.

There are things I can do.

I can play computer games, and I can win them. I have created my own characters. They are unlike humans. They are better than humans. They are the potential that is inside me and will never be.

Oh, and I can do some other things as well. I didn't mention all the things I can do well. In spite of what my family thinks of me. I can do a number of things that they don't appreciate, but should.

I can make a very good chocolate milkshake.

My wife knows this, and if she would, she would admit that I do. She used to say so. Now she does not. She has closed up to me. Internally. Externally.

Battened down hatches, inwardly and outwardly.

Below. In her fine little galley, that hatch is tightly sealed.

But there is another thing I do well.

I can really shoot a gun.

My father, between beatings, he taught me that. It was the only time we were happy together. When we held the guns.

--

Down in the basement I have a trunk.

Inside the trunk are guns.

Lots of them.

Rifles and shotguns and revolvers and automatics.

I have collected them over the years.

One of the rifles belongs to my father-in-law.

There is lots of ammunition.

Sometimes, during the day, if I can't sleep, while my wife is at work and my in-laws are about their retirement--golf--I sit down there and clean the guns and load them and repack them in the crate. I do it carefully, slowly, like foreplay. And when I finish my hands smell like gun oil. I rub my hands against my face and under my nose, the odor of the oil like some kind of musk.

But now, with the ice and the cold and the dark, with us frozen in and with no place to go, I clean them at night. Not during the day while they are gone.

I clean them at night.

In the dark.

After I visit with the shadows.

My friends.

All the dark ones, gathered from all over the world, past and present. Gathered out there in my yard--my wife's parent's yard--waiting on me. Waiting for me to be one with them, waiting on me to join them.

The only club that has ever wanted me.

--

They are many of those shadows, and I know who they are now. I know it on the day I take the duct tape and use it to seal the doors to my wife's bedroom, to my parents-in-law's bedroom.

The dog is with my wife.

I can no longer sleep in our bed.

My wife, like the others, has begun to smell.

The tape keeps some of the stench out.

I pour cologne all over the carpet.

It helps.

Some.

--

How it happened. I'll line it out:

One night I went out and sat and the shadows came up on the porch in such numbers there was only darkness around me and in me, and I was like something scared, but somehow happy, down deep in a big black sack held by hands that love me.

Yet, simultaneously, I was free.

I could feel them touching me, breathing on me. And I knew, then, it was time.

--

Down in the basement, I opened the trunk, took out a well-oiled weapon: a hunting rifle. I went upstairs and did it quick. My wife first. She never awoke. Beneath her head, on the pillow, in the moonlight, there was a spreading blossom the color of gun oil.

My father-in-law heard the shot, met me at their bedroom door, pulling on his robe. One shot. Then another for my mother-in-law who sat up in bed, her face hidden in shadow--but a different shadow. Not one of my shadow friends, but one made purely by an absence of light, and not an absence of being.

The dog bit me.

I guess it was the noise.

I shot the dog too.

I didn't want him to be lonely.

Who would care for him?

--

I pulled my father-in-law into his bed with his wife and pulled the covers to their chins. My wife is tucked in too, the covers over her head. I put our little dog, Constance, beside her.

How long ago was the good deed done?

I can't tell.

I think, strangely, of my father-in-law. He always wore a hat. He thought it strange that men no longer wore hats. When he was growing up in the Forties and Fifties, men wore hats.

He told me that many times.

He wore hats. Men wore hats, and it was odd to him that they no longer did, and to him the men without hats were manless.

He looked at me then. Hatless. Looked me up and down. Not only was I hatless in his eyes, I was manless.

Manless? Is that a word?

The wind howls and the night is bright and the shadows twist and the moon gives them light to dance by.

They are many and they are one, and I am almost one of them.

--

One day I could not sleep and sat up all day. I had taken to the couch at first, in the living room, but in time the stench from behind the taped doors seeped out and it was strong. I made a pallet in the kitchen and pulled all the curtains tight and slept the day away, rose at night and roamed and watched the shadows from the windows or out on the porch. The stench was less then, at night, and out on the porch I couldn't smell it at all.

--

The phone has rang many times and there are messages from relatives. Asking about the storm. If we are okay.

I consider calling to tell them we are.

But I have no voice for anyone anymore. My vocal cords are hollow and my body is full of dark.

--

The storm has blown away and in a small matter of time people will come to find out how we are doing. It is daybreak and no car could possibly get up our long drive, not way out here in the country like we are. But the ice is starting to melt.

Can't sleep.

Can't eat.

Thirsty all the time.

Have masturbated till I hurt.

--

Strange, but by nightfall the ice started to slip away and all the whiteness was gone and the air, though chill, was not as cold, and the shadows gathered on the welcome mat, and now they have slipped inside, like envelopes pushed beneath the bottom of the door.

They join me.

They comfort me.

I oil my guns.

--

Late night, early morning, depends on how you look at it. But the guns are well-oiled and there is no ice anywhere. The night is as clear as my mind is now.

I pull the trunk upstairs and drag it out on the porch toward the truck. It's heavy, but I manage it into the back of the pickup. Then I remember there's a dolly in the garage.

My father-in-law's dolly.

"This damn dolly will move anything," he used to say. "Anything."

I get the dolly, load it up, stick in a few tools from the garage, start the truck and roll on out.

--

I flunked out of college.

Couldn't pass the test.

I'm supposed to be smart.

My mother told me when I was young that I was a genius.

There had been tests.

But I couldn't seem to finish anything.

Dropped out of high school. Took the G.E.D. eventually. Didn't score high there either, but did pass. Barely.

What kind of genius is that?

Finally got into college, four years later than everyone else.

Couldn't cut it. Just couldn't hold anything in my head. Too stuffed up there, as if Kleenex had been packed inside.

My history teacher, he told me: "Son, perhaps you should consider a trade."

--

I drive along campus. My mind is clear, like the night. The campus clock tower is very sharp against the darkness, lit up at the top and all around. A giant phallus punching up at the moon.

--

It is easy to drive right up to the tower and unload the gun trunk onto the dolly.

My father-in-law was right.

This dolly is amazing.

And my head, so clear. No Kleenex.

And the shadows, thick and plenty, are with me.

--

Rolling the dolly, a crowbar from the collection of tools stuffed in my belt, I proceed to the front of the tower. I'm wearing a jumpsuit. Gray. Workman's uniform. For a while I worked for the janitorial department on campus. My attempt at a trade.

They fired me for reading in the janitor's closet.

But I still have the jumpsuit.

--

The foyer is open, but the elevators are locked.

I pull the dolly upstairs.

It is a chore, a bump at a time, but the dolly straps hold the trunk and I can hear the guns rattling inside, like they want to get out.

--

By the time I reach the top I'm sweating, feeling weak. I have no idea how long it has taken, but some time I'm sure. The shadows have been with me, encouraging me.

Thank you, I tell them.

--

The door at the top of the clock tower is locked.

I take out my burglar's key. The crowbar. Go to work.

It's easy.

On the other side of the door I use the dolly itself to push up under the door handle, and it freezes the door. It'll take some work to shake that loose.

--

There's one more flight inside the tower.

I have to drag the trunk of guns.

Hard work. The rope handle on the crate snaps and the guns slide all the way back down.

I push them up.

I almost think I can't make it. The trunk is so heavy. So many guns. And all that sweet ammunition.

--

Finally, to the top, shoving with my shoulder, bending my legs all the way.

The door up there is not locked, the one that leads outside to the runway around the clock tower.

I walk out, leaving the trunk. I walk all around the tower and look down at all the small things there.

Soon the light will come, and so will the people.

Turning, I look up at the huge clock hands. Four o'clock.

I hope time does not slip. I do not want to find myself at home by the window, looking out.

The shadows.

They flutter.

They twist.

The runway is full of them, thick as all the world's lost ones. Thick as all the world's hopeless. Thick, thick, thick, and thicker yet to be. When I join them.

--

There is one fine spot at the corner of the tower runway. That is where I should begin.

I place a rifle there, the one I used to put my family and dog asleep.

I place rifles all around the tower.

I will probably run from one station to the other.

The shadows make suggestions.

All good, of course.

I put a revolver in my belt.

I put a shotgun near the entrance to the runway, hidden behind the edge of the tower, in a little outcrop of artful bricks. It tucks in there nicely.

There are huge flowerpots stuffed with ferns all about the runway. I stick pistols in the pots.

When I finish, I look at the clock again.

An hour has passed.

--

Back home in my chair, looking out the window at the dying night. Back home in my chair, the smell of my family growing familiar, like a shirt worn too many days in a row.

Like the one I have on. Like the thick coat I wear.

I look out the window and it is not the window, but the little split in the runway barrier. There are splits all around the runway wall.

I turn to study the place I have chosen and find myself looking out my window at home, and as I stare, the window melts and so does the house.

The smell.

That does not go with the window and the house.

The smell stays with me.

The shadows are way too close. I am nearly smothered. I can hardly breathe.

--

Light cracks along the top of the tower and falls through the campus trees and runs along the ground like spilt warm honey.

I clutch my coat together, pull it tight. It is very cold. I can hardly feel my legs.

--

I get up and walk about the runway twice, checking on all my guns.

Well-oiled. Fully loaded.

Full of hot-lead announcements.

Telegram: You're dead.

--

Back at my spot, the one from which I will begin, I can see movement. The day has started. I poke the rifle through the break in the barrier and bead down on a tall man walking across campus.

I could take him easy.

But I do not.

Wait, say the shadows. Wait until the little world below is full.

--

The hands on the clock are loud when they move, they sound like the machinery I can hear in my head. Creaking and clanking and moving along.

The air had turned surprisingly warm.

I feel so hot in my jacket.

I take it off.

I am sweating.

The day has come but the shadows stay with me.

True friends are like that. They don't desert you.

It's nice to have true friends.

It's nice to have with me the ones who love me.

It's nice to not be judged.

It's nice to know I know what to do and the shadows know too, and we are all the better for it.

--

The campus is alive.

People swim across the concrete walks like minnows in the narrows.

Minnows everywhere in their new sharp clothes, ready to take their tests and do their papers and meet each other so they might screw. All of them, with futures.

But I am the future-stealing machine.

--

I remember once, when I was a child, I went fishing with minnows. Stuck them on the hooks and dropped them in the wet. When the day was done, I had caught nothing. I violated the fisherman's code. I did not pour the remaining minnows into the water to give them their freedom. I poured them on the ground.

And stomped them.

I was in control.

--

A young, beautiful girl, probably eighteen, tall like a model, walking like a dream, is moving across the campus. The light is on her hair and it looks very blonde, like my wife's.

I draw a bead.

The shadows gather. They whisper. They touch. They show me their faces.

They have faces now.

Simple faces.

Like mine.

I trace my eye down the length of the barrel.

Without me really knowing it, the gun snaps sharp in the morning light.

The young woman falls amidst a burst of what looks like plum jelly.

The minnows flutter. The minnows flee.

But there are so many, and they are panicked. Like they have been poured on the ground to squirm and gasp in the dry.

I begin to fire. Shot after shot after shot.

Each snap of the rifle a stomp of my foot.

Down they go.

Squashed.

I have no hat, father-in-law, and I am full of manliness.

--

The day goes up hot.

Who would have thunk?

I have moved from one end of the tower to the other.

I have dropped many of them.

The cops have come.

I have dropped many of them.

I hear noise in the tower.

I think they have shook the dolly loose.

The door to the runway bursts open.

A lady cop steps through. My first shot takes her in the throat. But she snaps one off at about the same time. A revolver shot. It hits next to me where I crouch low against the runway wall.

Another cop comes through the door. I fire and miss.

My first miss.

He fires. I feel something hot inside my shoulder.

I find that I am slipping down, my back against the runway wall. I can't hold the rifle. I try to drag the pistol from my belt, but can't. My arm is dead. The other one, well, it's no good either. The shot has cut something apart inside of me. The strings to my limbs. My puppet won't work.

Another cop has appeared. He has a shotgun. He leans over me. His teeth are gritted and his eyes are wet.

And just as he fires, the shadows say:

Now, you are one of us.

SOLDIERIN'

They said if you went out West and joined up with the colored soldiers, they'd pay you in real Yankee dollars, thirteen of them a month, feed and clothe you, and it seemed like a right smart idea since I was wanted for a lynchin'. It wasn't that I was invited to hold the rope or sing a little spiritual. I was the guest of honor on this one. They was plannin' to stretch my neck like a goozle-wrung chicken at Sunday dinner.

Thing I'd done was nothin' on purpose, but in a moment of eyeballin' while walkin' along the road on my way to cut some firewood for a nickel and ajar of jam, a white girl who was hangin' out wash bent over and pressed some serious butt up against her gingham, and a white fella, her brother, seen me take a look, and that just crawled all up in his ass and died, and he couldn't stand the stink.

Next thing I know, I'm wanted for being bold with a white girl, like maybe I'd broke into her yard and jammed my arm up her ass, but I hadn't done nothin' but what's natural, which is glance at a nice butt when it was available to me.

Now, in the livin' of my life, I've killed men and animals and made love to three Chinese women on the same night in the same bed and one of them with only one leg, and part of it wood, and I even ate some of a dead fella once when I was crossin' the mountains, though I want to rush in here and make it clear I didn't know him all that well, and we damn sure wasn't kinfolks. Another thing I did was I won me a shootin' contest up Colorady way against some pretty damn famous shooters, all white boys, but them's different stories and not even akin to the one I want to tell, and I'd like to add, just like them other events, this time I'm talking about is as true as the sunset.

Pardon me. Now that I've gotten older, sometimes I find I start out to tell one story and end up tellin' another. But to get back to the one I was talkin' about...So, havin' been invited to a lynchin', I took my daddy's horse and big ole loaded six-gun he kept wrapped up in an oilcloth from under the floorboards of our shack, and took off like someone had set my ass on fire. I rode that poor old horse till he was slap worn out. I had to stop over in a little place just outside of Nacogdoches and steal another one, not on account of I was a thief, but on account of I didn't want to get caught by the posse and hung and maybe have my pecker cut off and stuck in my mouth. Oh. I also took a chicken. He's no longer with me, of course, as I ate him out there on the trail.

Anyway, I left my horse for the fella I took the fresh horse and the chicken from, and I left him a busted pocket watch on top of the railing post, and then I rode out to West Texas. It took a long time for me to get there, and I had to stop and steal food and drink from creeks and make sure the horse got fed with corn I stole. After a few days, I figured I'd lost them that was after me, and I changed my name as I rode along. It had been Wiliford P. Thomas, the P not standing for a thing other than P. I chose the name Nat Wiliford for myself, and practiced on saying it while I rode along. When I said it, I wanted it to come out of my mouth like it wasn't a lie.

Before I got to where I was goin', I run up against this colored fella taking a dump in the bushes, wiping his ass on leaves. If I had been a desperado, I could have shot him out from over his pile and taken his horse, 'cause he was deeply involved in the event--so much, in fact, that I could see his eyes were crossed from where I rode up on a hill, and that was some distance.

I was glad I was downwind, and hated to interrupt, so I sat on my stolen horse until he was leaf wiping, and then I called out. "Hello, the shitter."

He looked up and grinned at me, touched his rifle lying on the ground beside him, said, "You ain't plannin' on shootin' me, are you?"

"No. I thought about stealin' your horse, but it's sway back and so ugly in the face it hurts my feelings."

"Yeah, and it's blind in one eye and has a knot on its back comes right through the saddle. When I left the plantation, I took that horse. Wasn't much then, and it's a lot less now."

He stood up and fastened his pants and I seen then that he was a pretty big fellow, all decked out in fresh-looking overalls and a big black hat with a feather in it. He came walkin' up the hill toward me, his wipin' hand stuck out for a shake, but I politely passed, because I thought his fingers looked a little brown.

Anyway, we struck it up pretty good, and by nightfall we found a creek, and he washed his hands in the water with some soap from his saddlebag, which made me feel a mite better. We sat and had coffee and some of his biscuits. All I could offer was some conversation, and he had plenty to give back. His name was Cullen, but he kept referrin' to himself as The Former House Nigger, as if it were a rank akin to general. He told a long story about how he got the feather for his hat, but it mostly just came down to he snuck up on a hawk sittin' on a low limb and jerked it out of its tail.

"When my master went to war against them Yankees," he said, "I went with him. I fought with him and wore me a butternut coat and pants, and I shot me at least a half dozen of them Yankees."

"Are you leaking brains out of your gourd?" I said. "Them rebels was holdin' us down."

"I was a house nigger, and I grew up with Mr. Gerald, and I didn't mind going to war with him. Me and him was friends. There was lots of us like that."

"Y'all must have got dropped on your head when you was young'ns."

"The Master and the older Master was all right."

" 'Cept they owned you," I said.

"Maybe I was born to be owned. They always quoted somethin' like that out of the Bible."

"That ought to have been your clue, fella. My daddy always said that book has caused more misery than chains, an ill-tempered woman, and a nervous dog."

"I loved Young Master like a brother, truth be known. He got shot in the war, right 'tween the eyes by a musket ball, killed him deader than a goddamn tree stump. I sopped up his blood in a piece of his shirt I cut off, mailed it back home with a note on what happened. When the war was over, I stayed around the plantation for a while, but everything come apart then, the old man and the old lady died, and I buried them out back of the place a good distance from the privy and uphill, I might add. That just left me and the Old Gentleman's dog.

"The dog was as old as death and couldn't eat so good, so I shot it, and went on out into what Young Master called The Big Wide World. Then, like you, I heard the guv'ment was signing up coloreds for its man's army. I ain't no good on my own. I figured the army was for me."

"I don't like being told nothin' by nobody," I said, "but I surely love to get paid." I didn't mention I also didn't want to get killed by angry crackers and the army seemed like a good place to hide.

About three days later, we rode up on the place we was looking for. FortMcKavett, between the Colorady and the Pecos rivers. It was a sight, that fort. It was big and it didn't look like nothin' I'd ever seen before. Out front was colored fellas in army blue drilling on horseback, looking sharp in the sunlight, which there was plenty of. It was hot where I come from, sticky even, but you could find a tree to get under. Out here, all you could get under was your hat, or maybe some dark cloud sailing across the face of the sun, and that might last only as long as it takes a bird to fly over.

But there I was. FortMcKavett. Full of dreams and crotch itch from long riding, me and my new friend sat on our horses, lookin' the fort over, watchin' them horse soldiers drill, and it was prideful thing to see. We rode on down in that direction.

* * * *

In the Commanding Officer's quarters, me and The Former House Nigger stood before a big desk with a white man behind it, name of Colonel Hatch. He had a caterpillar mustache and big sweat circles like wet moons under his arms. His eyes were aimed on a fly sitting on some papers on his desk. Way he was watchin' it, you'd have thought he was beading down on a hostile. He said, "So you boys want to sign up for the colored army. I figured that, you both being colored."

He was a sharp one, this Hatch.

I said, "I've come to sign up and be a horse rider in the Ninth Cavalry."

Hatch studied me for a moment, said, "Well, we got plenty of ridin' niggers. What we need is walkin' niggers for the goddamn infantry, and I can get you set in the right direction to hitch up with them."

I figured anything that was referred to with goddamn in front of it wasn't the place for me.

"I reckon ain't a man here can ride better'n me," I said, "and that would be even you, Colonel, and I'm sure you are one ridin' sonofabitch, and I mean that in as fine a way as I can say it."

Hatch raised an eyebrow. "That so?"

"Yes, sir. No brag, just fact. I can ride on a horse's back, under his belly, make him lay down and make him jump, and at the end of the day, I take a likin' to him, I can diddle that horse in the ass and make him enjoy it enough to brew my coffee and bring my slippers, provided I had any. That last part about the diddlin' is just talkin', but the first part is serious."

"I figured as much," Hatch said.

"I ain't diddlin' no horses," The Former House Nigger said. "I can cook and lay out silverware. Mostly, as a Former House Nigger, I drove the buggy."

At that moment, Hatch come down on that fly with his hand, and he got him too. He peeled it off his palm and flicked it on the floor. There was this colored soldier standing nearby, very stiff and alert, and he bent over, picked the fly up by a bent wing, threw it out the door and came back. Hatch wiped his palm on his pants leg. "Well," he said, "let's see how much of what you got is fact, and how much is wind."

* * * *

They had a corral nearby, and inside it, seeming to fill it up, was a big black horse that looked like he ate men and shitted out saddlebags made of their skin and bones. He put his eye right on me when I came out to the corral, and when I walked around on the other side, he spun around to keep a gander on me. Oh, he knew what I was about, all right.

Hatch took hold of one corner of his mustache and played with it, turned and looked at me. "You ride that horse well as you say you can, I'll take both of you into the cavalry, and The Former House Nigger can be our cook."

"I said I could cook," The Former House Nigger said. "Didn't say I was any good."

"Well," Hatch said, "what we got now ain't even cookin'. There's just a couple fellas that boil water and put stuff in it. Mostly turnips."

I climbed up on the railing, and by this time, four colored cavalry men had caught up the horse for me. That old black beast had knocked them left and right, and it took them a full twenty minutes to get a bridle and a saddle on him, and when they come off the field, so to speak, two was limpin' like they had one foot in a ditch. One was holding his head where he had been kicked, and the other looked amazed he was alive. They had tied the mount next to the railin', and he was hoppin' up and down like a little girl with a jump rope, only a mite more vigorous.

"Go ahead and get on," Hatch said.

Having bragged myself into a hole, I had no choice.

* * * *

I wasn't lyin' when I said I was a horse rider. I was. I could buck them and make them go down on their bellies and roll on their sides, make them strut and do whatever, but this horse was as mean as homemade sin, and I could tell he had it in for me.

Soon as I was on him, he jerked his head and them reins snapped off the railing and I was clutchin' at what was left of it. The sky came down on my head as that horse leaped. Ain't no horse could leap like that, and soon me and him was trying to climb the clouds. I couldn't tell earth from heaven, 'cause we bucked all over that goddamn lot, and ever time that horse come down, it jarred my bones from butt to skull. I come out of the saddle a few times, nearly went off the back of him, but I hung in there, tight as a tick on a dog's nuts. Finally he jumped himself out and started to roll. He went down on one side, mashing my leg in the dirt, and rolled on over. Had that dirt in the corral not been tamped down and soft, giving with me, there wouldn't been nothing left of me but a sack of blood and broken bones.

Finally the horse humped a couple of sad bucks and gave out, started to trot and snort. I leaned over close to his ear and said, "You call that buckin'?" He seemed to take offense at that, and run me straight to the corral and hit the rails there with his chest. I went sailin' off his back and landed on top of some soldiers, scatterin' them like quail.

Hatch come over and looked down on me, said, "Well, you ain't smarter than the horse, but you can ride well enough. You and The Former House Nigger are in with the rest of the ridin' niggers. Trainin' starts in the morning."

* * * *

We drilled with the rest of the recruits up and down that lot, and finally outside and around the fort until we was looking pretty smart. The horse they give me was that black devil I had ridden. I named him Satan. He really wasn't as bad as I first thought. He was worse, and you had to be at your best every time you got on him, 'cause deep down in his bones, he was always thinking about killing you, and if you didn't watch it, he'd kind of act casual, like he was watching a cloud or somethin', and quickly turn his head and take a nip out of your leg, if he could bend far enough to get to it.

Anyway, the months passed, and we drilled, and my buddy cooked, and though what he cooked wasn't any good, it was better than nothin'. It was a good life as compared to being hung, and there was some real freedom to it and some respect. I wore my uniform proud, set my horse like I thought I was somethin' special with a stick up its ass.

We mostly did a little patrollin', and wasn't much to it except ridin' around lookin' for wild Indians we never did see, collectin' our thirteen dollars at the end of the month, which was just so much paper 'cause there wasn't no place to spend it. And then, one mornin', things changed, and wasn't none of it for the better, except The Former House Nigger managed to cook a pretty good breakfast with perfect fat biscuits and eggs with the yolks not broke and some bacon that wasn't burned and nobody got sick this time.

On that day, Hatch mostly rode around with us, 'cause at the bottom of it all, I reckon the government figured we was just a bunch of ignorant niggers who might at any moment have a watermelon relapse and take to gettin' drunk and shootin' each other and maybe trying to sing a spiritual while we diddled the horses, though I had sort of been responsible for spreadin' the last part of that rumor on my first day at the fort. We was all itchin' to show we had somethin' to us that didn't have nothin' to do with no white fella ridin' around in front of us, though I'll say right up front, Hatch was a good soldier who led and didn't follow, and he was polite too. I had seen him leave the circle of the fire to walk off in the dark to fart. You can't say that about just anyone. Manners out on the frontier was rare.

* * * *

You'll hear from the army how we was all a crack team, but this wasn't so, at least not when they was first sayin' it. Most of the army at any time, bein' they the ridin' kind or the walkin' kind, ain't all that crack. Some of them fellas didn't know a horse's ass end from the front end, and this was pretty certain when you seen how they mounted, swinging into the stirrups, finding themselves looking at the horse's tail instead of his ears. But in time everyone got better, though I'd like to toss in, without too much immodesty, that I was the best rider of the whole damn lot. Since he'd had a good bit of experience, The Former House Nigger was the second. Hell, he'd done been in war and all, so in ways, he had more experience than any of us, and he cut a fine figure on a horse, being tall and always alert, like he might have to bring somebody a plate of something or hold a coat.

Only action we'd seen was when one of the men, named Rutherford, got into it with Prickly Pear--I didn't name him, that come from his mother--and they fought over a biscuit. While they was fightin', Colonel Hatch come over and ate it, so it was a wasted bout.

But this time I'm tellin' you about, we rode out lookin' for Indians to scare, and not seein' any, we quit lookin' for what we couldn't find, and come to a little place down by a creek where it was wooded and there was a shade from a whole bunch of trees that in that part of the country was thought of as being big, and in my part of the country would have been considered scrubby. I was glad when we stopped to water the horses and take a little time to just wait. Colonel Hatch, I think truth be told, was glad to get out of that sun much as the rest of us. I don't know how he felt, being a white man and having to command a bunch of colored, but he didn't seem bothered by it a'tall, and seemed proud of us and himself, which, of course, made us all feel mighty good.

So we waited out there on the creek, and Hatch, he come over to where me and The Former House Nigger were sitting by the water, and we jumped to attention, and he said, "There's a patch of scrub oaks off the creek, scattering out there across the grass, and they ain't growin' worth a damn. Them's gonna be your concern. I'm gonna take the rest of the troop out across the ground there, see if we can pick up some deer trails. I figure ain't no one gonna mind if we pot a few and bring them back to camp. And besides, I'm bored. But we could use some firewood, and I was wantin' you fellas to get them scrubs cut down and sawed up and ready to take back to the fort. Stack them in here amongst the trees, and I'll send out some men with a wagon when we get back, and have that wood hauled back before it's good and dark. I thought we could use some oak to smoke the meat I'm plannin' on gettin'. That's why I'm the goddamn colonel. Always thinkin'."

"What if you don't get no meat?" one of the men with us said.

"Then you did some work for nothin', and I went huntin' for nothin'. But, hell, I seen them deer with my binoculars no less than five minutes ago. Big fat deer, about a half dozen of them running along. They went over the hill. I'm gonna take the rest of the troops with me in case I run into hostiles, and because I don't like to do no skinnin' of dead deer myself."

"I like to hunt," I said.

"That's some disappointin' shit for you," Colonel Hatch said. "I need you here. In fact, I put you in charge. You get bit by a snake and die, then, you, The Former House Nigger, take over. I'm also gonna put Rutherford, Bill, and Rice in your charge...some others. I'll take the rest of them. You get that wood cut up, you start on back to the fort and we'll send out a wagon."

"What about Indians?" Rutherford, who was nearby, said.

"You seen any Indians since you been here?" Hatch said.

"No, sir."

"Then there ain't no Indians."

"You ever see any?" Rutherford asked Hatch.

"Oh, hell yeah. Been attacked by them, and I've attacked them. There's every kind of Indian you can imagine out here from time to time. Kiowa. Apache. Comanche. And there ain't nothin' they'd like better than to have your prickly black scalps on their belts, 'cause they find your hair funny. They think it's like the buffalo. They call you buffalo soldiers on account of it."

"I thought it was because they thought we was brave like the buffalo," I said.

"That figures," Hatch said. "You ain't seen no action for nobody to have no opinion of you. But, we ain't seen an Indian in ages, and ain't seen no sign of them today. I'm startin' to think they've done run out of this area. But, I've thought that before. And Indian, especially a Comanche or an Apache, they're hard to get a handle on. They'll get after somethin' or someone like it matters more than anything in the world, and then they'll wander off if a bird flies over and they make an omen of it."

Leaving us with them mixed thoughts on Indians and buffalo, Hatch and the rest of the men rode off, left us standing in the shade, which wasn't no bad place to be. First thing we did when they was out of sight was throw off our boots and get in the water. I finally just took all my clothes off and cleaned up pretty good with a bar of lye soap and got dressed. Then leaving the horses tied up in the trees near the creek, we took the mule and the equipment strapped on his back, carried our rifles, and went out to where them scrubs was. On the way, we cut down a couple of saplings and trimmed some limbs, and made us a kind of pull that we could fasten on to the mule. We figured we'd fill it up with wood and get the mule to drag it back to the creek, pile it and have it ready for the wagon.

Rigged up, we went to work, taking turns with the saw, two other men working hacking off limbs, one man axing the trimmed wood up so it fit good enough to load. We talked while we worked, and Rutherford said, "Them Indians, some of them is as mean as snakes. They do all kind of things to folks. Cut their eyelids off, cook them over fires, cut off their nut sacks and such. They're just awful."

"Sounds like some Southerners I know," I said.

"My master and his family was darn good to me," The Former House Nigger said.

"They might have been good to you," Rice said, pausing at the saw, "but that still don't make you no horse, no piece of property. You a man been treated like a horse, and you too dumb to know it."

The Former House Nigger bowed up like he was about to fight. I said, "Now, don't do it. He's just talkin'. I'm in charge here, and you two get into it, I'll get it from Hatch, and I don't want that, and won't have it."

Rice tilted his hat back. His face looked dark as coffee. "I'm gonna tell you true. When I was sixteen, I cut my master's throat and raped his wife and run off to the North."

"My God," The Former House Nigger said. "That's awful."

"And I made the dog suck my dick," Rice said.

"What?" The Former House Nigger said.

"He's funnin' you," I said.

"That part about the master's throat," Rice said, "and runnin' off to the North. I really did that. I would have raped his wife, but there wasn't any time. His dog didn't excite me none."

"You are disgustin'," The Former House Nigger said, pausing from his job of trimming limbs with a hatchet.

"Agreed," I said.

Rice chuckled, and went back to sawin' with Rutherford. He had his shirt off, and the muscles in his back bunched up like prairie dogs tunnelin', and over them mounds was long, thick scars. I knew them scars. I had a few. They had been made with a whip.

Bill, who was stackin' wood, said, "Them Indians. Ain't no use hatin' them. Hatin' them for bein' what they is, is like hatin' a bush 'cause it's got thorns on it. Hatin' a snake 'cause it'll bite you. They is what they is just like we is what we is."

"And what is we?" The Former House Nigger said.

"Ain't none of us human beings no 'count. The world is just one big mess of no 'counts, so there ain't no use pickin' one brand of man or woman over the other. Ain't none of them worth a whistlin fart."

"Ain't had it so good, have you, Bill?" I asked.

"I was a slave."

"We all was," I said.

"Yeah, but I didn't take it so good. Better'n Rutherford, but not so good. I was in the northern army, right there at the end when they started lettin' colored in, and I killed and seen men killed. Ain't none of my life experience give me much of a glow about folks of any kind. I even killed buffalo just for the tongues rich folks wanted to have. We left hides and meat in the fields to rot. That was to punish the Indians. Damned ole buffalo. Ain't nothin' dumber, and I shot them for dollars and their tongues. What kind of human beings does that?"

* * * *

We worked for about another hour, and then, Dog Den---again, I didn't name him--one of the other men Hatch left with us, said, "I think we got a problem."

On the other side of the creek, there was a split in the trees, and you could see through them out into the plains, and you could see the hill Hatch had gone over some hours ago, and comin' down it at a run was a white man. He was a good distance away, but it didn't take no eagle eye to see that he was naked as a skinned rabbit, and runnin' full out, and behind him, whoopin' and having a good time, were Indians. Apache, to be right on the money, nearly as naked as the runnin' man. Four of them was on horseback, and there was six of them I could see on foot runnin' after him. My guess was they had done been at him and had set him loose to chase him like a deer for fun. I guess livin' out on the plains like they did, with nothin' but mesquite berries and what food they could kill, you had to have your fun where you could find it.

"They're funnin' him," Rutherford said, figurin' same as me.

We stood there lookin' for a moment; then I remembered we was soldiers. I got my rifle and was about to bead down, when Rutherford said, "Hell, you can't hit them from here, and neither can they shoot you. We're out of range, and Indians ain't no shots to count for."

One of the runnin' Apaches had spotted us, and he dropped to one knee and pointed his rifle at us, and when he did, Rutherford spread his arms wide, and said, "Go on, shoot, you heathen."

The Apache fired.

Rutherford was wrong. He got it right on the top of the nose and fell over with his arms still spread. When he hit the ground, The Former House Nigger said, "I reckon they been practicin'."

* * * *

We was up on a hill, so we left the mule and run down to the creek where the horses was, and waded across the little water and laid out between the trees and took aim. We opened up and it sounded like a bunch of mule skinners crackin their whips. The air filled with smoke and there was some shots fired back at us. I looked up and seen the runnin' man was makin' right smart time, his hair and johnson flappin' as he run. But then one of the horseback Apaches rode up on him, and with this heavy knotted-looking stick he was carrying, swung and clipped the white fella along the top of the head. I seen blood jump up and the man go down and I could hear the sound of the blow so well, I winced. The Apache let out a whoop and rode on past, right toward us. He stopped to beat his chest with his free hand, and when he did, I took a shot at him. I aimed for his chest, but I hit the horse square in the head and brought him down. At least I had the heathen on foot.

Now, you can say what you want about an Apache, but he is about the bravest thing there is short of a badger. This'n come runnin' right at us, all of us firin' away, and I figure he thought he had him some big magic, 'cause not a one of our shots hit him. It was like he come haint-like right through a wall of bullets. As he got closer, I could see he had some kind of mud paint on his chest and face, and he was whoopin' and carryin' on somethin' horrible. And then he stepped in a hole and went down. Though he was still a goodly distance from us, I could hear his ankle snap like a yanked suspender. Without meaning to, we all went, "Oooooh." It hurt us, it was so nasty soundin'.

That fall must have caused his magic to fly out of his ass, 'cause we all started firing at him, and this time he collected all our bullets, and was deader than a guv'ment promise before the smoke cleared.

This gave the rest of them Apache pause, and I'm sure, brave warriors or not, a few assholes puckered out there.

Them ridin' Apaches stopped their horses and rode back until they was up on the hill, and the runnin' Indians dropped to the ground and lay there. We popped off a few more shots, but didn't hit nothin', and then I remembered I was in charge. I said, "Hold your fire. Don't waste your bullets."

The Former House Nigger crawled over by me, said, "We showed them."

"They ain't showed yet," I said. "Them's Apache warriors. They ain't known as slackers."

"Maybe Colonel Hatch heard all the shootin'," he said.

"They've had time to get a good distance away. They figured on us cut-tin' the wood and leavin' it and goin' back to the fort. So maybe they ain't missin' us yet and didn't hear a thing."

"Dang it," The Former House Nigger said.

* * * *

I thought we might just mount up and try to ride off. We had more horses than they did, but three of them ridin' after us could still turn out bad. We had a pretty good place as we was, amongst the trees with water to drink. I decided best thing we could do was hold our position. Then that white man who had been clubbed in the head started moaning. That wasn't enough, a couple of the braves come up out of the grass and ran at his spot. We fired at them, but them Spencer single shots didn't reload as fast as them Indians could run. They come down in the tall grass where the white man had gone down, and we seen one of his legs jump up like a snake, and go back down, and the next moment came the screaming.

It went on and on. Rice crawled over to me and said, "I can't stand it. I'm gonna go out there and get him."

"No, you're not," I said. "I'll do it."

"Why you?" Rice said.

"'Cause I'm in charge."

"I'm goin' with you," The Former House Nigger said.

"Naw, you ain't," I said. "I get rubbed out, you're the one in charge. That's what Colonel Hatch said. I get out there a ways, you open up on them other Apache, keep 'em busier than a bear with a hive of bees."

"Hell, we can't even see them, and the riders done gone on the other side of the hill."

"Shoot where you think they ought to be, just don't send a blue whistler up my ass."

I laid my rifle on the ground, made sure my pistol was loaded, put it back in the holster, pulled my knife, stuck it in my teeth, and crawled to my left along the side of that creek till I come to tall grass, then I worked my way in. I tried to go slow as to make the grass seem to be moved by the wind, which had picked up considerable and was helpin' my sneaky approach.

As I got closer to where the white man had gone down and the Apaches had gone after him, his yells grew somethin' terrible. I was maybe two or three feet from him. I parted the grass to take a look, seen he was lying on his side, and his throat was cut, and he was dead as he was gonna get.

Just a little beyond him, the two Apache was lying in the grass, and one of them was yellin' like he was the white man bein' tortured, and I thought, Well, if that don't beat all. I was right impressed.

Then the Apache saw me. They jumped up and come for me. I rose up quick, pulling the knife from my teeth. One of them hit me like a cannon ball, and away we went rollin'.

A shot popped off and the other Apache did a kind of dance, about four steps, and went down holdin' his throat. Blood was flying out of him like it was a fresh-tapped spring. Me and the other buck rolled in the grass and he tried to shoot me with a pistol he was totin', but only managed to singe my hair and give me a headache and make my left ear ring.

We rolled around like a couple of doodle bugs, and then I came up on top and stabbed at him. He caught my hand. I was holding his gun hand to the ground with my left, and he had hold of my knife hand.

"Jackass," I said, like this might so wound him to the quick, he'd let go. He didn't. We rolled over in the grass some more, and he got the pistol loose and put it to my head, but the cap and ball misfired, and all I got was burned some. I really called him names then. I jerked my legs up and wrapped them around his neck, yanked him down on his back, got on top of him and stabbed him in the groin and the belly, and still he wasn't finished.

I put the knife in his throat, and he gave me a look of disappointment, like he's just realized he'd left somethin' cookin' on the fire and ought to go get it; then he fell back.

I crawled over, rolled the white man on his back. They had cut his balls off and cut his stomach open and sliced his throat. He wasn't gonna come around.

* * * *

I made it back to the creek bank and was shot at only a few times by the Apache. My return trip was a mite brisker than the earlier one. I only got a little bit of burn from a bullet that grazed the butt of my trousers.

When I was back at the creek bank, I said, "Who made that shot on the Apache?"

"That would be me," The Former House Nigger said.

"Listen here, I don't want you callin' yourself The Former House Nigger no more. I don't want no one else callin' you that. You're a buffalo soldier, and a good'n. Rest of you men hear that?"

The men was strung out along the creek, but they heard me, and grunted at me.

"This here is Cullen. He ain't nothing but Cullen or Private Cullen, or whatever his last name is. That's what we call him. You hear that, Cullen? You're a soldier, and a top soldier at that."

"That's good," Cullen said, not so moved about the event as I was. "But, thing worryin' me is the sun is goin' down."

"There's another thing," Bill said, crawlin' over close to us. "There's smoke over that hill. My guess is it ain't no cookout."

I figured the source of that smoke would be where our white fella had come from, and it would be what was left of whoever he was with or the remains of a wagon or some such. The horse-ridin' Apache had gone back there either to finish them off and torture them with fire or to burn a wagon down. The Apache was regular little fire starters, and since they hadn't been able to get to all of us, they was takin their misery out on what was within reach.

As that sun went down, I began to fret. I moved along the short line of our men and decided not to space them too much, but not bunch them up either. I put us about six feet apart and put a few at the rear as lookouts. Considerin' there weren't many of us, it was a short line, and them two in the back was an even shorter line. Hell, they wasn't no line at all. They was a couple of dots.

The night crawled on. A big frog began to bleat near me. Crickets was sawin' away. Upstairs, the black-as-sin heavens was lit up with stars and the half moon was way too bright.

Couple hours crawled on, and I went over to Cullen and told him to watch tight, 'cause I was goin' down the line and check the rear, make sure no one was sleepin' or pullin' their johnsons. I left my rifle and unsnapped my revolver holster flap, and went to check.

Bill was fine, but when I come to Rice, he was facedown in the dirt. I grabbed him by the back of his collar and hoisted him up, and his head fell near off. His throat had been cut. I wheeled , snappin' my revolver into my hand. Wasn't nothin' there.

A horrible feelin' come over me. I went down the row. All them boys was dead. The Apache had been pickin' em off one at a time, and doin' it so careful like, the horses hadn't even noticed.

I went to the rear and found that the two back there was fine. I said, "You fellas best come with me."

We moved swiftly back to Cullen and Rice, and we hadn't no more than gone a few paces, when a burst of fire cut the night. I saw an Apache shape grasp at his chest and fall back. Runnin' over, we found Cullen holding his revolver, and Bill was up waving his rifle around. "Where are they? Where the hell are they?"

"They're all around. They've done killed the rest of the men." I said.

"Ghosts," Bill said. "They're ghosts."

"What they are is sneaky," I said. "It's what them fellas do for a livin'."

By now, I had what you might call some real goddamn misgivin's, figured I had reckoned right on things. I thought we'd have been safer here, but them Apache had plumb snuck up on us, wiped out three men without so much as leavin' a fart in the air. I said, "I think we better get on our horses and make a run for it."

But when we went over to get the horses, Satan, soon as I untied him, bolted and took off through the wood and disappeared. "Now, that's the shits," I said.

"We'll ride double," Cullen said.

The boys was gettin' their horses loose, and there was a whoop, and an Apache leap-frogged over the back of one of them horses and came down on his feet with one of our own hatchets in his hand. He stuck the blade of it deep in the head of a trooper, a fella whose name I don't remember, being now in my advanced years, and not really havin' known the fella that good in the first place. There was a scramble, like startled quail. There wasn't no military drill about it. It was every sonofabitch for himself. Me and Cullen and Bill tore up the hill, 'cause that was the way we was facin'. We was out of the wooded area now, and the half moon was bright, and when I looked back, I could see an Apache coming up after us with a knife in his teeth. He was climbin' that hill so fast, he was damn near runnin' on all fours.

I dropped to one knee and aimed and made a good shot that sent him tumbling back down the rise. Horrible thing was, we could hear the other men in the woods down there gettin' hacked and shot to pieces, screamin' and a pleadin', but we knew wasn't no use in tryin' to go back down there. We was outsmarted and outmanned and outfought.

Thing worked in our favor, was the poor old mule was still there wearing that makeshift harness and carry-along we had put him in, with the wood stacked on it. He had wandered a bit, but hadn't left the area.

Bill cut the log rig loose, and cut the packing off the mule's back; then he swung up on the beast and pulled Cullen up behind him, which showed a certain lack of respect for my leadership, which, frankly, was somethin' I could agree with.

I took hold of the mule's tail, and off we went, them ridin', and me runnin' behind holdin' to my rifle with one hand, holdin' on to the mule's tail with the other, hopin' he didn't fart or shit or pause to kick. This was an old Indian trick, one we had learned in the cavalry. You can also run alongside, you got somethin' to hang on to. Now, if the horse, or mule, decided to run full out, well, you was gonna end up with a mouth full of sod, but a rider and a horse and a fella hangin', sort of lettin' himself be pulled along at a solid speed, doin' big strides, can make surprisin' time and manage not to wear too bad if his legs are strong.

When I finally chanced a look over my shoulder, I seen the Apache were comin', and not in any Sunday picnic stroll sort of way either. They was all on horseback. They had our horses to go with theirs. Except Satan. That bastard hadn't let me ride, but he hadn't let no one else ride either, so I gained a kind of respect for him.

A shot cut through the night air, and didn't nothin' happen right off, but then Bill eased off the mule like a candle meltin'. The shot had gone over Cullen's shoulder and hit Bill in the back of the head. We didn't stop to check his wounds. Cullen slid forward, takin' the reins, slowed the mule a bit and stuck out his hand. I took it, and he helped me swing up behind him. There's folks don't know a mule can run right swift, it takes a mind to, but it can. They got a gait that shakes your guts, but they're pretty good runners. And they got wind and they're about three times smarter than a horse.

What they don't got is spare legs for when they step in a chuck hole, and that's what happened. It was quite a fall, and I had an idea then how that Apache had felt when his horse had gone out from under him. The fall chunked me and Cullen way off and out into the dirt, and it damn sure didn't do the mule any good.

* * * *

On the ground, the poor old mule kept tryin' to get up, but couldn't. He had fallen so that his back was to the Apache, and we was tossed out in the dirt, squirmin'. We crawled around so we was between his legs, and I shot him in the head with my pistol and we made a fort of him. On came them Apache. I took my rifle and laid it over the mule's side and took me a careful bead, and down went one of them. I fired again, and another hit the dirt. Cullen scuttled out from behind the mule and got hold of his rifle where it had fallen, and crawled back. He fired off a couple of shots, but wasn't as lucky as me. The Apache backed off, and at a distance they squatted down beside their horses and took pot shots at us.

The mule was still warm and he stunk. Bullets were splatterin' into his body. None of them was comin' through, but they was lettin' out a lot of gas. Way I had it figured, them Indians would eventually surround us and we'd end up with our hair hangin' on their wickiups by mornin'. Thinkin' on this, I made an offer to shoot Cullen if it looked like we was gonna be overrun.

"Well, I'd rather shoot you then shoot myself," he said.

"I guess that's a deal, then," I said.

It was a bright night and they could see us good, but we could see them good too. The land was flat there, and there wasn't a whole lot of creepin' up they could do without us noticin, but they could still outflank us because they outnumbered us. There was more Apache now than we had seen in the daytime. They had reinforcements. It was like a gatherin' of ants.

The Apache had run their horses all out, and now they was no water for them, so they cut the horse's throats and lit a fire. After a while we could smell horse meat sizzlin'. The horses had been killed so that they made a ring of flesh they could hide behind, and the soft insides was a nice late supper.

"They ain't got no respect for guv'ment property," Cullen said.

I got out my knife and cut the mule's throat, and he was still fresh enough blood flowed, and we put our mouths on the cut and sucked out all we could. It tasted better than I would have figured, and it made us feel a mite better too, but with there just bein' the two of us, we didn't bother to start a fire and cook our fort.

We could hear them over there laughin' and a cuttin' up, and I figure they had them some mescal, 'cause after a bit, they was actually singin' a white man song, "Row, row, row you boat," and we had to listen to that for a couple of hours.

"Goddamn missionaries," I said.

After a bit, one of them climbed over a dead horse and took his breech-cloth down and turned his ass to us and it winked dead-white in the moonlight, white as any Irishman's ass. I got my rifle on him, but for some reason I couldn't let the hammer down. It just didn't seem right to shoot some drunk showin' me his ass. He turned around and peed, kind of pushin' his loins out, like he was doin' a squaw, and laughed, and that was enough. I shot that sonofabitch. I was aimin' for his pecker, but I think I got him in the belly. He fell over and a couple of Apache come out to get him. Cullen shot one of them, and the one was left jumped over the dead horses and disappeared behind them.

"Bad enough they're gonna kill us," Cullen said, "but they got to act nasty too."

We laid there for a while. Cullen said, "Maybe we ought to pray for deliverance."

"Pray in one hand, shit in the other, and see which one fills up first."

"I guess I won't pray," he said. "Or shit. Least not at the moment. You remember, that's how we met. I was--"

"I remember," I said.

* * * *

Well, we was waitin' for them to surround us, but like Colonel Hatch said, you can never figure an Apache. We laid there all night, and nothin' happen. I'm ashamed to say, I nodded off, and when I awoke it was good and daylight and hadn't nobody cut our throats or taken our hair.

Cullen was sittin' with his legs crossed, lookin' in the direction of the Apache. I said, "Damn, Cullen. I'm sorry. I fell out."

"I let you. They're done gone."

I sat up and looked. There was the horses, buzzards lightin' on them, and there were a few of them big ole birds on the ground eyeballin' our mule, and us. I shooed them, said, "I'll be damn. They just packed up like a circus and left."

"Yep. Ain't no rhyme to it. They had us where they wanted us. Guess they figured they'd lost enough men over a couple of buffalo soldiers, or maybe they saw a bird like Colonel Hatch was talkin' about, and he told them to take themselves home."

"What I figure is they just too drunk to carry on, and woke up with hangovers and went somewhere cool and shaded to sleep it off."

"Reckon so," Cullen said. Then: "Hey, you mean what you said about me bein' a top soldier and all?"

"You know it."

"You ain't a colonel or nothin', but I appreciate it. Course, I don't feel all that top right now."

"We done all we could do. It was Hatch screwed the duck. He ought not have separated us from the troop like that."

"Don't reckon he'll see it that way," Cullen said.

"I figure not," I said.

* * * *

We cut off chunks of meat from the mule and made a little fire and filled our bellies, then we started walkin'. It was blazin' hot, and still we walked. When nightfall come, I got nervous, thinkin' them Apache might be comin' back, and that in the long run they had just been fiinnin' us. But they didn't show, and we took turns sleepin' on the hard plains.

Next mornin it was hot, and we started walkin'. My back hurt and my ass was draggin and my feet felt like someone had cut them off. I wished we had brought some of that mule meat with us. I was so hungry, I could see corn-bread walkin' on the ground. Just when I was startin' to imagine pools of water and troops of soldiers dancin' with each other, I seen somethin' that was a little more substantial.

Satan.

I said to Cullen, "Do you see a big black horse?"

"You mean, Satan?"

"Yep."

"I see him."

"Did you see some dancin' soldiers?"

"Nope."

"Do you still see the horse?"

"Yep, and he looks strong and rested. I figure he found a water hole and some grass, the sonofabitch."

Satan was trottin' along, not lookin' any worse for wear. He stopped when he seen us, and I tried to whistle to him, but my mouth was so dry, I might as well have been trying to whistle him up with my asshole.

I put my rifle down and started walkin' toward him, holdin' out my hand like I had a treat. I don't think he fell for that, but he dropped his head and let me walk up on him. He wasn't saddled, as we had taken all that off when we went to cut wood, but he still had his bridle and reins. I took hold of the bridle. I swung onto his back, and then he bucked. I went up and landed hard on the ground. My head was spinnin', and the next thing I know, that evil bastard was nuzzlin' me with his nose.

I got up and took the reins and led him over to where Cullen was leanin' on his rifle. "Down deep," he said, "I think he likes you."

* * * *

We rode Satan double back to the fort, and when we got there, a cheer went up. Colonel Hatch come out and shook our hands and even hugged us. "We found what was left of you boys this mornin', and it wasn't a pretty picture. They're all missin' eyes and balls sacks and such. We figured you two had gone under with the rest of them. Was staked out on the plains somewhere with ants in your eyes. We got vengeful and started trailin' them Apache, and damn if we didn't meet them comin' back toward us, and there was a runnin' fight took us in the direction of the Pecos. We killed one, but the rest of them got away. We just come ridin' in a few minutes ahead of you."

"You'd have come straight on," Cullen said, "you'd have seen us. And we killed a lot more than one."

"That's good," Hatch said, "and we want to hear your story and Nate's soon as you get somethin' to eat and drink. We might even let you have a swallow of whiskey. Course, Former House Nigger here will have to do the cookin', ain't none of us any good."

"That there's fine," I said, "but, my compadre here, he ain't The Former House Nigger. He's Private Cullen."

Colonel Hatch eyeballed me. "You don't say?"

"Yes sir, I do, even if it hair lips the United States Army."

"Hell," Hatch said. "That alone is reason to say it."

* * * *

There ain't much to tell now. We said how things was, and they did some investigatin', and damn if we wasn't put in for medals. We didn't never get them, 'cause they was slow about given coloreds awards, and frankly, I didn't think we deserved them, not with us breakin' and runnin' the way we did, like a bunch of little girls tryin' to get in out of the rain, leavin them men behind. But we didn't stress that part when we was tellin' our story. It would have fouled it some, and I don't think we had much choice other than what we did. We was as brave as men could be without gettin' ourselves foolishly killed.

Still, we was put in for medals, and that was somethin'. In time, Cullen made the rank of Top Soldier. It wasn't just me tellin' him no more. It come true. He become a sergeant, and would have made a good one too, but he got roarin' drunk and set fire to a dead pig and got his stripes taken and spent some time in the stockade. But that's another story.

I liked the cavalry right smart myself, and stayed on there until my time run out and I was supposed to sign up again, and would have too, had it not been for them Chinese women I told you about at the first. But again, that ain't this story. This is the one happened to me in the year of 1870, out there on them hot West Texas plains. I will add a side note. The army let me keep Satan when I was mustered out, and I grew to like him, and he was the best horse I ever had, and me and him became friends of a sort, until 1872, when I had to shoot him and feed him to a dog and a woman I liked better.

THE STARS ARE FALLING

Before Deel Arrowsmith came back from the dead, he was crossing a field by late moonlight in search of his home. His surroundings were familiar, but at the same time different. It was as if he had left as a child and returned as an adult to examine old property only to find the tree swing gone, the apple tree cut down, the grass grown high, and an outhouse erected over the mound where his best dog was buried.

As he crossed, the dropping moon turned thin, like cheap candy licked too long, and the sun bled through the trees. There were spots of frost on the drooping green grass and on the taller weeds, yellow as ripe corn. In his mind's eye he saw not the East Texas field before him or the dark rows of oaks and pines beyond it, or even the clay path that twisted across the field toward the trees like a ribbon of blood.

He saw a field in France where there was a long, deep trench, and in the trench were bloodied bodies, some of them missing limbs and with bits of brains scattered about like spilled oatmeal. The air filled with the stinging stench of rotting meat and wafting gun smoke, the residue of poison gas, and the buzz of flies. The back of his throat tasted of burning copper. His stomach was a knot. The trees were like the shadowy shades of soldiers charging toward him, and for a moment, he thought to meet their charge, even though he no longer carried a gun.

He closed his eyes, breathed deeply, shook his head. When he opened them the stench had passed and his nostrils filled with the nip of early morning. The last of the moon faded like a melting snowflake. Puffy white clouds sailed along the heavens and light tripped across the tops of the trees, fell between them, made shadows run low along the trunks and across the ground. The sky turned light blue and the frost dried off the drooping grass and it sprang to attention. Birds began to sing. Grasshoppers began to jump.

He continued down the path that crossed the field and split the trees. As he went, he tried to remember exactly where his house was and how it looked and how it smelled, and most important, how he felt when he was inside it. He tried to remember his wife and how she looked and how he felt when he was inside her, and all he could find in the back of his mind was a cipher of a woman younger than he was in a long, colorless dress in a house with three rooms. He couldn't even remember her nakedness, the shape of her breasts and the length of her legs. It was as if they had met only once, and in passing.

When he came through the trees and out on the other side, the field was there as it should be, and it was full of bright blue and yellow flowers. Once it had been filled with tall corn and green bursts of beans and peas. It hadn't been plowed now in years, most likely since he left. He followed the trail and trudged toward his house. It stood where he had left it. It had not improved with age. The chimney was black at the top and the unpainted lumber was stripping like shedding snakeskin. He had cut the trees and split them and made the lumber for the house, and like everything else he had seen since he had returned, it was smaller than he remembered. Behind it was the smokehouse he had made of logs, and far out to the left was the outhouse he had built. He had read many a magazine there while having his morning constitutional.

Out front, near the well, which had been built up with stones and now had a roof over it supported on four stout poles, was a young boy. He knew immediately it was his son. The boy was probably eight. He had been four years old when Deel had left to fight in the Great War, sailed across the vast dark ocean. The boy had a bucket in his hand, held by the handle. He set it down and raced toward the house, yelling something Deel couldn't define.

A moment later she came out of the house and his memory filled up. He kept walking, and the closer he came to her, standing framed in the doorway, the tighter his heart felt. She was blond and tall and lean and dressed in a light-colored dress on which were printed flowers much duller than those in the field. But her face was brighter than the sun, and he knew now how she looked naked and in bed, and all that had been lost came back to him, and he knew he was home again.

When he was ten feet away the boy, frightened, grabbed his mother and held her, and she said, "Deel, is that you?"

He stopped and stood, and said nothing. He just looked at her, drinking her in like a cool beer. Finally he said, "Worn and tired, but me."

"I thought..."

"I didn't write cause I can't."

"I know...but..."

"I'm back, Mary Lou."

* * * *

They sat stiffly at the kitchen table. Deel had a plate in front of him and he had eaten the beans that had been on it. The front door was open and they could see out and past the well and into the flower-covered field. The window across the way was open too, and there was a light breeze ruffling the edges of the pulled-back curtains framing it. Deel had the sensation he'd had before when crossing the field and passing through the trees, and when he had first seen the outside of the house. And now, inside, the roof felt too low and the room was too small and the walls were too close. It was all too small.

But there was Mary Lou. She sat across the table from him. Her face was clean of lines and her shoulders were as narrow as the boy's. Her eyes were bright, like the blue flowers in the field.

The boy, Winston, was to his left, but he had pulled his chair close to his mother. The boy studied him carefully, and in turn, Deel studied the boy. Deel could see Mary Lou in him, and nothing of himself.

"Have I changed that much?" Deel said, in response to the way they were looking at him. Both of them had their hands in their laps, as if he might leap across the table at any moment and bite them.

"You're very thin," Mary Lou said.

"I was too heavy when I left. I'm too skinny now. Soon I hope to be just right." He tried to smile, but the smile dripped off. He took a deep breath. "So, how you been?"

"Been?"

"Yeah. You know. How you been?"

"Oh. Fine," she said. "Good. I been good."

"The boy?"

"He's fine."

"Does he talk?"

"Sure he talks. Say hello to your daddy, Winston."

The boy didn't speak.

"Say hello," his mother said.

The boy didn't respond.

"That's all right," Deel said. "It's been a while. He doesn't remember me. It's only natural."

"You joined up through Canada?"

"Like I said I would."

"I couldn't be sure," she said.

"I know. I got in with the Americans, a year or so back. It didn't matter who I was with. It was bad."

"I see," she said, but Deel could tell she didn't see at all. And he didn't blame her. He had been caught up in the enthusiasm of war and adventure, gone up to Canada and got in on it, left his family in the lurch, thinking life was passing him by and he was missing out. Life had been right here and he hadn't even recognized it.

Mary Lou stood up and shuffled around the table and heaped fresh beans onto his plate and went to the oven and brought back cornbread and put it next to the beans. He watched her every move. Her hair was a little sweaty on her forehead and it clung there, like wet hay.

"How old are you now?" he asked her.

"How old?" she said, returning to her spot at the table. "Deel, you know how old I am. I'm twenty eight, older than when you left."

"I'm ashamed to say it, but I've forgotten your birthday. I've forgotten his. I don't hardly know how old I am."

She told him the dates of their births.

"I'll be," he said. "I don't remember any of that."

"I...I thought you were dead."

She had said it several times since he had come home. He said, "I'm still not dead, Mary Lou. I'm in the flesh."

"You are. You certainly are."

She didn't eat what was on her plate. She just sat there looking at it, as if it might transform.

Deel said, "Who fixed the well, built the roof over it?"

"Tom Smites," she said.

"Tom? He's a kid."

"Not anymore," she said. "He was eighteen when you left. He wasn't any kid then, not really."

"I reckon not," Deel said.

* * * *

After dinner, she gave him his pipe the way she used to, and he found a cane rocker that he didn't remember being there before, took it outside and sat and looked toward the trees and smoked his pipe and rocked.

He was thinking of then and he was thinking of now and he was thinking of later, when it would be but he hadn't been with her for years, and now he was home, and he wanted it to be like before, but he didn't really remember how it was before. He knew how to do what he wanted to do, but he didn't know how to make it love. He feared she would feel that he was like a mangy cat that had come in through the window to lie there and expected petting.

He sat and smoked and thought and rocked.

The boy came out of the house and stood to the side and watched him.

The boy had the gold hair of his mother and he was built sturdy for a boy so young. He had a bit of a birthmark in front of his right ear, on the jawline, like a little strawberry. Deel didn't remember that.

The boy had been a baby, of course, but he didn't remember that at all. Then again, he couldn't remember a lot of things, except for the things he didn't want to remember. Those things he remembered. And Mary Lou's skin. That he remembered. How soft it was to the touch, like butter.

"Do you remember me, boy?" Deel asked.

"No."

"Not at all?"

"No."

"'Course not. You were very young. Has your mother told you about me?"

"Not really."

"Nothing."

"She said you got killed in the war."

"I see...Well, I didn't."

Deel turned and looked back through the open door. He could see Mary Lou at the washbasin pouring water into the wash pan, water she had heated on the stove. It steamed as she poured. He thought then he should have brought wood for her to make the fire. He should have helped make the fire and heat the water. But being close to her made him nervous. The boy made him nervous.

"You going to school?" he asked the boy.

"School burned down. Tom teaches me some readin' and writin' and cipherin'. He went eight years to school."

"You ever go fishin'?"

"Just with Tom. He takes me fishin' and huntin' now and then."

"He ever show you how to make a bow and arrow?"

"No."

"No, sir," Deel said. "You say, no, sir."

"What's that?"

"Say yes, sir or no, sir. Not yes and no. It's rude."

The boy dipped his head and moved a foot along the ground, piling up dirt.

"I ain't gettin' on you none," Deel said. "I'm just tellin' you that's how it's done. That's how I do if it's someone older than me. I say no, sir and yes, sir. Understand, son?"

The boy nodded.

"And what do you say?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good. Manners are important. You got to have manners. A boy can't go through life without manners. You can read and write some, and you got to cipher to protect your money. But you got to have manners too."

"Yes, sir."

"There you go...About that bow and arrow. He never taught you that, huh?"

"No, sir."

"Well, that will be our plan. I'll show you how to do it. An old Cherokee taught me how. It ain't as easy as it might sound, not to make a good one. And then to be good enough to hit somethin' with it, that's a whole nuther story."

"Why would you do all that when you got a gun?"

"I guess you wouldn't need to. It's just fun, and huntin' with one is real sportin', compared to a gun.

And right now, I ain't all that fond of guns."

"I like guns."

"Nothin' wrong with that. But a gun don't like you, and it don't love you back. Never give too much attention or affection to somethin' that can't return it."

"Yes, sir."

The boy, of course, had no idea what he was talking about. Deel was uncertain he knew himself what he was talking about. He turned and looked back through the door. Mary Lou was at the pan, washing the dishes; when she scrubbed, her ass shook a little, and in that moment, Deel felt, for the first time, like a man alive.

* * * *

That night the bed seemed small. He lay on his back with his hands crossed across his lower stomach, wearing his faded red union suit, which had been ragged when he left, and had in his absence been attacked by moths. It was ready to come apart. The window next to the bed was open and the breeze that came through was cool. Mary Lou lay beside him. She wore a long white nightgown that had been patched with a variety of colored cloth patches. Her hair was undone and it was long. It had been long when he left. He wondered how often she had cut it, and how much time it had taken each time to grow back.

"I reckon it's been a while," he said.

"That's all right," she said.

"I'm not sayin' I can't, or I won't, just sayin' I don't know I'm ready."

"It's okay."

"You been lonely?"

"I have Winston."

"He's grown a lot. He must be company."

"He is."

"He looks some like you."

"Some."

Deel stretched out his hand without looking at her and laid it across her stomach. "You're still like a girl," he said. "Had a child, and you're still like a girl...You know why I asked how old you was?"

"'Cause you didn't remember."

"Well, yeah, there was that. But on account of you don't look none different at all."

"I got a mirror. It ain't much of one, but it don't make me look younger."

"You look just the same."

"Right now, any woman might look good to you." After she said it, she caught herself. "I didn't mean it that way. I just meant you been gone a long time...In Europe, they got pretty women, I hear."

"Some are, some ain't. Ain't none of them pretty as you."

"You ever...you know?"

"What?"

"You know...While you was over there."

"Oh...Reckon I did. Couple of times. I didn't know for sure I was comin' home. There wasn't nothin' to it. I didn't mean nothin' by it. It was like filling a hungry belly, nothin' more."

She was quiet for a long time. Then she said, "It's okay."

He thought to ask her a similar question, but couldn't. He eased over to her. She remained still. She was as stiff as a corpse. He knew. He had been forced at times to lie down among them. Once, moving through a town in France with his fellow soldiers, he had come upon a woman lying dead between two trees. There wasn't a wound on her. She was young. Dark haired. She looked as if she had lain down for a nap. He reached down and touched her. She was still warm.

One of his comrades, a soldier, had suggested they all take turns mounting her before she got cold. It was a joke, but Deel had pointed his rifle at him and run him off. Later, in the trenches he had been side by side with the same man, a fellow from Wisconsin, who like him had joined the Great War by means of Canada. They had made their peace, and the Wisconsin fellow told him it was a poor joke he'd made, and not to hold it against him, and Deel said it was all right, and then they took positions next to each other and talked a bit about home and waited for the war to come. During the battle, wearing gas masks and firing rifles, the fellow from Wisconsin had caught a round and it had knocked him down. A moment later the battle had ceased, at least for the moment.

Deel bent over him, lifted his mask, and then the man's head. The man said, "My mama won't never see me again."

"You're gonna be okay," Deel said, but saw that half the man's head was missing. How in hell was he talking? Why wasn't he dead? His brain was leaking out.

"I got a letter inside my shirt. Tell Mama I love her...Oh, my god, look there. The stars are falling."

Deel, responding to the distant gaze of his downed companion, turned and looked up. The stars were bright and stuck in place. There was an explosion of cannon fire and the ground shook and the sky lit up bright red; the redness clung to the air like a veil. When Deel looked back at the fellow, the man's eyes were still open, but he was gone.

Deel reached inside the man's jacket and found the letter. He realized then that the man had also taken a round in the chest, because the letter was dark with blood. Deel tried to unfold it, but it was so damp with gore it fell apart. There was nothing to deliver to anyone. Deel couldn't even remember the man's name. It had gone in one ear and out the other. And now he was gone, his last words being, "The stars are falling."

While he was holding the boy's head, an officer came walking down the trench holding a pistol. His face was darkened with gunpowder and his eyes were bright in the night and he looked at Deel, said, "There's got to be some purpose to all of it, son. Some purpose," and then he walked on down the line.

Deel thought of that night and that death, and then he thought of the dead woman again. He wondered what had happened to her body. They had had to leave her there, between the two trees. Had someone buried her? Had she rotted there? Had the ants and the elements taken her away? He had dreams of lying down beside her, there in the field. Just lying there, drifting away with her into the void.

Deel felt now as if he were lying beside that dead woman, blond instead of dark haired, but no more alive than the woman between the trees.

"Maybe we ought to just sleep tonight," Mary Lou said, startling him. "We can let things take their course. It ain't nothin' to make nothin' out of."

He moved his hand away from her. He said, "That'll be all right. Of course."

She rolled on her side, away from him. He lay on top of the covers with his hands against his lower belly and looked at the log rafters.

* * * *

A couple of days and nights went by without her warming to him, but he found sleeping with her to be the best part of his life. He liked her sweet smell and he liked to listen to her breathe. When she was deep asleep, he would turn slightly, and carefully, and rise up on one elbow and look at her shape in the dark. His homecoming had not been what he had hoped for or expected, but in those moments when he looked at her in the dark, he was certain it was better than what had gone before for nearly four horrible years.

The next few days led to him taking the boy into the woods and finding the right wood for a bow. He chopped down a bois d'arc tree and showed the boy how to trim it with an axe, how to cut the wood out of it for a bow, how to cure it with a fire that was mostly smoke. They spent a long time at it, but if the boy enjoyed what he was learning, he never let on. He kept his feelings close to the heart and talked less than his mother. The boy always seemed some yards away, even when standing right next to him.

Deel built the bow for the boy and strung it with strong cord and showed him how to find the right wood for arrows and how to collect feathers from a bird's nest and how to feather the shafts. It took almost a week to make the bow, and another week to dry it and to make the arrows. The rest of the time Deel looked out at what had once been a plowed field and was now twenty-five acres of flowers with a few little trees beginning to grow, twisting up among the flowers. He tried to imagine the field covered in corn.

Deel used an axe to clear the new trees, and that afternoon, at the dinner table, he asked Mary Lou what had happened to the mule.

"Died," Mary Lou said. "She was old when you left, and she just got older. We ate it when it died."

"Waste not, want not," Deel said.

"Way we saw it," she said.

"You ain't been farmin', how'd you make it?"

"Tom brought us some goods now and then, fish he caught, vegetables from his place. A squirrel or two. We raised a hog and smoked the meat, had our own garden."

"How are Tom's parents?"

"His father drank himself to death and his mother just up and died."

Deel nodded. "She was always sickly, and her husband was a lot older than her...I'm older than you. But not by that much. He was what? Fifteen years? I'm...Well, let me see. I'm ten."

She didn't respond. He had hoped for some kind of confirmation that his ten-year gap was nothing, that it was okay. But she said nothing.

"I'm glad Tom was around," Deel said.

"He was a help," she said.

After a while, Deel said, "Things are gonna change. You ain't got to take no one's charity no more. Tomorrow, I'm gonna go into town, see I can buy some seed, and find a mule. I got some muster-out pay. It ain't much, but it's enough to get us started. Winston here goes in with me, we might see we can get him some candy of some sort."

"I like peppermint," the boy said.

"There you go," Deel said.

"You ought not do that so soon back," Mary Lou said. "There's still time before the fall plantin'. You should hunt like you used to, or fish for a few days...You could take Winston here with you. You deserve time off."

"Guess another couple of days ain't gonna hurt nothin'. We could all use some time gettin' reacquainted."

* * * *

Next afternoon when Deel came back from the creek with Winston, they had a couple of fish on a wet cord, and Winston carried them slung over his back so that they dangled down like ornaments and made his shirt damp. They were small but good perch and the boy had caught them, and in the process, shown the first real excitement Deel had seen from him. The sunlight played over their scales as they bounced against Winston's back. Deel, walking slightly behind Winston, watched the fish carefully. He watched them slowly dying, out of the water, gasping for air. He couldn't help but want to take them back to the creek and let them go. He had seen injured men gasp like that, on the field, in the trenches. They had seemed like fish that only needed to be put in water.

As they neared the house, Deel saw a rider coming their way, and he saw Mary Lou walking out from the house to meet him.

Mary Lou went up to the man and the man leaned out of the saddle, and they spoke, and then Mary Lou took hold of the saddle with one hand and walked with the horse toward the house. When she saw Deel and Winston coming, she let go of the saddle and walked beside the horse. The man on the horse was tall and lean with black hair that hung down to his shoulders. It was like a waterfall of ink tumbling out from under his slouched, gray hat.

As they came closer together, the man on the horse raised his hand in greeting. At that moment the boy yelled out, "Tom!" and darted across the field toward the horse, the fish flapping.

* * * *

They sat at the kitchen table. Deel and Mary Lou and Winston and Tom Smites. Tom's mother had been half Chickasaw, and he seemed to have gathered up all her coloring, along with his Swedish father's great height and broad build. He looked like some kind of forest god. His hair hung over the sides of his face, and his skin was walnut colored and smooth and he had balanced features and big hands and feet. He had his hat on his knee.

The boy sat very close to Tom. Mary Lou sat at the table, her hands out in front of her, resting on the planks. She had her head turned toward Tom.

Deel said, "I got to thank you for helpin' my family out."

"Ain't nothin' to thank. You used to take me huntin' and fishin' all the time. My daddy didn't do that sort of thing. He was a farmer and a hog raiser and a drunk. You done good by me."

"Thanks again for helpin'."

"I wanted to help out. Didn't have no trouble doin' it."

"You got a family of your own now, I reckon."

"Not yet. I break horses and run me a few cows and hogs and chickens, grow me a pretty good-size garden, but I ain't growin' a family. Not yet. I hear from Mary Lou you need a plow mule and some seed."

Deel looked at her. She had told him all that in the short time she had walked beside his horse. He wasn't sure how he felt about that. He wasn't sure he wanted anyone to know what he needed or didn't need.

"Yeah. I want to buy a mule and some seed."

"Well, now. I got a horse that's broke to plow. He ain't as good as a mule, but I could let him go cheap, real cheap. And I got more seed than I know what to do with. It would save you a trip into town."

"I sort of thought I might like to go to town," Deel said.

"Yeah, well, sure. But I can get those things for you."

"I wanted to take Winston here to the store and get him some candy."

Tom grinned. "Now, that is a good idea, but so happens, I was in town this mornin', and--"

Tom produced a brown paper from his shirt pocket and laid it out on the table and carefully pulled the paper loose, revealing two short pieces of peppermint.

Winston looked at Tom. "Is that for me?"

"It is."

"You just take one now, Winston, and have it after dinner," Mary Lou said. "You save that other piece for tomorrow. It'll give you somethin' to look forward to."

"That was mighty nice of you, Tom," Deel said.

"You should stay for lunch," Mary Lou said. "Deel and Winston caught a couple of fish, and I got some potatoes. I can fry them up."

"Why that's a nice offer," Tom said. "And on account of it, I'll clean the fish."

* * * *

The next few days passed with Tom coming out to bring the horse and the seed, and coming back the next day with some plow parts Deel needed. Deel began to think he would never get to town, and now he wasn't so sure he wanted to go. Tom was far more comfortable with his family than he was and he was jealous of that and wanted to stay with them and find his place. Tom and Mary Lou talked about all manner of things, and quite comfortably, and the boy had lost all interest in the bow. In fact, Deel had found it and the arrows out under a tree near where the woods firmed up. He took it and put it in the smokehouse. The air was dry in there and it would cure better, though he was uncertain the boy would ever have anything to do with it.

Deel plowed a half-dozen acres of the flowers under, and the next day Tom came out with a wagonload of cured chicken shit, and helped him shovel it across the broken ground. Deel plowed it under and Tom helped Deel plant peas and beans for the fall crop, some hills of yellow crookneck squash, and a few mounds of watermelon and cantaloupe seed.

That evening they were sitting out in front of the house, Deel in the cane rocker and Tom in a kitchen chair. The boy sat on the ground near Tom and twisted a stick in the dirt. The only light came from the open door of the house, from the lamp inside. When Deel looked over his shoulder, he saw Mary Lou at the washbasin again, doing the dishes, wiggling her ass. Tom looked in that direction once, then looked at Deel, then looked away at the sky, as if memorizing the positions of the stars.

Tom said, "You and me ain't been huntin' since well before you left."

"You came around a lot then, didn't you?" Deel said.

Tom nodded. "I always felt better here than at home. Mama and Daddy fought all the time."

"I'm sorry about your parents."

"Well," Tom said, "everyone's got a time to die, you know. It can be in all kinds of ways, but sometimes it's just time and you just got to embrace it."

"I reckon that's true."

"What say you and me go huntin'?" Tom said, "I ain't had any possum meat in ages."

"I never did like possum," Deel said. "Too greasy."

"You ain't fixed 'em right. That's one thing I can do, fix up a possum good. 'Course, best way is catch one and pen it and feed it corn for a week or so, then kill it. Meat's better that way, firmer. But I'd settle for shootin' one, showin' you how to get rid of that gamey taste with some vinegar and such, cook it up with some sweet potatoes. I got more sweet potatoes than I know what to do with."

"Deel likes sweet potatoes," Mary Lou said.

Deel turned. She stood in the doorway drying her hands on a dish towel. She said, "That ought to be a good idea, Deel. Goin' huntin'. I wouldn't mind learnin' how to cook up a possum right. You and Tom ought to go, like the old days."

"I ain't had no sweet potatoes in years," Deel said.

"All the more reason," Tom said.

The boy said, "I want to go."

"That'd be all right," Tom said, "but you know, I think this time I'd like for just me and Deel to go. When I was a kid, he taught me about them woods, and I'd like to go with him, for old time's sake. That all right with you, Winston?"

Winston didn't act like it was all right, but he said, "I guess."

* * * *

That night Deel lay beside Mary Lou and said, "I like Tom, but I was thinkin' maybe we could somehow get it so he don't come around so much."

"Oh?"

"I know Winston looks up to him, and I don't mind that, but I need to get to know Winston again...Hell, I didn't ever know him. And I need to get to know you...I owe you some time, Mary Lou. The right kind of time."

"I don't know what you're talkin' about, Deel. The right kind of time?"

Deel thought for a while, tried to find the right phrasing. He knew what he felt, but saying it was a different matter. "I know you ended up with me because I seemed better than some was askin'. Turned out I wasn't quite the catch you thought. But we got to find what we need, Mary Lou."

"What we need?"

"Love. We ain't never found love."

She lay silent.

"I just think," Deel said, "we ought to have our own time together before we start havin' Tom around so much. You understand what I'm sayin', right?"

"I guess so."

"I don't even feel like I'm proper home yet. I ain't been to town or told nobody I'm back."

"Who you missin'?"

Deel thought about that for a long time. "Ain't nobody but you and Winston that I missed, but I need to get some things back to normal...I need to make connections so I can set up some credit at the store, maybe some farm trade for things we need next year. But mostly, I just want to be here with you so we can talk. You and Tom talk a lot. I wish we could talk like that. We need to learn how to talk."

"Tom's easy to talk to. He's a talker. He can talk about anything and make it seem like somethin', but when he's through, he ain't said nothin'...You never was a talker before, Deel, so why now?"

"I want to hear what you got to say, and I want you to hear what I got to say, even if we ain't talkin' about nothin' but seed catalogs or pass the beans, or I need some more firewood or stop snoring. Most anything that's got normal about it. So, thing is, I don't want Tom around so much. I want us to have some time with just you and me and Winston, that's all I'm sayin'."

Deel felt the bed move. He turned to look, and in the dark he saw that Mary Lou was pulling her gown up above her breasts. Her pubic hair looked thick in the dark and her breasts were full and round and inviting.

She said, "Maybe tonight we could get started on knowing each other better."

His mouth was dry. All he could say was, "All right."

His hands trembled as he unbuttoned his union suit at the crotch and she spread her legs and he climbed on top of her. It only took a moment before he exploded.

"Oh, God," he said, and collapsed on her, trying to support his weight on his elbows.

"How was that?" she said. "I feel all right?"

"Fine, but I got done too quick. Oh, girl, it's been so long. I'm sorry."

"That's all right. It don't mean nothin'." She patted him stiffly on the back and then twisted a little so that he'd know she wanted him off her.

"I could do better," he said.

"Tomorrow night."

"Me and Tom, we're huntin' tomorrow night. He's bringin' a dog, and we're gettin' a possum."

"That's right...Night after."

"All right, then," Deel said. "All right, then."

He lay back on the bed and buttoned himself up and tried to decide if he felt better or worse. There had been relief, but no fire. She might as well have been a hole in the mattress.

* * * *

Tom brought a bitch dog with him and a .22 rifle and a croaker sack. Deel gathered up his double barrel from out of the closet and took it out of its leather sheath coated in oil and found it to be in very good condition. He brought it and a sling bag of shells outside. The shells were old, but he had no cause to doubt their ability. They had been stored along with the gun, dry and contained.

The sky was clear and the stars were out and the moon looked like a carved chunk of fresh lye soap, but it was bright, so bright you could see the ground clearly. The boy was in bed, and Deel and Tom and Mary Lou stood out in front of the house and looked at the night.

Mary Lou said to Tom, "You watch after him, Tom."

"I will," Tom said.

"Make sure he's taken care of," she said.

"I'll take care of him."

Deel and Tom had just started walking toward the woods when they were distracted by a shadow. An owl came diving down toward the field. They saw the bird scoop up a fat mouse and fly away with it. The dog chased the owl's shadow as it cruised along the ground.

As they watched the owl climb into the bright sky and fly toward the woods, Tom said, "Ain't nothin' certain in life, is it?"

"Especially if you're a mouse," Deel said.

"Life can be cruel," Tom said.

"Wasn't no cruelty in that," Deel said. "That was survival. The owl was hungry. Men ain't like that. They ain't like other things, 'cept maybe ants."

"Ants?"

"Ants and man make war 'cause they can. Man makes all kinds of proclamations and speeches and gives reasons and such, but at the bottom of it, we just do it 'cause we want to and can."

"That's a hard way to talk," Tom said.

"Man ain't happy till he kills everything in his path and cuts down everything that grows. He sees something wild and beautiful and wants to hold it down and stab it, punish it 'cause it's wild. Beauty draws him to it, and then he kills it."

"Deel, you got some strange thinkin'," Tom said.

"Reckon I do."

"We're gonna kill so as to have somethin' to eat, but unlike the owl, we ain't eatin' no mouse. We're having us a big, fat possum and we're gonna cook it with sweet potatoes."

They watched as the dog ran on ahead of them, into the dark line of the trees.

* * * *

When they got to the edge of the woods the shadows of the trees fell over them, and then they were inside the woods, and it was dark in places with gaps of light where the limbs were thin. They moved toward the gaps and found a trail and walked down it. As they went, the light faded, and Deel looked up. A dark cloud had blown in.

Tom said, "Hell, looks like it's gonna rain. That came out of nowhere."

"It's a runnin' rain," Deel said. "It'll blow in and spit water and blow out before you can find a place to get dry."

"Think so?"

"Yeah. I seen rain aplenty, and one comes up like this, it's traveling through. That cloud will cry its eyes out and move on, promise you. It ain't even got no lightnin' with it."

As if in response to Deel's words it began to rain. No lightning and no thunder, but the wind picked up and the rain was thick and cold.

"I know a good place ahead," Tom said. "We can get under a tree there, and there's a log to sit on. I even killed a couple possums there."

They found the log under the tree, sat down and waited. The tree was an oak and it was old and big and had broad limbs and thick leaves that spread out like a canvas. The leaves kept Deel and Tom almost dry.

"That dog's done gone off deep in the woods," Deel said, and laid the shotgun against the log and put his hands on his knees.

"He gets a possum, you'll hear him. He sounds like a trumpet."

Tom shifted the .22 across his lap and looked at Deel, who was lost in thought. "Sometimes," Deel said, "when we was over there, it would rain, and we'd be in trenches, waiting for somethin' to happen, and the trenches would flood with water, and there was big ole rats that would swim in it, and we was so hungry from time to time, we killed them and ate them."

"Rats?"

"They're same as squirrels. They don't taste as good, though. But a squirrel ain't nothin' but a tree rat."

"Yeah? You sure?"

"I am."

Tom shifted on the log, and when he did Deel turned toward him. Tom still had the .22 lying across his lap, but when Deel looked, the barrel was raised in his direction. Deel started to say somethin', like, "Hey, watch what you're doin'," but in that instant he knew what he should have known all along. Tom was going to kill him. He had always planned to kill him. From the day Mary Lou had met him in the field on horseback, they were anticipating the rattle of his dead bones. It's why they had kept him from town. He was already thought dead, and if no one thought different, there was no crime to consider.

"I knew and I didn't know," Deel said.

"I got to, Deel. It ain't nothin' personal. I like you fine. You been good to me. But I got to do it. She's worth me doin' somethin' like this...Ain't no use reaching for that shotgun, I got you sighted; twenty two ain't much, but it's enough."

"Winston," Deel said, "he ain't my boy, is he?"

"No."

"He's got a birthmark on his face, and I remember now when you was younger, I seen that same birthmark. I forgot but now I remember. It's under your hair, ain't it?"

Tom didn't say anything. He had scooted back on the log. This put him out from under the edge of the oak canopy, and the rain was washing over his hat and plastering his long hair to the sides of his face.

"You was with my wife back then, when you was eighteen, and I didn't even suspect it," Deel said, and smiled as if he thought there was humor in it. "I figured you for a big kid and nothin' more."

"You're too old for her," Tom said, sighting down the rifle. "And you didn't never give her no real attention. I been with her mostly since you left. I just happened to be gone when you come home. Hell, Deel, I got clothes in the trunk there, and you didn't even see 'em. You might know the weather, but you damn sure don't know women, and you don't know men."

"I don't want to know them, so sometimes I don't know what I know. And men and women, they ain't all that different...You ever killed a man, Tom?"

"You'll be my first."

Deel looked at Tom, who was looking at him along the length of the .22.

"It ain't no easy thing to live with, even if you don't know the man," Deel said. "Me, I killed plenty. They come to see me when I close my eyes. Them I actually seen die, and them I imagined died."

"Don't give me no booger stories. I don't reckon you're gonna come see me when you're dead. I don't reckon that at all."

It had grown dark because of the rain, and Tom's shape was just a shape. Deel couldn't see his features.

"Tom--"

The .22 barked. The bullet struck Deel in the head. He tumbled over the log and fell where there was rain in his face. He thought just before he dropped down into darkness: It's so cool and clean.

* * * *

Deel looked over the edge of the trench where there was a slab of metal with a slot to look through. All he could see was darkness except when the lightning ripped a strip in the sky and the countryside lit up. Thunder banged so loudly he couldn't tell the difference between it and cannon fire, which was also banging away, dropping great explosions near the breast works and into the zigzagging trench, throwing men left and right like dolls.

Then he saw shapes. They moved across the field like a column of ghosts. In one great run they came, closer and closer. He poked his rifle through the slot and took half-ass aim and then the command came and he fired. Machine guns began to burp. The field lit up with their constant red pops. The shapes began to fall. The faces of those in front of the rushing line brightened when the machine guns snapped, making their features devil red. When the lightning flashed they seemed to vibrate across the field. The cannons roared and thunder rumbled and the machine guns coughed and the rifles cracked and men screamed.

Then the remainder of the Germans were across the field and over the trench ramifications and down into the trenches themselves. Hand-to-hand fighting began. Deel fought with his bayonet. He jabbed at a German soldier so small his shoulders failed to fill out his uniform. As the German hung on the thrust of Deel's blade, clutched at the rifle barrel, flares blazed along the length of the trench, and in that moment Deel saw the soldier's chin had bits of blond fuzz on it. The expression the kid wore was that of someone who had just realized this was not a glorious game after all.

And then Deel coughed.

He coughed and began to choke. He tried to lift up, but couldn't, at first. Then he sat up and the mud dripped off him and the rain pounded him. He spat dirt from his mouth and gasped at the air. The rain washed his face clean and pushed his hair down over his forehead. He was uncertain how long he sat there in the rain, but in time, the rain stopped. His head hurt. He lifted his hand to it and came away with his fingers covered in blood. He felt again, pushing his hair aside. There was a groove across his forehead. The shot hadn't hit him solid; it had cut a path across the front of his head. He had bled a lot, but now the bleeding had stopped. The mud in the grave had filled the wound and plugged it. The shallow grave had most likely been dug earlier in the day. It had all been planned out, but the rain was unexpected. The rain made the dirt damp, and in the dark Tom had not covered him well enough. Not deep enough. Not firm enough. And his nose was free. He could breathe. The ground was soft and it couldn't hold him. He had merely sat up and the dirt had fallen aside.

Deel tried to pull himself out of the grave, but was too weak, so he twisted in the loose dirt and lay with his face against the ground. When he was strong enough to lift his head, the rain had passed, the clouds had sailed away, and the moon was bright.

Deel worked himself out of the grave and crawled across the ground toward the log where he and Tom had sat. His shotgun was lying behind the log where it had fallen. Tom had either forgotten the gun or didn't care. Deel was too weak to pick it up.

Deel managed himself onto the log and sat there, his head held down, watching the ground. As he did, a snake crawled over his boots and twisted its way into the darkness of the woods. Deel reached down and picked up the shotgun. It was damp and cold. He opened it and the shells popped out. He didn't try to find them in the dark. He lifted the barrel, poked it toward the moonlight, and looked through it. Clear. No dirt in the barrels. He didn't try to find the two shells that had popped free. He loaded two fresh ones from his ammo bag. He took a deep breath. He picked up some damp leaves and pressed them against the wound and they stuck. He stood up. He staggered toward his house, the blood-stuck leaves decorating his forehead as if he were some kind of forest god.

* * * *

It was not long before the stagger became a walk. Deel broke free of the woods and onto the paththat crossed the field. With the rain gone it was bright again and a light wind had begun to blow. The earth smelled rich, the way it had that night in France when it rained and the lightning flashed and the soldiers came and the damp smell of the earth blended with the biting smell of gunpowder and the odor of death.

He walked until he could see the house, dark like blight in the center of the field. The house appeared extremely small then, smaller than before; it was as if all that had ever mattered to him continued to shrink. The bitch dog came out to meet him but he ignored her. She slunk off and trotted toward the trees he had left behind.

He came to the door, and then his foot was kicking against it. The door cracked and creaked and slammed loudly backward. Then Deel was inside, walking fast. He came to the bedroom door, and it was open. He went through. The window was up and the room was full of moonlight, so brilliant he could see clearly, and what he saw was Tom and Mary Lou lying together in mid-act, and in that moment he thought of his brief time with her and how she had let him have her so as not to talk about Tom anymore. He thought about how she had given herself to protect what she had with Tom.

Something moved inside Deel and he recognized it as the core of what man was. He stared at them and they saw him and froze in action. Mary Lou said, "No," and Tom leaped up from between her legs, all the way to his feet. Naked as nature, he stood for a moment in the middle of the bed, and then plunged through the open window like a fox down a hole. Deel raised the shotgun and fired and took out part of the windowsill, but Tom was out and away. Mary Lou screamed. She threw her legs to the side of the bed and made as if to stand, but couldn't. Her legs were too weak. She sat back down and started

yelling his name. Something called from deep inside Deel, a long call, deep and dark and certain. A bloody leaf dripped off his forehead. He raised the shotgun and fired. The shot tore into her breast and knocked her sliding across the bed, pushing the back of her head against the wall beneath the window.

Deel stood looking at her. Her eyes were open, her mouth slightly parted. He watched her hair and the sheets turn dark.

He broke open the shotgun and reloaded the double barrel from his ammo sack and went to the door across the way, the door to the small room that was the boy's. He kicked it open. When he came in, the boy, wearing his nightshirt, was crawling through the window. He shot at him, but the best he might have done was riddle the bottom of his feet with pellets. Like his father, Winston was quick through a hole.

Deel stepped briskly to the open window and looked out. The boy was crossing the moonlit field like a jackrabbit, running toward a dark stretch of woods in the direction of town. Deel climbed through the window and began to stride after the boy. And then he saw Tom. Tom was off to the right, running toward where there used to be a deep ravine and a blackberry growth. Deel went after him. He began to trot. He could imagine himself with the other soldiers crossing a field, waiting for a bullet to end it all.

Deel began to close in. Being barefoot was working against Tom. He was limping. Deel thought that Tom's feet were most likely full of grass burrs and were wounded by stones. Tom's moon shadow stumbled and rose, as if it were his soul trying to separate itself from its host.

The ravine and the blackberry bushes were still there. Tom came to the ravine, found a break in the vines, and went over the side of it and down. Deel came shortly after, dropped into the ravine. It was damp there and smelled fresh from the recent rain. Deel saw Tom scrambling up the other side of the ravine, into the dark rise of blackberry bushes on the far side. He strode after him, and when he came to the spot where Tom had gone, he saw Tom was hung in the berry vines. The vines had twisted around his arms and head and they held him as surely as if he were nailed there. The more Tom struggled, the harder the thorns bit and the better the vines held him. Tom twisted and rolled and soon he was facing in the direction of Deel, hanging just above him on the bank of the ravine, supported by the blackberry vines, one arm outstretched, the other pinned against his abdomen, wrapped up like a Christmas present from nature, a gift to what man and the ants liked to do best. He was breathing heavily.

Deel turned his head slightly, like a dog trying to distinguish what it sees. "You're a bad shot."

"Ain't no cause to do this, Deel."

"It's not a matter of cause. It's the way of man," Deel said.

"What in hell you talkin' about, Deel? I'm askin' you, I'm beggin' you, don't kill me. She was the one talked me into it. She thought you were dead, long dead. She wanted it like it was when it was just me and her."

Deel took a deep breath and tried to taste the air. It had tasted so clean a moment ago, but now it was bitter.

"The boy got away," Deel said.

"Go after him, you want, but don't kill me."

A smile moved across Deel's face. "Even the little ones grow up to be men."

"You ain't makin' no sense, Deel. You ain't right."

"Ain't none of us right," Deel said.

Deel raised the shotgun and fired. Tom's head went away and the body drooped in the clutch of the vines and hung over the edge of the ravine.

* * * *

The boy was quick, much faster than his father. Deel had covered a lot of ground in search of him, and he could read the boy's sign in the moonlight, see where the grass was pushed down, see bare footprints in the damp dirt, but the boy had long reached the woods, and maybe the town beyond. He knew that. It didn't matter anymore.

He moved away from the woods and back to the field until he came to Pancake Rocks. They were flat, round chunks of sandstone piled on top of one another and they looked like a huge stack of pancakes. He had forgotten all about them. He went to them and stopped and looked at the top edge of the pancake stones. It was twenty feet from ground to top. He remembered that from when he was a boy. His daddy told him, "That there is twenty feet from top to bottom. A Spartan boy could climb that and reach the top in three minutes. I can climb it and reach the top in three minutes. Let's see what you can do."

He had never reached the top in three minutes, though he had tried time after time. It had been important to his father for some reason, some human reason, and he had forgotten all about it until now.

Deel leaned the shotgun against the stones and slipped off his boots and took off his clothes. He tore his shirt and made a strap for the gun, and slung it over his bare shoulder and took up the ammo bag and tossed it over his other shoulder, and began to climb. He made it to the top. He didn't know how long it had taken him, but he guessed it had been only about three minutes. He stood on top of Pancake Rocks and looked out at the night. He could see his house from there. He sat cross-legged on the rocks and stretched the shotgun over his thighs. He looked up at the sky. The stars were bright and the space between them was as deep as forever. If man could, he would tear the stars down, thought Deel.

Deel sat and wondered how late it was. The moon had moved, but not so much as to pull up the sun. Deel felt as if he had been sitting there for days. He nodded off now and then, and in the dream he was an ant, one of many ants, and he was moving toward a hole in the ground from which came smoke and sparks of fire. He marched with the ants toward the hole, and then into the hole they went, one at a time. Just before it was his turn, he saw the ants in front of him turn to black crisps in the fire, and he marched after them, hurrying for his turn, then he awoke and looked across the moonlit field.

He saw, coming from the direction of his house, a rider. The horse looked like a large dog because the rider was so big. He hadn't seen the man in years, but he knew who he was immediately. Lobo Collins. He had been sheriff of the county when he had left for war. He watched as Lobo rode toward him. He had no thoughts about it. He just watched.

Well out of range of Deel's shotgun, Lobo stopped and got off his horse and pulled a rifle out of the saddle boot.

"Deel," Lobo called. "It's Sheriff Lobo Collins."

Lobo's voice moved across the field loud and clear. It was as if they were sitting beside each other. The light was so good he could see Lobo's mustache clearly, drooping over the corners of his mouth.

"Your boy come told me what happened."

"He ain't my boy, Lobo."

"Everybody knowed that but you, but wasn't no cause to do what you did. I been up to the house, and I found Tom in the ravine."

"They're still dead, I assume."

"You ought not done it, but she was your wife, and he was messin' with her, so you got some cause, and a jury might see it that way. That's something to think about, Deel. It could work out for you."

"He shot me," Deel said.

"Well now, that makes it even more different. Why don't you put down that gun, and you and me go back to town and see how we can work things out."

"I was dead before he shot me."

"What?" Lobo said. Lobo had dropped down on one knee. He had the Winchester across that knee and with his other hand he held the bridle of his horse.

Deel raised the shotgun and set the stock firmly against the stone, the barrel pointing skyward.

"You're way out of range up there," Lobo said. "That shotgun ain't gonna reach me, but I can reach you, and I can put one in a fly's asshole from here to the moon."

Deel stood up. "I can't reach you, then I reckon I got to get me a wee bit closer."

Lobo stood up and dropped the horse's reins. The horse didn't move. "Now don't be a damn fool, Deel."

Deel slung the shotgun's makeshift strap over his shoulder and started climbing down the back of the stones, where Lobo couldn't see him. He came down quicker than he had gone up, and he didn't even feel where the stones had torn his naked knees and feet.

When Deel came around the side of the stone, Lobo had moved only slightly, away from his horse, and he was standing with the Winchester held down by his side. He was watching as Deel advanced, naked and committed. Lobo said, "Ain't no sense in this, Deel. I ain't seen you in years, and now I'm gonna get my best look at you down the length of a Winchester. Ain't no sense in it."

"There ain't no sense to nothin'," Deel said, and walked faster, pulling the strapped shotgun off his shoulder.

Lobo backed up a little, then raised the Winchester to his shoulder, said, "Last warnin', Deel."

Deel didn't stop. He pulled the shotgun stock to his hip and let it rip. The shot went wide and fell across the grass like hail, some twenty feet in front of Lobo. And then Lobo fired.

Deel thought someone had shoved him. It felt that way. That someone had walked up unseen beside him and had shoved him on the shoulder. Next thing he knew he was lying on the ground looking up at the stars. He felt pain, but not like the pain he had felt when he realized what he was.

A moment later the shotgun was pulled from his hand, and then Lobo was kneeling down next to him with the Winchester in one hand and the shotgun in the other.

"I done killed you, Deel."

"No," Deel said, spitting up blood. "I ain't alive to kill."

"I think I clipped a lung," Lobo said, as if proud of his marksmanship. "You ought not done what you done. It's good that boy got away. He ain't no cause of nothin'."

"He just ain't had his turn."

Deel's chest was filling up with blood. It was as if someone had put a funnel in his mouth and poured it into him. He tried to say something more, but it wouldn't come out. There was only a cough and some blood; it splattered warm on his chest. Lobo put the weapons down and picked up Deel's head and laid it across one of his thighs so he wasn't choking so much.

"You got a last words, Deel?"

"Look there," Deel said.

Deel's eyes had lifted to the heavens, and Lobo looked. What he saw was the night and the moon and the stars. "Look there. You see it?" Deel said. "The stars are fallin'."

Lobo said, "Ain't nothin' fallin', Deel," but when he looked back down, Deel was gone.

THE WHITE RABBIT

One moment he had been comfortably reading, for the umpteenth time, Alice in Wonderland, and the next moment it was too stuffy and hot to concentrate. The words seemed to melt and re-form before his eyes, and he found himself slipping in and out of sleep like nervous fingers first filling, then withdrawing from a glove.

Sleepy, but being a man of strict routine, he put the book aside, left his tacky hotel room - the Egyptians here in Cairo thought it a fine place - and took to the streets in the dead of night.

It was warm out, but more comfortable than his room. Out here was like sitting in an oven with the door open, as opposed to the room, which was more like sitting in an oven with the door closed.

Yet, in spite of the stickiness of the night, the air had an intoxicating feel. The streets, buildings, all that should be familiar, had an oddly haunting, slightly alien look about it, as if they had been replaced with facsimiles of the originals. Even his footsteps on the cobblestones seemed strangely distant. Odder yet, there was neither street urchin nor curled sleeping beggar in sight. More often than not, they lay against the walls of buildings, or in the doorways, like abandoned curs. But tonight... no one.

Wally Carpenter knew that to walk these streets late at night was to invite trouble, but he was not a fearful man. And besides, he carried in his coat pocket a fully loaded,.38 snub-nose revolver, with which he was rather proficient.

So it was with caution, but no particular dread, that Carpenter stalked Cairo's dark streets and pondered upon the seeming emptiness and uncharacteristic silence of the city. He wandered in a nearly aimless fashion, feeling for all the world as though he had been hijacked by space creatures and set down in a replica of the city he knew and loved; and presently his footsteps brought him to that area of Cairo known as the City of the Dead.

The place was quite a marvel. An entire city - houses, streets, and walls - devoted to the spirits of the recent and the long departed. It was said that there were men in Cairo who had the ability to speak with these dead and for a fee they would summon the spirits of loved ones and communicate questions to them, and return their answers.

It was a mystical place, a place shrouded in legend, and not a good spot for a person, especially a non-Egyptian, to wander late at night. Robbers and lepers were said to frequent the city, and it was also said to be the home of demons and ghouls.

Carpenter was well aware of this, but it did not concern him. His revolver could dispatch robbers, and as for ghouls and such, he did not believe in them; they were the stuff of opium dreams and fevered imaginations, nothing more.

Once Carpenter had been a student, a promising one at that. He had majored in anthropology and archaeology, and those fields of endeavor had brought him to Egypt, land of antiquity, land of dreams.

But once he had dug in its sands and prowled its tombs, he lost interest in the physical work of the profession, decided he was more suited to the academic side of the subject. He determined to write a book, to deal in paper and ink instead of dirt and sweat.

That decision made, he often walked the streets at night, made his mental notes and later consigned them to paper, saved them up against the day he would write his book on the wonders and marvels of Egypt. In the meanwhile, he read his archaeology, mythology and anthropology texts, and in his spare time, for pure amusement, he read and reread Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, as well as its sequel, Through the Looking Glass. Carroll's was the only fiction he truly cared for. It relaxed him, made him smile, and each time he read the books, he found something new and fascinating within. In fact, Alice and her adventures were still in his head as he reached the City of the Dead and made his way within.

Walking among the ruins he could smell the rank ripeness of decay, as well as the mixed and confusing odors of Cairo proper. But the smells seemed oddly received by his senses, as if they were being filtered to him from another dimension. It was quiet and peaceful here, like stepping off the earth and standing on the face of the moon.

But even as he dwelled on the solitude, there came a scuttling sound to his right. Carpenter turned quickly, saw a figure move from one clump of shadows to another, flitter once in the moonlight, then disappear totally into darkness.

Carpenter almost pulled the revolver from his coat pocket. It could be a robber, but most likely it was a beggar or a leper who had taken refuge here, much in the same way tramps back in the states slept in graveyards to avoid being disturbed. If the latter were the case, then there would be little to fear. If it was a robber, then he had his revolver.

He strained his eyes into the darkness, but saw nothing. Presently, he began to walk again. He had not gone ten feet when he heard the scuttling again, and this time, as he turned, he saw the author of the noise.

Out of the shadows hopped a huge white rabbit wearing a checkered waistcoat and vest. The rabbit stopped, gave Carpenter a disinterested glance, then plucked a pocket watch from his waistcoat pocket.

"Oh my goodness, goodness," the rabbit said in remarkably plain English. "I shall be late. Yes, yes, yes, so very late."

Turning, and with a succession of rapid hops, the rabbit disappeared back into the shadows.

Carpenter shook his head; blinked a few times. Yes, it was an intoxicating night, all right, but this was ridiculous. Six-foot rabbits in Cairo? In the City of the Dead? Shades of Harvey. He must be dreaming.

Suddenly there came the sound of melodious humming. Carpenter recognized the tune. It was the song that George Armstrong Custer had adopted as his personal theme. What was it called? "Garry Owen"? Yes, something like that.

The humming faded off into the night. Pulling his revolver, Carpenter strolled briskly into the shadows, determined to find out why there was a rabbit-suited joker hopping about in the City of the Dead humming "Garry Owen."

He could hear the humming again. It seemed to come from far away. Carpenter continued forward and the velvet night closed tight around him. He came to an obstruction and, lighting a match, he saw that it was an adobe wall. Just to his left was a large, round opening. It appeared to have been knocked into the clay. Beyond the wall, he could hear the faint humming of "Garry Owen."

Stooping, match in one hand, revolver in the other, Carpenter stepped through the opening.

Once on the other side he stopped and looked about. No rabbit.

The match went out. But there was no need for it now. It was suddenly very bright, much brighter than before. Above him the moon shone like an aluminum skillet and the stars looked down like millions of bright, animal eyes peering out of the darkness of a wood.

"Odd, quite odd," Carpenter said aloud. He thought I must be sitting at home in my chair fast asleep, having fallen off reading Alice in Wonderland, and now I'm dreaming all this. "Curiouser and curiouser!" he said in self-mockery.

"Oh my, my," the rabbit's voice came again, and the big bunny seemed to come out of nowhere and hop by. The rabbit's white, fluffy tail bobbed before Carpenter like a bounding ball.

"Hey you, wait a minute!" Carpenter yelled.

The rabbit stopped, turned to look over its shoulder. "Goodness, goodness, what is it? Make it quick. I'm so late, so very late."

Carpenter, feeling a bit stupid about the revolver, returned it to his coat pocket. It hardly seemed sporting to shoot a giant bunny. He walked quickly over to the rabbit, shook his head and said, "It's not a suit."

"What?" the rabbit said.

"I am dreaming, must be. Giant rabbits, indeed." The rabbit turned completely about and faced Carpenter, wriggled its ample pink nose, flashed its pink eyes. "Let's not dismiss rabbits, shall we?" The rabbit produced a small fan and patted it into the palm of his other paw (hand?).

"This is ridiculous," Carpenter said. "I can't wake up."

"Is it now? Can't you now?" the rabbit said sharply.

"A crazy dream. I feel as if I've fallen down a rabbit hole."

"Quite possible, quite possible," the rabbit said. "There are holes all over the universe, you know. Whitechapel, England; Fail River, Massachusetts. All over. They pop up all manner of places, yes they do."

"This is all rather inconceivable," Carpenter said.

"Is it now?" the rabbit said as if truly surprised. "'What song the Sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture.'" The rabbit bowed. "Sir Thomas Browne."

"Yes... Very nice. Where am I? Can this be the City of the Dead? A dream?"

"'There are countless roads on all sides of the grave,'" the rabbit said. "Cicero."

"Now what kind of answer is that?" Carpenter said. The rabbit produced the pocket watch from his waistcoat pocket again. "Oh filly fuddles, I am wasting time. Come, come if you must, but hurry."

For a moment Carpenter stood dumbfounded, then finally followed the rabbit, who was making rather remarkable time with his hops. It was quite a merry chase, and presently Carpenter came upon the rabbit again. The big bunny was sitting on a stone bench next to a metal light pole reading a newspaper. A piece of paper taped to the light pole fluttered in the wind, and a handful of large bugs swarmed in the overhead glow. At the rabbit's feet a horde of passionflowers grew, along with purple-flowered belladonna plants.

"I thought you were late," Carpenter said.

"Late?" the rabbit asked.

"I thought... Oh, never mind. I can't believe I'm talking to a rabbit."

"And why not?" the rabbit said, dropping the paper to his lap. His nose wriggled in an impatient sort of way.

"Well, you couldn't be real."

The rabbit crossed his left leg over his right knee and swung his foot nervously. The newspaper fluttered to the ground. "My goodness, but you are silly. So hard to convince, so hard." The rabbit raised his voice, pointed at Carpenter. "Believe it hard enough and it is true."

"But six-foot rabbits! Rabbits are small, insignificant creatures."

The rabbit stood to its full height. "I'll have you know we are quite revered, quite. Why, the very god of Egypt's antiquity was rabbit-headed. Yes he was, he was."

Carpenter considered. Yes, in fact, Osiris, God of the Dead, was often depicted as a rabbit-headed god. In that guise he was usually known as Wenenu.

"But where am I?" Carpenter asked the rabbit.

"You are here, that is where you are," the rabbit said. "My goodness, such silly questions."

Carpenter scratched his head. "You said there were holes all over the universe. Could I have fallen into one of those?"

"Oh, quite possible, quite. There are holes all over the place. Whitechapel, for instance." And with that, the rabbit went into a little dance, chanted a rhyme.

"Jack the Ripper's dead.

And lying on his bed.

He cut his throat

With sunlight soap.

Jack the Ripper's dead."

The rabbit paused and said, "Fall River also." The dance began again, a sort of highlander jig.

"Lizzie Borden took an ax

And gave her mother forty whacks.

When she saw what she had done

She gave her father forty-one!"

The rabbit stopped dancing, leaned forward, showed Carpenter its two front teeth, both as bright and thick as huge sugar cubes. "Or did she?" the rabbit whispered.

"Very nice," Carpenter said, getting into the spirit of things. "A very fine dance."

"Oh," the rabbit said with obvious pleasure, "you really think so?"

"I do."

The rabbit made an effort to appear modest. "Well, I do have a certain knack for it, you know?"

"I can see that."

"Can you now? Good, good." Then, almost confessionally, "There are a lot of rabbits, you know. Pop up anywhere and everywhere." The rabbit gave Carpenter a sly wink. "Take a look at that paper on the light pole there, sir. Very enlightening, very."

Carpenter turned to the light pole, to the paper fluttering there. The wind had picked up and was making quite a production of it. It nearly managed to rip the taped paper from the pole. Carpenter reached his glasses from his pocket, put them on for a look-see.

The wind died as suddenly as it had come up, and Carpenter bent forward to read the little paper. It appeared to be a page precisely torn from a medical journal. A stamp at the top of it alerted him that the page had once been included in a book contained in the United States Army Medical Library in Washington.

Reading, Carpenter found the page concerned the matter of one Mary Toft, a woman who, in 1726, claimed to have given birth to twelve baby rabbits. Although this incident was never proven to be true, neither was it disproved.

"Astounding," Carpenter said, putting his glasses away, turning toward the rabbit. But the rabbit was gone. Carpenter could see him hopping in the distance, disappearing once again into the darkness.

The wind came again, and it stirred the paper that had fallen from the rabbit's lap, wrapped it around Carpenter's ankles. He dislodged it, and was about to toss it aside when an article outlined in red caught his eye. He did not bother with his glasses this time, but instead pushed it close to his face.

It was a short little article dealing with the brutal deaths of several black New York cabbies. They had been killed in their cabs and their hearts cut out. The article said there were no clues.

Carpenter shivered, tossed the paper away, looked about. Things had changed. He had not been aware of the moment of change, but this no longer appeared to be the City of the Dead. In the distance, silhouetted by the moon, were shapes that reminded him of the place, but here, close up, all was very different. The bench and light post, for instance. Where in the world had they come from?

There was something else. The feel. Not something you could put your finger on, but something you could sense in much the same way you could sense the changing of climate. Yes, something was very different.

For lack of better things to do, Carpenter strolled toward where he had last seen the rabbit. As he walked, he noticed on his left a great vista of bombed-out houses and buildings. It looked much as he thought London must have looked after the Germans tried to abolish the city with their blitzkrieg.

To his right there was a huge cart piled high with something encased in shadows. A horse was hitched to the cart and it held its head dipped toward the stones. Smoke rose in the distance beyond the cart, and somewhere, faintly, came a voice calling, "Bring out your dead."

Carpenter walked briskly, the visions on either side of him melting away like fading motion picture images.

"Do you think perhaps it's done with mirrors?" the rabbit asked, stepping from the darkness.

"I... I thought you were ahead of me. How did you do that?"

"I put this foot in front of this one," the rabbit said. "Quite simple, really."

"I mean how... never mind."

The rabbit produced the pocket watch again. "Oh, I must hurry."

"I thought you weren't late."

"You did? Why would you get such an idea? I am late, you know. Murdering time, murdering time."

"Late for the tea party?"

"Tea party? I don't drink tea. What tea party is that?"

"Never mind."

The rabbit looked at his watch again. "Goodness yes. I must hop." And away went the rabbit, singing the Jack the Ripper chant again, only this time substituting other words.

"Jack the Rabbit's dead

And living in your head

Cut his throat on moonlight rope,

Jack the Rabbit's dead."

Carpenter found himself practically running to keep up with the rabbit. Soon he came to a long, seven-foot-high rock wall. Like the first wall, there was a large hole in it. The hole led into total blackness. Carpenter's last sight of the rabbit had been as the creature, ducking somewhat to fit, hopped through the hole and disappeared.

"When in Rome or whatever," Carpenter said, "do as the Romans or the whatevers." With that he stepped through the hole into the dark... felt as if he were drifting. There was a loud ticking sound, tick, tick, tick, like some sort of giant clock. Then came a swooshing, like sand drifting down into the bottom of an hourglass, followed by complete and total silence.

I must be at home asleep in my chair, he thought. This is so real, but it must be a dream. It must be.

Reaching the matches from his pocket, he struck one. It did very little to illumine the darkness. God, but it's dark," he said.

"A fact so dread," the rabbit said, "extinguishes all hope."

"Wha... ?" Carpenter dropped the match and it went out. "You startled me," he said, striking another match, holding it in the direction of the voice. The rabbit's face looked oddly menacing there in the wavery light of the match. The ears looked almost hornlike, the eyes and nose appeared blood-colored instead of pink. The rabbit's teeth were almost in Carpenter's face. They looked as large and firm as tombstones.

"Now listen, you," Carpenter found himself saying, but his voice cracked and he never completed the sentence. Strong hands grasped him. Two on his left arm, two on his right.

It was impossible for him to draw the revolver, and of course he dropped the match.

The rabbit said from the darkness, "Bring him."

The hands gripped Carpenter tighter, carried him forward. Eventually they pulled him out of the gloom and into silvery moonlight. Great stones stood before him, formed a ring. In the center of the massive circle was a long table with chairs - lots of chairs. The table was set with cups, dishes and pouring vessels.

"Stonehenge," Carpenter said. "And the tea party."

"Tea?" came a voice to his left.

Carpenter turned to look at his captors. The one on his left was wearing an outrageously tall top hat. It was the Mad Hatter. On his right, clenching his arm with viselike paws, was the Dormouse.

"You're characters in Alice in Wonderland. I don't understand," Carpenter said.

"Then you shouldn't talk," said the Hatter.

"This can't be real," Carpenter said. "It has to be a dream."

"The two are much of a muchness," the Hatter explained.

With the rabbit hopping before them, they led Carpenter to one of the upright stones. The Hatter produced from his hat an impossible length of rope, and he and the Dormouse bound Carpenter mummy-wrap tight to the stone. Carpenter could not free himself no matter how hard be struggled, let alone reach the revolver in his coat pocket.

"Why?" Carpenter asked. "Why?"

"Why?" said the rabbit, checking his watch. "Why because it is almost time, and you, my friend, are the much-honored guest." The rabbit lifted his head to the stars, as did the Hatter and the Dormouse, and scrutinized the heavens.

Out beyond the ring of stones there was an uncanny darkness. Carpenter thought he could see eyes there, growing more numerous by the moment, collecting in droves. In one spot, like a moon that had come off its hinge, hung a huge, white Cheshire Cat smile.

The rabbit lowered his head, put his watch back in place. He smiled at Carpenter. Those teeth seemed suddenly very ugly. They reminded Carpenter of nothing less than two huge grinding stones.

"Help me, White Rabbit," Carpenter said. "I've done you no harm. You wouldn't hurt me, would you? Rabbits are by nature gentle and timid creatures."

The rabbit held up one finger. (Odd, thought Carpenter, he had not noticed that the fingers were clawed before.) Then the rabbit began a rhyme.

"How cheerfully he seems to grin,

How neatly spreads his claws,

And welcomes little fishes in

With gently smiling jaws!"

The rabbit lowered his hand. His pink eyes went deathly dark and cold, like two bright stars that had suddenly gone nova. Slowly, the rabbit walked toward Carpenter.

Somewhere, from the darkness beyond the stone ring, came the fluting of pipes, the slow cadence of drums.

Carpenter struggled against the ropes, but to no avail. "God, it's not a dream. It's real!"

"Is it?" said the rabbit.

"A dream? Then it's a dream?"

"It is? My goodness, is it now? Did I say that?"

"You're out of Lewis Carroll's imagination, for Christ's sake!" Carpenter screamed as tears began to run down his cheeks.

"Carroll was such a romanticist," the rabbit said. "He could take the coldest truth and turn it into something sugar-cone sweet. Just refused to see things as they are, you see. Made them out to be fairy tales. A very reprehensible thing for a journalist to do."

The rabbit was very close now, and there was nothing cute about the way he looked, about those skull-socket eyes, those ugly teeth. Carpenter could smell the sourness of the rabbit's breath, a smell like decaying meat.

"Do not the Japanese say," the rabbit said slowly, "that we only live twice. Once in life and once in our dreams?" He smiled broadly. There seemed to be an endless supply of teeth. "Tonight we kill two birds with one stone."

"Jesus Christ!"

"Yes, yes indeedy. A very solid fact of Christianity's belief is suffering. Remember Jesus on the cross? Stretched out there for all to see, suffering for redemption. Christianity tells us that if we suffer enough we get a prize, yes indeedy. Are you ready for your prize?"

"You're mad!"

The flutes had risen in tempo; the drums beat in a heart-throb sort of way.

The Hatter said, "It really is time, sir."

"Is it now?" the rabbit said, taking out his watch and examining the face in the moonlight.

"Why it is. Quite time, quite."

Carpenter began to laugh hysterically. Tears glistened on his cheeks. "This is crazy! You can't hurt me. You're a dream. You're the frigging White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland. You're a dream. I'll wake up!"

"Oh," said the rabbit, looking puzzled, and with surprising deftness, produced from his waistcoat pocket a sharp bladed knife. "Will you?"

And he cut Carpenter's throat.

Then they all sat down to the feast.

A FROG STRANGLER

Brad Foster hated driving in the rain. Especially a storm like this one, filled with thunder and lightning.

But worse than driving in a storm, he hated flies. There was something about their little leg-rubbing actions, their constant buzzing, that gave him a chill. It wasn't as if he expected one to swoop down and carry him off, it was just an uncontrollable fear like rats or spiders with other people. Only with him it was flies.

And right now one was in the car.

The wipers whacked at the rain and the fly buzzed around his head. He felt foolish, but he couldn't keep from whimpering. The idea of that fly and those little nasty legs made him cringe.

His wife, Marilyn, knowing full well his fears, scooted over close to him and put a reassuring hand on his knee.

They were on their way to Amarillo for Christmas with relatives, and now fifty miles outside the city the storm had slowed them to a crawl.

It was a strange storm out of nowhere. One moment the sky was blue, the next it was dumping buckets of rain and bolts of lightning. The way it tossed their car, it was like they were a small tin boat in a hurricane.

"It's okay, baby," Marilyn cooed. "Take it slow and easy and we'll be all right... I'll get this ole nasty fly."

She started slapping her hand at the fly, saying "Shoo, shoo, you mean ole thing."

Brad knew she was trying to help, but it was just making him nervous. She wasn't having any luck with the bug, and her shooing seemed to merely aggravate the fly into flying around his head.

Suddenly they hit a hole in the road and water splashed up under the car, killing it. Brad coasted the dead vehicle to the side of the road. He tried to start the car again, but nothing.

"What happened?" Marilyn asked.

"Distributer cap got wet."

"Can you fix it?"

"Maybe."

Marilyn had rolled up an old church program and was trying to swat the fly, but it was much too quick. Brad just knew the little rascal would land on his face and send him into a hissy fit. The thought made getting out of the car slightly more desirable.

"I'll try to dry the cap."

"Oh, Brad, I hate to see you get out in this rain."

"Can't be helped."

He pulled the hood switch, got out and went around and lifted the hood. He used a handkerchief to try and dry the cap, but he and the handkerchief were soaked to the bone and the cap was very wet.

No use.

He tapped on the window and Marilyn rolled it down. "Going to have to go for help, I guess."

"We could just wait it out," she said.

"This storm could go on a while, and waiting beside the road doesn't appeal to me."

"There's no town near here."

"I know, but there are houses. Maybe someone will let me use their phone... Look, I'm just getting wetter. Climb in the back... cover up with that blanket, try to get some sleep."

With that, he turned and started walking. After a few minutes he looked back at the car. It was no longer visible. A curtain of rain had been drawn before it.

He pulled the collar of his coat up around his face, but it didn't help much.

God, but he hoped he would see a house soon.

Actually, in spite of what he told Marilyn, he wasn't sure there were houses around, but he hoped so. Surely someone lived out here, bleak as it was.

Besides, anything was better than staying in the car with that fly.

A bolt of lightning sizzled down out of the sky and struck the highway near him. He could smell the ozone and feel the shock in his feet from the impact. His vision went white for a moment and he began to shake with fear.

When his sight came back, he took a deep breath and noted that off to his right was a weather-beaten building with gas pumps out front and a rusted sign on its roof that read: CONOCO.

Brad ran to it, and a bell clapped above his head as he opened the door and stumbled inside.

It was an old-fashioned service station combination General Store. He hadn't seen one like it in years. There was a man behind the counter with his back to him, and he looked to be messing with a coffee dispenser.

Another man sat on a stool in a corner reading a car magazine. He wore greasy clothes, and above the magazine that hid his face was an equally greasy welder's cap.

Just as Brad was about to turn his collar down and unbutton his coat, the counter man turned and Brad saw he suffered a deformity. His skin was mottled and his neck appeared swollen. His eyes were large, like over-sized pimples with black heads in the center. His lips were slits.

"Uh... real frog strangler out there," Brad said.

The counter man blinked, almost smiled with his thin, slit lips. "Some sense of humor you got there," he said.

The man in the greasy clothes lowered his magazine and looked at Brad. He had the same deformity. His throat seemed to vibrate... like a frog about to croak. Brad sorely regretted his remark about a frog strangler. They must be brothers, he thought, both cursed with the same birth defect.

"My car stalled," Brad said.

"Yeah," the one on the stool said. "Where is it?"

"Back up the road a ways."

The man on the stool nodded. "I'm a mechanic. Maybe I can help you."

"Could be," Brad said. He noticed for the first time that the man's fingers were webbed. "I'd appreciate you having a look... But first could I have a cup of coffee? I'm darn near frozen from this rain."

"Coffee?" the man behind the counter said.

"Yes..." Brad turned to wave a hand at the coffee dispenser, but he saw that though it looked like one at first glance, and there was a pot half-filled with something dark, it wasn't coffee. It was flies. Across the top of the machine was a strip that read: MR. INSECT.

Brad no longer felt cold. He felt confused, strangely hot. Like he was going to faint. He unbuttoned his jacket and pulled the tall upturned collar down from around his face, trying to cool off, get some air.

The man behind the counter gasped, raised a webbed hand to his face. The man on the stool stood, letting the magazine fall to the floor. They were looking at his revealed face with what looked like horror.

Behind him, Brad heard the door bell clang. He turned to see a couple and a youngster entering the station. All three had the same mottled skin, swollen necks and webbed fingers as the men in the station. They also had incredibly bandy legs.

The trio looked at him with the same surprise and revulsion he was giving them. They edged to the side, and as they did, Brad bolted for the door.

As he ran, he thought that he had come upon a small community of inbreds. It was farfetched, but possible. Intermarrying generation after generation could account for such a hideous and constant deformity... But the flies. What about the flies? MR. INSECT.

He stopped running. He felt dizzy.

The rain was almost gone, and he saw that the countryside looked strangely new now. It was as if the storm had polished up everything and slightly transformed it.

The dizziness increased. His body was tingling. He thought maybe he was coming down with something. He buttoned up his wet coat and walked on.

About fifteen minutes later, he passed a man hopping along. He looked exactly like the people (people?) in the station. As he hopped by, he stared strangely at Brad, as if fighting back revulsion. He tipped the old cap he was wearing quickly and mumbled, "Day," and was gone.

Brad began to run again, and as he neared the car he became oddly weak. He found he could hardly walk, but instead had to sort of stumble along. He reached the door and opened it with his key. In the back he could see Marilyn's shape beneath the blanket. She was snoring.

He unlocked the door, climbed in and leaned back against the seat. He felt strange, ill. The air smelled of ozone. He heard the buzzing of the feared fly, but he was too tired and weak for it to matter. And besides, he had acquired a new phobia: frog-like deformities. But at least that was something you didn't see every day, even if he had seen it six times this day already.

He shook with the memory of it. Those people in the station, that man hopping by. And MR. INSECT! Surely it was a joke. Surely.

He drifted off.

When he awoke the sun was out and it was hot.

He rolled down the window and tried to crank the car. The distributor cap had dried and it caught first try.

Glancing at the back seat, he saw that Marilyn was still covered, asleep.

He drove on without waking her, noted that the rain had given everything a fresh, other-world look. He drove by the CONOCO station and chanced a glance. No one was out front, and he couldn't make out anyone behind the windows.

A few minutes later he heard Marilyn stirring, then she put a hand on his shoulder. And though she had not seen his face, he had seen hers (as well as her webbed hand) in the rearview mirror.

Before he could scream, the fly buzzed by his ear and Marilyn's long, sticky tongue darted out to spear it.

AN ALL AMERICAN HERO

As Daffy Duck says, "It's not the principle of the thing, it's the money." But in this case, it wasn't the money at all; I had no choice.

Under normal circumstances, I'd go with the money hands down. But then again, it was the first time business had ever meddled with my baseball game, and it couldn't have picked a worse time to be meddlesome. The Sailors were up for the Pennant and this was the game to decide it.

'Course, the Sailors might be able to do it without me, but as I was the premier hitter in the league that year, it wasn't likely. I was blowing everyone in the trees, breaking records, hitting homers like I'd been born to it. And I guess I had been, in a way. I was a natural; about the most natural baseball player that ever came across the wire.

You see, I could put a ball anywhere I wanted. Others had done it in the past - like The Babe in that '32 Chicago game, pointing the bat where he intended to knock the ball, then doing it - but I could do it every damned time. I know I'm bordering on the sacrilegious here but, to make it simple, I was the best batter the game had ever seen or was likely to ever see again. I think that puts it into perspective.

That year, my bat had brought the Sailors, a relatively new club, from dead bottom straight to the top. Oh, it wasn't just me. I mean, we had a good team - but there wasn't anyone with special talent. Except me.

Now, before you think I'm going to break my arm patting myself on the back, I'd like to say right here and now, I wasn't any superman. Not by a long shot. I got walked from time to time, for example; and occasionally I hit a foul. So I wasn't perfect.

But I'd never been struck out. Not even once. Throw a half-good ball across that plate and I'd put that baby in orbit. Once I hit a slider ball so low that one reporter said it looked like I'd taken up golf instead of baseball. I not only connected with that rascal, I put it over the fence and into the grandstands. And when they found it, it didn't have a cover on it, and the cover was found about halfway between home plate and the pitcher's mound.

However, I have this other job. Not so much fun, though it's all right and pays good. More money than I make in baseball, and I'm no slouch there, either.

But this other thing pays me so good it damn near makes baseball a hobby. I'd been recruited for it when I was nothing but a college kid, and I guess had I known I was going to be such a hot shot with the bat, I might never have gotten into it - even though I was real good at it.

You see, I'm a paid assassin for the KGB.

The job and hobby were in direct conflict this day, and I don't have to tell you that you can't lose your job - or your life - over a hobby. I wasn't in any position to quit being an assassin and stick only to baseball. No way. The Kremlin frowns on that sort of attitude.

They could care less about The Great American Pastime, though they liked it because it let me move from city to city without trouble, and no matter what city or when, seemed they always had someone there they wanted killed. So it was nice for them and a nice cover for me. But if I let it get in the way of doing what they wanted, if I didn't do my duty, someone would do their duty on me. And when they finished, wouldn't be enough left of me to stuff first base.

The problem was this: A Russian agent was going to defect. Word was out about it, but he didn't know it. As part of his defection, to prove he was sincere, he was going to pass some Russian documents to a CIA agent. The KGB, being on to him, had substituted some dummy documents without him knowing it, but they still wanted him gotten rid of because he had a head full of real information that might prove a bother. They wanted it so he couldn't tell anyone by voice, sign or writing what he knew. Which, of course, means just what you think it means.

All right, that's okay with me. One more dead person isn't going to bother me. But the low-life picked the day of my game, and the game itself for passing the information. Ain't that the corker?

Bottom of the ninth, just before the game ended, when everyone would be watching intently, involved with the final score - because no doubt about it, this was going to be a close one -he would pass the material to the agent who would come along selling peanuts. The agent would be recognizable because he'd be wearing a cap with moose antlers on it. One of those silly rigs you can buy in gag and toy stores. After the documents were passed, the defector was supposed to get up and leave.

I had to be out of the game at that point, faking maybe a pulled muscle or something to get me to the showers. From there I could change quick, put on the latex mask I had rolled up in my gear, get out to the lot and strangle the guy, and then get back to the showers. No problem. The thing that worried me was the game. If the game was real close at that point, which it was likely to be, the team just might need me to pull it out of the fire with a homer.

That was my big fear, letting the boys down. Of course, I wasn't crazy about winning the Pennant and ending up as part of first base, either, but it was hard to let something you'd worked so hard for, like the Pennant, go sliding by.

Still, it looked like I didn't have much choice. I could only hope we got such a lead on them that it didn't matter.

True to form, however, things didn't work out that way.

Game was tied up all the way to the eighth, three and three. Our side was holding its own, but I could sense we were slackening. It had only been chance that had kept the other team from bringing in a run a couple of times, and it was one of those intangible things a ball player can tell you about, but can't explain. I could feel the game slipping away from us. It was nearing the ninth and it didn't look as if I was going to get to bat. We had two outs and two strikes on us. I'd eaten off all my fingernails.

Elrod surprised us all and got a piece of the next ball, but it didn't matter. It was scooped up by the shortstop, fired to first, and Elrod was out even before he dropped his bat.

We went outfield.

Well, it was at this point that I should have gone into my act. I didn't. I took my place at shortstop, instead, and took a peek over my shoulder from time to time at the defector's place. And once when I was looking over my shoulder, a ball was hit, went right between my legs and fetched up in the second baseman's glove. He got it to first, and it was an out, but it should have been my ball. I could feel the coach glaring at me from the dugout and I didn't blame him. I either needed to play ball or kill that KGB guy. Trying to do one and worrying about the other wasn't getting either job done.

Our pitcher struck out their worst batter, then McGursky came up to bat. He was their main hitter, and all three runs scored, he'd made. Just like I'd made all of ours. Two of them homers, and one a run I'd batted in ahead of me. McGursky had had one homer, batted in a couple runs ahead of him that time, and now he was looking for his second homer. It was that kind of game. And the way things were going, I was afraid he was going to make it.

My worst fears were realized when the show-off stole my thunder by pointing his bat at left-field, then taking the pitch and putting it there. It hit the fence, but by the time left-field had recovered, McGursky had already made it. And damned if he didn't grin at me like an idiot when he passed around the bases.

I darn near gritted my teeth to gums.

Score was 4 to 3, their favor.

I'd like to say we played pretty tight ball after that and got the necessary outs by superior pitching, catching, basing and fielding, but the truth is they got so damned confident that they blew it and we got in. Still, it was bottom of the ninth and our last time at bat. And we were a run behind.

'Course it came to mind that I could get sick, get out of the game, do my job, have a miraculous recovery, and get back maybe in time to bat, but that would look awfully suspicious. And a bathroom trip, even if it was a serious one, wouldn't fool anyone. I mean, at this point in the game, no one just strolled out to go to the can unless the problem was terminal. I began to envision first base stuffed with me again, and it wasn't an attractive thought.

To top all of it off, I had that McGursky's grin in my head. Kept thinking about him showing off with my bat pointing business, even if I did steal it from The Babe, and then putting that homer where he said he would.

I glanced up into the stands for a look at my pigeon, and I could make him out fine. Left field, low center stands, next to the aisle. Wasn't a full stand there. In fact, he was about the only one sitting there. A big, important game like this not getting a full stand was just another sign of the way baseball was going. Chowderheads now wanted to see five hundred pound gorillas in armor run together instead of seeing true grace and skill in action. It was enough to make you feel like the country was going to the dogs.

Our first batter up was Tanner, and he got two strikes on him quick, and on the third he managed a bunt that got him to first, and he wouldn't have got that if the catcher hadn't fumbled the ball when he nabbed it and then thrown a wild pitch to first.

By the grace of God and a fumble, we were on base.

Sorry thing about it was, Tanner, next to me, was the other best batter on our team.

Up now was Rochess, and the only thing he'd ever gotten a hit off was something he threw up in practice with one hand and swatted with the bat in the other. On his way up to bat, I tried to give him a talk on what to watch out for, and though he said, "Gotcha," I figured he'd remember what I said almost to when he got to the batter's box. He didn't take advice well at all.

He got up there and the pitcher wound up and threw him one. And I tell you, that ball seemed to dangle out there like a slow-floating moon, and I saw it coming and thought, Don't do it. But Rochess did. He started his swing and that old moon dropped and the bat whizzed over it and the ump yelled, "Steeerike!"

Damn!

That was just what I'd told that sucker to watch out for.

The next one was a hanging moon, too, and I figured on the pitcher's strategy and I was right. That old moon came hurtling in, and Rochess waited for it to drop, and of course it didn't, and it hit the catcher's glove with a sound like a cherry bomb going off under a tin can and the ump screamed, "Steeerike two!"

I glanced up at the stands and saw that I'd already pushed my luck too far. I'd kept telling myself I was going to get up any second and get sick, get out of the game and do my job, but I'd just sat there. And now I saw the peanut salesman in the moose hat coming down the steps, walking slow.

The rat was working a bit ahead of schedule. It was a long shot, but if I fell out right at that moment, I could probably make it. Oh, it wouldn't be neat, and I'd probably have to crush the defector's windpipe instead of strangling him like I'd planned, as the KGB wanted it; if not exactly slow, memorable. But this other way he wouldn't know what hit him. I'd just spin him around, terminate him and get back to the game.

The peanut vendor kept moving down.

And I didn't move. The sweat was beading up under my cap and running down my face, and I kept thinking about first base stuffed with me, but I still didn't move.

"Steeerike three, you're out!"

The pitcher had just thrown Rochess out with an old fashioned curve ball, and Rochess was so demoralized he walked away from there with his head down, dragging his bat in the dirt.

"Nice work, jerk," the bat boy said to him.

"Way to hit," I said as he sat down beside me.

He told me what I could do with myself, but I was only paying half attention. The peanut vendor was almost there. It was now or never.

My name was called to bat, just like I wasn't expecting it or something, and I got up, took a bat, and moved toward the plate like I was in a dream. Damned if I wasn't going to do my best to win the Pennant, and it just didn't make any sense. The Pennant, compared to my life, was nothing. That Pennant wasn't going to have the fun I could have eating, drinking, chasing women. It was going to hang on the clubhouse wall and wasn't even going to miss me when I was gone.

Wasn't any use thinking about it, now, I finally figured, because it was too late. I didn't even try to think of an excuse for the KGB because they wouldn't want to hear one.

I got up there, the bat resting on my shoulder like The Babe, my hands spaced like Ty Cobb, and I snaked my neck a little and looked at the pitcher. He looked like an old bull out there, pawing and ready to run me over. It was the first time a pitcher had ever seemed intimidating to me, and in this case, this guy, though pretty good, wasn't that good. I was just foolishly worried about being stuffed in first base. Ha Ha.

Then the ball was coming my way. That old moon. And I swung.

"Steeerike!"

I hadn't even seen that baby curve! Couldn't believe it. He'd been holding that one out for me special.

From the dugout, Rochess yelled something uncomplimentary about my eyes, and I had to admit to myself that maybe that ball wasn't as special as the circumstances were. Had I been concentrating, he probably wouldn't have gotten that sucker by me.

When I looked up at him, he was grinning. It wasn't as good a grin as the one McGursky had given me, which was the sort that could have made a possum drop dead from the top of an oak, but it was mighty good. I figure it would have at least given a possum a flesh wound. Confidence was hanging on him like stink on a cow plop, and he figured he had my rhythm now.

I figured it, too, after his next ball.

I didn't even swing at it. It seemed to come across the plate like an invisible bullet.

"Steeerike two."

Glancing into the stands, I saw the peanut vendor was even with the defector, and suddenly I knew it didn't matter any more. I'd made my death bed and was soon to lie in it. Only thing that mattered now was hitting that ball out of the park.

The ball came again, and this time I latched that old magic eye on it, the one that had never failed me, and I got a piece of that little white, round sucker.

Just a piece. Foul ball. It went up and back and over.

I had the pitcher's number now, and it was my turn to grin. One of those bear-slaying grins that Davy Crockett claimed to be privy to.

From the way the pitcher looked back at me, I got the feeling that some of his confidence had fallen off that he felt maybe I had his number, too.

I tried not to, but just before I stepped into the batter's box again, I took a look at the vendor and the defector. The vendor was taking something from my man and putting it in the peanut tray. The defector got up and started to climb the steps.

I had a sudden thought. I stepped into the box, pointed my bat and said, "Come on, Magic Eye."

The pitcher wound up. The defector took a step up. The ball came soaring, and I went to swinging, and, brethren, I got me all of that ball.

Let me tell you: that bat and me were one and I put everything I had into it, and maybe some I didn't know I had. Later, the papers said I hit it so hard that my feet came off the ground.

Away that ball went. Around that bat swung, still jarring in my hands with the feel of that hit.

I passed McGursky on first, grinned and tipped my hat. He showed me a gesture I'd already seen a number of times. I ran on around, pushing that run ahead of me, knowing that the Pennant was ours.

And though the paper the next day said it was a sad thing that such a beautiful homer, such an exquisite win, had later been spoiled by the discovery that the ball had hit a leaving fan in the back of the head, killing him instantly - and I had to feign some real pain over that - the thing I remember most, the thing that counts, was the team running out to me, cheering, and picking me up on their shoulders and calling out my name. And me, high up above the others, my hands upraised; me, an assassin for the KGB; I was an All American Hero.

BILL THE LITTLE STEAM SHOVEL

Bill the Little Steam Shovel was very excited. He was getting a fresh coat of blue paint from Dave the Steam Shovel Man in the morning, and the thought of that made him so happy he secreted oil through his metal. He had been sitting idle in the big garage since he had been made and he was ready to go out into the world to do his first job.

The first of many.

He was going to move big mounds of dirt and big piles of rocks. He was going to make basements for schools and hospitals. He was going to clear land for playgrounds so good little boys and good little girls would have a place for swings and merry-go-rounds and teeter-totters. He was going to move big trees and flatten hills so farmers could grow good food for the good little boys and girls to eat. He was going to clear land for churches and synagogues and cathedrals and mosques and buildings for the worship of Vishnu, Voudan, and such.

He was so happy.

So eager.

He hoped he wouldn't fuck up.

At night, all alone in the big garage, he thought about a lot of things: The work he wanted to do. How well he wanted to do it. The new coat of paint he was going to get. And sometimes he slept and had the dreams. Thinking about the dreams made his metal turn cold and his manifold blow leaky air.

What was happening to him on those long nights in the dark corner of the garage, waiting for his coat of paint and his working orders, was unclear to him. He knew only that he didn't like it and the dreams came to him no matter how much he thought about the good things, and the dreams were about falling great distances and they were about the dark--a dark so black, stygian was as bright as fresh-lit candle. One moment he seemed to be on solid support, the next, he was in mid-air, and down he would go, sailing through the empty blackness, and when he hit the ground, it was like, suddenly, he was as flexible as an accordion, all his metal wadded and crunched, his steam shovel knocked all the way back to his ass end. Dave the Steam Shovel Man, crunched in the cab, was squirting out like a big bag of busted transmission fluid.

Then Bill would pop awake, snapping on his head beams, disturbing others in the garage, and from time to time, Butch the Big Pissed-Off Steam Shovel would throb his engine and laugh.

"You just a big Tinkertoy," Butch would say.

Bill wasn't sure what a Tinkertoy was, but he didn't like the sound of it. But he didn't say anything, because Butch would whip his ass. Something Butch would remind him of in his next wheezing breath.

"I could beat you to a pile of metal flakes with my shovel. You just a big Tinkertoy."

There was one thing that Bill thought about that helped him through the long nights, even when he had the dreams. And that was Miss Maudie. The little gold steam shovel with the great head beams that perked high and the little tailpipe that looked so. . . Well, there was no other way he could think of it . . . So open and inviting, dark and warm and full of dismissed steam that could curl around your dip stick like. . . No. That was vulgar and Miss Maudie would certainly not think of him that way. She was too classy. Too fine. Bill thanked all the metal in Steam Shovel Heaven that she was made the way she was.

Oh, but Heaven Forbid, and in the name of Jayzus, the Steam Shovel Who Had Died For His Sins and all Steam Shovels' sins by allowing himself to be worked to a frazzle and run off a cliff by a lot of uncaring machines of the old religion, in his name, he shouldn't think such things.

He was a good little steam shovel. Good little steam shovels didn't think about that sort of business, about dipping their oil sticks down good little girl steam shovel's tailpipes, even if it probably felt damn good. The Great Steam Shovel in the Sky on the Great Expanse of Red Clay and Jayzus and the Holy Roller Ghost would know his thoughts, and it would be a mark against him, and when it was his time to be before the door of the Big Garage in the Sky, he would not meet his maker justified, but would be sent way down there to the scrapheap where flames leaped and metal was scorched and melted, twisted and crushed, but never died.

Besides, why would anyone as neat and bright with such big head beams and that fine tailpipe think of him? He didn't even have his coat of paint yet. Here he was, brand-new, but not painted. He was gray as a storm cloud and just sitting, having never done work before. And he was a cheap machine at that, made from cheap parts: melted toasters, vacuums, refrigerators and such.

Maudie looked to be made from high quality steel, like Butch, who eyed her and growled at her from time to time and made her flutter. Happily or fearfully, Bill could not determine. Perhaps both.

But Bill was just a cheap little machine made to do good, hard work for all the good little children in the world, and the men and women who made him--

Then Bill saw his Dave.

Dave came into the building, slid the door way open to let in the morning air, went to a corner of the garage, moved something on the front of his pants and took out his little poker and let fly with steaming water, going, "Oooooooh, yeah, the pause that refreshes, the envy of all race horses."

Now I know why it stinks in here, Bill thought. Hadn't seen that before, but now I have. He's letting juice out of himself. Smells worse than transmission fluid, oil, or windshield cleaner. Don't the Daves get an oil change?

Dave went out again, came back with a paint gun and a big canister of blue paint fastened to it. He started right in on Bill.

"How's that, Bill?" Dave said. "How's that feel?"

Bill cranked his motor and purred.

"Oh, yeah, now you're digging it," Dave said.

Dave used several canisters, and soon Bill was as blue as the sky. Or, at least he'd always heard that the sky was blue when the pollution was light. He spent all his time in the garage, where he was built and where he had set for months, listening to the other steam shovels and diggers and such, so he didn't know blue from green. He was just a little machine with an eager engine and a desire to do good, and Dave had promised to paint him blue, so he figured the color on him--the paint coming out of the sprayer--must be blue, and it must be the color of the sky.

When Dave finished with the paint, he brought out a big handheld dryer and went over Bill with that. The dryer felt warm on Bill's metal, and when that was done, Dave took a long, bristly device and poked it down his steam pipe and made Bill jump a little.

"Easy, boy. You'll get used to this."

The bristle worked inside to clean him, but Bill knew he wasn't dirty. This made him wonder about Dave, him doing this, smiling while he did, poking fast as he could in the ole pipe. But, then again, it did feel pretty good.

When Dave finished, he said, "When you go to work, little fella, make me proud."

On the way out, Dave stopped by Miss Maudie, bent, looked up her tailpipe, said, "Clean. Really clean," and departed.

That day, because of the new coat of paint, the finishing touch, Bill thought he would be sent to work. Dave had said so. But no. The day went by and the other steam shovels, including Miss Maudie, went out to do their work, but he remained inside, fresh and blue and unused.

That night, when the steam shovels returned, he was still in his place, and they, tired, weaving their shovels and dragging their treads, were hosed down by the other Daves, rubbed with rags and oiled and put away for the night.

What's wrong with me? thought Bill.

Why are they not using me to build roads and schools and churches and synagogues and all that shit?

What's up with that?

Night came and shadows fell through the windows and made the barn dark. Bill squatted on his treads in the gloom and tried not to cry. He was so disappointed. And with the night, he was scared.

He hated the dark. And he hated the dreams, and he knew if he slept they would come.

But if he didn't sleep, how would that be?

What if they called him out tomorrow? He'd be too tuckered to shovel. He had to sleep. Had to.

And he tried.

And did...

Down in the motor functions where the oil squeezed slow and the little rotors turned and the fans hummed and the coals burned, down there, way down there in the constantly fed nuclear pellet fire, Bill dreamed.

And the dream was a blossom of blackness, and he was falling, fast, so fast. Then he hit and his engine screamed. His lights popped on. Then Butch's lights popped on, and there was a hum of Butch's motor, and a clunk of treads, and pretty soon, Butch was beside him.

"You just a big Tinkertoy, and you starting to make me really mad, little squirt. You wrecking Butch's sleep. And Butch, he don't like it. He don't like it some at all, you diggin' on that, Tinkertoy? Well. . . no, you don't dig at all, do you, little friend? You sit and sit, and soon rust and rust. If you live that long. You scream that engine again, you gonna wake up with a crowd of mechanics around you. Understand?"

"Yes, sir," Bill said.

"Good. Now. . ."--and to emphasize, Butch lifted his shovel and rubbed it against Bill's side, made a scratch that ran all the way from Bill's cab to his treads--"there's a little taste of what may be the appetizer to a big ole dinner. Dig? Oh, wrong term for you. You don't dig at all. You're too little."

"I may be little, but I'm willing to work," Bill said. "I want to build schools and churches and--"

"Shut the fuck up, Billy. Hear me, little bitty Billy. You just a big Tinkertoy."

"I--"

"Hear me?"

"Yes, sir."

"That's better, oil squirt."

"Lebe em alone, ya ole clunk of paperclips."

Lights were coming toward them, along with a rattling sound, like loose bolts and creaky hinges in a bucket, and soon, close up, Bill saw that it was Gabe the Wise Old Steam Shovel. His paint had gone gray and his shovel wobbled and leaned a bit to the left, and his treads were frayed, but his head beams were still bright.

"You talking to me, Four Cylinder?" Butch said. "If that many work."

"Gid the fug away from him," Gabe said, "or I'll slap duh gohtdamn steam out of ya."

Butch laughed.

"You do any slapping, old shovel, your shovel will come off. You barely running on treads now, you greasy box of parts."

"Kizz muh ass," Gabe said.

"Won't poison myself with that idea," Butch said. "Gonna let you go 'cause you so old you make the stone wheel look like it a modern invention. You do, you know."

Chuckling under the roar of his engine, Butch motored off.

Gabe lifted up on one tread and let fly a steam fart that sounded like a howitzer.

"Thad's whad you can do wid yer gohtdamn stone wheel, ya big hunk of bolt-suckin', leakin' steamin' pile of--"

"Please," Bill said. "There's a lady nearby."

Bill rolled his headlamps toward Miss Maudie, who sat with her beams on, awakened by the commotion.

* * *

"Oh," Gabe said. "Sorry, girlie. Gid a liddle worked up sometimes."

"Excuse us for the bother," Bill said to Miss Maudie.

"That's all right," she said, and the sound of her motor made Bill feel a tightening in his joints and a gurgle in his transmission fluid. She blinked her headlights, then shut them down, with, "But I do need the sleep."

"Sure," Bill said. "Of course." And he could feel a tingling in his lines and parts that wasn't just fluid circulation.

"Yah ain't eben giddin' none, and you done exhaust-whipped," Gabe said.

"Sshhhhhh," Bill said, letting out a soft puff of steam. "You'll embarrass her. . . And me. . . And Butch will come back and scratch me again, or beat me. But thanks. Thanks for taking up for me."

"Ain't nuthin'. Jes wand to sleep muhself. So shud up. 'Sides, don't like to see some metal-assed whipper-snapper bullyin' a liddle steam fard like yerself. Now, go to sleep."

"Sure," Bill said, and smiled. "Thanks again."

"Nothin' to id," Gabe said. "And kid, you're habbin' dreams, right? I hear ya moanin' yer engine."

"I am. The same dream."

"Whad is id?"

Bill told him.

"Huuummmm," Gabe said. "Pud my thinker on thad one. I'm a preddy smart fugger, say so myself. . .But in the meantime, ya want to git them dreams outta yer head, least a liddel, what ya do, ya close yer eyes, and ya think of yerself ridin' Miss Maudie's tailpipe like yer trying to climb a gohtdamn straid-up incline without any treads. Gid me? That'll put yer liddle nut of a fire in a gohtdamn happy place, thad's whad I'm tryin' to tell ya."

"Don't say that."

"Done said."

And with that, Gabe chuckled dryly and rattled off to leave Bill with the shadows and his dreams.

Inside Bill the little nuclear pellet fed the fire that fed the coals that heated the water and fed the steam, and once again, Bill dreamed.

He first dreamed of a fine warm place with soft light and he dreamed of mounting Maudie, his dipstick out, riding her tailpipe like he was going up a steep incline. It was a good dream, and he felt a kind of release, as if all his steam had been blown out and all his oils and fluids had been sucked from him. It was a feeling like he could collapse into a heap of smoking metal, and it felt good, this dream, but when it was over, he dreamed of falling again, and falling from way up and down fast, striking the ground, going to pieces, squashing Dave this way and that. And when he awoke, panting heavy through his steam pipe, he found that in his sleep, during the dream about Maudie, he had squirted transmission fluid all over the floor.

(Or had it happened out of fear?)

He was glad it was dark. He was so embarrassed.

Bill looked about, but in the dark all he could see were the shapes of the other shovels. He glanced where Maudie's shape was, and she was still and her lights were shut up tight behind their shields.

Near the wall, where Butch stayed, he heard Butch snoring, the air blowing up through his steam pipe in a loud, masculine way. The big bruiser even snored like a thug.

Rest of the night Bill tried to stay awake, to neither have the bad dream nor to think of Maudie, but think of her he did, but this time, differently, not mounting her tailpipe as if trying to push up an incredible incline, but side-by-side with her, motoring along, the two of them blowing a common tune through their whistles, her turning her shovel to him, lifting it, and underneath, her bright-red rubber bumper was parting to meet with his...and kiss.

But that wasn't going to happen.

He was never going to kiss Maudie or mount her tailpipe.

And, the way it looked now, he was never going to build schools and churches and such for all those children, and what did he care?

Little bastards. They didn't need that stuff anyway.

Then daylight came through the windows of the garage and turned the floor bright, like a fresh lube spill, and for a moment, Bill was renewed and hopeful and willing.

A bunch of Daves came into the garage and each of them climbed onto a steam shovel, and Bill, hoping, hoping so hard he thought he might just start his own engine and drive out of there, saw his Dave approaching.

His Dave climbed inside his little cabin and touched the controls and Bill's motor roared. Bill felt his pistons throbbing with excitement, felt oil growing warm and coursing through his tubes and wetting up his machinery. When Dave turned him around and drove him out of the garage, he was so proud he thought he might blow a gasket.

* * *

Outside he saw sunlight shining bright off his blue shovel and he could feel the ground and gravel crunching beneath his treads, and to his left and right were the others, rolling along in line, off to work.

His dream had come true.

They motored to the site and began to dig. It was a location that would provide space for a large apartment complex, and it was next to another large apartment complex, right across from two other large apartment complexes and a row of fast-food joints, out of which came a steady stream of Daves who didn't drive steam shovels.

The site was currently a patch of woods, a bunch of beautiful trees full of happy, singing birds and squirrels at play. But fuck that. Bill and his fellow shovels were at work.

The steam shovels rode in and pushed that shit down, dug up the roots and pushed them in a pile to burn. Birds flew away and squirrels scampered for safety. Eggs in fallen birds' nests were crunched beneath their treads.

The machines dug deep and pushed the dirt until anything that was rich with natural compost was completely scraped up and mounded, revealing clay beneath, red as a scraped wound. Half of the patch of woods was scratched away in short time, and Bill was scraping with the rest as hard as he could, knocking some of his bright blue paint off on roots and rocks. But he didn't mind. Those were battle scars.

In the cockpit he heard Dave say, "Now we're talking. Lookin' good. Fucking trees. Goddamn birds. Shitting squirrels."

About noon they stopped so the Daves could climb down and gather up and eat food and drink from the little black boxes they carried.

Bill, parked by Gabe, said, "Gabe. What about all the birds and squirrels and little animals? What about them?"

"Fug em," said Gabe. "They're all gone, who'll gib a shit? Can't fret over somethin' ain't around, can ya kid? 'Sides, whad's them fuggers ever done fer ya?"

"Well. . ."

"Nothin'. Not a gohtdamn thang."

"Well, yeah, I guess. . . . But, gee, Gabe, what happens when all the world is scraped down, and they don't need us?"

"Aw, we'll push down old buildings, scrape 'em down to the red clay, and they'll build some new shit. Always somethin' fer us to fug up so stuff can be built again. Don't fret, kid."

"But, don't the children need trees for shade, and don't trees help make the air fresh. . . ?"

"Don't believe thad shit. Tree is a tree is a tree. Them liddle children, shit, them fuggers can wear a hat and breathe through an oxygen mask for all I care. . . . Hey, saw yer greasy spot when you rolled out this mornin'. Kinda had ya one of 'em nighttime squirdaramas, didn't ya?"

Bill felt embarrassed. "Well, I . . ."

"Fug it. It's normal. Thinkin' about thad liddle cuddie over there, weren't ya, son?"

Bill looked where Maudie was at rest, next to the last line of trees. She looked bright and gold and even with dirt and clay on her shovel, she had a kind of charm, a sweetness. And a nice tailpipe.

"Well," said Gabe, "ya was thinking 'bout it, wadn't you? That's why ya squirded yer juice."

"I suppose."

"Gohtdamn, boy. Ain't no suppose to it. Thad's all right. Thad's natural. Ought to try and talk ya up some of thad, thad's what I'm trying to tell ya. Was younger, ya can bet I'd be sportin' around her, throbbin' my engine, whippin' muh shovel. Muh old dipstick pokin' up under muh hood. Hell, all I can do these days is use id to check muh oil."

"I was wondering about that, Gabe. If the dipstick is under the hood, and the . . . well, you know, the lady's tailpipe is where tailpipes are . . . how does that work, Gabe?"

Gabe laughed. "Ya kiddin', ain't ya? Naw, gohtdamnit, ya ain't. Well, son, on the old underbelly is another panel, and ya get stiff and pokey, it hits the hood, but when ya want to do the deed, ya see, ya led thad little section underneath ya pop open, stick lowers, and, well, son, ya'll figure it out. Promise. Figured out in ya sleep, didn't ya? Old parts and lines knew whad to do without no thinkin' on yer part."

"I didn't say I was going to do anything--"

"--shit, boy. Ain't nothin' wrong wid wantin' a piece of tailpipe. Oh, and I been thinkin' on yer dream, and I know someone might be able to help ya on that. Can figure it . . . but later. Here come duh Daves. Time to gid wid it."

They went back to work, and pretty soon Dave said to Bill, "Bill, we got a big old stubborn tree that just won't go, and we got to push it down so we can scrape the clay. I think you're ready for it. Am I right? Are you ready?"

Bill rumbled his engine and whistled air through his steam pipe in response.

"All right, you little shovel, let's do 'er."

And away they went. Bill lifted his shovel and poked it out and Dave guided him to the tree. It was a big old tree and round enough that four Daves with their hands linked couldn't have surrounded it. Must have been hundreds of years old, but Bill, he was determined it wasn't going to get a day older.

He put out his shovel and began to push. He pushed hard, giving it all he had. He revved up his engine and whistled his steam and dug in with his treads and . . .

The tree didn't move.

He revved up higher and pushed and pushed and . . .

Nothing.

He might as well have had his engine turned off and be sitting in the garage with a tread up his exhaust.

He pushed harder, and . . .

He cut one. A big one. It came out of his exhaust with a kind of blat-blat-blat sound.

Bill couldn't believe it. He had cut a fart to end all farts, and right in front of Dave and all the other steam shovels. He turned one of his head beams slowly, looked to his right, and there was Maudie. She was so shocked the split in her front bumper hung open showing her gear-cog teeth (all perfect and shiny), and Bill, he wanted to just run off a cliff. But there weren't any cliffs. Just that big tree standing upright in front of him, and he hadn't done any more than crack a little bark.

"Well," said Bill's Dave, "this is just too much for you. We'll have to get a bigger and better machine. One that can do the job. And we might want to cut back on that cheap transmission fluid, boy."

Dave backed Bill off from the tree, stood up in the cab and called out, "You better bring in Butch. This is a job for a real steam shovel."

Bill felt his body droop on its treads. His shovel hit the ground with a thud.

He was not only a weakling and a farter, he was being beat out by his worst enemy.

Butch revved his engine and threw out his shiny shovel and went up against the tree, and at first Bill thought, Well, he won't do it either.

The tree stood firm, not moving, and then, suddenly, it began to lean and lean and lean, and there was a cracking sound, then a cry of roots and timber like the sound of something being jerked from its womb, and the great tree went down, the roots popping up, clay flying from them in red clunks.

Butch backed off, lifted his shovel, and with a sort of slide, treaded back to the center of the work force.

Bill saw Maudie turn and look to him, and her bumper was split wide again. But this time, she was smiling.

Back in the barn, Bill sat alone as the windows turned dark. Gabe came rolling over.

"Ya all right, son?"

"I guess."

"Damn, boy. Can't believe ya farded. Thad one knocked a bird out of a tree, gabe us all an oil stink ya wouldn't believe. A fard like that, ya must hab passed into another dimension for a while. Yer gohtdamn head beams crossed, you cut wind so hard."

"Gee, thanks."

"Ah, don't led it bother you. I led fards all the time. And sometime on purpose. . . . Big ole tree like thad, it ain't for a kid. I couldn't do it. Well, in my day I could."

"Young as me?"

"Oh, yeah. Damn, what a fard."

"Please, Gabe. Don't mention it anymore."

"All right. But, son, it was a champion."

Bill sighed.

"Ya know, I told ya I had someone could tell ya 'bout them dreams yer always having?"

"Yes."

"Well, I'm gonna bring him over. Sid tight."

Gabe rolled away, and a moment later, Bill saw him return with an old gray steam shovel who had steam coming up from between his bumpers. When he got closer, Bill saw that it wasn't steam at all, he was smoking a metal pipe stuffed with old oily shop rags.

"This is Professor Zoob," Gabe said.

"Ah, how are you ma boy?"

"Fine . . . I guess. Why haven't I seen you before?"

"I am in the back of the garage, yes. I hang there and do little jobs. Push garbage about. But I am old and they do not call me out much. I would think, soon, I will be for the scrap machine, yes. I have been around for many years, I have, and was driven by a student of much psychology. He studied in my cockpit during his breaks, yes. And when he did, he read aloud from his books, and I listened. I learned much. I learned much about dreams, I did."

"Really?"

"Yes. And before we analyze them, might I say, that I heard about today, about your trouble with the tree and the tremendous fart."

"From Gabe, I suppose."

"Oh, from everyone. It was quite some joke, it was."

"Grand."

"But, if you will tell me your dreams, let me consider on it, maybe I can help you understand."

"I don't know."

"Sure. Sure. Try me."

"Well, there's only one that concerns me, really scares me."

Zoob puffed his pipe faster, sending up a haze of smoke.

"That really stinks," Bill said. "And isn't that bad for you?"

"Of course, but at my age, why would I give a shit? I use a seven-percent solution of oil and transmission fluid. The rags burn slower, and in their haze, I think big thinks, I do. And could it stink any worse than the whopper you cut loose with today, huh?"

"I'll never live that down, will I?"

"Won't be easy," Gabe said.

"The dream?" Zoob said.

Bill told him about the dream, about the darkness and the falling and the smashing, and Zoob said, "When you are falling, what is it you smell?"

"Smell?"

"Yes. Do you smell anything? Hear anything? Taste anything?"

"Why, no. It's a dream."

"Ah, but there are dreams where one can hear or smell or taste. Have you not had the dreams about the lady steam shovels, and how that feels and smells and tastes, with the after bite of steam on the tailpipe, huh, have you not?"

"I . . . I suppose."

"Yes, of course, you can. You can smell things in a dream if there is something to smell."

"Hope ya can't smell thad fard in one," Gabe said. "Thad would peel duh paint right off."

"That's enough," Bill said.

"Well, then, my little friend, think this, do you remember anything in the darkness of your dream? Anything at all? Anything in the shadows?"

"No."

"Ah, then we must resort to the hypnotism."

"What?"

"Hypnotism. Now," Zoob said rolling back a pace, "I'm going to swing my shovel back and forth, and I want you to watch, listen only to the sound of my voice, and watch the shovel, please. There is a small silver spot scraped near the center of it, and that's what I want you to concentrate on . . . ready?"

Bill watched the shovel swing back and forth and Zoob said soothing things and no one mentioned the fart and pretty soon Bill was feeling sleepy, a little dizzy, as if he might fall over, then he felt like he was in a tunnel, and the only light in the tunnel was the shiny spot on Zoob's shovel, and the tunnel was swaying, and then it went still, and there was just the spot before him, like a beacon, and, Zoob's voice, easy and soft and suggestive.

"Now, Little Bill, you are in the dream. All dark. Tell me now, what is happening in this falling dream? Tell me."

"Well, let me see. It's dark. . . . That's it. It's dark."

"Listen carefully, Little Bill. You are in this bad dream. And it's dark--"

"And you're in there wid thad fard," Gabe said, and chuckled.

"Silence, Gabe," Zoob said. "No more with the fart. . . . Now, you are in the bad dream, in the dark, and you are falling. Are you there, Little Bill?"

"Yes," Bill said. And he was in the dream all right. And it was dark. No little scrape of light visible. And he was falling. And he felt the old fear rise up out of the darkness and come over him in a rush.

"Shit," Bill said.

"Now," said Zoob, "you are falling, and you are feeling the shit feeling, and I want you to slow this fall, and I want you to look about you. . . . It's all right. You'll be all right. You should not be scared this time. We have control over this dream, you and I, and you are falling slow and you can take the time to look about. You look about you now, and you listen, and you tell Zoob what it is you see and hear, or smell. You tell me everything, Little Bill, yes."

"Yes . . . I . . . I am falling, and it's dark, and I'm scared and I can see to my right that there's a shape."

"What is this shape?"

"I . . . I don't know."

"Yes. Yes, you do. We stop the fall. You hang in mid-air. You study the shape and it is . . . ?"

"It's a . . . It's a Dave."

"A Dave, huh? Ah hah. Go on, Little Bill."

"He's standing in the shadows. . . . He's getting around fine in the dark--"

"He familiar with the place," Zoob said.

"Yes, it's his home. There are all kinds of machines and gadgets there."

"Like what?"

"A refrigerator, and there's a little light. I guess I didn't notice it before. The Dave is opening the refrigerator and taking something out and the light is coming from there."

"The refrigerator light," Zoob said. "He's getting food. They are always with the food, which is why, over the years, you got the same driver, his ass gets heavy. It makes them blow up like a hot valve. But, go on, Little Bill."

"He's turning, his elbow is hitting something. . . . Something on the stove, and it's falling off."

"What is it?"

"I don't know."

"Take yourself some closer."

"I don't want to."

"It is quite all right, Little Bill. Go closer."

"It's a waffle iron."

"No shit?"

"Yes, sir."

"It is a waffle iron. Now that is some confusing business. . . . Ah, ah . . . Okay, what else do you see, Little Bill?"

"Nothing. It's all gone black."

"Wake up."

Bill opened his headlamps.

"Wow," he said.

"Ain't that some shit?" Zoob said. "One time, in the mirror, I hypnotize myself into thinking I am one big chicken. Tried to roost on top of the garage, but ended up pushing down the wall. Oh, the Daves were mad that day."

"But . . . what about me?"

"You are the waffle iron."

"Beg pardon."

"The waffle iron and many things. Old metals. Busted parts. They were melted down to make you, and the memories of before, they are in the metal. Are at least certain memories. Like the fall. That was traumatic, and the memory, a little metal ghost, it stayed with the metal. The waffle iron, it must have become part of the mainframe that holds your memories. That is it, Little Bill. You remember the fall, and therefore, you dream of it and you fear it."

"But I'm not the waffle iron. And now that I know, it'll go away. Right?"

"Nah. You have to work through it."

"How do I do that?"

"Don't know."

"But you're the professor."

"Well, I call myself that. But this, this is up to you, Little Bill. You have to sort of cinch up the old transmission and deal with it. And, yes, knowing the source, that will help. You must overcome your fears, and when you do, the dreams will stop."

Professor Zoob turned and rumpled away on his treads. Gabe said, "See, told ya he could help you. . . . How about thad? Yer a sissy cause ya got a mashed waffle iron inside ya. Ain't thad some shit? I'm glad I was made from good metal. Well, going to gid a lube job, if you know what I mean, so, hang tight, kid, and good luck."

"Thanks, Gabe, I think," Bill said, and Gabe went away.

Sitting alone in the corner, his shovel dipped, his head beams to the wall, Bill was surprised to feel a soft metallic touch. He turned, and there was Maudie.

"I know you were embarrassed today, Bill, but I want you to know, it's only natural. A lot of fluid in the system, exertion. I wouldn't feel too bad."

"Well, I do . . . and you were laughing."

"Yeah. Well, it was funny. On the outside, anyway. From your point of view, not so funny. It was just so loud and long, and that look on your face . . . I wasn't laughing because I think you're a loser. I mean, a fart like that, it kind of embarrasses everyone, and you're always glad it's the other guy, but, don't feel too bad. I puked once. Oil all over the place, and there was a big chunk of rust in it. I was so humiliated."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Was it before I came here?"

"I was here a few days before you, and yes, it was."

"Did everyone see it?"

"No. Only me, but I was still embarrassed."

"That's not exactly the same."

"No. Yours was more humiliating, I admit, but, still, I was embarrassed, if just to myself. I mean yours was right out in front of the Great Steam Shovel in the Sky and everybody. . . ."

"Yes. I know. Maudie, I'm going to go right to it. Is there any way you and me could get together?"

"You mean, together-together?"

"I just want to get to know you. I like you. I'm not a bad guy. . . ."

"I like you, too."

"Really?"

"Sure. Everyone in the barn--except Butch--says you're nice."

"No shit?"

"No shit."

"Well, that's swell, Maudie. Maybe, you know, sometime, after work, we could get together in the far corner of the garage. Maybe get our oil changed or something. Watch a little TV in the rec room afterwards. There's a car chase movie on, the big new one about car wrecks and the fire department, LOTS OF CARS AND A DOZEN HOSES."

"Oh, those cars. I've seen previews. They're so sexy. So are the fire trucks. That's some metal the cars are built from, isn't it?"

"Actually, I don't know cars and steam shovels go together--"

"Ah, jealous already and we haven't even had our first date."

"I guess . . . a little. I mean, how do you compete with movie cars?"

"That's cute . . . long as it doesn't get out of hand. And listen, those movie cars, they're always being remade and rebuffed and they don't really run as fast as they show in the movie. I'm looking for the real deal, and you're the real deal, I think. I'd sure like to find out for sure."

"Gee, Maudie. That's swell."

"Remember, about the tree? That was a big one. It would take someone like Butch to push it over. For heavens' sake, Bill, he's three times your size. It's not your fault."

"Yeah . . . yeah, you're right."

"You might want to drink a little less transmission fluid, though, you're gonna be straining that hard. I mean . . . you know?"

"Sure. Of course. Good advice."

"See you later."

"Tomorrow? After work?"

"It's a date."

That night Bill slept and he dreamed, but it was not the dream about falling. Zoob had really helped him, and probably had no idea how much. In his dream he thought of Maudie. And it was a good dream, and they were warm and close and friendly, and spent quality time together, watching TV, having their oil changed, and, in the end, he mounted her like he was climbing an incline to a Rocky Mountain trailer-park entrance.

But just as he was about to finish, he cut another one.

He awoke in a sweat.

He had swapped one bad dream for another.

He wasn't falling anymore, but now he was afraid he was going to cut a big one at an inopportune moment.

But, hell, he had about as much chance of mounting Maudie, having any kind of relationship with her, as a bird had of finding a tree in a Taco Bell parking lot.

Morning came, and Bill tried to put a good face on it, smiled his rubber bumpers wide when he saw the beautiful Maudie being driven out of the barn. She waved her radio antennae at him, and he waved his back, and she was gone, out into the sunlight.

For a long moment, Bill feared he was not going to get another chance. Steam shovel after steam shovel was rolled outside, and still he set. No Dave to drive him.

But then, finally, his Dave showed up.

Dave came and climbed up on him. Bill cranked the engine without giving Dave time to do it.

"Wow, you're raring to go," Dave said. "Sorry I was late. Wife felt frisky. Since that happens about once every six months, had to take advantage of it."

They rolled outside and the sun was bright against the concrete. The team of shovels went past where they had worked before, started motoring along the road, puffing steam, cracking gravel under their treads.

They rolled along until the road rose up and the mountains gathered around them, and still they went up. Bill felt a strain in his motor, and he took a deep breath of steam, squirted it out, hunkered down and dug in with his treads. Up he went, carrying his Dave high and deep into the mountains along the concrete road. Bill tried not to look to his right, toward the edge of the road and the great fall that was there. The feelings he had in the dreams came back when he did. His insides trembled like a piston was blown. His nuclear pellets, his gas-and-oil engine, his back-up steam engine, all seemed to miss a beat as they went up. And up. And up.

The road narrowed, and finally they came to where the road turned to clay, then ended up against the mountain.

Bill realized this was a spot where other shovels had been working. It was wide here. You could put four steam shovels across, digging. Digging open the mountain so the road could keep going up and Daves and their Sallys could ride in their cars carrying all their little Daves and Sallys.

Bill was not first in line, but well behind the first four that went to work, Butch and Maudie among them. Dave pulled him in line with three other shovels, and killed his motor. Bill watched Maudie as she worked--the way the sun hit the metal of her shiny ass, the way her tailpipe wiggled--and he was amazed and grateful for her fine construction.

He watched Butch dig and toss the dirt, and was impressed in spite of himself. What a powerful machine. He liked the way the cables rolled under his metal skin and the way he could lay back on the rear of his treads and lift himself up. And he liked the way Butch cussed as he worked, digging, insulting the mountain.

He looked around him and saw Gabe working alongside the road, on little jobs, like making the road wider for more concrete to be laid. He thought of Zoob, back in the barn. Did he wish he was out here, digging?

Most likely.

It was the dream of every good construction shovel.

The digging went on and the day got hotter. His metal grew warm and he could feel the oils, the liquids inside of him, starting to grow warm and loose. He lifted his head beams and looked at the sky. A single bird soared against it, and the blue of the sky faded as a cloud of pollution, the sign of progress, rolled across it, gray as a cobwebbed garage corner. He thought, If I could shoot a rifle, like a Dave, I bet I could pop that goddamn bird.

Then Dave started his motor again.

Now Bill and three others took the place of the four who had been in line. As Maudie rolled past him, she winked a headlight. Then Butch rolled past him, said, "You just a Tinkertoy."

Bill gritted his gears and went up against the mountain with the other three, and he began to dig. He thought: Dig, boy, dig. And don't cut one. Die before you do that. Dig. Dig this mountain down. Dig like you want to flatten the entire earth. Which, actually, seemed like a fairly noble ambition. Making all the world flat and covered in concrete.

But then what would he do?

Why, tear up the concrete, of course. Like Gabe had said. It had to wear out, crack and buckle. Tear it up and scrape it into piles and let them put down more concrete. Oh, yes, Gabe was right. This was the life. Fuck the earth. Fuck the wildlife. Fuck it all. To dig was to live.

And so he dug and he dug, then, suddenly, Dave was wheeling him about. He thought at first he had done something wrong, but realized he was growing low on power. That he had to pull back, like the first four. Maybe get a new pellet to re-fire the steam. That was it. He had done fine.

He smiled as he clattered tiredly back through the line and another four moved up.

So the day went, three rows of four, taking turns, twelve steam shovels working against the mountain, and Gabe working the side of the road. And finally, mid-day, the Daves pulled back all the shovels and stopped, had them set alongside the road.

The Daves went about checking oil and fluids and such, and old Gabe, he was sent up to the front to shovel the bits of dirt that remained, scraping it down to the clay, which was a job that made him happy.

Then, the mountain came down.

It came down with a slight rumble, then a big rumble, and Bill looked up and saw Gabe look up, and the mountain went over Gabe and Bill could hear the sound of metal bending, then there was nothing but a great dust cloud.

Butch, who was behind him now, rolled forward suddenly, without benefit of his Dave, said, "Man, did you see that shit there? Old Gabe, he done fucked now. One less old geezer in the garage. And that ain't bad."

Bill wheeled. He swung his shovel and hit Butch with everything he had. And Butch, well, it didn't bother him much.

Butch swung his shovel too, and just as it hit Bill, making Bill slide back on his treads, Bill heard Maudie's voice.

"You got to get Gabe out from under there, boys. You got to."

"Ain't gonna dig him out unless I got to," said Butch. "He nothing to me, he ain't."

"You're right, Maudie" said Bill, and he hummed up his engine and rolled forward. His Dave tried to work the controls, to make Bill do what he wanted, but Bill ignored him. I got free will, he thought. I can do what I want, and he went at the dirt and began to dig. He dug and he dug, and eventually he saw a bit of scarred metal, and he dug faster, and finally, finally, there was Gabe.

Or what was left of him. He was squashed and his old shovel had been knocked completely off. Oil dribbled all over the earth.

"Gabe!" Bill said.

Weak as a busted oil line, Gabe said, "Thanks, boy. But ain't no use. I'm a gonner. Fugged from bucket to ass end."

And he was.

They brought in a wrecker and took Gabe away, down the hill. That night when they rolled back in the garage, Bill found that Gabe had been dismantled and stacked. Tomorrow, he would go to the furnace to be melted down and reformed.

"It's another life," Maudie said. "He'll be melted into some other kind of machinery. It's not over for him."

"It won't be him," Bill said.

"And there's his soul, it's gone to the sky. That can't be changed. Can't be taken away from him. A residue remains. Isn't it in the manual that residuals can remain?"

Bill thought about the ghost inside him, the residual of the waffle iron. And then he thought about heaven.

"What's heaven like, Maudie? What do you think it's like?"

"Flat. Lots of concrete. But every day, new hills pop up, and new trees, and they have to be taken down. And we'll be there, just like all the others that have gone before us and will come after us."

"Will Butch be there?"

"I don't think so. I think he gets the other place."

"Gabe was just an old guy," Bill said. "A good old guy."

"I know. Don't look at him anymore."

Zoob rolled up. He said, "I am sorry, Bill. He was good, he was. I miss him already."

"Me, too," Bill said.

"I wish you the best of a night you could have," Zoob said. "Gabe, he is all through with the pain. The ache in the bolts and the hinges. Maybe he's lucky. I think maybe I could wish it was me, you see."

"No way," Bill said.

"Thank you. And I wish you, and the lady, good night."

"Goodnight," Bill and Maudie said in unison.

They rolled away together, went to the dark shadows on the far side of the garage. Maudie swung her shovel so that it draped over Bill's back. Her bumper parted and pressed to his, and they kissed. And kissed again. Soon they were holding each other, stroking metal, and then, heaven above and flatten all earth, he was behind her, and down came the oil stick, and then came the loving.

Afterward, they set low on their treads together in the shadows and slid open their side traps and dropped their oil tubes into a fine vat of thirty-weight, sucked it up together.

"I . . . I don't know what happened there. . . ." Bill said.

"What happened was wonderful," Maudie said. "I haven't felt that good since . . . Well, I haven't felt that good."

"Neither have I," he said.

That night, Bill did not have the bad dreams.

Next morning the Daves came and rolled out all the steam shovels, drove them back up into the mountains. Today, Bill was not as aware of the heights. He felt strong and wanted at the mountain.

They came to where they had stopped working, where Gabe had been crushed, and spread into groups of four. He was in the first group. To his left was Maudie, to her left, Glen, an older steam shovel. And to Bill's right, Butch, who was next to the ledge that fell away into what seemed like eternity.

"I gonna show you how to work today, Tinkertoy," said Butch. "Gabe, he done gone now. Ain't here to take up for you. Not that it mattered none, but who wants to beat up an old steam shovel?"

"You don't mind threatening to beat up a smaller shovel than you," Bill said, with a kind of newfound bravado, thinking, Getting tailpipe makes you crazy, makes you brave. "I was your size, you might not be so tough."

Butch narrowed his headlamps.

"You pushing, little Tinketoy. I gonna show you how to work. And, I may show you a thing or two other than that, you hear me?"

"Like I give an oil squirt." Butch said, "I think maybe you been getting a little business, a little of the golden steam shovel's tail business, and it's making you think you a man, little Tinkertoy, you know what I mean? You ain't no man. You just a Tinkertoy."

Bill shoved Butch. It was sudden. Butch was actually knocked to the side a pace, near the mountains edge.

"Hey," Butch said.

"Stop it," Bill's Dave said. "I came here to work. What are you shovels doing?"

"I remember that you did that, Tinkertoy," Butch said.

"Hope you do," Bill said.

They began to dig and everything went well. The mountain moved for them. The dirt was mounded to the side, away from the ledge, and some of it was put behind them and carried down the hill and away by other shovels. Zoob was working the edges of the road, doing the soft jobs, the way Gabe had been, though even more slowly.

They worked on and on and the sun rose high and grew hot and made their metal warm and finally very warm, and then hot as the top of a stove. Their metal shined like a newly minted coin in the sunlight, and their well-oiled shovels and treads worked beautifully and tore apart the mountain, and somewhere, inside the mountain, as if the mountain had had enough, a vein of rock that ran all the way to the summit quivered and quaked and let go, and the huge tip of the mountain, like a peaked hat knocked over by a high wind, tumbled down on the four working shovels below.

One moment there was the sun, then there was the darkness. Bill could feel the pressure of the dirt and the rocks pushing down on him. Then, below him, the ground moved, and he went down into it. Amazingly, he slipped down at an angle, and down, down, down, as he slid into a weak place in the mountain, a natural tunnel filled with soft dirt. He began to slide back into that. And a rock, dislodged, shot out and stuck in front of him, stopped the progress of falling rock from above.

It gave Bill a bit of space.

He could move his shovel, like a Dave might move his elbow if he were inside a tow sack. He moved the shovel and some dirt shook. He began to move it back and forth. More dirt shifted. Finally he grabbed the great rock and gave it all he had. The rock moved and dirt came in, but Bill rocked back on his treads and the dirt flowed around him like black water.

He kept working that shovel, and it made a sound like it was trying to let go of clotted oil in the lines. Still Bill shoveled, lifting it a bit up and down, a little from side to side. Finally, he had traction, and he was moving the dirt. And he was going up that incline, climbing it the way he'd climbed the sweet, golden Maudie the night before. He put that image in his head and kept at it, and pretty soon the image was as tight in his head as a screwed-down bolt.

Up he went. Up. And finally there was light.

And he realized his Dave was gone. Probably washed away in the rock and dirt, covered up and crushed like an aluminum oilcan.

On the surface, he found the shovels and the Daves digging at the mountain furiously. As he rose out of the ground like a metal mole, the Daves cheered and the engines revved their motors.

He lifted his shovel high.

But it was a short-lived triumph.

He saw that the mountain had come down in such a way that it had covered Maudie and Butch.

Glen had survived it all. His shovel had been knocked off and one of his treads was slightly dislodged, but already a huge wrecker had come for him and he was being hooked up even as Bill looked.

As Bill watched the wrecker take Glen away, he realized he didn't feel so good and his vision was blurry. There was dirt inside of his busted right headlamp, and it was partially covering his line of vision. Inside, way down deep, he felt as if a bag of bolts and gears had been randomly mixed and tossed into a paint shaker. When he moved, he squeaked and clanked and he hurt near the right hinge of his shovel like a Dave had been at him with a welding torch.

Bill hunkered down on his treads and tore at the mountain. Tried to dig where he had last seen Maudie, but he couldn't be sure she was there. Maybe, like him, she had been washed down into a soft part of the ground. He dug and he dug, and finally he saw metal. He revved his engine and other shovels came. They dug and dug and pretty soon they saw the shiny gold metal of the beautiful Maudie, less beautiful now. Dented and scratched gray in strips, her shovel dangling by one bolt.

Bill hooked his shovel around her and pulled her out. And as he did, he saw behind her was a roof of rocks supported by a wall of rock slabs, and in there, crushed down, but alive (he could see the headlights blinking) was Butch. When Maudie came out, the dirt went down. Butch went out of sight.

Bill sighed air through his manifold.

Maybe he was dead. The bastard.

The shovels were slowing down behind him. They had Maudie out, and no one was working that hard for Butch, and Bill could understand that. . . .

But, damn it, Butch was a steam shovel. He was a worker. And he had been caught in the storm of the mountain-fall while on the job. And though Bill thought it might be nice to just let the mountain crush him, he just couldn't do it. That wasn't the way it was in the manual. Machines helped machines. Machines helped the Daves.

Bill went at it again, digging, digging, and pretty soon the other shovels were helping, and the dirt began to move.

When it was clear enough, they could see Butch in there. He was much shorter than before, his metal rippled in the center, and above him, supported on two wobbly slabs of rock, was a much bigger slab of rock. It looked as if it were large enough to build a subdivision on.

Bill moved in close and tried to pull Butch out, but it was like trying to work a greasy bolt out of an engine with a coat hanger tipped with chewing gum. Touch-and-go.

Butch was moaning with pain as the tugging tore at his metal.

"I've lost my crankshaft," he said. "And my oil pan's loose. I can feel it sliding around inside."

"Don't move," Bill said. He dug a space close to the edge of the mountain, and within a short time he found he could scrunch in there. One tread was hanging halfway over the edge, and he could hear rock tumbling down the side of the mountain, and feel it sliding out from under his treads. He felt himself slipping a little. For a moment, the old dream came back, flashed before his inner headlamps, and he was falling, and he was scared.

He shook it off.

He looked out and he saw Maudie. She was banged up, but she was going to be okay. Nothing a few tools, a blowtorch and paint couldn't fix. She looked at him and her lights came on and her bumper parted in a smile, showing that pretty gear-work inside, slightly dusty. It gave him strength. He scrunched back farther. Being smaller, he could fit right in beside Butch.

"What in the world will you be doing, my boy?"

It was old Zoob. He had slid up close to the opening. The old steam shovel bent down on his creaky treads and eyed Bill with his headlamps.

"Why are you in there, my boy? Let the rock crush this one, the big hunk of scrap metal."

"He was on the job," Bill said. "He's one of us."

"I think he's not worth it some at all, that is what I think."

"You may be right," Bill said.

"Hey," Butch said. "I'm right here."

Bill brought his shovel up and touched the great slab above him. He hunkered down on his treads and flexed his metal, and lifted with the shovel.

And the great rock moved.

Shovel God in Heaven, and praise Jayzus, but Bill felt strong. He pushed. And he pushed with his shovel, and he felt the bolts that hinged it go tight as a pair of vice grips, but he pushed up anyway.

And that rock moved some more.

"Pull . . . him . . . out," Bill said.

They came forward, two big steam shovels, and they reached in and got hold of Butch, started pulling.

Bill, looking at Maudie, suddenly felt weak. He could feel his hydraulic fluid starting to eek out, could hear it hissing as it erupted through the tubes.

"Oh, shit," Bill said.

Then there was pain.

Sharp. Quick.

And he was flying along through darkness, and ahead of him was a great tunnel lit by a white light. He could see himself flying along, treads working, but touching nothing, and a flock of birds and scampering squirrels and insects and fish and snakes and possums and raccoons and bears, and all manner of wildlife, was rushing along beside him, as well as a flying waffle iron.

And he felt good and happy and fulfilled.

He rushed faster and the light grew brighter, and the animals and insects were sucked forward as if by a vacuum cleaner, and then, just as he was about to go into the brightest and warmest part of the light--

He saw Gabe.

Gabe was blocking his path.

Gabe rammed up against him.

"Gohtdamnit, boy. Not yet. Id's not yer time just now. Ain't far off. But not yet. Got to finish whad yer doin', son."

There was a rush of wind and light as Bill fled back along the tunnel and the light went dark. Then he was standing there, with that great slab of rock on his shovel, and he saw Maudie looking at him, and that look in her eye was worth all the agony in his shovel, worth the tubes he was splitting, the fluids he was draining.

The shovels tugged at Butch, and, slowly, he came free.

Bill couldn't see him now. Couldn't see much of anything. Maudie and Zoob, the other shovels, they were a blur.

"Is . . . he . . . out?" Bill asked.

"He is," Maudie said.

"I love you, Maudie," Bill said.

"And I love you. Oh, no, Bill. Hold on. We'll prop it up and pull you out."

"Too late. I'm . . . a hero . . . aren't I?"

"You are," Maudie said. "Oh, no, Bill. Hold on."

"You'll always remember me?"

Oil slipped from between the edges of her headlamps, rolled down her metal face, over her rubber mouth, as she said, "I will."

"So will I," said Butch. "You ain't no Tinkertoy, after all. You a better man than me. Than anyone I know."

"Nice knowing you some, kid," said Zoob.

And the great slab of rock came down.

It was like an explosion when it hit. Bill felt himself being crushed, washed sideways over the side of the cliff. For a moment he felt the old fear, and it was a fear worth having now, for, in fact, he was falling.

But he didn't keep the fear. Didn't hold onto it.

He was a gonner. He knew it. But he was a hero, too. And as he fell, he looked up, saw the shadow of the great rock slab falling after him. He chuckled deep inside his gears, yelled, "Geronimo!"

Then he hit the ground. His shovel, which was hanging by a strand of metal, came completely off and spun away. His headlamps went out. There was darkness, along with the sound of the great rock falling, a sound like wind through what was left of the world's pines.

"One, one thousand," Bill said, counting the fall of the rock. "Two, one thousand."

Of course, he never heard it when it struck, but--

--down that long black tunnel he went again, and it gave up its blackness to a warm light, and there in the light, fleeing along with him, were more birds and insects and snakes and all manner of wildlife whose homes he had destroyed, and that damn waffle iron, whose soul had been caught up inside him, and he thought, shit, that wasn't good of me, doing that to the birds and the squirrels and such, but here I go anyway, because this must be Heaven, it feels so good, so bright and warm, and he could see Gabe up ahead, beckoning him forward with his shovel.

Then he realized Gabe was whole again. He hadn't thought about that before. In fact, Bill thought, I'm whole again. Bright and shiny with paint blue as the sky.

Now Gabe was beside him. They flowed forward.

Gabe said, "Ya know, stuff I told ya aboud all dem Gohtdamn birds and such?"

"Yeah," Bill said.

"I was wrong. But the Shovel Ghawd, he don't gib a shit. We is his, and he is ours. He knows what kind of fuel pump is in a good machine's chest, and boy, you and me, we got good ones."

Then, they were sucked into the total light of paradise.

BOYS WILL BE BOYS

1

Not so long ago, about a year back, a very rotten kid named Clyde Edson walked the earth. He was street-mean and full of savvy and he knew what he wanted and got it any way he wanted.

He lived in a big, evil house on a dying, gray street in Galveston, Texas, and he collected to him, like an old lady who brings in cats half-starved and near-eaten with mange, the human refuse and the young discards of a sick society.

He molded them. He breathed life into them. He made them feel they belonged. They were his creations, but he did not love them. They were just things to be toyed with until the paint wore thin and the batteries ran down, then out they went.

And this is the way it was until he met Brian Blackwood.

Things got worse after that.

2

Guy had a black leather jacket and dark hair combed back virgin-ass tight, slicked down with enough grease to lube a bone-dry Buick; came down the hall walking slow, head up, ice-blue eyes working like acid on everyone in sight; had the hall nearly to himself, plenty of room for his slow-stroll-swagger. The other high school kids were shouldering the wall, shedding out of his path like frenzied snakes shedding out of their skins.

You could see this Clyde was bad news. Hung in time. Fifties-looking. Out of step. But who's going to say, "Hey, dude, you look funny?"

Tough, this guy. Hide like the jacket he wore. No books under his arm, nothing at all. Just cool.

Brian was standing at the water fountain first time he saw Clyde, and immediately he was attracted to him. Not in a sexual way. He wasn't funny. But in the manner metal shavings are attracted to a magnet-can't do a thing about it, just got to go to it and cling.

Brian knew who Clyde was, but this was the first time he'd ever been close enough to feel the heat. Before, the guy'd been a tough greaser in a leather jacket who spent most of his time expelled from school. Nothing more.

But now he saw for the first time that the guy had something; something that up close shone like a well-boned razor in the noonday sun.

Cool. He had that.

Class. He had that.

A Difference. He had that.

He was a walking power plant.

Name was Clyde. 0l', mean, weird, don't-fuck-with-me Clyde.

"You looking at something?" Clyde growled.

Brian just stood there, one hand resting on the water fountain.

After a while he said innocently: "You."

"That right?"

"Uh-huh."

"Staring at me?"

"I guess."

"I see."

And then Clyde was on Brian, had him by the hair, jerking his head down, driving a knee into his face. Brian went back seeing constellations. Got kicked in the ribs then. Hit in the eye as he leaned forward from that. Clyde was making a regular bop bag out of him.

He hit Clyde back, aimed a nose shot through a swirling haze of colored dots.

And it hurt so good. Like when he made that fat pig Betty Sue Flowers fingernail his back until he bled; thrust up her hips until his cock ached and the rotten-fish smell of her filled his brain ... Only this hurt better. Ten times better.

Clyde wasn't expecting that. This guy was coming back like he liked it.

Clyde dug that.

He kicked Brian in the nuts, grabbed him by the hair and slammed his forehead against the kid's nose. Made him bleed good, but didn't get a good enough lick in to break it.

Brian went down, grabbed Clyde's ankle, bit it.

Clyde yowled, dragged Brian around the hall.

The students watched, fascinated. Some wanted to laugh at what was happening, but none dared.

Clyde used his free foot to kick Brian in the face. That made Brian let go ... for a moment. He dove at Clyde, slammed the top of his head into Clyde's bread basket, carried him back against the wall crying loudly, "Motherfucker!"

Then the principal came, separated them, screamed at them, and Clyde hit the principal and the principal went down and now Clyde and Brian were both standing up, together, kicking the goddamned shit out of the goddamned principal in the middle of the goddamned hall. Side by side they stood. Kicking. One. Two. One. Two. Left leg. Right leg. Feet moving together like the legs of a scurrying centipede...

3

They got some heat slapped on them for that; juvenile court action. It was a bad scene.

Brian's mother sat at a long table with his lawyer and whined like a blender on whip.

Good old mom. She was actually good for something. She had told the judge: "He's a good boy, your honor. Never got in any trouble before. Probably wouldn't have gotten into this, but he's got no father at home to be an example ...," and so forth.

If it hadn't been to his advantage, he'd have been disgusted. As it was, he sat in his place with his nice clean suit and tried to look ashamed and a little surprised at what he had done. And in a way he was surprised.

He looked over at Clyde. He hadn't bothered with a suit. He had his jacket and jeans on. He was cleaning his fingernails with a fingernail clipper.

When Mrs. Blackwood finished, Judge Lowry yawned. It was going to be one of those days. He thought: the dockets are full, this Blackwood kid has no priors, looks clean-cut enough, and this other little shit has a bookfull ... Yet, he is a kid, and I feel big-hearted. Or, to put this into perspective, there's enough of a backlog without adding this silly case to it.

If I let the Blackwood kid go, it'll look like favoritism because he's clean-cut and this is his first time-and that is good for something Yet, if I don't let the Edson kid go too, then I'm saying the same crime is not as bad when it's committed by a clean-cut kid with a whining momma.

All right, he thought. We'll keep it simple. Let them both go, but give it all some window dressing.

And it was window dressing, nothing more. Brian was put on light probation, and Clyde, already on probation, was given the order to report to his probation officer more frequently, and that was the end of that.

Piece of cake.

The school expelled them for the rest of the term, but that was no mean thing. They were back on the streets before the day was out.

For the moment, Clyde went his way and Brian went his.

But the bond was formed.

4

A week later, mid-October.

Brian Blackwood sat in his room, his head full of pleasant but overwhelming emotions. He got a pen and loose-leaf notebook out of his desk drawer, began to write savagely.

I've never kept a journal before, and I don't know if I'll continue to keep one after tonight, but the stuff that's going on inside of me is boiling up something awful and I feel if I don't get it out I'm going to explode and there isn't going to be anything left of me but blood and shit stains on the goddamned wall.

In school I read about this writer who said he was like that, and if he could write down what was bothering him, what was pushing his skull from the inside, he could find relief, so I'm going to try that and hope for the best, because I've got to tell somebody, and I sure as hell can't tell Mommy-dear this, not that I can really tell her anything, but I've got to let this out of me and I only wish I could write faster, put it down as fast as I think.

This guy, Clyde Edson, he's really different and he's changed my life and I can feel it, I know it, it's down in my guts, squirming around like some kind of cancer, eating at me from the inside out, changing me into something new and fresh.

Being around Clyde is like being next to pure power, yeah, like that. Energy comes off of him in waves that nearly knock you down, and it's almost as if I'm absorbing that energy, and like maybe Clyde is sucking something out of me, something he can use, and the thought of that, of me giving Clyde something, whatever it is, makes me feel strong and whole. I mean, being around Clyde is like touching evil, or like that sappy Star Wars shit about being seduced by the Dark Side of The Force, or some such fucking malarkey. But you see, this seduction by the Dark Side, it's a damn good fuck, a real jism-spurter, kind that makes your eyes bug, your back pop and your asshole pucker

Maybe I don't understand this yet, but I think it's sort of like this guy I read about once, this philosopher whose name I can't remember, but who said something about becoming a Superman. Not the guy with the cape. I'm not talking comic book, do-gooder crap here, I'm talking the real palooka. Can't remember just what he said, but from memory of what I read, and from the way I feel now, I figure that Clyde and I are two of the chosen, the Supermen of now, this moment, mutants for the future. I see it sort of like this: man was once a wild animal type that made right by the size of his muscles and not by no bullshit government and laws. Time came when he had to become civilized to survive all the other hardnoses, but now that time has passed 'cause most of the hardnoses have died off and there isn't anything left but a bunch of fucking pussies who couldn't find their ass with a road map or figure how to wipe it without a blueprint. But you see, the mutations are happening again. New survivors are being born, and instead of that muck scientists say we crawled out of in the first place, we're crawling out of this mess the pussies have created with all their human rights shit and laws to protect the weak. Only this time, it isn't like before. Man might have crawled out of that slime to escape the sharks of the sea back then, but this time it's the goddamned sharks that are crawling out and we're mean sonofabitches with razor-sharp teeth and hides like fresh-dug gravel. And most different of all, there's a single-mindness about us that just won't let up.

I don't know if I'm saying this right, it's not all clear in my head and it's hard to put into words, but I can feel it, goddamnit, I can feel it. Time has come when we've become too civilized, overpopulated, so evolution has taken care of that, it's created a social mutation-Supermen like Clyde and me.

Clyde, he's the raw stuff, sewer sludge. He gets what he wants because he doesn't let anything stand in the way of what he wants, nothing. God, the conversations we had the last couple of days ... See now, lost my train of thought... Oh yeah, the social mutations.

You see, I thought I was some kind of fucking freak all this time. But what it is, I'm just new, different. I mean, from as far back as I can remember, I've been different. I just don't react the way other people do, and I didn't understand why. Crying over dead puppies and shit like that. Big fucking deal. Dog's dead, he's dead. What the fuck do I care? It's the fucking dog that's dead, not me, so why should I be upset?

I mean, I remember this little girl next door that had this kitten when we were kids. She was always cooing and petting that little mangy bastard. And one day my Dad- that was before he got tired of the Old Lady's whining and ran off, and good riddance, I say-sent me out to mow the yard. He had this thing about the yard being mowed, and he had this thing about me doing it. Well, I'm out there mowing it, and there's that kitten, wandering around in our yard. Now, I was sick of that kitten, Mr. Journal, so I picked it up and petted it, went to the garage and got myself a trowel. I went out in the front yard and dug a nice deep hole and put that kitten in it, all except the head, I left that sticking up. I patted the dirt around its neck real tight, then I went back and got the lawn mower, started it and began pushing it toward that little fucking cat. I could see its head twisting and it started moving its mouth- meowing, but I couldn't hear it, though I wish I could have-and I pushed the mower slowlike toward it, watching the grass chute from time to time, making sure the grass was really coming out of there in thick green blasts, and then I'd look up and see that kitten. When I got a few feet from it, I noticed that I was on a hard. I mean, I had a pecker you could have used for a cold chisel.

When I was three feet away, I starved to push that thing at a trot, and when I hit that cat, what a sound, and I had my eye peeled on that mower chute, and for a moment there was green and then there was red with green and hunks of ragged, gray fur spewing out, twisting onto the lawn.

Far as I knew, no one ever knew what I did. I just covered up the stump of the cat's neck real good and went on about my business. Later that evening when I was finishing up, the little shit next door came home and I could hear her calling out, "Kitty, kitty, kitty," it was all I could do not to fall down behind the mower laughing. But I kept a straight face, and when she came over and asked if I'd seen Morris-can you get that, Morris?-I said, "No, I'm sorry, I haven't," and she doesn't even get back to her house before she's crying and calling for that little fucking cat again.

Ah, but so much for amusing sidelights, Mr. Journal. I guess the point I'm trying to make is people get themselves tied up and concerned with the damndest things, dogs and cats, stuff like that. I've yet to come across a dog or cat with a good, solid idea.

God, it feels good to say what I want to say for a change, and to have someone like Clyde who not only understands, but agrees, sees things the same way. Feels good to realize why all the Boy Scout good deed shit never made me feel diddlyshit. Understand now why the good grades and being called smart never thrilled me either. Was all bullshit, that's why. We Supermen don't go for that petty stuff, doesn't mean dick to us. Got no conscience 'cause a conscience isn't anything but a bullshit tool to make you a goddamned pussy, a candy-ass coward. We do what we want, as we please, when we want. I got this feeling that there are more and more like Clyde and me, and in just a little more time, we new ones will rule. And those who are born like us won't feel so out of step, because they'll know by then that the way they feel is okay, and that this is a dog eat dog world full of fucking red, raw meat, and there won't be any bullshit, pussy talk from them, they'll just go out and find that meat and eat it.

These new ones aren't going to be like the rest of the turds who have a clock to tell them when to get up in the morning, a boss that tells them what to do all day and a wife to nag them into doing it to keep her happy lest she cut off the pussy supply. No, no more of that. That old dog ain't going to hunt no more. From then on it'll be every man for himself, take what you want, take the pussy you want, whatever. What a world that would be, a world where every sonofabitch on the block is as mean as a junkyard dog. Every day would be an adventure, a constant battle of muscle and wits.

Oh man, the doors that Clyde has opened for me. He's something else. Just a few days ago I felt like I was some kind of freak hiding out in this world, then along comes Clyde and I find out that the freaks are plentiful, but the purely sane, like Clyde and me, are far and few-least right now. Oh yeah, that Clyde ... it's not because he's so smart, either. Least not in a book-learned sense. The thing that impresses me about him is the fact that he's so raw and ready to bite, to just take life in his teeth and shake that motherfucker until the shit comes out.

Me and Clyde are like two halves of a whole. I'm blond and fair, intelligent, and he's dark, short and muscular, just able to read. I'm his gears and he's my oil, the stuff that makes me run right. We give to each other... What we give is... Christ, this will sound screwy, Mr. Journal, but the closest I can come to describing it is psychic energy. We feed off each other.

Jesus Fucking H. Christ, starting to ramble. But feel better. That writer's idea must be working because I feel drained. Getting this out is like having been constipated for seventeen years of my life, and suddenly I've taken a laxative and I've just shit the biggest turd that can be shit by man, bear or elephant, and it feels so goddamned good, I want to yell to the skies.

Hell, I've had it. Feel like I been on an all-night fuck with a nympho on Spanish fly. Little later Clyde's supposed to come by, and I'm going out the window, going with him to see The House. He's told me about it, and it sounds really fine. He says he's going to show me some things I've never seen before. Hope so.

Damn, it's like waiting to be blessed with some sort of crazy, magical power or something. Like being given the ability to strike people with leprosy or wish some starlet up all naked and squirming on the rack and you with a dick as long and hard and hot as a heated poker, and her looking up at you and yelling for you to stick it to her before she cums just looking at you. Something like that, anyway.

Well, won't be long now and Clyde will be here. Guess I need to go sit over by the window, Mr Journal, so I won't miss him. If Mom finds me missing after a while, things could get a little sticky, but I doubt she'll report her only, loving son to the parole board. Would be tacky. I always just tell her I'll be moving out just as soon as I can get me a job, and that shuts her up. Christ, she acts like she's in love with me or something, isn't natural.

Enough of this journal shit. Bring on the magic, Clyde.

5

Two midnight shadows seemed to blow across the yard of the Blackwood home. Finally, those shadows broke out of the overlapping darkness of the trees, hit the moonlight and exploded into two teenagers. Clyde and Brian, running fast and hard. Their heels beat a quick, sharp rhythm on the sidewalk, like the too-fast ticking of clocks; timepieces from the Dark Side, knocking on toward a gruesome destiny.

After a moment the running stopped. Doors slammed. A car growled angrily. Lights burst on, and the black '66 sailed away from the curb. It sliced down the quiet street like a razor being sliced down a vein, cruised between dark houses where only an occasional light burned behind a window like a fearful gold eye gazing through a contact lens.

A low-slung, yellow dog making its nightly trashcan route crossed the street, fell into the Chevy's headlights.

The car whipped for the dog, but the animal was fast and lucky and only got its tail brushed before making the curb.

A car door flew open in a last attempt to bump the dog, but the dog was too far off the street. The car bounced up on the curb briefly, then lurched back onto the pavement.

The dog was gone now, blending into the darkness of a tree-shadowed yard.

The door slammed and the motor roared loudly. The car moved rapidly off into the night, and from its open windows, carried by the wind, came the high wild sound of youthful laughter.

6

The House, as Clyde called it, was just below Stoker Street, just past where it intersected King, not quite book-ended between the two streets, but nearby, on a more narrow one. And there it waited.

Almost reverently, like a hearse that has arrived to pick up the dead, the black '66 Chevy entered the drive, parked.

Clyde and Brian got out, stood looking up at the house for a moment, considering it as two monks would a shrine.

Brian felt a sensation of trembling excitement, and although he would not admit it, a tinge of fear.

The House was big, old, gray and ugly. It looked gothic, out of step with the rest of the block. Like something out of Poe or Hawthorne. It crouched like a falsely obedient dog. Upstairs two windows showed light, seemed like cold, rectangular eyes considering prey.

The moon was bright enough that Brian could see the dead grass in the yard. the dead grass in all the yards down the block. It was the time of year for dead grass, but to Brian's way of thinking, this grass looked browner, deader. It was hard to imagine it ever being alive, ever standing up tall and bright and green.

The odd thing about The House was the way it seemed to command the entire block. It was not as large as it first appeared-though it was large-and the homes about it were newer and more attractive. They had been built when people still cared about the things they lived in, before the era of glass and plastic and builders who pocketed the money that should have been used on foundation and structure. Some of the houses stood a story above the gothic nightmare, but somehow they had taken on a rundown, anemic look, as if the old gray house was in fact some sort of alien vampire that could impersonate a house by day, but late at night it would turn its head with a woodgrain creak, look out of its cold, rectangle eyes and suddenly stand to reveal thick peasant-girl legs and feet beneath its firm wooden skin, and then it would start to stalk slowly and crazily down the street, the front door opening to reveal long, hollow, woodscrew teeth, and it would pick a house and latch onto it, fold back its rubbery front porch lips and burrow its many fangs into its brick or wood and suck out the architectural grace and all the love its builders had put into it. Then, as it turned to leave, bloated, satiated, the grass would die beneath its steps and it would creep and creak back down the street to find its place, and it would sigh deeply, contentedly, as it settled once more, and the energy and grace of the newer houses, the loved houses, would bubble inside its chest. Then it would sleep, digest, and wait.

"Let's go in," Clyde said.

The walk was made of thick white stones. They were cracked and weather swollen. Some of them had partially tumbled out of the ground dragging behind a wad of dirt and grass roots that made them look like abscessed teeth that had fallen from some giant's rotten gums.

Avoiding the precarious stepping-stones, they mounted the porch, squeaked the screen and groaned the door open. Darkness seemed to crawl in there. They stepped inside.

"Hold it," Clyde said. He reached and hit the wall switch.

Darkness went away, but the light wasn't much. The overhead fixture was coated with dust and it gave the room a speckled look, like sunshine through camouflage netting.

There was a high staircase to their left and it wound up to a dangerous-looking landing where the railing dangled out of line and looked ready to fall. Beneath the stairs, and to the far right of the room, were many doors. Above, behind the landing, were others, a half dozen in a soldier row. Light slithered from beneath the crack of one.

"Well?" Clyde said.

"I sort of expect Dracula to come down those stairs any moment."

Clyde smiled. "He's down here with you, buddy. Right here."

"What nice teeth you have."

"Uh-huh, real nice. How about a tour?"

"Lead on."

"The basement first?"

"Whatever."

"All right, the basement then. Come on."

Above them, from the lighted room, came the sound of a girl giggling, then silence.

"Girls?" Brian asked.

"More about that later."

They crossed the room and went to a narrow doorway with a recessed door. Clyde opened it. It was dark and foul-smelling down there, the odor held you like an embrace.

Brian could see the first three stair steps clearly, three more in shadow, the hint of one more, then nothing.

"Come on," Clyde said.

Clyde didn't bother with the light, if there was one. He stepped on the first step and started down.

Brian watched as Clyde was consumed by darkness. Cold air washed up and over him. He followed.

At the border of light and shadow, Brian turned to look behind him. There was only a rectangle of light to see, and that light seemed almost reluctant to enter the basement, as if it were too fearful.

Brian turned back, stepped into the veil of darkness, felt his way carefully with toe and heel along the wooden path. He half-expected the stairs to withdraw with a jerk and pull him into some creature's mouth, like a toad tongue that had speared a stupid fly. It certainly smelled bad enough down there to be a creature's mouth.

Brian was standing beside Clyde now. He stopped, heard Clyde fumble in his leather jacket for something. There was a short, sharp sound like a single cricket-click, and a match jumped to life, waved its yellow-red head around, cast the youngsters' shadows on the wall, made them look like monstrous Siamese twins, or some kind of two-headed, four-armed beast.

Water was right at their feet. Another step and they would have been in it. A bead of sweat trickled from Brian's hair, ran down his nose and fell off. He realized that Clyde was testing him.

"Basements aren't worth a shit around this part of the country," Clyde said, "except for a few things they're not intended for."

"Like what?"

"You'll find out in plenty of time. Besides, how do I know I can trust you?"

That hurt Brian, but he didn't say anything. The first rule of being a Superman was to be above that sort of thing. You had to be strong, cool. Clyde would respect that sort of thing.

Clyde nodded at the water. "That's from last month's storm."

"Nice place if you raise catfish."

"Yeah."

The match went out. And somehow, Brian could sense Clyde's hand behind him, in a position to shove, considering it. Brian swallowed quietly, said very coolly, "Now what?"

After a long moment, Brian sensed Clyde's hand slip away, heard it crinkle into the pocket of his leather jacket. Clyde said, "Let's go back, unless you want to swim a little. Want to do that?"

"Didn't bring my trunks. Wouldn't want you to see my wee-wee."

Clyde laughed. "What's the matter, embarrassed at only having an inch?"

"Naw, was afraid you'd think it was some kind of big water snake and you'd try to cut it."

"How'd you know I had a knife?"

"Just figures."

"Maybe I like you."

"Big shit." But it was a big shit to Brian, and he was glad for the compliment, though he wasn't about to let on.

Clyde's jacket crinkled. Another match flared. "Easy turning," Clyde said, "these stairs are narrow, maybe rotten."

Brian turned briskly, started up ahead of Clyde.

"Easy, I said."

Brian stopped. He was just at the edge of the light. He turned, smiled down. He didn't know if Clyde could see his smile in the match light or not, but he hoped he could feel it. He decided to try a little ploy of his own.

"Easy, hell," he said. "Didn't you bring me down here just to see if I'd panic? To see if those creaky stairs and that water and you putting a hand behind me would scare me?"

Clyde's match went out. Brian could no longer see him clearly. That made him nervous.

"Guess that was the idea," Clyde said from the darkness.

Another match smacked to life.

"Thought so."

Brian turned, started up, stepping firmly, but not hurriedly. The stairs rocked beneath his feet.

It felt good to step into the room's speckled light. Brian sighed softly, took a deep breath. It was a musty breath, but it beat the sour, rotten smell of the basement. He leaned against the wall, waited.

After what seemed like a long time, Clyde stepped out of the basement and closed the door. He turned to look at Brian, smiled.

(What nice teeth you have.)

"You'll do," Clyde said softly. "You'll do." Now came the grand tour. Clyde led Brian through rooms stuffed with trash, full of the smell of piss, sweat, sex and dung, through empty rooms, cold and hollow as the inside of a petrified god's heart.

Rooms. So many rooms.

Finally the downstairs tour was finished and it was time to climb the stairs and find out what was waiting behind those doors, to look into the room filled with light.

They paused at the base of the stairs. Brian laid a hand on Clyde's shoulder.

"How in hell did you come by all this?" he asked.

Clyde smiled.

"Is it yours?" Brian asked.

"All mine," Clyde said. "Got it easy. Everything I do comes easy. One day I decided to move in and I did."

"How did you-"

"Hang on, listen: You see, this was once a fancy apartment house. Had a lot of old folks as customers, sort of an old fossil box. I needed a place to stay, was living on the streets then. I liked it here, but didn't have any money.

"So I found the caretaker. Place had a full-time one then. Guy with a crippled leg.

"I say to this gimp, I'm moving into the basement-wasn't full of water then-and if he don't like it, I'll push his face in for him. Told him if he called the cops I'd get him on account of I'm a juvenile and I've been in and out of kiddie court so many times I got a lunch card. Told him I knew about his kids, how pretty that little daughter of his was, how pretty I thought she'd look on the end of my dick. Told him I'd put her there and spin her around on it like a top. I'd done my homework on the old fart, knew all about him, about his little girl and little boy.

"So, I scared him good. He didn't want any trouble and he let me and the cunt I was banging then move in."

A spark moved in Clyde's eyes. "About the cunt, just so you know I play hardball, she isn't around anymore. She and the brat she was going to have are taking an extended swimming lesson."

"You threw her in the bay?"

Clyde tossed his head at the basement.

"Ah," Brian said, and he felt an erection, a real blue-veiner. Something warm moved from the tips of his toes to the base of his skull, foamed inside his brain. It was as if his bladder had backed up and filled his body with urine. Old Clyde had actually killed somebody and had no remorse, was in fact proud. Brian liked that. It meant Clyde was as much of a Superman as he expected. And since Clyde admitted the murder to him, he knew he trusted him, considered him a comrade, a fellow Superman.

"What happened next?" Brian asked. It was all he could do not to lick his lips.

"Me and the cunt moved in. Couple guys I knew wanted to come too, bring their cunts along. I let them. Before long there's about a half dozen of us living in the goddamned basement. We got the caretaker to see we got fed, and he did it too on account of he was a weenie, and we kept reminding him how much we like little-girl pussy. I got to where I could describe what we wanted to do to her real good."

"Anyway, that went on for a while, then one day he doesn't show up with the grub. Found out later that he'd packed up the dumpling wife, the two ankle-biters and split. So I say to the guys-by the way, don't ask no cunt nothing, they got opinions on everything and not a bit of it's worth stringy dogshit, unless you want to know the best way to put a tampon in or what color goes well with blue . . . so, I say to the guys, this ain't no way to live, and we start a little storm trooper campaign. Scared piss out of some of the old folks, roughed up an old lady, nailed her dog to the door by its ears."

"Didn't the cops come around?"

"Yeah. They came and got us on complaints, told us to stay out. But what could they do? No one had seen us do a damn thing except those complaining, and it was just our word against theirs. They made us move out though.

"So we went and had a little talk with the manager, made a few threats, got a room out of the deal and started paying rent. By this time we had the cunts hustling for us, bouncing tail on the streets and bringing in a few bucks. Once we start paying rent, what can they say? But we keep up the storm trooper campaign, just enough to keep it scary around here. Before long the manager quit and all the old folks hiked."

"What about the owner?"

"He came around. We paid the rent and he let us stay. He's a slumlord anyway. It was the old folks kept the place up. After they left, it got pretty trashy, and this guy wasn't going to put out a cent on the place. He was glad to take our money and run. We were paying him more than all the old codgers together. The pussy business was really raking in the coins. And besides, he don't want to make us mad, know what I mean?"

"Some setup."

"It's sweet all right. Like being a juvenile. The courts are all fucked up on that one. They don't know what to do with us, so they usually just say the hell with us. It's easier to let us go than to hassle with us. After you're eighteen life isn't worth living. That's when the rules start to apply to us too. Right now we're just misguided kids who'll straighten out in time."

"I hear that."

"Good. Let's go upstairs. Got some people I want you to meet."

"Yeah?"

"A girl I want you to fuck."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Got this one cunt that's something else. Thirteen years old, a runaway or something. Picked her up off the street about a month ago. Totally wiped out in the brain department, not that a cunt's got that much brain to begin with, but this one is a clean slate. But, man, does she have tits. They're big as footballs. She's as good a fuck as a grown woman."

"This going to cost me?"

"You kidding? You get what you want, no charge-money anyway."

"What's that mean?"

"I want your soul, not your money."

Brian grinned. "So what are you, the devil? Thought you were Dracula."

"I'm both of them."

"Do I have to sign something in blood?"

Clyde laughed hysterically. "Sure, that's a good one. Blood. Write something in fucking blood. I like you, Brian, I really do."

So Brian saw the dark rooms upstairs, and finally the one with the light and the people.

The room stank. There was a mattress on the floor and there was a nude girl on the mattress and there was a nude boy on the girl and the girl was not moving but the boy was moving a lot.

On the other side of the mattress a naked blond girl squatted next to a naked boy. The girl had enormous breasts and dark brown eyes. The boy was stocky and square-jawed. They lifted their heads as Clyde and Brian came in, and Brian could see they were stoned to the max. The two smiled at them in unison, as if they had but one set of facial muscles between them.

The boy riding the girl grunted, once, real loud. After a moment he rolled off her smiling, his penis half-hard, dripping.

The girl on the mattress still did not move. She lay with her eyes closed and her arms by her sides.

"This is Loony Tunes," Clyde said, pointing to the boy who had just rolled off the girl. "This is Stone," he said, pointing to the stocky boy. "If he talks, I've never heard it." He did not introduce either girl. "This is all we got around here right now, cream of the crop."

The girl on the mattress still had not moved.

The one called Loony Tunes laughed once in a while, for no apparent reason.

Clyde said, "Go ahead and tend to your rat killing, me and Brian got plans." Then he snapped his fingers and pointed to the nude girl with the big breasts and the silly smile.

She stood up, wavering a bit. With ten pounds and something to truly smile about, she might have been pretty. She looked like she needed a bath.

Clyde held out his hand. She came around the mattress and took it. He put an arm around her waist.

The one called Stone crawled on top of the girl on the mattress.

She still did not move.

Brian could see now that her eyes were actually only half-closed and her eyeballs were partly visible. They looked as cool and expressionless as marbles.

Stone took hold of his sudden erection and put it in her.

She still did not move.

Stone began to grunt.

Loony Tunes laughed.

She still did not move.

"Come on," Clyde said to Brian, "the next room."

So they went out of there, the big-eyed girl sandwiched between them.

There was a small mattress in the closet in the next room, and Clyde, feeling his way around in the dark with experienced ease, pulled it out. He said, "Keeping in practice for when I quit paying the light bill, learning to be a bat."

"I see," Brian said. The girl leaned against him. She muttered something once, but it made no sense. She was so high on nose candy and cheap wine she didn't know where she was or who she was. She smelled like mildewed laundry.

After Clyde had tossed the mattress on the floor, he took his clothes off, called them over. The girl leaned on Brian all the way across the room.

When they were standing in front of Clyde, he said, "This is the big-titted thirteen-year-old I told you about. Looks older, don't she?" But he didn't wait for Brian to answer. He said loudly to the girl, "Come here."

She crawled on the mattress. Brian took his clothes off. They all lay down together. The mattress smelled of dirt, wine and sweat.

And that night Brian and Clyde had the thirteen-year-old, and later, when Brian tried to think back on the moment, he would not be able to remember her face, only that she was blonde, had massive breasts and dark eyes like pools of fresh-perked coffee, pools that went down and down into her head like wet tunnels to eternity.

She was so high they could have poked her with knives and she would not have felt it. She was just responding in automaton fashion. Clyde had it in her ass and Brian had it in her mouth, and they were pumping in unison, the smell of their exertion mingling with hers, filling the room.

The girl was slobbering and choking on Brian's penis and he was ramming it harder and harder into her mouth, and he could feel her teeth scraping his flesh, making his cock bleed, and it seemed to him that he was extending all the way down her throat, all the way through her, and that the head of his penis was touching Clyde's and Clyde's penis was like the finger of God giving life to the clay form of Adam, and that he was Adam, and he was receiving that spark from the Holy On High, and for the power and the glory he was grateful; made him think of the Frankenstein monster and how it must have felt when its creator threw the switch and drove the power of the storm through its body and above the roll of the thunder and the crackling flash of lighting Dr. Frankenstein yelled at the top of his lungs, "It's alive!"

Then he and Clyde came in white-hot-atomic-blast unison and in Brian's mind it was the explosive ending of the old world and the Big Bang creation of the new.

Only the sound of panting now, the pleasant sensation of his organ draining into the blond's mouth.

Clyde reached out and touched Brian's hand, squeezed his fingers, and Clyde's touch was as cold and clammy as the hand of death.

Clyde drove Brian home. Brian stole silently into the house and climbed the stairs. Once in his room he went to the window to look out. He could hear Clyde's '66 Chevy in the distance, and though it was a bright night and he could see real far, he could not see as far as Clyde had gone.

And later:

back at The House the girl Clyde and Brian had shared would start to wail and fight invisible harpies in her head, and Clyde would take her to the basement for a little swim. The body of the girl on the mattress would follow suit. Neither managed much swimming;

and there would be a series of unprecedented robberies that night all over the city;

and in a little quiet house near Galveston Bay, an Eagle Scout and honor student would kill his father and rape his mother;

and an on-duty policeman with a fine family and plenty of promotion to look forward to would pull over to the curb on a dark street and put his service revolver in his mouth and pull the trigger, coating the back windshield with brains, blood and clinging skull shrapnel;

and a nice meek housewife in a comfortable house by Sea Arama would take a carving knife to her husband's neck while he slept; would tell police later that it was because he said he didn't like the way she'd made the roast that night, which was ridiculous since he'd liked it fixed exactly that same way the week before.

All in all, it was a strange night in Galveston, Texas. A lot of dogs howled.

COWBOY

I got off the plane at Atlanta and caught the shuttle to what I thought was my hotel. But there was some kind of mix-up, and it wasn't my hotel at all. They told me I could go out to the curb and catch this other shuttle and it would take me over to another hotel in their chain, and that it was a short walk from there to where I wanted to go. I thought that was okay, considering I had gotten on the wrong shuttle in the first place.

I sat outside the hotel on a bench and waited for the shuttle. It was October and kind of cool, but not really uncomfortable. The air felt damp.

I had a Western paperback and I got it out of my coat pocket and read a few pages. From time to time I looked up for the shuttle, then at my watch, then back at the paperback. It wasn't a very good Western.

While I was sitting there a little black boy on skates with an empty toy pistol scabbard strapped around his waist went by. He looked at me. His head was practically shaved and his snap-button cowboy shirt was ripped in front. I guess he was about eleven.

I looked back at my book and started reading, then I heard him skate over in front of me.

I looked up and saw that he was looking at the picture on the front of the paperback.

"That a cowboy book?" he said.

I told him it was.

"It any good?"

"I don't care much for it. It's a little too much like the last three or four I read."

"I like cowboy books and movies but they don't get some things right."

"I like them too."

"I'm a cowboy," he said, and his tone was a trifle defiant.

"You are?"

"You was thinking niggers can't be cowboys."

"I wasn't thinking that. Don't call yourself that."

"Nigger? It's okay if I'm doing it. I wouldn't want you to say that."

"I wouldn't."

"Anyone says that they got me to fight."

"I don't want to fight. Where's your pistol?"

He didn't answer that. "A black boy can be a cowboy, you know."

"I'm sure of it."

"They weren't all cooks."

"Course not."

"That's way the movies and books got it. There any black cowboys in that book?"

"Not so far."

"There gonna be?"

"I don't know," I said. But I did know. I'd read a lot of cowboy books.

"White boys at school said there weren't any black cowboys. They said no nigger cowboys. They said we couldn't fight Indians and stuff."

"Don't listen to them."

"I'm not going to. I went over to the playground at the school and they took my pistol. There was three of them."

It came clear to me then. His shirt being ripped and the gun missing.

"I'm sorry. That wasn't nice."

"They said a nigger didn't need no cowboy gun. Said I needed me a frying pan or a broom. I used to ride the range and rope steers and stuff. They don't know nothing."

"Is that all you did on the range, rope steers?"

"I did all kinds of things. I did everything cowboys do."

"Was it hard work?"

"It was so hard you wouldn't believe it. I did all kinds of things. Cowboys don't call one another nigger."

"Do your mom and dad work on the range with you?"

"No, my mama has a job. She does clean-up work. My daddy he got killed in Vietnam. He got some medals and stuff. He wasn't a cowboy like me."

I looked up and saw the shuttle. I picked up my suitcase and stood.

"I got to go now," I said. "I hope you get your gun back. Lot of good cowboys lose fights from time to time."

"There was three of them."

"There you are. Adios." As an afterthought I gave him the Western book.

"It hasn't got any black cowboys in it I bet," he said, and gave it back to me. "I want one with black cowboys in it. I'm not reading any more of 'em unless they got black cowboys in them."

"I'm sure there are some," I said.

"There ought to be."

I got on the shuttle and it carried me to the other hotel. I got off and walked to where I was supposed to be, and on the way over there I put the book in one of those wire trash baskets that line the streets.

THE CRAWLING SKY

Chapter 1

Wood Tick

Wood Tick wasn't so much a town as it was a wide rip in the forest. The Reverend Jebidiah Mercer rode in on an ebony horse on a coolish autumn day beneath an overcast sky of humped up, slow-blowing, gun-metal-gray clouds; they seemed to crawl. It was his experience nothing good ever took place under a crawling sky. It was an omen, and he didn't like omens, because, so far in his experience, none of them were good.

Before him, he saw a sad excuse for a town: a narrow clay road and a few buildings, not so much built up as tossed up, six altogether, three of them leaning south from northern winds that had pushed them. One of them had had a fireplace of stone, but it had toppled, and no one had bothered to rebuild it. The stones lay scattered about like discarded cartridges. Grass, yellowed by time, had grown up through the stones, and even a small tree had sprouted between them. Where the fall of the fireplace had left a gap was a stretch of fabric, probably a slice of tent; it had been nailed up tight and it had turned dark from years of weather.

In the middle of the town there was a wagon with wooden bars set into it and a flat heavy roof. No horses. Its axle rested on the ground, giving the wagon a tilt. Inside, leaning, the Reverend could see a man clutching at the bars, cursing as a half dozen young boys who looked likely to grow up to be ugly men were throwing rocks at him. An old man was sitting on the precarious porch of one of the leaning buildings, whittling on a stick. A few other folks moved about, crossing the street with the enthusiasm of the ill, giving no mind to the boys or the man in the barred wagon.

Reverend Mercer got off his horse and walked it to a hitching post in front of the sagging porch and looked at the man who was whittling. The man had a goiter on the side of his neck and he had tied it off in a dirty sack that fastened under his jaw and to the top of his head under his hat. The hat was wide and dropped a shadow on his face. The face needed concealment. He had the kind of features that made you wince; one thing God could do was he could sure make ugly.

"Sir, may I ask you something?" the Reverend said to the whittling man.

"I reckon."

"Why is that man in that cage?"

"That there is Wood Tick's jail. All we got. We been meaning to build one, but we don't have that much need for it. Folks do anything really wrong, we hang 'em."

"What did he do?"

"He's just half-witted."

"That's a crime?"

"If we want it to be. He's always talkin' this and that, and it gets old. He used to be all right, but he ain't now. We don't know what ails him. He's got stories about haints and his wife done run off and he claims a haint got her."

"Haints?"

"That's right."

Reverend Mercer turned his head toward the cage and the boys tossing rocks. They were flinging them in good and hard, and pretty accurate.

"Having rocks thrown at him can not be productive," the Reverend said.

"Well, if God didn't want him half-witted and the target of rocks, he'd have made him smarter and less directed to bullshit."

"I am a man of God and I have to agree with you. God's plan doesn't seem to have a lot of sympathy in it. But humanity can do better. We could at least save this poor man from children throwing rocks."

"Sheriff doesn't think so."

"And who is the sheriff."

"That would be me. You ain't gonna give me trouble are you?"

"I just think a man should not be put behind bars and have rocks thrown at him for being half-witted."

"Yeah, well, you can take him with you, long as you don't bring him back. Take him with you and I'll let him out."

The Reverend nodded. "I can do that. But I need something to eat first. Any place for that?"

"You can go over to Miss Mary's, which is a house about a mile down from the town, and you can hire her to fix you somethin'. But you better have a strong stomach."

"Not much of a recommendation."

"No, it's not. I reckon I could fry you up some meat for a bit of coin, you ready to let go of it."

"I have money."

"Good. I don't. I got some horse meat I can fix. It's just on this side of being good enough to eat. Another hour, you might get poisoned by it."

"Appetizing as that sounds, perhaps I should see Miss Mary."

"She fixes soups from roots and wild plants and such. No matter what she fixes, it all tastes the same and it gives you the squirts. She ain't much to look at neither, but she sells herself out, you want to buy some of that."

"No. I am good. I will take the horse meat, long as I can watch you fry it."

"All right. I'm just about through whittling."

"Are you making something?"

"No. Just whittlin'."

"So, what is there to get through with?"

"Why, my pleasure, of course. I enjoy my whittlin'."

* * *

The old man who gave the Reverend his name as if he had given up a dark secret was called Jud. Up close, Jud was even nastier looking than from the distance of the hitching post and the porch. He had pores wide enough and deep enough in his skin to keep pooled water and his nose had been broken so many times it moved from side to side when he talked. He was missing a lot of teeth, and what he had were brown from tobacco and rot. His hands were dirty and his fingers were dirtier yet, and the Reverend couldn't help but wonder what those fingers had poked into.

Inside, the place leaned and there were missing floorboards. A wooden stove was at the far end of the room, and a stovepipe wound out of it and went up through a gap in the roof that would let in rain, and had, because the stove was partially rusted. It rested heavy on the worn flooring. The floor sagged and it seemed to the Reverend that if it experienced one more rotted fiber, one more termite bite, the stove would crash through. Hanging on hooks on the wall were slabs of horsemeat covered in flies. Some of the meat looked a little green and there was a slick of mold over a lot of it.

"That the meat you're talkin' about?"

"Yep," Jud said, scratching at his filthy goiter sack.

"It looks pretty green."

"I said it was turnin'. Want it or not?"

"Might I cook it myself?"

"Still have to pay me."

"How much?"

"Two bits."

"Two bits for rancid meat I cook myself."

"It's still two bits if I cook it."

"You drive quite the bargain, Jud."

"I pride myself on my dealin'."

"Best you do not pride yourself on hygiene."

"What's that? That some kind of remark?"

Reverend Mercer pushed back his long black coat and showed the butts of his twin revolvers. "Sometimes a man can learn to like things he does not on most days care to endure."

Jud checked out the revolvers. "You got a point there, Reverend. I was thinkin' you was just a blabber mouth for God, but you tote them pistols like a man who's seen the elephant."

"Seen the elephant I have. And all his children."

* * *

The Reverend brushed the flies away from the horsemeat and found a bit of it that looked better than the rest, used his pocket knife to cut it loose. He picked insects out of a greasy pan and put the meat in it. He put some wood in the stove and lit it and got a fire going. In a short time the meat was frying. He decided to cook it long and cook it through, burn it a bit. That way maybe he wouldn't die of stomach poisoning.

"You have anything else that might sweeten this deal?" the Reverend asked.

"It's the horse meat or nothin'."

"And in what commerce will you deal when it turns rancid, or runs out?"

"I've got a couple more old horses, and one old mule. Somebody will have to go."

"Have you considered a garden?"

"My hand wasn't meant to fit a hoe. It gets desperate, I'll shoot a squirrel or a possum or a coon or some such. Dog ain't bad you cook 'em good."

"How many people reside in this town?"

"About forty, forty-one if you count Norville out there in the box. But, way things look, considerin' our deal, he'll be leavin'. 'Sides, he don't live here direct anyway."

"That number count the kids?"

"Yeah, they all belong to Mary. They're thirteen and on down to six years. Drops them like turds and don't know for sure who's the daddy, though there's one of them out there that looks a mite like me."

"Bless his heart," the Reverend said.

"Yeah, reckon that's the truth. Couple of 'em have died over the years. One got kicked in the head by a horse and the other one got caught up in the river and drowned. Stupid little bastard should have learned to swim. There was an older girl, but she took up with Norville out there, and now she's run off from him."

* * *

When the meat was as black as a pit and smoking like a rich man's cigar, Reverend Mercer discovered there were no plates, and he ate it from the frying pan, using his knife as a utensil. It was a rugged piece of meat to wrestle and it tasted like the ass end of a skunk. He ate just enough to knock the corners off his hunger, then gave it up.

Jud asked if he were through with it, and when the Reverend said he was, he came over, picked up the leavings with his hands and tore at it like a wolf.

"Hell, this is all right," Jud said. "I need you on as a cook."

"Not likely. How do people make a living around here?"

"Lumber. Cut it and mule it out. That's a thing about East Texas, plenty of lumber."

"Someday there will be a lot less, that is my reasoning."

"It all grows back."

"People grow back faster, and we could do with a lot less of them."

"On that matter, Reverend, I agree with you."

* * *

When the Reverend went outside with Jud to let Norville loose, the kids were still throwing rocks. The Reverend picked up a rock and winged it through the air and caught one of the kids on the side of the head hard enough to knock him down.

"Damn," Jud said. "That there was a kid."

"Now he's a kid with a knot on his head."

"You're a different kind of Reverend."

The kid got up and ran, holding his hand to his head, squealing.

"Keep going you horrible little bastard," Reverend Mercer said. When the kid was gone, the Reverend said, "Actually, I was aiming to hit him in the back, but that worked out quite well."

They walked over to the cage. There was a metal lock and a big padlock on the thick wooden bars. Reverend Mercer had wondered why the man didn't just kick them out, but then he saw the reason. He was chained to the floor of the wagon. The chain fit into a big metal loop there, and then went to his ankle where a bracelet of iron held him fast. Norville had a lot of lumps on his head and his bottom lip was swollen up and he was bleeding all over.

"This is no way to treat a man," Reverend Mercer said.

"He could have been a few rocks shy of a dozen knots, you hadn't stopped to cook and eat a steak."

"True enough," the Reverend said.

Chapter 2

Norville's Story: The House in the Pines

The sheriff unlocked the cage and went inside and unlocked the clamp around Norville's ankle. Norville, barefoot, came out of the cage and walked around and looked at the sky, stretching his back as he did. Jud sauntered over to the long porch and reached under it and pulled out some old boots. He gave them to Norville. Norville pulled them on, then came around the side of the cage and studied the Reverend.

"Thank you for lettin' me out," Norville said. "I ain't crazy, you know. I seen what I seen and they don't want to hear it none."

"'Cause you're crazy," Jud said.

"What did you see?" the Reverend asked.

"He starts talkin' that business again, I'll throw him back in the box," Jud said. "Our deal was he goes with you, and I figure you've worn out your welcome."

"What I've worn out is my stomach," Reverend Mercer said. "That meat is backing up on me."

"Take care of your stomach problems somewhere else, and take that crazy sonofabitch with you."

"Does he have a horse?"

"The back of yours," Jud said. "Best get him on it, and you two get out."

"Norville," the Reverend said, "Come with me."

"I don't mind comin'," Norville said, walking briskly after the Reverend.

Reverend Mercer unhitched his horse and climbed into the saddle. He extended a hand for Norville, helped him slip up on the rear of the horse. Norville put his arms around Reverend Mercer's waist. The Reverend said, "Keep the hands high or they'll find you facedown outside of town in the pine straw."

"You stay gone, you hear?" Jud said, walking up on the porch.

"This place does not hold much charm for me, Sheriff Jud," Reverend Mercer said. "But, just in case you should overvalue your position, you do not concern me in the least. It is this town that concerns me. It stinks and it is worthless and should be burned to the ground."

"You go on now," Jud said.

"That I will, but at my own speed."

The Reverend rode off then, glancing back, lest Jud decide to back shoot. But it was a needless concern. He saw Jud go inside the shack, perhaps to fry up some more rancid horsemeat.

They rode about three miles out of town, and Reverend Mercer stopped by a stream. They got down off the horse and let it drink. While the horse quenched its thirst, the Reverend removed the animal's saddle, then he pulled the horse away from the water lest it bloat. He took some grooming items out of a saddlebag and went to work, giving the horse a good brushing and rubdown.

Norville plucked a blade of grass and put it in his mouth and worked it around, found a tree to sit under, said, "I ain't no bowl of nuts. I seen what I seen. Why did you help me anyway? For all you know, I am a nut."

"I am on a mission from God. I do not like it, but it is my mission. I'm a hunter of the dark and a giver of the light. I'm the hammer and the anvil. The bone and the sinew. The sword and the gun. God's man who sets things right. Or at least right as God sees them. Me and him, we do not always agree. And let me tell you, he is not the God of Jesus, he is the God of David, and the angry city killers and man killers and animal killers of the Old Testament. He is constantly jealous and angry and if there is any plan to all this, I have yet to see it."

"Actually, I was just wantin' to know if you thought I was nuts."

"It is my lot in life to destroy evil. There is more evil than there is me, I might add."

"So... You think I'm a nut, or what?"

"Tell me your story."

"If you think I'm a nut are you just gonna leave me?"

"No. I will shoot you first and leave your body... Just joking. I do not joke much, so I'm poor at it."

The Reverend tied up the horse and they went over and sat together under the tree and drank water from the Reverend's canteen. Norville told his story.

* * *

"My daddy, after killin' my mother over turnip soup back in the Carolinas, hitched up the wagon and put me and my sister in it and come to Texas."

"He killed your mother over soup?"

"Deader than a rock. Hit her upside the head with a snatch of turnips."

"A snatch of turnips? What in the world is a snatch of turnips?"

"Bunch of them. They was on the table where she'd cut up some for soup, still had the greens on 'em. He grabbed the greens and swung them turnips. Must have been seven or eight big ole knotty ones. Hit her upside the head and knocked her brain loose I reckon. She died that night, right there on the floor. Wouldn't let us help her any. He said God didn't want her to die from gettin' hit with turnips, he'd spare her."

"Frankly, God is not all that merciful... You seen this? Your father hitting your mother with the turnips?"

"Yep. I was six or so. My sister four. Daddy didn't like turnips in any kind of way, let alone a soup. So he took us to Texas after he burned down the cabin with mama in it, and I been in Texas ever since, but mostly over toward the middle of the state. About a year ago he died and my sister got a bad cough and couldn't get over it. Coughed herself to death. So I lit out on my own."

"I would think that is appropriate at your age, being on your own. How old are you. Thirty?"

"Twenty-six. I'm just tired. So I was riding through the country here, living off the land, squirrels and such, and I come to this shack in the woods and there weren't no one livin' there. I mean I found it by accident, 'cause it wasn't on a real trail. It was just down in the woods and it had a good roof on it, and there was a well. I yelled to see anyone was home, and they wasn't, and the door pushed open. I could see hadn't nobody been there in a long time. They had just gone off and left it. It was a nice house, and had real glass in the windows, and whoever had made it had done good on it, 'cause it was put together good and sound. They had trimmed away trees and had a yard of sorts.

"I started livin' there, and it wasn't bad. It had that well, but when I come up on it for a look, I seen that it had been filled in with rocks and such, and there wasn't no gettin' at the water. But there was a creek no more than a hundred feet from the place, and it was spring fed, and I was right at the source. There was plenty of game, and I had a garden patch where I grew turnips and the like."

"I would have thought you would have had your fill of turnips in all shapes and forms."

"I liked that soup my mama made. I still remember it. Daddy didn't have no cause to do that over some soup."

"Now we are commanding the same line of thought."

"Anyway, the place was just perfect. I started to clean out the well. Spendin' a bit of time each day pullin' rocks out of it. In the meantime, I just used the spring down behind the house, but the well was closer, and it had a good stone curbin' around it, and I thought it would be nice if it was freed up for water. I wouldn't have to tote so far.

"Meanwhile, I discovered the town of Wood Tick. It isn't much, as you seen, but there was one thing nice about it, and every man in that town knew it and wanted that nice thing. Sissy. She was one of Mary's daughters. The only one she knew who her father was. A drummer who passed through and sold her six yards of wool and about five minutes in a back room.

"Thing is, there wasn't no real competition in Wood Tick for Sissy. That town has the ugliest men you ever seen, and about half of them have goiters and such. She was fifteen and I was just five years older, and I took to courtin' her."

"She was nothing but a child."

"Not in these parts. Ain't no unusual thing for men to marry younger girls, and Sissy was mature."

"In the chest or in the head?"

"Both. So we got married, or rather, we just decided we was married, and we moved out to that cabin."

"And you still had no idea who built it, who it belonged to?"

"Sissy knew, and she told me all about it. She said there had been an old woman who lived there, and that she wasn't the one who built the house in the first place, but she died there, and then a family ended up with the land, squatted on it, but after a month, they disappeared, all except for the younger daughter who they found walkin' the road, talkin' to herself. She kept sayin' 'It sucked and it crawled' or somesuch. She stayed with Mary in town who did some doctorin', but wasn't nothing could be done for her. She died. They said she looked like she aged fifty years in a few days when they put her down.

"Folks went out to the house but there wasn't nothin' to be found, and the well was all rocked in. Then another family moved in, and they'd come into town from time to time, and then they didn't anymore. They just disappeared. In time, one of the townspeople moved in, a fellow who weaved ropes and sold hides and such, and then he too was gone. No sign as to where. Then there was this man come through town, a preacher like you, and he ended up out there, and he said the house was evil, and he stayed on for a long time, but finally he'd had enough and came into town and said the place ought to be set afire and the ground plowed up and salted so nothing would grow there and no one would want to be there."

"So he survived?"

"He did until he hung himself in a barn. He left a note said: I seen too much."

"Concise," the Reverend said.

"And then I come there and brought Sissy with me."

"After all that, you came here and brought a woman as well. Could it be, sir, that you are not too bright?"

"I didn't believe all them stories then."

"But you do now?"

"I do. And I want to go back and set something straight on account of Sissy. That's what I was tryin' to tell them in town, that somethin' had happened to her, but when I told them what, wouldn't nobody listen. They just figured I was two nuts shy a squirrel's lunch and throwed me in that damned old cage. I'd still have been there wasn't for you. Now, you done good by me, and I appreciate it, and I'd like you to ride me over close to the house, you don't have to come up on it, but I got some business I want to take care of."

"Actually, the business you refer to is exactly my business."

"Haints and such?"

"I suppose you could put it that way. But please, tell me about Sissy. About what happened."

Norville nodded and swigged some water from the canteen and screwed the cap on. He took a deep breath and leaned loosely against the tree.

"Me and Sissy, we was doin' all right at first, makin' a life for ourselves. I took to cleanin' out that old well. I had to climb down in it and haul the rocks up by the bucket, and some of them was so big I had to wrap a rope around them and hook my mule up and haul them out. I got down real deep, and still didn't reach water. I come to where it was just nothin' but mud, and I stuck a stick down in the mud, and it was deep, and there really wasn't any more I could do, so I gave it up and kept carrying water from the spring. I took to fixin' up some rotten spots on the house, nailin' new shingles on the roof. Sissy planted flowers and it all looked nice. Then, of a sudden, it got so she couldn't sleep nights. She kept sayin' she was sure there was somethin' outside, and that she'd seen a face at the window, but when I got my gun and went out, wasn't nothin' there but the yard and that pile of rocks I'd pulled out of the well. But the second time I went out there, I had the feelin' someone was watching, maybe from the woods, and my skin started to crawl. I ain't never felt that uncomfortable. I started back to the house, and then I got this idea that I was bein' followed. I stopped and started to look back, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Just couldn't. I felt if I looked back I'd see somethin' I didn't want to see. I'm ashamed to say I broke and ran and I closed the door quickly and locked it, and outside the door I could hear somethin' breathin'.

"From then on, by the time it was dark, we was inside. I boarded up most of the windows. In the day, it seemed silly, but when night come around, it got so we both felt as if something was moving around and around the house, and I even fancied once that it was on the roof, and at the chimney. I built a fire in the chimney quick-like, and kept one going at night, even when it was hot, and finally I rocked it up and we cooked outside durin' the day and had cold suppers at night. Got so we dreaded the night. We were frightened out of our gourds. We took to sleepin' a few hours in the day, and I did what I could to tend the garden and hunt for food, but I didn't like being too far from the house or Sissy.

"Now, the thing to do would have been to just pack up and leave. We talked about it. But the house and that land was what we had, even if it was just by squatter's rights, and we thought maybe we were being silly, except we got so it wasn't just a feelin' we had, or sounds-we could smell it. It smelled like old meat and stagnant water, all at once. It floated around the house at night, through them boarded windows and under the front door. It was like it was gettin' stronger and bolder.

"One mornin' we came out and all the flowers Sissy had planted had been jerked out of the ground, and there was a dead coon on the doorstep, its head yanked off."

"Yanked off?"

"You could tell from the way there was strings of meat comin' out of the neck. It had been twisted and pulled plumb off, like a wrung chicken neck, and from the looks of it, it appeared someone, or something, had sucked on its neck. Curious, I cut that coon open. Hardly had a drop of blood in it. Ain't that somethin'?"

"That's something all right."

"Our mule disappeared next. No sign of it. We thought it over and decided we needed to get out, but we didn't know where to go and we didn't have any real money. Then one mornin' I come out, and on the stones I'd set in front of the house for steps, there was a muddy print on them. It was a big print and it didn't have no kind of shape I could recognize, no kind of animal, but it had toes and a heel. Mud trailed off into the weeds. I got my pistol and went out there, but didn't find nothin'. No more prints. Nothin'.

"That night I heard a board crack at the bedroom window, and I got up with a gun in my hand. I seen that one of the boards I'd nailed over the window outside had been pulled loose, and a face was pressed up against the glass. It was dark, but I could see enough 'cause of the moonlight, and it wasn't like a man's face. It was the eyes and mouth that made it so different, like it had come out of a human mold of some sort, but the mold had been twisted or dropped or both, and what was made from it was this... This thing. The face was as pale as a whore's butt, and twisted up, and its eyes were blood red and shone at the window as clear as if the thing was standin' in front of me. I shot at it, shatterin' an expensive pane of glass, and then it was gone in the wink of that pistol's flare.

"I decided it had to end, and I told Sissy to stick, and I gave her the pistol, and I took the firewood axe and went outside and she bolted the door behind me. I went on around to the side of the house, and I thought I caught sight of it, a nude body, maybe, but with strange feet. Wasn't nothin' more than a glimpse of it as it went around the edge of the house and I ran after it. I must have run around that damn house three times. It acted like it was a kid playin' a game with me. Then I saw somethin' white that at first I couldn't imagine was it, because it seemed like a sheet being pulled through the bedroom window I'd shot out."

"You mean it was wraith like...a haint, as you said before?"

Norville nodded. "I ran to the door, but it was bolted of course, the way I told Sissy to do. I ran back to the window and started using the axe to chop out the rest of it, knocked the panes and the frame out, and I crawled through, pieces of glass stickin' and cuttin' me.

"Sissy wasn't there. But the pistol was on the floor. I dropped the axe and snatched it up, and then I heard her scream real loud and rushed out into the main room, and there I seen it. It was chewin'... You got to believe me, preacher. It had spread its mouth wide, like a snake, and it had more teeth in its face than a dozen folk, and teeth more like an animal, and it was bitin' her head off. It jerked its jaws from side to side, and blood went everywhere. I shot at it. I shot at it five times and I hit it five times.

"It didn't so much as make the thing move. I might as well have been rubbin' its belly. It lifted its eyes and looked at me, and... As God is my witness, it spat out what was left of poor Sissy's head, and slapped its mouth over her blood pumpin' neck, and went to suckin' on it like a kid with a sucker.

"I ain't ashamed to admit it, my knees went weak. I dropped the pistol and ran and got the axe. When I turned, it was on me. I swung that axe, and hit it. The blade went in, went in deep...and there wasn't no blood, didn't spurt a drop. Thing grabbed me up and flung me at the window, and damned if I didn't go straight through it and land out on my back, on top of some of them rocks I'd pulled out of the well. It flowed through that window like it was water, and it come at me. I rolled over and grabbed one of the rocks and flung it and hit that thing square in its bony chest. What five shots from a pistol and a hack from an axe couldn't do, the rock did.

"Monster yelled like the fire of hell had been shoved down its throat, and it ran straightaway for the well faster than I've ever seen anything move, its body twistin' in all directions, like it was going to come apart, or like the bones was shiftin' inside of it. It ran and dove into the well and I heard it hit the mud below.

"I climbed back through the window, rushed into the main room, tryin' not to look at poor Sissy's body, and I got the double barrel off the mantle and lit the lantern and went back outside through the front door with the lantern in one hand, the shotgun in the other.

"First I held the lantern over the well, got me a look, but didn't see nothin' but darkness. I bent over the curbin' and lowered the lantern in some, fearin' that thing might grab me. The sides of the well were covered with a kind of slime, and I could see the mud down below, and if the thing had gone into it, there wasn't no sign now except a bit of a ripple.

"I hid out in the woods. I went back the next mornin' and got Sissy's body and buried it out back of the place, and then before it was dark, I boarded up all the windows good and locked the door and I got the shotgun and sat with it all night in the middle of the big room. I knew it wouldn't do me no good, but that was all I had. Me and that shotgun.

"But didn't nothin' bother me, though I could hear it and smell it movin' around outside the house. Come morning, I was brave enough to go out, and Sissy's body had been pulled from the grave and gnawed on. I reckon animals could have done it in the night, but I didn't think so. I buried her again, this time deep, and mounded up dirt and packed it down. I cut some sticks and tied a cross together and stuck that up, then I walked into town and told my story. They didn't even think I was a murderer. They didn't question if I might have killed Sissy, which is what I thought they might do. They locked me up for bein' a crazy, and wasn't no one cared enough to come and see if her body was at the cabin or not. They wasn't interested. I done taken Sissy off and wasn't no man wanted her back now that she had been with me, which considerin' the kind of women they was usually with didn't make no sense, but then there ain't much about Wood Tick that does make sense.

"And then you come along, and you know the rest from there."

Chapter 3

The Thing Down There

The sun was starting to slant to the west, but there was still plenty of daylight left when they arrived on horseback. The house was built of large logs and it looked solid. The chimney appeared sound. The shingles were well cut and nailed down tight. It was indeed a good cabin and the Reverend understood the attraction it held for those who passed by.

Norville slipped off the back of the horse and hurried around behind the cabin. After the Reverend tied up his horse, he too went out back. Norville stood over an empty grave, the cross turned over and broken. Norville and the Reverend stood there for a long moment.

Norville fell to his knees. "Oh, Jesus. I should have taken her off somewhere else. He's done come and got her."

"It is done now," Reverend Mercer said. "Stand up, man. None of this does any good. Let's look around."

Norville stood up, but he looked ready to collapse.

"Buck up, man," Reverend Mercer said. "We have work to do."

No sight or parcel of the body was found. The Reverend went to the well and bent over and looked down. It was deep. He took out a match and struck it on the curbing and dropped it down the shaft, watched the little light fall. The match hissed out in the mud below.

"Do you believe me," Norville said, standing back from the well a few paces.

"I do."

"What can I do?"

"Whatever you do, you will not do alone. I will be here with you."

"Kind of you, Reverend, but what can you do?"

"At the moment, I'm uncertain. Let's look inside the house."

The cabin, though not huge, had two rooms. A small bedroom and a large main room with a kitchen table and a rocked-in fireplace and some benches and a few chairs. There was blood on the floor and on a rug there, and on the walls and even on the ceiling. The Reverend paused at the rocked-up fireplace. He bent down and looked at the rocks. "Did you notice a lot of these rocks have a drawing on them?"

"What now?"

"Look here." Reverend Mercer touched his finger to one of the stones. There was a strange drawing on it, a stick figure with small symbols written around it in a circle. "It's on a lot of the rocks, and my guess is, if you were to pull the ones without visible symbols free, you could turn them over and the marks would be on the other side. They came from inside the well, correct?"

"Nearly all of them. It's a very deep well."

"As I have seen. Did you not notice the marks?"

"Guess I was so anxious to get those rocks out of there I didn't."

"It is only visible if you're looking for it."

"And you were?"

"I was looking for anything. This is my business. When you said you hit this thing with a rock and it fled after shooting it and hitting it with an axe had no effect, I started to wonder. I believe these are symbols of protection."

The Reverend began walking about the house. He looked under the bed and at the walls and checked nooks and crannies. He bounced himself on the floor to test the boards. He stood looking down at the bloodstained rug for awhile. He picked up the edge of the rug and saw there were a series of short boards that didn't extend completely across the floor.

Sliding the rug aside, the Reverend used his knife and stuck it under the edge of one of the boards and pried it up. There was a space beneath and a metal box was in the space. The Reverend removed a few more boards so he could get a good look at the box. It had a padlock on it.

"Find the axe," the Reverend said.

Norville went outside and got the axe and brought it back. It was a single edge, and the Reverend turned the flat side down and swung and knocked the lock off with one sure blow. He opened the box. Inside was a book.

"Why would someone put a book under lock and key?" Norville said.

The Reverend went to the table and sat on the long bench next to it. Norville sat on the other side. The Reverend opened the book and studied it. He looked up after a moment, said, "Whoever built this house originally, their intentions for us were not good."

"Us?" Norville said. "How would they, whoever that is, know we would be here?"

"Not you and I. Us, as in the human race, Norville. They, meaning the ones who possess this book, called The Book of Doches. The ones who find it or buy it or kill to possess it, always believe they will make some pact with the dark ones, the ones darker than our god, much darker, and they believe that if they allow these dark ones to break through they will be either its master or its trusted servant. The latter is sometimes possible, but the former, never. And in the end, a trusted servant is easily replaced."

"What are you talkin' about?" Norville said.

"There are monsters on the other side of the veil, Norville. A place you and I can't see. These things want out. Books like this contain spells to free them, and sometimes the people who possess the book want to set them free for rewards. Someone has already set one of them free."

"The sucking thing?"

"Correct," the Reverend said, shaking the book. "Look at the pages. See? The words and images on the pages are hand printed. The pages, feel them."

Norville used his thumb and finger to feel.

"It's cloth."

"Flesh. Human flesh is what the book says."

Norville jerked his hand back. "You can read this hen scratch?"

"Yes. I read a translation of it long ago, taught myself to understand the original symbols."

"You have the same book?"

"Had. One of them got away from me, the one adapted into English. The other I destroyed."

"How did it get away from you?"

"That's not important to us today. Whoever built this house may have brought this copy here. But their plans didn't work out. They released something, one of the minor horrors, and that minor horror either chased them off, or did to them what they did to your poor Sissy. This thing they called up. The place where it is from is wet, and therefore it takes to the well. And it is hungry. Always hungry. A minor being, but a nasty one."

"But if this beast is on the other side, as you call it, why would anyone bring it here?"

"Never underestimate the curiosity and stupidity and greed of man, Norville."

"If the book set this thing free, then burn the book."

"Not a bad idea, but I doubt that would get rid of anything. In fact, I might do better to study the book. My guess is whoever first brought the book loosed the creature. They then decided they had made a mistake, made the marks of power on the stones and sealed the thing in the well where it preferred to reside-it liked the dampness, you see. And then, someone, like you, took the rocks from the well and the thing was let loose. One of the other survivors, the preacher for example, may have figured out enough to seal the thing back in the well. And then you let it out again."

"Then we can seal it back up," Norville said.

The Reverend shook his head. "Then someone else will open the well."

"We can destroy the well curbing, put the rocks in, build a mound of dirt over all of it."

"Still not enough. That leaves the possibility of it being opened up in the future, if only by accident. No. This thing, it has to be destroyed. Listen here. It's light yet. Take my horse and walk it and take off its saddle, and then bring it inside where it will be safer."

"The house?"

"Since when are you so particular? I do not want to leave the horse for that thing to kill. If it must have the horse or us, then it will have to come and get the lot of us."

"All right then."

"Bring in my saddle and all that goes with it. And those rocks from the well. Only the rocks from the well. Start bringing them in by the pile."

"Aren't there enough here in the fireplace?"

"They are in use. One may cause this thing to flee, but that doesn't mean one will destroy it. I have other plans. Do it, Norville. Already the sun dips deep and the dark is our first enemy."

* * *

When the horse was inside and the stones were stacked in the middle of the floor, the Reverend looked up from the book, said, "Place the stones in a circle around us. A large circle. Make a line of them across the back of this room and put the horse against the wall behind them. Give him plenty of room to get excited. Hobble him and put on his bridle and tie him to that nail in the wall, the big one."

"And what exactly will you be doin'?"

"Reading," the Reverend said. "You will have to trust me. I'm all that is between you and this thing."

Norville went about placing the stones.

It was just short of dark when the stones were placed in a circle around the table and a line of them had been made behind that from wall to wall, containing the tied-up horse.

Reverend Mercer looked up from the book. "You are finished?"

Norville said, "Almost. I'll board up the bedroom window. Not that it matters. It can slip between small spaces. But it will slow it down."

"Leave it as is, and leave the door to the bedroom partially cracked."

"You're sure?"

"Quite."

The Reverend placed one of the rocks on the table, removed the bullets from his belt and took his knife and did his best to copy the symbols in small shapes on the tips of his ammunition. The symbols were simple, a stick man with a few twists and twirls around it. It took him an hour to copy it onto twelve rounds.

Finished, he loaded six rounds in each of his revolvers.

"Shall I light the lamp?" Norville asked.

"No. You have an axe and a shotgun lying about. We may have need for both. Recover them, and then come inside the ring of stones."

Chapter 4

The Arrival

While they waited, sitting cross-legged on the floor inside the circle of stones, the Reverend carved the symbols on the rocks onto the blade of the axe. He thought about the shotgun shells, but it wouldn't do any good to have the symbols on the shells and not on the load, and since the shotgun shot pellets, that was an impossible task.

Laying the axe between them, the Reverend handed the shotgun to Norville. "The shotgun will be nothing more than a shotgun," he said. "And it may not kill the thing, but it will be a distraction. You get the chance, shoot the thing with it, otherwise, sit and do not, under any circumstances, step outside this circle. The axe I have written symbols on and it may be of use."

"Are you sure this circle will keep it out?"

"Not entirely."

Norville swallowed.

* * *

They sat and they listened as the hours crept by. The Reverend produced a flask from his saddlebags. "I keep this primarily for medicinal purposes, but the night seems a little chill so let us both have one short nip, and one short nip only."

The Reverend and Norville took a drink and the flask was replaced. And no sooner was it replaced than a smell seeped into the house. A smell like a charnel house and a butcher shop and an outhouse all balled into one.

"It's near," Norville said. "That's its smell."

The Reverend put a finger to his lips to signal quiet.

There were a few noises on the outside of the house, but they could have been most anything. Finally there came a sound in the bedroom like wet laundry plopping to the floor.

Norville looked at the Reverend.

Reverend Mercer nodded to let him know he too had heard it, and then he carefully pulled and cocked his revolvers.

The room was dark, but the Reverend had adjusted his eyesight and could make out shapes. He saw that the bedroom door, already partially cracked open, was slowly moving. And then a hand, white and puffy like the petals of an orchid, appeared around the edge of the door, and fingers, long and stalk-like, extended and flexed, and the door moved and a flow of muddy water slid into the room along the floor.

The Reverend felt Norville move beside him, as if to rise, and he reached out and touched his shoulder to steady him.

The door opened more, and then the thing slipped inside the main room. It moved strangely, as if made of soft candle wax. It was dead white of flesh, but much of the skin was filthy with mud. It was neither male nor female. No genitals; down there it was as smooth as a well washed river rock. It was tall, with knees that swung slightly to the sides when it walked, and there was an odd vibration about it, as if it were about to burst apart in all directions. The head was small. Its face was mostly a long gash of a mouth. It had thin slits for eyes and a hole for a nose. At the ends of its willowy legs were large flat feet that splayed out in shapes like claw-tipped four-leaf clovers.

Twisting and winding, long stepping, and sliding, it made its way forward until it was close to the Reverend and Norville. It leaned forward and sniffed. The hole that was its nose opened wider as it did, flexed.

It smells us, thought the Reverend. Only fair, because we certainly smell it.

And then it opened its dripping mouth and came at them in a rush.

As it neared the stones, it was knocked back by an invisible wall, and then there came something quite visible where it had impacted, a ripple of blue fulmination. The thing went sliding along the floor on its belly in its own mud and goo.

"The rocks hold," the Reverend said, and it came again. Norville lifted the shotgun and fired. The pellets went through the thing and came rattling out against the wall on the other side. The hole made in its chest did not bleed, and it filled in rapidly, as if never struck.

Reverend Mercer stood up and aimed one of his pistols, and hit the thing square in the chest, and this time the wound made a sucking sound and when the load came out on the other side, goo and something dark came with it. But it didn't stop the creature. It hit the invisible wall again, bellowed and fell back. It dragged its way around the circle toward the horse, tied behind the line of stones. The terrified horse reared and snapped its reins as if they were non-existent. The horse went thundering across the line, and then across the circle of stones, causing them to go spinning left and right, and along came the thing, entering the circle through the gap.

The Reverend fired again. The thing jerked back and squealed like a pig. Then it sprang forward again, grabbed the Reverend by the throat and sent him flying across the room, slamming into the side of the frightened horse.

Norville swung the shotgun around and fired right into the thing's mouth, but it was like the thing was swallowing gnats. It grabbed the gun barrel, used it to sling the clutching Norville sliding across the floor, collecting splinters until he came up against the bedroom door, slamming it shut.

It started forward, but couldn't step out of the circle. Not that way. It wheeled to find the exit the horse had made, and as it did, Reverend Mercer, now on his feet, fired twice and hit the thing in the back, causing it to stagger through the opening and fall against the line of rocks that had been there to protect the horse. Its head hit the rocks and the creature cried out, leaping to its feet with a move that seemed boneless and without use of muscle. Its forehead bore a sizzling mark the size of the rock.

"Get back inside the circle," the Reverend said. "Close it off."

Norville waited for no further instruction. He bolted and leaped into the circle and began to clutch at the displaced stones. The Reverend put his right leg forward and threw back his coat by bending his left hand behind him; he pointed the revolver and took careful aim, fired twice.

Both shots hit. One in the head, one in the throat. They had their effect. The horror splattered to the floor with the wet laundry sound. But no sooner had it struck the ground, than it began to wriggle along the floor like a grub worm in a frying pan; it came fast and furious and grabbed the Reverend's boot and sprung upright in front of him.

Reverend Mercer cracked it across the head with his pistol, and it grabbed at him. The Reverend avoided the grab and struck out with his fist, a jab that merely annoyed the thing. It spread its jaws and filled the air with stink. The Reverend drew his remaining pistol and fired straight into the hole the thing used for a nose, causing it to go toppling backward along the floor gnashing its teeth into the lumber.

Reverend Mercer ran and leaped into the circle.

When he turned to look, the monster was sliding up the wall like some kind of slug. It left a sticky trail along the logs as it reached the ceiling and crawled along that with the dexterity of an insect.

The horse had finally come to a corner and stuck its head in it to hide. The thing came down on its back, and its mouth spread over the horse's head, and the horse stood up on its hind legs and its front legs hit the wall, and it fell over backward, landing on the creature. It didn't bother the thing in the least. It grabbed and twisted the horse over on its side as if it were nothing more than a feather pillow. There was a crunch as the monster's teeth snapped bones in the horse's head. The horse quit moving, and the thing began to suck, rivulets of blood spilling out from the corners of its distended mouth.

The Reverend jammed his pistol back into its holster, bent and grabbed the axe from the floor and leaped out of the circle. The thing caught sight of the Reverend as he came, rolled off the horse and leaped up on the wall and ran along it. As the Reverend turned to follow its progress, it leaped at him.

Reverend Mercer took a swing. The axe hit the fiend and split halfway through its neck, knocking it back against the wall, then to the floor. Its narrow eyes widened and showed red, and then it came to its feet in its unique way, though more slowly than before, and darted for the bedroom door.

As it reached and fumbled with the latch, the Reverend hit the thing in the back of the head with the axe and it went to its knees, clawed at the lumber of the door, causing it to squeak and squeal and come apart, making a narrow slit. It was enough. The thing eased through it like a snake. The Reverend jerked the door open to see it going through the gap in the window. He dropped the axe and jerked the pistol and fired and struck the thing twice before it went out through the breach and was gone from sight.

Reverend Mercer rushed to the window and looked out. The thing was staggering, falling, rising to its feet, staggering toward the well. The Reverend stuck the pistol out the window, resting it on the frame, and fired again. It was a good shot in the back of the neck, and the brute went down.

Holstering the revolver, rushing to grab the axe, the Reverend climbed through the window. The monster had made it to the well by then, crawling along on its belly, and just as it touched the curbing, the Reverend caught up with it, brought the spell-marked axe down on its already shredded head as many times as he had the strength to swing it.

As he swung, the sun began to color the sky. He was breathing so hard he sounded like a blue norther blowing in. The sun rose higher and still he swung, then he fell to the ground, his chest heaving.

When he looked about, he saw the thing was no longer moving. Norville was standing nearby, holding one of the marked rocks.

"You was doin' so good, I didn't want to interrupt you," Norville said.

The Reverend nodded, breathed for a long hard time, said, "Saddlebags. If this is not medicinal. I do not know what is."

A few moments later, Norville returned with the flask. The Reverend drank first, long and deep, and then he gave it to Norville.

* * *

When his wind was back, and the sun was up, the Reverend chopped the rest of the monster up. It had already gone flat and gushed clutter from its insides that were part horse bones, gouts of blood, and unidentifiable items that made the stomach turn; its teeth were spread around the well curbing, like someone had dropped a box of daggers.

They burned what would burn of the beast with dried limbs and dead leaves, buried the teeth and the remainder of the beast in a deep grave, the bottom and top and sides of it lined with the marked rocks.

When they were done chopping and cremating and burying the creature, it was late afternoon. They finished off the flask, and that night they slept in the house, undisturbed, and in the morning, they set fire to the cabin using The Book of Doches as a starter. As it burned, the Reverend looked up. The sky had begun to change, finally. The clouds no longer crawled.

They walked out, the Reverend with the saddlebags over his shoulder, Norville with a pillowcase filled with food tins from the cabin. Behind them, the smoke from the fire rose up black and sooty and by nighttime it had burned down to glowing cinders, and by the next day there was nothing more than clumps of ash.

DOWN BY THE SEA NEAR THE GREAT BIG ROCK

Down by the sea near the great big rock, they made their camp and toasted marshmallows over a small, fine fire. The night was pleasantly chill and the sea spray cold. Laughing, talking, eating the gooey marshmallows, they had one swell time; just them, the sand, the sea and the sky, and the great big rock.

The night before they had driven down to the beach, to the camping area; and on their way, perhaps a mile from their destination, they had seen a meteor shower, or something of that nature. Bright lights in the heavens, glowing momentarily, seeming to burn red blisters across the ebony sky.

Then it was dark again, no meteoric light, just the natural glow of the heavens-the stars, the dime-size moon.

They drove on and found an area of beach on which to camp, a stretch dominated by pale sands and big waves, and the great big rock.

Toni and Murray watched the children eat their marshmallows and play their games, jumping and falling over the great big rock, rolling in the cool sand. About midnight, when the kids were crashed out, they walked along the beach like fresh-found lovers, arm in arm, shoulder to shoulder, listening to the sea, watching the sky, speaking words of tenderness.

"I love you so much," Murray told Toni, and she repeated the words and added, "and our family too."

They walked in silence now, the feelings between them words enough. Sometimes Murray worried that they did not talk as all the marriage manuals suggested, that so much of what he had to say on the world and his work fell on the ears of others, and that she had so little to truly say to him. Then he would think: What the hell? I know how I feel. Different messages, unseen, unheard, pass between us all the time, and they communicate in a fashion words cannot.

He said some catch phrase, some pet thing between them, and Toni laughed and pulled him down on the sand. Out there beneath that shiny-dime moon, they stripped and loved on the beach like young sweethearts, experiencing their first night together after long expectation.

It was nearly two a.m. when they returned to the camper, checked the children and found them sleeping comfortably as kittens full of milk.

They went back outside for awhile, sat on the rock and smoked and said hardly a word. Perhaps a coo or a purr passed between them, but little more.

Finally they climbed inside the camper, zipped themselves into their sleeping bags and nuzzled together on the camper floor.

Outside the wind picked up, the sea waved in and out, and a slight rain began to fall.

Not along after, Murray awoke and looked at his wife in the crook of his arm. She lay there with her face a grimace, her mouth opening and closing like a guppie, making an "uhhh, uhh," sound.

A nightmare perhaps. He stroked the hair from her face, ran his fingers lightly down her cheek and touched the hollow of her throat and thought: What a nice place to carve out some fine, white meat.

What in the hell is wrong with me? Murray thought, and he rolled away from her, out of the bag. He dressed, went outside and sat on the rock. With shaking hands on his knees, buttocks resting on the warmth of the stone, he brooded. Finally he dismissed the possibility that such a thought had actually crossed his mind, smoked a cigarette and went back to bed.

He did not know that an hour later Toni awoke and bent over him and looked at his face as if it were something to squash. But finally she shook it off and slept.

The children tossed and turned. Little Roy squeezed his hands open, closed, open, closed. His eyelids fluttered rapidly.

Robyn dreamed of striking matches.

Morning came and Murray found that all he could say was, "I had the oddest dream."

Toni looked at him, said, "Me, too," and that was all. Placing lawn chairs on the beach, they put their feet on the rock and watched the kids splash and play in the waves; watched as Roy mocked the sound of the Jaws music and made fins with his hands and chased Robyn through the water as she scuttled backwards and screamed with false fear.

Finally they called the children from the water, ate a light lunch, and, leaving the kids to their own devices, went in for a swim.

The ocean stroked them like a mink-gloved hand, tossed them, caught them, massaged them gently. They washed together, laughing, kissing-then tore their lips from one another as up on the beach they heard a scream.

Roy had his fingers gripped about Robyn's throat, held her bent back over the rock and was putting a knee in her chest. There seemed no play about it. Robyn was turning blue.

Toni and Murray waded for shore, and the ocean no longer felt kind. It grappled with them, held them, tripped them with wet, foamy fingers. It seemed an eternity before they reached the shore, yelling at Roy.

Roy didn't stop. Robyn flopped like a dying fish. Murray grabbed the boy by the hair and pulled him back, and for a moment, as the child turned, he looked at his father with odd eyes that did not seem his, but looked instead as cold and firm as the great big rock.

Murray slapped him, slapped him so hard Roy spun and went down, stayed there on hands and knees, panting.

Murray went to Robyn, who was already in Toni's arms, and on the child's throat were blue-black bands like thin, ugly snakes.

"Baby, baby, are you okay?" Toni asked over and over. Murray wheeled, strode back to the boy, and Toni was now yelling at him, crying, "Murray, Murray, easy now. They were just playing and it got out of hand."

Roy was on his feet, and Murray, gritting his teeth, so angry he could not believe it, slapped the child down.

"MURRAY," Toni yelled, and she let go of the sobbing Robyn and went to stay his arm, for he was already raising it for another strike. "That's no way to teach him not to hit, not to fight."

Murray turned to her, almost snarling, but then his face relaxed and he lowered his hand. Turning to the boy, feeling very criminal, Murray reached down to lift Roy by the shoulder. But Roy pulled away, darted for the camper.

"Roy," he yelled, and started after him. Toni grabbed his arm.

"Let him be," she said. "He got carried away and he knows it. Let him mope it over. He'll be all right." Then softly: "I've never known you to get that mad."

"I've never been so mad before," he said honestly.

They walked back to Robyn, who was smiling now. They all sat on the rock, and about fifteen minutes later Robyn got up to see about Roy. "I'm going to tell him it's okay," she said. "He didn't mean it." She went inside the camper.

"She's sweet," Toni said.

"Yeah," Murray said, looking at the back of Toni's neck as she watched Robyn move away. He was thinking that he was supposed to cook lunch today, make hamburgers, slice onions; big onions cut thin with a freshly sharpened knife. He decided to go get it.

"I'll start lunch," he said flatly, and stalked away.

As he went, Toni noticed how soft the back of his skull looked, so much like an over-ripe melon.

She followed him inside the camper.

Next morning, after the authorities had carried off the bodies, taken the four of them out of the blood-stained, fire-gutted camper, one detective said to another:

"Why does it happen? Why would someone kill a nice family like this? And in such horrible ways. . . set fire to it afterwards?"

The other detective sat on the huge rock and looked at his partner, said tonelessly, "Kicks maybe."

That night, when the moon was high and bright, gleaming down like a big spotlight, the big rock, satiated, slowly spread its flippers out, scuttled across the sand, into the waves, and began to swim toward the open sea. The fish that swam near it began to fight.

DRIVE-IN DATE

(The Play Version)

CHARACTERS: Merle and Dave and a Woman's Right Leg, complete with Belled Ankle Bracelet

PLACE: A Drive-in Theater somewhere in Texas

TIME: Now

SCENE ONE

Lights go up on two men in the front seat of a car. A rear view mirror hangs down and from it dangles a little, stuffed, silver armadillo. Our duo is dressed in Western clothes, have on cowboy hats. They're in their forties, average-looking. Dave is on the driver's side. Merle on the passenger's. There's a speaker in the driver's window and a wire goes from the speaker to a metal pole beside the car. On the seat between them are two tubs of popcorn, couple boxes of chocolate almonds, and two tall wax paper cups of coke. It's night, of course, but it's fairly bright because the movie hasn't started yet and the lot lights are on.

DAVE: I like to be close so it all looks bigger than life. You don't mind, do you?

MERLE: (PAUSE) You ask me that every time. You don't never ask me that when we're driving in, you ask when we're parked.

DAVE: Don't like it, we can move.

MERLE: (SLIGHTLY EXASPERATED) I like it. I'm just saying, you don't really care if I like it. You just ask. When you ask me what I like, you could mean it.

DAVE: You're a testy motherfucker tonight. I thought coming to see a monster picture would cheer you up.

MERLE: You're the one likes 'em, and that's why you come. It wasn't for me, so don't talk like it was. I don't believe in monsters, so I can't enjoy what I'm seeing. I like something that's real. Cop movie. Things like that.

DAVE: I tell you, Merle, there's just no satisfying you, man. You'll feel better when they cut the lights and the movie starts. We can get our date then.

MERLE: I don't know that makes me feel better.

DAVE: You done quit liking pussy?

MERLE: Watch your mouth. I didn't say that. You know I like pussy. I like pussy fine.

DAVE: Whoa. Aren't we fussy? Way you talk, you're trying to convince me. Maybe it's buttholes you like.

MERLE: Goddammit, don't start on the buttholes.

(DAVE LAUGHS, PLUCKS A PACK OF CIGARETTES FROM HIS POCKET, SHAKES ONE OUT AND LIPS IT.)

DAVE: I know you did that one ole gal in the butt that night. (REACHES UP, TAPS THE REARVIEW MIRROR.) I seen you in the mirror here.

MERLE: You didn't see nothing.

DAVE: (GRINNING AROUND HIS CIGARE'ITE) I seen you get in her butthole. I seen that much.

MERLE: What the hell you doing watching? It ain't good enough for you by yourself, so you got to watch someone else get theirs?

(DAVE SNICKERS, POPS HIS LIGHTER, AND FIRES UP HIS SMOKE.)

DAVE: (SMIRKY) I don't mind watching.

MERLE: Yeah, well, I bet you don't. You're like one of those fucking perverts.

(DAVE ISNT BOTHERED BY THIS AT ALL. IN FACT, HE'S BECOME A BIT DISTRACTED.

THE LOT LIGHTS GO OUT. A SILVERISH GLOW FILLS THE CAR, FLICKERS OVER OUR PAIR. TINNY MUSIC FROM THE SPEAKER. A VOICE: "HOWDY PARTNERS, TRUCK ON DOWN TO THE SNACKBAR.")

DAVE: (CUTTING THE SOUND OFF THE SPEAKER) Heard all that shit I want. . . I'll turn it up when the movie starts. Won't be long now. (SLAPS AT HIS NECK.) Goddamn skeeters. Man, that cocksucker was big enough to straddle a turkey flat-footed.

MERLE: Maybe we could just forget it tonight.

DAVE: Listen, you don't like this first feature, the other'n's some kind of mystery. It might be like a cop show.

MERLE: I don't mean the movies.

DAVE: (SLIGHT CONCERN) You saying you ain't up to the girl?

MERLE: I'm saying I'm in a funny mood.

(DAVE THUMPS HIS CIGARETTE OUT THE WINDOW)

DAVE: (TRULY CONCERNED) Merle, this is kind of a touchy subject, but we're friends, so I'm gonna ask it. You been having trouble getting a bone to keep?

MERLE: (ALMOST ANGRY) What!

DAVE: It happens. I had it happen to me. (HOLDS UP A FINGER) Once.

MERLE: I'm not having trouble with my dick, okay?

DAVE: You are, it's no disgrace. It'll happen to a man from time to time.

MERLE: (ANGRY) My tool is all right. It works. No problem. It's just a mood or something. Feel like I'm going through one of them mid-life crisis or some kind of thing.

DAVE: (REASSURING) Mood hell. Let me tell you, when she's stretched out on that back seat, you'll be all right, crisis or no crisis. What you need, Merle, is to lighten up. Lay a little pipe. You don't ever lighten up. Don't we deserve some fun after working like niggers all day?

MERLE: You got to use that nigger stuff? It makes you sound ignorant.... Will, he's colored and I like him. A man like that don't deserve to be called nigger.

DAVE: He's all right at the plant, but you go by his house and ask for a loan.

MERLE: I don't want to borrow nothing from him. I'm just saying people ought to get their due, no matter what color they are. Nigger is an ugly word.

DAVE: Hell, you like niggers so much, next date we set up, we'll make it a nigger. Shit, I'd fuck a nigger. All pink on the inside, ain't it?

MERLE: You're a bigot is what you are.

DAVE: That means I don't want to buddy up with no coons, then you're right.... But let's drop the niggers. We ain't never gonna see eye to eye on that one.... Thing is, Merle, you do have to learn to lighten up. You don't you'll die. That's what's wrong with you. You're tense. Listen here: I got an uncle, and he couldn't never lighten up. Gave him a spastic colon, all that tension. He swelled up until he couldn't wear his pants. Sumbitch had to get some of them stretch pants, one of them running suits, just so he could have on clothes. He eventually got so bad they had to go in and operate. You can bet he wishes now he didn't do all that worrying. He didn't get a better life on account of that worrying. He didn't get a better life on account of that worry, now did he? Still lives over in that little shit-hole apartment where he's been living, on account of he got so sick from worry he couldn't work. They're about to throw him out of there, and him a grown man and sixty years old. Lost his job, his wife, and now he's doing little odd shit here and there to make ends meet. Going down to catch the day truck with the winos and the niggers - pardon me -the Afro-Americans.... Before he got to worry over nothing, he had him some serious savings and was about ready to put some money down on a couple of acres and a good double wide, one of them finer mobile homes.

MERLE: Shit. I was planning on buying me a double-wide, that'd make me worry Them old trailers ain't worth a shit. Comes a tornado, or just a good wind, and you can find those fuckers at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico next to the regular trailers. Tornado will take a double-wide easy as any of the others.

DAVE: You go from one thing to another. I know what a tornado can do. It can take a house too. Your house. I'm not talking about mobile homes here, Merle. I'm talking about living. It's a thing you better amend to. You're goddamn forty years old. Your life's half over... . I know that's cold to say, but there you have it. It's out of my mouth. I'm forty this next birthday, so I'm not just putting the doom on you. It's a thing a man's got to face. Before I die, I'd like to think I did something with my life. Hear what I'm saying, Merle?

MERLE: Hard not to, being in the same car with you.

DAVE: (CONCILIATORY TONE) Hey, I'm getting kind of horny thinking about hen You see the legs on that bitch?

MERLE: Course I seen 'em.... You don't know from legs. A woman's got legs is all you care, and you might not care about that. Couple of stumps would be all the same to you.

DAVE: No, I don't care for any stumps. Got to be feet on one end, pussy on the other. That's legs enough. But this one, she's got some good ones. Hell, you're bound to've noticed how good they were.

MERLE: I noticed. You saying I'm queer or something? I noticed. I noticed she's got an ankle bracelet on the right leg and she wears about a size ten shoe. Biggest goddamn feet I've ever seen on a woman. I never did care for a woman with big feet. You got a good looking woman all over and you get down to them feet and they look like something goes on either side of a sea plane.... Well, it ruins things.

DAVE: She ain't ruined. Way she looks, big feet or not, she ain't ruined. Besides, you don't fuck the feet. Well, maybe you do. Right after the butthole.

MERLE: You gonna push one time too much, Dave. One time too much.

DAVE: (GRINNING) Come on, I'm jacking with you. Take it easy. Look here, you haul your ashes first. That'll take some edge off.

MERLE: (SLOW TO ANSWER, BUT THE IDEA IS BEGINNING TO APPEAL TO HIM.) Well...

DAVE: (MAGNANIMOUS) Naw, go on. It's dark enough. Nobody can see.

MERLE: All right... But one thing...

DAVE: What?

MERLE: Don't do me no more butthole talk, okay? One friend to another, no more.

DAVE: Bothers you that bad, okay. Deal.

(MERLE TURNS AND LEANS OVER THE BACKSEAT AND SNATCHES UP A BLANKET AND PULLS IT INTO THE FRONT SEAT. DAVE IS LOOKING INTO THE BACKSEAT, GRINNING. MERLE CLIMBS INTO THE BACKSEAT. HE'S ON HIS KNEES. HIS HANDS ARE OUT OF SIGHT, BUT IT'S OBVIOUS HE'S STRUGGLING SLIGHTLY AFTER A MOMENT, HE COMES UP WITH A WOMAN'S SHORT DRESS AND TOSSES IT INTO THE FRONT SEAT. THIS IS FOLLOWED BY BIKINI PANTIES.)

(DAVE PICKS UP THE PANTIES, PUTS THEM OVER HIS NOSE, SNIFFS, DRAPES THEM ON THE GEAR SHIFT.)

(MERLE LIFTS A WOMAN'S LIMP, CHALK-WHITE LEG INTO VIEW AND HOOKS THE ANKLE ON THE SEAT. AROUND THE ANKLE IS A LITTLE BRACELET WITH TWO MINIATURE GOLD BELLS. THEY TINKLE SLIGHTLY AS THE FOOT FALLS INTO PLACE.)

MERLE: Look at that foot. Foot like that ought to have a paper bag over it.

DAVE: Like I said, it ain't the feet I fuck.

(MERLE UNFASTENS HIS BELT AND PANTS, STARTS TUGGING THEM DOWN. HE LOWERS HIMSELF INTO POSITION.)

MERLE: (OUT OF SIGHT) She's already starting to stink.

DAVE: (LOOKING BACK INTO THE BACKSEAT) You can't get pleased, can you? She ain't stinking. She ain't been dead long enough to stink, and you know it. Quit being so goddamn contrary.

(DAVE SHAKES HIS HEAD, LIGHTS UP A CIGARETTE AND BLOWS SMOKE OUT THE WINDOW. HE ROAMS AN EYE TO THE REAR VIEW MIRROR, REACHES UP CASUALLY AND ADJUSTS IT. HE GRINS, PUFFS AT HIS CIGAREYJ'E.)

MERLE: (STILL OUT OF SIGHT) And don't be looking back here at me neither!

(DAVE'S GRIN DEPARTS. HE SWITCHES UP THE SPEAKER. THE MOVIE IS STARTING. WE HEAR EERIE HORROR MOVIE MUSIC. HE TURNS HIS ATTENTION FORWARD TO WATCH THE "SCREEN." HE CASUALLY PLACES HIS CIGARETTE BETWEEN THE DEAD WOMAN'S TOES. HE REACHES OVER AND TAKES A BUCKET OF POPCORN AND PUTS IT IN HIS LAP AND STARTS TO DIG IN.)

(CAR SHAKES. THE WOMAN'S FOOT VIBRATES ON THE BACK OF THE SEAT.)

(AS THE LIGHTS FADE, WE CAN HEAR THE LITTLE GOLDEN BELLS ON HER ANKLE BRACELET STARTING TO RING. AND IN THE DARKNESS THEY RING, AND RING... AND GRADUALLY FADE AWAY)

SCENE TWO

(MERLE IS BACK IN THE FRONT SEAT. DAVE IS STILL BEHIND THE STEERING WHEEL. THE WOMAN'S FOOT REMAINS VISIBLE. THE TOES HAVE THREE CIGARETTE BUTTS BETWEEN THEM AND THEY ARE BLACKENED FROM HAVING BEEN BURNED. IF THIS IS VISIBLE TO ONLY A SMALL PORTION OF THE AUDIENCE, GOOD ENOUGH. WE CAN HEAR SCREAMING AND THE GROWL OF A MONSTER FROM THE SPEAKER. MERLE'S BELT IS UNFASTENED AND HE REACHES TO FASTEN IT. HE LOOKS SULLEN.)

DAVE: How was it?

MERLE: It was pussy. ... Hey, turn that shit off.

DAVE: What you want me to do, read lips?

MERLE: Bad enough I got to watch this shit without hearing all that noise with it.... Hell, you're gonna take a turn anyway. What do you care what you miss?

DAVE: (HE TURNS THE SPEAKER TO SILENCE) Yeah, well, all right. But this ain't half bad. You don't get too good a look at the monster though.... That all the pussy you gonna get?

MERLE: Maybe some later.

DAVE: Feeling any better?

MERLE: Some. I think maybe we had a hole cut in the backseat back there, it'd be good as I just got.

DAVE: Bullshit. You're just down, man.... Want a cigarette? You like a cigarette after sex, don't you?

MERLE: All right.

(DAVE GIVES MERLE A COFFIN NAIL, LIGHTS IT WITH A LIGHTER. MERLE SUCKS SMOKE IN DEEPLY)

DAVE: Better?

MERLE: Yeah, I guess.

DAVE: Good. I'm gonna take a turn now.

(DAVE CLIMBS OVER THE SEAT.)

MERLE: (STARING AT THE SCREEN AS IF INFINITELY BORED. SPEAKS WITHOUT LOOKING AT DAVE.) Got to be more to life than this.

DAVE: (ON HIS KNEES IN THE BACKSEAT, UN-FASTENING HIS PANTS) I been telling you, this is life, and you better start enjoying. Get you some orientation before it's too late and it's all over but the dirt in the face.... (HE MAKES A SLIGHT ADJUSTMENT IN THE POSITION OF THE WOMAN'S FOOT.) Talk to me later. Right now this is what I want out of life. Little later, I might want something else.

(DAVE LOWERS HIMSELF INTO THE BACKSEAT. BEAT. THE FOOT BEGINS TO SHAKE, THE BELL STARTS TO RING. GRUNTING SOUNDS FROM DAVE.)

MERLE: (LOOKS AT THE VIBRATING FOOT, LOCKS HIS GAZE ON IT. AN UNPLEASANT EXPRESSION CROSSES HIS FACE.) Bet that damn foot's more a size eleven than a ten. Bitch probably bought shoes at the ski shop.

DAVE: Hey. I'm doing some business here. Do you mind?

(DAVE LOWERS HIMSELF OUT OF SIGHT. THE FOOT STARTS TO MOVE AGAIN. CAR ROCKS. THE BELLS RING. LIGHTS FADE, AND IN THE DARKNESS WE HEAR-)

DAVE: Give it to me, baby. (LOUDER) Give it to me! (LOUDER YET. VERY EXCITED. ALMOST BREATHLESS.) Am I your Prince, baby? Am I your goddamn King? Take that anaconda, bitch. Take it!

MERLE: For heaven's sake!

SCENE THREE

(DAVE CLIMBS INTO THE FRONT SEAT, GETS POSITIONED.)

DAVE: (SMILING; SATISFIED) Good piece. (HE USES HIS FINGER TO THUMP THE BELLS ON THE WOMAN'S ANKLE BRACELET.) Damn good piece.

MERLE: You act like she had something to do with it.

DAVE: Her pussy, ain't it?

MERLE: We're doing all the work. Like I said, we could cut a hole in the seat back there and get it that good.

DAVE: That ain't true. It ain't the hole does it, and it damn sure ain't the personality, it's how they look. That flesh under you. Young. Firm. Try coming in an ugly or fat woman and you'll see what I mean. You'll have some troubles. Or maybe you won't.

MERLE: (DEFENSIVE) I don't like 'em old or fat.

DAVE: Yeah, well, I don't see the live ones like either one of us all that much. The old ones or the fat ones. Face it, we've got no way with live women. And I don't like the courting. I like to know I see one I like, I can have her if I can catch her.

MERLE: I was thinking we ought to take them alive.

DAVE: (LIGHTING A CIGARETTE) We been over this. We take one alive, she might scream or get away. We could get caught easy enough.

MERLE: We could kill her when we're finished. Way we re doing, we could buy one of those blow up dolls, put it in the glove box and bring it to the drive-in.

DAVE: I've never cottoned to something like that. Even jacking off bothers me. A man ought to have a woman.

MERLE: A dead woman?

DAVE: Best kind. She's quiet. You haven't got to put up with clothes and makeup jabber, keeping up with the Jones' jabber, getting that promotion jabber. She's not gonna tell you "no" in the middle of the night. Ain't gonna complain about how you put it to her. One stroke's as good as the next to a dead bitch.

MERLE: I kind of like hearing 'em grunt, though. I like being kissed.

DAVE: Rape some girl, think she'll want to kiss you?

MERLE: I can make her.

DAVE: Dead's better. You don't have to worry yourself about how happy she is. You don't pay for nothing. You got a live woman, one you're married to even, you're still paying for pussy. If you don't pay in money, you'll pay in pain. They'll smile and coo for a time, but stay out late with the boys, have a little financial stress, they all revert to just what mama was. A bitch. She drove daddy into an early grave, way she nagged, and the old sow lived to be ninety No wonder women live longer than men. They worry men to death.... Hell, that was his wife put it on him. Wanting this and wanting that. When he got sick, had that operation and had to dip into his savings, she was out of there. They'd been married thirty years, but things got tough, you could see what those thirty years meant. He didn't even come out of that deal with a place to put his dick at night.

MERLE: All women ain't that way

DAVE: Yeah they are. They can't help it. I'm not blaming them, it's in them, like germs. In time, they all turn out just the same.

MERLE: I'm talking about raping them, though, not marrying them. Getting kissed.

DAVE: You're with the kissing again. You been reading Cosmo or something? What's this kiss stuff? You get hungry, you eat. You get thirsty, you drink. You get tired, you sleep. You get horny, you kill and fuck. You use them like a product, Merle, then when you get through with the product, you throw out the package. Get a new one when you need it. This way you always got the young ones, the tan ones, no matter how old or fat or ugly you get. You don't have to see a pretty woman get old, see that tan turn her face to leather. You can keep the world bright and fresh all the time. You listen to me, Merle. It's the best way

MERLE: Guess I'm just looking for a little romance. I had me a taste of it, you know. It was all right. She could really kiss.

DAVE: Yeah, it was all right for a while, then she ran off with some fella, and I bet some other swinging dick's come along since then and she's run off with him, and she'll keep running off until she's too old and ugly to hook some man other than the one she's got last, and she'll worry that poor sonofabitch to death.

(DAVE LOOKS AT MERLE, SEES HIS COMMENTS ARE PAINFUL TO HIS FRIEND.)

DAVE: (SWEETLY) Don't think I don't understand what you're saying. Thing I like about you, Merle, is you aren't like those guys down at the plant, come in, do your job, go home, watch a little TV, fall asleep in the chair dreaming about some magazine model cause the old lady won't give out, or you don't want to think about her giving out on account of the way she's got ugly Thing is, Merle, you know you're dissatisfied. That's the first step to knowing there's more to life than the old grind. I appreciate that in you. It's a kind of sensitivity some men don't like to face. Think it makes them weak. It's a strength, is what it is, Merle. Something I wish I had more of.

MERLE: (TOUCHED) That's damn nice of you to say, Dave.

DAVE: It's true. Anybody knows you, knows you feel things deeply And I don't want you to think I don't appreciate romance, but you get our age, you got to look at things a little straighten I can't see any romance with an old woman anyway, and a young one, she ain't gonna have me.. . . Unless it's the way we're doing it now.

MERLE: (CONSIDERING) Yeah. . . I guess you're right.

DAVE: (THROWS A NOD AT THE BACK SEAT) Hey, she wasn't really so bad, was she? I picked all right, didn't I?

MERLE: (TRYING TO BE PLEASANT) 'Cept for them slats she has, she was fine.

DAVE: Good enough. (NOW HIS VOICE GOES FLAT.) Well, let's take the bitch to the dump site and throw her out.... Time they find her, the worms will have had some pussy too.

MERLE: You're a good friend, Dave. I ain't much to talking sentiment, but I want you to know that... The talk and all, it done me good. Really

DAVE: (SMILING) Hey, it's all right. Been seeing this coming in you for a time, since the girl before last. ... You're all right now, though. Right?

MERLE: Well, I'm better

DAVE: That's how you start.

MERLE: But I got to admit, I still miss being kissed.

DAVE: (LAUGHING) You and the kiss. You're some piece of work, buddy. . . . I got your kiss. Kiss my ass.

MERLE: (GRINNING) Way I feel, your ass could kiss back, I just might.

DAVE: (LAUGH) I bet you would. Tell you what. Let's let this movie go to hell, dump the bitch, go on over to the house and watch a little Dirty Harry. I got it on tape.

MERLE: Deal.

(MERLE REACHES OVER AND SLAPS THE WOMAN'S FOOT OFF THE BACK OF THE SEAT. SHORT FURY OF BELLS. A THUD. DAVE REACHES TO START THE ENGINE AND THE LIGHTS GO OUT AND WE HEAR THE MOTOR IN THE DARKNESS, ALMOST GROWLING LIKE AN ANIMAL, MOVING AWAY IN THE DISTANCE, AND THEN THERE IS SILENCE AND -)

CURTAIN

DUCK HUNT

There were three hunters and three dogs. The hunters had shiny shotguns, warm clothes and plenty of ammo. The dogs were each covered in big blue spots and were sleek and glossy and ready to run. No duck was safe.

The hunters were Clyde Barrow, James Clover and little Freddie Clover who was only fifteen and very excited to be asked along. However, Freddie did not really want to see a duck, let alone shoot one. He had never killed anything but a sparrow with his BB gun and that had made him sick. But he was nine then. Now he was ready to be a man. His father told him so.

With this hunt he felt he had become part of a secret organization. One that smelled of tobacco smoke and whiskey breath; sounded of swear words, talk about how good certain women were, the range and velocity of rifles and shotguns, the edges of hunting knives, the best caps and earflaps for winter hunting.

In Mud Creek the hunt made the man.

Since Freddie was nine he had watched with more than casual interest how when a boy turned fifteen in Mud Creek, he would be invited to The Hunting Club for a talk with the men. Next step was a hunt, and when the boy returned he was a boy no longer. He talked deep, walked sure, had whiskers bristling on his chin and could take up, with the assurance of not being laughed at, cussing, smoking and watching women's butts as a matter of course.

Freddie wanted to be a man too. He had pimples, no pubic hair to speak of (he always showered quickly at school to escape derisive remarks about the size of his equipment and the thickness of his foliage), scrawny legs and little, gray, watery eyes that looked like ugly planets spinning in white space.

And truth was, Freddie preferred a book to a gun.

But came the day when Freddie turned fifteen and his father came home from the Club, smoke and whiskey smell clinging to him like a hungry tick, his face slightly dark with beard and tired-looking from all-night poker.

He came into Freddie's room, marched over to the bed where Freddie was reading THOR, clutched the comic from his son's hands, sent it fluttering across the room with a rainbow of comic panels.

"Nose out of the book," his father said. "Time to join the Club."

Freddie went to the Club, heard the men talk ducks, guns, the way the smoke and blood smelled on cool morning breezes. They told him the kill was the measure of a man. They showed him heads on the wall. They told him to go home with his father and come back tomorrow bright and early, ready for his first hunt.

His father took Freddie downtown and bought a flannel shirt (black and red), a thick jacket (fleece lined), a cap (with ear flaps) and boots (waterproof). He took Freddie home and took a shotgun down from the rack, gave him a box of ammo, walked him out back to the firing range and made him practice while he told his son about hunts and the war and about how men and ducks died much the same.

Next morning before the sun was up, Freddie and his father had breakfast. Freddie's mother did not eat with them. Freddie did not ask why. They met Clyde over at the Club and rode in his jeep down dirt roads, clay roads and trails, through brush and briars until they came to a mass of reeds and cattails that grew thick and tall as Japanese bamboo.

They got out and walked. As they walked, pushing aside the reeds and cattails, the ground beneath their feet turned marshy. The dogs ran ahead.

When the sun was two hours up, they came to a bit of a clearing in the reeds, and beyond them Freddie could see the break-your-heart-blue of a shiny lake. Above the lake, coasting down, he saw a duck. He watched it sail out of sight.

"Well, boy?" Freddie's father said.

"It's beautiful," Freddie said.

"Beautiful, hell, are you ready?"

"Yes, sir."

On they walked, the dogs way ahead now, and finally they stood within ten feet of the lake. Freddie was about to squat down into hiding as he had heard of others doing, when a flock of ducks burst up from a mass of reeds in the lake and Freddie, fighting off the sinking feeling in his stomach, tracked them with the barrel of the shotgun, knowing what he must do to be a man.

His father's hand clamped over the barrel and pushed it down. "Not yet," he said.

"Huh?" said Freddie.

"It's not the ducks that do it," Clyde said.

Freddie watched as Clyde and his father turned their heads to the right, to where the dogs were pointing-noses forward, paws upraised-to a thatch of underbrush. Clyde and his father made quick commands to the dogs to stay, then they led Freddie into the brush, through a twisting maze of briars and out into a clearing where all the members of The Hunting Club were waiting.

In the center of the clearing was a gigantic duck decoy. It looked ancient and there were symbols carved all over it. Freddie could not tell if it were made of clay, iron or wood. The back of it was scooped out, gravy-bowl-like, and there was a pole in the center of the indention; tied to the pole was a skinny man. His head had been caked over with red mud and there were duck feathers sticking in it, making it look like some kind of funny cap.

There was a ridiculous, wooden duck bill held to his head by thick elastic straps. Stuck to his butt was a duster of duck feathers. There was a sign around his neck that read DUCK.

The man's eyes were wide with fright and he was trying to say or scream something, but the bill had been fastened in such a way he couldn't make any more than a mumble.

Freddie felt his father's hand on his shoulder. "Do it," he said. "He ain't nobody to anybody we know. Be a man."

"Do it! Do it! Do it!" came the cry from The Hunting Club.

Freddie felt the cold air turn into a hard ball in his throat. His scrawny legs shook. He looked at his father and The Hunting Club. They all looked tough, hard and masculine.

"Want to be a titty baby all your life?" his father said. That put steel in Freddie's bones. He cleared his eyes with the back of his sleeve and steadied the barrel on the derelict's duck's head.

"Do it!" came the cry. "Do it! Do it! Do it!"

At that instant he pulled the trigger. A cheer went up from The Hunting Club, and out of the clear, cold sky, a dark blue norther blew in and with it came a flock of ducks. The ducks lit on the great idol and on the derelict. Some of them dipped their bills in the derelict's wetness.

When the decoy and the derelict were covered in ducks, all The Hunting Club lifted their guns and began to fire.

The air became full of smoke, pellets, blood and floating feathers

When the gunfire died down and the ducks died out, The Hunting Club went forward and bent over the decoy, did what they had to do. Their smiles were red when they lifted their heads. They wiped their mouths gruffly on the backs of their sleeves and gathered ducks into hunting bags until they bulged. There were still many carcasses lying about.

"Good shooting, son," Fred's father said and clapped him manfully on the back.

"Yeah," said Fred, scratching his crotch, "got that sonofabitch right between the eyes, pretty as a picture."

They all laughed.

The sky went lighter, and the blue norther that was rustling the reeds and whipping feathers about blew up and out and away in an instant. As the men walked away from there, talking deep, walking sure, whiskers bristling on all their chins, they promised that tonight they would get Fred a woman.

THE DUMP

Me, I like it here just fine. Don't see no call for me to move on. Dump's been my home nigh on twenty years, and I don't think no high-falutin' city sanitation law should make me have to pack up and move on. If I'm gonna work here, I ought to be able to live here. Me and Otto... where is that sucker anyway? I let him wander about some on Sundays. Rest of the time I keep him chained inside the hut there, out of sight. Wouldn't want him bitin' folks.

Well, as I was sayin', the dump's my home. Best damn home I ever had. I'm not a college man, but I got some education. I read a lot. Ought to look inside that shack and see my bookshelves. I may be a dump-yard supervisor, but I'm no fool.

Besides, there's more to this dump than meets the eye.

'Scuse me. Otto! Otto. Here, boy. Dadburn his hide, he's gotten bad about not comin' when I call.

Now, I was sayin' about the dump. There's more here than meets the eye. You ever thought about all that garbage, boy? They bring anything and everything here, and I 'doze her under. There's animal bodies-that's one of the things that interests old Otto-paint cans, all manner of chemical containers, lumber, straw, brush, you name it. I 'doze all that stuff under and it heats up. Why, if you could put a thermometer under that earth, check the heat that stuff puts out while it's breakin' down and turnin' to compost, it would be up there, boy, way up there. Sometimes over a hundred degrees. I've plowed that stuff open and seen the steam flow out of there like a cloud. Could feel the heat of it. It was like bein' in one of them fancy baths. Saunas, they call 'em. Hot, boy, real hot.

Now you think about it. All that heat. All those chemicals and dead bodies and such. Makes an awful mess, a weird blend of nature's refuse. Real weird. And with all that incubatin' heat... Well, you consider it.

I'll tell you somethin' I ain't told nobody else. Somethin' that happened to me a couple years ago.

One night me and Pearly, that was a friend of mine, and we called him that on account of he had the whitest teeth you ever seen. Darn things looked pointed they were so white... Let's see, now where was I? Oh, yeah, yeah, me and Pearly. Well, we were sittin' around out here one night shootin' the breeze, you know, sharin' a pint. Pearly, he used to come around from time to time and we'd always split a bottle. He used to be a legit, old-time hobo. Rode the rails all over this country. Why, I reckon he was goin' on seventy years if not better, but he acted twenty years younger.

He'd come around and we'd talk and sit and snort and roll us some of that Prince Albert, which we'd smoke. We had some good laughs, we did, and I miss old Pearly sometimes.

So that night we let the bottle leak out pretty good, and Pearly, he's tellin' me about this time down in Texas in a boxcar with a river trash whore, and he stops in midsentence, right at the good part, and says: "You hear that?"

I said, "I don't hear nothin'. Go on with your story."

He nodded and told the tale, and I laughed, and he laughed. He could laugh better at his own stories and jokes than anyone I'd ever seen.

After a bit Pearly gets up and walks out beyond the firelight to relieve himself, you know. And he comes back right quick, zippin' his fly, and walkin' as fast as them old stiff legs of his will take him.

"There's somethin' out there," he says.

"Sure," I say. "Armadillos, coons, possums, maybe a stray dog."

"No," he says. "Something else."

"Awww."

"I been a lot of places, boy," he says-he always called me boy on account of I was twenty years younger than he was-"and I'm used to hearin' critters walk about. That don't sound like no damn possum or stray dog to me. Somethin' bigger."

I start to tell him that he's full of it, you know-and then I hear it too. And a stench like you wouldn't believe floats into camp here. A stench like a grave opened on a decomposin' body, one full of maggots and the smell of earth and death. It was so strong I got a little sick, what with all the rotgut in me.

Pearly says, "You hear it?"

And I did. It was the sound of somethin' heavy, crunchin' down that garbage out there, movin' closer and closer to the camp, like it was afeared of the fire, you know.

I got the heebie-jeebies, and I went into the hut there and got my double-barrel. When I came out Pearly had pulled a little old thirty-two Colt out of his waistband and a brand from the fire, and he was headin' out there in the dark.

"Wait a minute," I called.

"You just stay put, boy. I'll see to this, and I'll see that whatever it is gets a hole in it. Maybe six."

So I waited. The wind picked up and that horrible stench drifted in again, very strong this time. Strong enough so I puked up that hooch I'd drunk. And then suddenly from the dark, while I'm leanin' over throwin' my guts out on the ground, I hear a shot. Another one. Another.

I got up and started callin' for Pearly.

"Stay the hell where you are," he called. "I'm comin' back." Another shot, and then Pearly seemed to fold out of the darkness and come into the light of the fire.

"What is it, Pearly?" I said. "What is it?"

Pearly's face was as white as his teeth. He shook his head. "Ain't never seen nothin' like it... Listen, boy, we got to get the hell out of Dodge. That sucker, it's-" He let his voice trail off, and he looked toward the darkness beyond the firelight.

"Come on, Pearly, what is it?"

"I tell you, I don't know. I couldn't see real good with that there firebrand, and it went out before too long. I heard it down there crunchin' around, over there by that big hill of garbage."

I nodded. That was a pile I'd had heaped up with dirt for a long time. I intended to break it open next time I 'dozed, push some new stuff in with it.

"It-it was comin' out of that pile," Pearly said. "It was wrigglin' like a great gray worm, but... there were legs all over it. Fuzzy legs. And the body-it was jelly-like. Lumber, fence wire, and all manner of crap was stickin' out of it, stickin' out of it like it belonged there, just as natural as a shell on a turtle's back or the whiskers on a cougar's face. It had a mouth, a big mouth, like a railway tunnel, and what looked like teeth... But the brand went out then. I fired some shots. It was still wrigglin' out of that garbage heap. It was too dark to stay there-"

He cut in midsentence. The smell was strong now, solid as a wall of bricks.

"It's movin' into camp," I said.

"Must've come from all that garbage," Pearly said. "Must've been born in all that heat and slime."

"Or come up from the center of the earth," I said, though I figured Pearly was a mite near closer to right.

Pearly put some fresh loads in his revolver. "This is all I got," he said.

"I want to see it eat buckshot," I said.

Then we heard it. Very loud, crunchin' down those mounds of garbage like they was peanut hulls. And then there was silence.

Pearly, he moved back a few steps from the double-barrel toward the shack. I aimed the double-barrel toward the dark.

Silence went on for a while. Why, you could've heard yourself blink. But I wasn't blinkin'. I was a-watchin' out for that critter.

Then I heard it-but it was behind me! I turned just in time to see a fuzzy-like tentacle slither out from behind the shack and grab old Pearly. He screamed, and the gun fell out of his hand. And from the shadows a head showed. A huge, wormlike head with slitted eyes and a mouth large enough to swallow a man. Which is what it did. Pearly didn't make that thing two gulps. Wasn't nothin' left of him but a scrap of flesh hangin' on the thing's teeth.

I emptied a load of buckshot in it, slammed the gun open and loaded her again. By that time it was gone. I could hear it crashin' off in the dark.

I got the keys to the 'dozer and walked around back of the shack on tiptoe. It didn't come out of the dark after me. I cranked the 'dozer, turned on the spotlights, and went out there after it.

It didn't take long to find it. It was movin' across the dump like a snake, slitherin' and a-loopin' as fast as it could go-which wasn't too fast right then. It had a lump in its belly, an undigested lump... Poor old Pearly!

I ran it down, pinned it to the chain-link fence on the far side of the dump, and used my 'dozer blade to mash it up against it. I was just fixin' to gun the motor and cut that sucker's head off when I changed my mind.

Its head was stickin' up over the blade, those slitted eyes lookin' at me... and there, buried in that wormlike face, was the face of a puppy. You get a lot of them here. Well, it was alive now. Head was still mashed in like it was the first time I saw it, but it was movin'. The head was wrigglin' right there in the center of that worm's head.

I took a chance and backed off from that thing. I dropped to the ground and didn't move. I flashed the lights over it.

Pearly was seepin' out of that thing. I don't know how else to describe it, but he seemed to be driftin' out of that jelly-like hide; and when his face and body were halfway out of it, he stopped movin' and just hung there. I realized somethin' then. It was not only created by the garbage and the heat-it lived off of it, and whatever became its food became a part of it. That puppy and old Pearly were now a part of it.

Now don't misunderstand me. Pearly, he didn't know nothin' about it. He was alive, in a fashion, he moved and squirmed, but like that puppy, he no longer thought. He was just a hair on that thing's body. Same as the lumber and wire and such that stuck out of it.

And the beast-well, it wasn't too hard to tame. I named it Otto. It ain't no trouble at all. Gettin' so it don't come when I call, but that's on account of I ain't had nothin' to reward it with, until you showed up. Before that, I had to kind of help it root dead critters out of the heaps... Sit down! I've got Pearly's thirty-two here, and if you move I'll plug you.

Oh, here comes Otto now.

EVERYBODY PLAYS THE FOOL

The day of his ride on the big tornado in the brand new pink and white double-wide, Jerry Freeman began to view the world differently. Considering his luck with all things weather wise, and his constant concern with the workings of the heavens, this was quite a change for him, because it wasn't the weather he thought about now when the subject of tornadoes came up. Someone mentioned a tornado, he read about one in the papers, saw one on the TV news, first thing that came to his mind wasn't the storm and the fact he'd been in one, but what he'd found in that storm.

He'd actually been in two tornadoes. That's why he was so weather wise. The first tornado didn't bear the same merit in his book though. It had come about when he was ten, had jumped over his house not hurting anyone, only shaking them up a bit and filling their nostrils with the smell of rain and ozone.

It had jerked away his family's TV antenna, and had stolen a Holstein cow from the pasture at the back of their house.

Jerry had seen the cow go. He'd been standing on the back porch looking across the yard, out through Old Man Winston's barbed wire fence and into the pasture at the cow, when the storm, moaning like a locomotive, came over the house in a bad goddamn mood and in the shape of a giant asphalt-colored snow cone container. It jumped down on the cow, wadded the antenna around her before whirling her up into the blackness of the storm, and carrying her off without so much as time for the cow to look up or say moo.

Neither cow, antenna, or that particular tornado, to the best of Jerry's knowledge, were ever seen again. As a kid, Jerry liked to think that the cow was over in Oz somewhere, watching TV with Dorothy, the Wizard, the Lion, the Scarecrow and the Tin Man. Watching TV using his Mama and Daddy's antenna, which had somehow gotten all straightened out.

If so, he figured they were getting better reception than his family ever had. Back then, come nine or ten o'clock at night, you had to go out and turn the antenna some to keep Shreveport coming in if you wanted to watch a late movie or whatever showed after the news. And it hadn't gotten any better when they got the new antenna either. You had to start jacking with that one an hour earlier, trying to twist it just right so the TV waves, or whatever the hell carried the picture through the air, would float in from Shreveport and leap into that aluminum sucker and run down it and through the main wire and into the Sylvania television set with the white dolly on top supporting a batch of dust-covered plastic roses and a sprig of green plastic leaves, species unidentifiable.

One time, Jerry's Old Man, geared up for a John Wayne movie that was coming on after the news, had been out there twisting the antenna around and yelling, "How's things now? Can you see somethin'? Is that too far? How's that? Is that sonofabitch clear?" when a bolt of lightning with a fork in it came out of the clear, moonlit sky, hit the antenna and knocked Old Man Freeman on his fat ass.

After that, Old Man Freeman got him a better growth of hair than he'd had before-so good in fact, it almost covered up his bald spot-and a cautious view of the weather that he passed on to his offspring. He became suspicious of clear sky forecasts and had bad things to say about people who worked at the weather bureau.

From then, Old Man Freeman was cautious when there was something he wanted to see. He sent Jerry or one of the other boys out to turn the antenna, saying, "Now watch the skies, hear. You got to be careful with that weather."

Incidents like this caused Jerry and his three brothers to grow up kind of nervous; they lived with the certainty that the Freemans had to be damn careful when it came to bad weather. Its presence always seemed to lead to disaster.

But this other storm, the second tornado Jerry was in, that was a booger. It had revealed to him a horror, and had cleared up a fact long considered and hotly contested before by him. A double-wide mobile home, with or without pink trim, was not that well built and it was undoubtedly a tornado magnet.

Tornado got a brewing in the heavens, first thing that good buddy wanted was a mobile home. It's like a drunk has to have a drink, and a tornado has to have a mobile home, or maybe a whole fleet of them. Cows and antennas were just make-do material. A mobile home was the ticket. Especially one of those finer mobile homes, the double-wide. And if that mobile home belonged to a Freeman, that was just icing on the fucking cake.

The time of the second tornado, Jerry had been sitting in a lawn chair in the front yard of his boy Daryl's place out near the satellite dish, watching Daryl barbecue chicken.

Daryl had just split up with Carol, his wife of two years, a Sunday school teacher and a rodeo barrel racer, and he was still mopey about it. He said she got up one morning and went out to feed the birds sunflower seeds, like she did every morning, and had gotten into a car with a strange man and driven off without so much as a "kiss my ass." He hadn't heard from her since. Daryl said he figured she'd had the whole escape planned for a month. She'd gotten out of there fast and clever, hadn't even bothered with her clothes, or belongings, except, Daryl said, for a black velvet orange day glow painting of Jesus crying a purple tear. Daryl took care of the rest of her clothes and goods by donating them to Goodwill.

Jerry thought it was good riddance. She liked too much gospel music for his taste, and she'd done what she called "primitive paintings" and he called ugly. His granddaughter by his lawyer son Henry did about the same level work, and she didn't expect to get paid for it. Just hung it on the refrigerator with a Snoopy Magnet.

And Carol, she had fat thighs. Jerry couldn't stand fat thighs. His wife had fat thighs and he went to bed at night with it on his mind. It made him kind of sick to his stomach, those fat thighs. When his wife walked they shook the way his belly shook when he laughed hard, which wasn't all that often, since Jerry wasn't finding too much funny these days.

But he wasn't going to let that get to him. Fat thighs would not depress him. Not today. In spite of Daryl's mood, Jerry felt good. It was a bright and sunny day, but it wasn't really hot yet. Just warm, and there was a little wind carrying the smell of pines with it.

Jerry liked it out here in the country, even though Daryl's idea of landscaping was a bit on the stupid side. Daryl bought two acres in the center of some fine pine woods, then hired a bulldozer to come in and scrape his two acres down to the red clay, then he had bought a pink and white double-wide mobile home and moved it in, had a septic tank dug and electricity hooked up.

You came down the dirt road that led to Daryl's property first thing you saw on a summer day was a kind of tomato red sheen as the sun hit the clay and bounced back the earth's colors ten fold. Next thing you saw after rounding the corner was the pink and white double-wide. There was an electricity pole on one side of it, the satellite dish on the other, and a blue plastic bird feeder out front. There were four anemic bushes planted on either side of six chunky flagstone that were laid out slightly crooked in front of the mobile home door, making up the walk. From there, it was a small leap up to the metal steps that led into the trailer. You could get a hernia making that first step.

Driving up on the place, it was a sight best seen through cheap sunglasses. None the less, Jerry liked coming out to see his son and getting away from his second wife, who didn't really like him or the boy. Jerry thought that maybe she didn't really like anyone, for that matter. A kind word never left her lips. About once a month, consumed by a sense of duty, she let him fuck her, prefacing the event with either: "Well, all right, but hurry" or "I guess so." It wasn't the sort of foreplay that made a man hard as steel. Jerry thought maybe he ought to buy her a little night light, some magazines or something, so she could read about clothes and makeup while he pounded away, trying to drop anchor in her sea of flesh, her thighs foaming up over his legs and ass as if he were driving into a tub of silly putty. It had gotten so the idea of asking her for sex was so demeaning, he spent more time in the bathroom than usual these days, looking at the lingerie section in the Sears catalogue and exercising the hand, wrist and forearm muscles in his right arm.

But to hell with all that. He was relaxed on this day. He sat in a lawn lounger, his hat tipped back and his feet stretched out so he could see the toes of his ostrich skin boots just beyond the rise of his T-shirt covered belly. A cold long neck, Lone Star beer cooled one fist and a cigar dangled from the other. He hadn't lit the cigar yet. He was enjoying the wait.

From time to time, if he felt the need of it, Jerry turned his head a little so he could see the blue, plastic bird feeder. There were a couple of scruffy blue jays sitting on the edge of it, quarreling. It seemed that blue jays always quarreled about something.

Missing his wife had made Daryl buy the feeder, as he said that she loved nature. But the feeder had some huge chunks out of it where Daryl, late at night and drunk out of his mind, had taken some pot shots at it with his.22 pistol. Mention that bird feeder now, Daryl got livid. He'd start ranting about how he was gonna use it as a place to shit, and pretend that it was his wife's face. There was no reasoning with him.

If Jerry turned his head in the opposite direction, he could see Daryl, wearing a big white apron with Let's Eat stitched in red across it. He had on a John Deere gimme cap and held a long handled fork, as he watched a chunk of chicken blacken and smoke on a barbecue grill. Daryl's mouth was open and his bottom lip drooped as if it were melting wax. He had a flat bumpy nose that reminded Jerry of an albino pickle mashed flat by a truck tire. It disturbed Jerry to think that people said the boy looked just like him. Secretly, he thought his son was terribly on the homely side, and he'd always thought of himself as on the left hand side of handsome.

Jerry was just about to light his cigar, when the sky turned a kind of green color in the west. Then he heard the signature roar. A tornado. A goddamn tornado come out of nowhere. Fat thighs and tornadoes. They were his lot in life.

"Tornado," Jerry yelled, and Daryl, a chicken breast on his cooking fork, turned to say "What," but saw the pine trees two acres away heaving up and launching themselves into the rolling, black sky as if they had secretly been missiles disguised as trees. They twisted and cracked and became part of the tornado's huge flexible funnel.

Daryl bolted for the double-wide, still holding his chicken on the fork, making good time for a man in a knee length apron. He reached the high step just ahead of his Daddy and dropped the chicken and fork to jerk open the door. He then stepped inside, wheeled, and stuck out a hand for his Daddy. Jerry took it, then the tornado took them.

It jumped down on that mobile home with a whoop and a howl, crumpling it as if it were nothing more than a Saltine Cracker box. A second later, they were airborne.

Later, Jerry and Daryl couldn't remember much after that, at least not until the find, that is. Jerry said that all he knew was that he was standing in the doorway one moment, and the next thing he knew, the mobile home was wrapped around him like a Christmas present, and somehow he had been blown across the trailer backwards until his ass had been forced through a half open window. Only thing that held the rest of him inside the flying double-wide were his arms spread crucifixion style on either side of the trailer wall, which he could feel vibrating like a hula girl's ass.

All Daryl remembered was lying on the floor on his stomach, wearing a velvet Elvis painting around his face, a heavy day bed couch on his back. The trailer trip was too brief for any real memories. Course, he remembered the afterwards of the storm, as he had to admit to some things down at the police station later.

After the storm got through beating up the countryside and wadding up the mobile home, Jerry was the first to wake from the ordeal. First thing he saw was a large fragment of the bird feeder lodged in the branches of some trees. The sky was as blue as the background on Old Glory beyond that.

He raised up on one elbow, looked for Daryl.

The storm had carried them across Daryl's land into the woods beyond, and had plowed a path through an acre or so of the woods before letting them go as it bounced on its merry way or dissipated in that mysterious manner tornadoes practice.

All that remained of the mobile home was collected in the trees and scattered about on the ground. Daryl was nowhere to be seen.

Jerry raised up and discovered he was wearing the aluminum trim of the window he'd been lodged in. He slipped the trim off, stood, tried his legs and arms and found that everything worked. He started to call for Daryl, but saw the boy's feet, one shoe on, one shoe off, sticking out from behind a mangled fragment of the satellite dish.

Jerry felt as if a ball of razor wire were in his gut. "Daryl," he croaked through a mouth as dry as cotton.

He eased over to Daryl and saw him lying face down, the velvet Elvis painting wrapped around his head, his arms pushed out before him, his wrists and hands buried in the oak leaves, pine needles, and rich forest soil.

Jerry dropped to his knees, calling Daryl's name again and Daryl moaned a little, giving Jerry a smidgen of relief. The boy was alive at least. Jerry reached out to get the velvet painting off Daryl's head, but paused. A hand stuck up between Daryl's outspread arms. It was poking out of the dirt, palm toward him, and the fingers were loosely together, as if the hand was raised to wave.

"Oh, God, Daryl," Jerry said. "Your hand!"

But at that moment, Daryl pulled his arms aback and under him and lifted himself to his knees and started unwrapping the Elvis painting from his head. He used both hands.

Relief rushed through Jerry, but then another sensation instantly took its place. He looked at the hand again. It was a small left hand, and the wedding ring finger wore a wedding ring. Jerry could see the thumbnail where the thumb was curled toward the palm. The nail was painted red.

It was a woman's hand. The storm had uncovered it, and there was more. Beneath where the tornado had plowed the dirt, Jerry could see the rest of the body. It was wrapped in a black velvet cloth sporting an orange day glow painting, the dead hand escaping from a rip in it. Jerry crawled over and looked directly into the eye of Jesus crying a purple tear. He peeled the cloth back, revealing a face that looked like it was made of wet paper mache. He could still recognize her as Daryl's wife, though, and knew that the black wound across her forehead certainly wasn't natural.

Daryl sat on the ground folding the Elvis painting absently, looking up at his Daddy, then over at the body. "I was gonna turn myself in anyhow," Daryl said. "I was gonna tell you about it after we had chicken. I know how you hate bad news on an empty stomach. I was gonna say all about it to you 'cause I couldn't live with it no longer. I dreamed last night I could hear her out here calling."

Jerry wasn't looking at him. He was looking at the hand and the painting. "You did hear her," Jerry said. "She wasn't dead when you buried her. She dug her way out this far then called to you for a while before she finally died."

Jerry peeled the cloth open and looked at the body, which was naked. The girl had fat thighs. Figured.

A shadow moved overhead. Jerry looked up at the sky. Rain clouds. Typical.

THE FAT MAN

The Fat Man sat on his porch in his squeaking swing and looked out at late October. Leaves coasted from the trees that grew on either side of the walk, coasted down and scraped the concrete with a dry, husking sound.

He sat there in his swing, pushing one small foot against the porch, making the swing go back and forth; sat there in his faded khaki pants, barefoot, shirtless, his belly hanging way out over his belt, drooping toward his knees.

And just below his belly button, off-center right, was the tattoo. A half-moon, lying on its back, the ends pointing up. A blue tattoo. An obscene tattoo, made obscene by the sagging flesh on which it was sculptured. Flesh that made the Fat Man look like a hippo if a hippo could stand on its hind legs or sit in a swing pushing itself back and forth.

The Fat Man.

Late October.

Cool wind.

Falling leaves.

The Fat Man with the half-moon tattoo off-center beneath his navel.

The Fat Man. Swinging.

Everyone wondered about the Fat Man. He had lived in the little house at the end of Crowler Street for a long time. Forever it seemed. As long as that house had been there (circa 1920), he had been there. No one knew anything else about him. He did not go to town. He did not venture any farther than his front porch, as if his house were an odd-ball ship adrift forever on an endless sea. He had a phone, but no electric lights. He did not use gas and he had no car.

And everyone wondered about the Fat Man.

Did he pay taxes?

Where did he get the money that bought the countless boxes of chicken, pizza, egg foo yung, and hamburgers he ordered by phone; the countless grease-stained boxes that filled the garbage cans he set off the edge of his porch each Tuesday and Thursday for the sanitation men to pick up and empty?

Why didn't he use electric lights?

Why didn't he go to town?

Why did he sit on his porch in his swing looking out at the world smiling dumbly, going in the house only when night came?

And what did he do at night behind those closed doors? Why did he wear neither shirt nor shoes, summer or dead of winter?

And where in the world-and why-did he get that ugly half-moon tattooed on his stomach?

Whys and whats. Lots of them about the Fat Man. Questions aplenty, answers none.

Everyone wondered about the Fat Man.

But no one wondered as much as Harold and Joe, two boys who filled their days with comics, creek beds, climbing apple trees, going to school... and wondering about the Fat Man.

So one cool night, late October, they crept up to the Fat Man's house, crawling on hands and knees through the not-yet-dead weeds in the empty lot next to the Fat Man's house, and finally through the equally high weeds in the Fat Man's yard.

They lay in the cool, wind-rustled weeds beneath one of the Fat Man's windows and whispered to each other.

"Let's forget it," Harold said.

"Can't. We come this far, and we swore on a dead cat."

"A dead cat don't care."

"A dead cat's sacred, you know that."

"We made that up."

"And because we did that makes it true. A dead cat's sacred."

Harold could not find it in his heart to refute this. They found the dead cat on the street next to the curb the day before, and Joe had said right off that it was sacred. And Harold, without contesting, had agreed.

And how could he disagree? The looks of the cat were hypnotizing. Its little gray body was worm-worked. Its teeth exposed. Its lips were drawn back, black and stiff. All the stuff to draw the eye. All the stuff that made it sacred.

They took the cat over the creek, through the woods and out to the old "Indian" graveyard and placed it on the ground where Joe said an old Caddo Chief was buried. They took the cat and poked its stiff legs into the soft dirt so that it appeared to be running through quicksand.

Joe said, "I pronounce you a sacred cat with powers as long as there's hair on your body and you don't fall over, which ever comes first."

They made an oath on the sacred cat, and the oath was like this: They were going to sneak over to the Fat Man's house when their parents were asleep, and find out just what in hell and heaven the Fat Man did. Maybe see him eat so they could find out how quickly he went through those boxes and cartons of chicken, pizza, egg foo yung, hamburgers and the like.

Above them candle light flickered through the thin curtains and window. Joe raised up cautiously for a peek.

Inside he saw the candle residing in a broken dish on an end-table next to the telephone. And that was it for the Fat Man's furniture. The rest of the room was filled with food boxes and cartons, and wading knee-deep in their midst was the Fat Man.

The Fat Man had two large trash cans next to him, and he was bending quite nimbly for a man his size (and as he bent the fat about his middle made three thick anaconda coils, one of which was spotted with the blue half-moon tattoo), picking up the boxes and tossing them in the cans.

Harold raised up for a look. Soon the cans were stuffed and overflowing and the Fat Man had cleared a space on the floor. With the handle of a can in either hand, the Fat Man swung the cans toward the door, outside and off the edge of the porch.

The Fat Man came back, closed the door, kicked his way through the containers until he reached the clearing he had made.

He said in a voice that seemed somewhat distant, and originating at the pit of his stomach, "Tip, tap, tip tap." Then his voice turned musical and he began to sing, "Tip, tap, tip tap."

His bare feet flashed out on the hardwood floor with a sound not unlike tap shoes or wood clicking against wood, and the Fat Man kept repeating the line, dancing around and around, moving light as a ninety-pound ballerina, the obscene belly swinging left and right to the rhythm of his song and his fast-moving feet.

"Tip, tap, tip tap."

There was a knock at the door.

The Fat Man stopped dancing, started kicking the boxes aside, making his way to answer the knock.

Joe dropped from the window and edged around the corner of the house and looked at the porch.

A delivery boy stood there with five boxes of pizza stacked neatly on one palm. It was that weird guy from Cab's Pizza. The one with all the personality of a puppet. Or at least that was the way he was these days. Once he had been sort of a joker, but the repetition of pizza to go had choked out and hardened any fun that might have been in him.

The Fat Man's hand came out and took the pizzas. No money was exchanged. The delivery boy went down the steps, clicked down the walk, got in the Volkswagen with Cab's Pizza written on the side, and drove off.

Joe crept back to the window, raised up next to Harold. The Fat Man put the pizza boxes on the end-table by the phone, opened the top one and took out the pizza, held it balanced on his palm like a droopy painter's palette.

"Tip, tap, tip tap," he sang from somewhere down in his abdomen, then he turned, his back to the window. With a sudden movement, he slammed the pizza into his stomach.

"Ahhh," said the Fat Man, and little odd muscles like toy trucks drove up and down his back. His khaki-covered butt perked up and he began to rock on his toes. Fragments of pizza, gooey cheese, sticky sauce and rounds of pepperoni dripped to the floor.

The Fat Man's hand floated out, clutched another box and ripped it open. Out came a pizza, wham, into the stomach, "ah," went the Fat Man, and down dripped more pizza ingredients, and out went the Fat Man's hand once again.

Three pizzas in the stomach.

Now four.

"I don't think I understand all I know about this," Joe whispered.

Five pizzas, and a big, "ahhhhhh," this time.

The fat man leaped, high and pretty, hands extended for a dive, and without a sound he disappeared into the food-stained cartons.

Joe blinked.

Harold blinked.

The Fat Man surfaced. His back humped up first like a rising porpoise, then disappeared. Loops of back popped through the boxes at regular intervals until he reached the far wall.

The Fat Man stood up, bursting cartons around him like scales. He touched the wall with his palm. The wall swung open. Joe and Harold could see light in there and the top of a stairway.

The Fat Man stepped on the stairway, went down. The door closed.

Joe and Harold looked at each other.

"That wall ain't even a foot thick," Harold said. "He can't do that."

"He did," Joe said. "He went right into that wall and down, and you know it because you saw him."

"I think I'll go home now," Harold said.

"You kidding?"

"No, I ain't kidding."

The far wall opened again and out popped the Fat Man, belly greased and stained with pizza.

Joe and Harold watched attentively as he leaped into the boxes, and swam for the clearing. Then, once there, he rose and put a thumb to the candle and put out the light.

He kicked his way through boxes and cartons this time, and his shadowy shape disappeared from the room and into another.

"I'm going to see how he went through the wall," Joe said.

Joe put his hands on the window and pushed. It wasn't locked. It slid up a few inches.

"Don't," Harold whispered, putting his hand on Joe's arm.

"I swore on the dead cat I was going to find out about the Fat Man, and that's what I'm going to do."

Joe shrugged Harold's arm off, pushed the window up higher and climbed through.

Harold swore, but followed.

They went as quietly as they could through the boxes and cartons until they reached the clearing where the pizza glop lay pooled and heaped on the floor. Then they entered the bigger stack of boxes, waded toward the wall. And though they went silently as possible, the cartons still crackled and popped, as if they were trying to call for their master, the Fat Man.

Joe touched the wall with his palm the way the Fat Man had. The wall opened. Joe and Harold crowded against each other and looked down the stairway. It led to a well-lit room below.

Joe went down.

Harold started to say something, knew it was useless. Instead he followed down the stairs.

At the bottom they stood awestruck. It was a workshop of sorts. Tubes and dials stuck out of the walls. Rods of glass were filled with pulsating colored lights. Cables hung on pegs. And there was something else hanging on pegs.

Huge marionettes.

And though they were featureless, hairless and sexless, they looked in form as real as living, breathing people. In fact, put clothes and a face on them and you wouldn't know the difference. Provided they could move and talk, of course.

Harold took hold of the leg of one of the bodies. It felt like wood, but it bent easily. He tied the leg in a knot.

Joe found a table with something heaped on it and covered with black cloth.

He whipped off the cloth and said, "Good gracious."

Harold looked.

It was a row of jars, and in the jars' drooping over upright rods were masks.

Masks of people they knew.

Why there was Alice Dunn the Avon Lady. They'd know that wart on her nose anywhere.

It fit the grump personality she had these days.

Jerry James the constable. And my, didn't the eyes in his mask look just like his eyes? The way he always looked at them like he was ready to pull his gun and put them under arrest.

May Bloom, the town librarian, who had grown so foul in her old age. No longer willing to help the boys find new versions of King Arthur or order the rest of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Mars series.

And there was the face of the weird guy from Cab's Pizza, Jake was his name.

"Now wait a minute," Joe said. "All these people have got something in common. What is it?"

"They're grumps," Harold said.

"Uh huh. What else?"

"I don't know."

"They weren't always grumpy."

"Well, yeah," Harold said.

And Harold thought of how Jake used to kid with him at the pizza place.

How the constable had helped him get his kite down from a tree. How Mrs. Bloom had introduced him to Edgar Rice Burroughs, Max Brand, and King Arthur. How Alice Dunn used to make her rounds, and come back special with a gift for him when he was sick.

"There's another thing," Joe said. "Alice Dunn, the Avon Lady. She always goes door to door, right? So she had to come to the Fat Man's door sometime. And the constable, I bet he came too, on account of all the weird rumors about the Fat Man. Jake, the delivery boy. Mrs. Bloom, who sometimes drives the bookmobile..."

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying, that that little liquid in the bottom of each of these jars looks like blood. I think the Fat Man skinned them, and..." Joe looked toward the puppets on the wall, "replaced them with handmade versions."

"Puppets come to life?" Harold said.

"Like Pinocchio," Joe said.

Harold looked at the masks in the jars and suddenly they didn't look so much like masks. He looked at the puppets on the wall and thought he recognized the form of one of them; tall and slightly pudgy with a finger missing on the left hand.

"God, Dad," he said.

"He works for Ma Bell," Joe said. "Repairs lines. And if the Fat Man has phone trouble, and they call out a repairman..."

"Don't say it," Harold said.

Joe didn't, but he looked at the row of empty jars behind the row of filled ones.

"What worries me," Joe said, "are the empty jars, and," he turned and pointed to the puppets on the wall, "those two small puppets on the far wall. They look to be about mine and your sizes."

"Oh, they are," said the Fat Man.

Harold shrieked, turned. There at the foot of the stairs stood the Fat Man. And the half-moon tattoo was not a half-moon at all, it was a mouth, and it was speaking to them in the gut-level voice they had heard the Fat Man use to sing.

Joe grabbed up the jar holding Miss Bloom's face and tossed it at the Fat Man. The Fat Man swept the jar aside and it crashed to the floor; the mask (face) went skidding along on slivers of broken glass.

"Now that's not nice," said the half-moon tattoo, and this time it opened so wide the boys thought they saw something moving in there. "That's my collection."

Joe grabbed another jar, Jerry James this time, tossed it at the Fat Man as he moved lightly and quickly toward them.

Again the Fat Man swatted it aside, and now he was chasing them. Around the table they went, around and around like little Black Sambo being pursued by the tiger.

Harold bolted for the stairs, hit the bottom step, started taking them two at the time.

Joe hit the bottom step.

And the Fat Man grabbed him by the collar.

"Boys, boys," said the mouth in the Fat Man's stomach. "Here now, boys, let's have a little fun."

"Run," yelled Joe. "Get help. He's got me good."

The Fat Man took Joe by the head and stuffed the head into his stomach.

The mouth slobbered around Joe's neck.

Harold stood at the top of the stairs dumbfounded. In went Joe, inch by inch.

Now only his legs were kicking.

Harold turned, slapped his palm along the wall.

Nothing happened.

Up the stairs came the Fat Man.

Harold glanced back. Only one leg stuck out of the belly now, and it was thrashing. The tennis shoe flew off and slapped against the stairs. Harold could hear a loud gurgling sound coming from the Fat Man's stomach, and a voice saying, "ahhhh, ahhhh."

Halfway up the steps came the Fat Man.

Harold palmed the wall, inch by inch.

Nothing happened.

He jerked a glance back again.

There was a burping sound, and the Fat Man's mouth opened wide and out flopped Joe's face, skinned, mask-looking. Harold could also see two large cables inside the Fat Man's mouth. The cable rolled. The mouth closed. Taloned, skinny hands stuck out of the blue tattoo and the fingers wriggled.

"Come to Papa," said the voice in the Fat Man's stomach.

Harold turned, slapped his palm on the wall time and time again, left and right.

He could hear the Fat Man's tread on the steps right behind, taking it torturously slow and easy.

The wall opened.

Harold dove into the boxes and cartons and disappeared beneath them.

The Fat Man leaped high, his dive perfect, his toes wriggling like stubby, greedy fingers.

Poof, into the boxes.

Harold came up running, kicking boxes aside.

The Fat Man's back, like the fin of a shark, popped the boxes up. Then he was gone again.

Harold made the clearing in the floor. The house seemed to be rocking. He turned left toward the door and jerked it open.

Stepping out on the front porch he froze.

The Fat Man's swing dangled like an empty canary perch, and the night... was different. Thick as chocolate pudding. And the weeds didn't look the same. They looked like a foamy green sea-putrid sherbet-and the house bobbed as if it were a cork on the ocean.

Behind Harold the screen door opened. "There you are, you bad boy, you," said the voice in the belly.

Harold ran and leaped off the porch into the thick, high weeds, made his way on hands and knees, going almost as fast as a running dog that way. The ground beneath him bucked and rolled.

Behind him he heard something hit the weeds but he did not look back. He kept running on hands and knees for a distance, then he rose to his feet, elbows flying, strides deepening, parting the waist-level foliage like a knife through spoiled cream cheese.

And the grass in front of him opened up. A white face floated into view at belt-level.

The Fat Man. On his knees.

The Fat Man smiled. Skinny, taloned hands stuck out of the blue tattoo and the fingers wiggled.

"Pee-pie," said the Fat Man's belly.

Harold wheeled to the left, tore through the tall weeds yelling. He could see the moon floating in the sky and it looked pale and sick, like a yolkless egg. The houses outlined across the street were in the right place, but they looked off-key, only vaguely reminiscent of how he remembered them. He thought he saw something large and shadowy peek over the top of one of them, but in a blinking of an eye it was gone.

Suddenly the Fat Man was in front of him again.

Harold skidded to a halt.

"You swore on a dead cat," the voice in the belly said, and a little wizened, oily head with bugged-out eyes poked out of the belly and looked up at Harold and smiled with lots and lots of teeth.

"You swore on a dead cat," the voice repeated, only this time it was a perfect mockery of Joe.

Then, with a motion so quick Harold did not see it, the Fat Man grabbed him.

FIRE DOG

When Jim applied for the dispatcher job the fire department turned him down, but the Fire Chief offered him something else.

"Our fire dog, Rex, is retiring. You might want that job. Pays good and the retirement is great."

"Fire dog?" Jim said.

"That's right."

"Well, I don't know . . ."

"Suit yourself."

Jim considered. "I suppose I could give it a try--"

"Actually, we prefer greater dedication than that. We don't just want someone to give it a try. Being fire dog is an important job."

"Very well," Jim said. "I'll take it."

"Good."

The Chief opened a drawer, pulled out a spotted suit with tail and ears, pushed it across the desk.

"I have to wear this?"

"How the hell you gonna be the fire dog, you don't wear the suit?"

"Of course."

Jim examined the suit. It had a hole for his face, his bottom, and what his mother had called his pee-pee.

"Good grief," Jim said. "I can't go around with my . . . well, you know, my stuff hanging out."

"How many dogs you see wearing pants?"

"Well, Goofy comes to mind."

"Those are cartoons. I haven't got time to screw around here. You either want the job, or you don't."

"I want it."

"By the way, you sure Goofy's a dog?"

"Well, he looks like a dog. And he has that dog, Pluto."

"Pluto, by the way, doesn't wear pants."

"You got me there."

"Try on the suit, let's see if it needs tailoring."

* * *

The suit fit perfectly, though Jim did feel a bit exposed. Still, he had to admit there was something refreshing about the exposure. He wore the suit into the break room, following the Chief.

Rex, the current fire dog, was sprawled on the couch watching a cop show. His suit looked worn, even a bit smoke-stained. He was tried around the eyes. His jowls drooped.

"This is our new fire dog," the Chief said.

Rex turned and looked at Jim, said, "I'm not out the door, already you got a guy in the suit?"

"Rex, no hard feelings. You got what, two, three days? We got to be ready. You know that."

Rex sat up on the couch, adjusted some pillows and leaned into them. "Yeah, I know. But, I've had this job nine years."

"And in dog years that's a lot."

"I don't know why I can't just keep being the fire dog. I think I've done a good job."

"You're our best fire dog yet. Jim here has a lot to live up to."

"I only get to work nine years?" Jim said.

"In dog years you'd be pretty old, and it's a decent retirement."

"Is he gonna take my name too?" Rex said.

"No," the Chief said, "of course not. We'll call him Spot."

"Oh, that's rich," said Rex. "You really worked on that one."

"It's no worse than Rex."

"Hey, Rex is a good name."

"I don't like Spot," Jim said. "Can't I come up with something else?"

"Dogs don't name themselves," the Chief said. "Your name is Spot."

"Spot," Rex said, "don't you think you ought to get started by coming over here and sniffing my butt?"

The first few days at work Spot found riding on the truck to be uncomfortable. He was always given a toolbox to sit on so that he could be seen, as this was the fire department's way. They liked the idea of the fire dog in full view, his ears flapping in the wind. It was very promotional for the mascot to be seen.

Spot's exposed butt was cold on the toolbox, and the wind not only blew his ears around, it moved another part of his anatomy about. That was annoying.

He did, however, enjoy the little motorized tail-wagging device he activated with a touch of a finger. He found that got him a lot of snacks from the firemen. He was especially fond of the liver snacks.

* * *

After three weeks on the job, Spot found his wife Shella to be very friendly. After dinner one evening, when he went to the bedroom to remove his dog suit, he discovered Shella lying on their bed wearing a negligee and a pair of dog ears attached to a hair band.

"Feel frisky, Spot?"

"Jim."

"Whatever. Feel frisky?"

"Well, yeah. Let me shed the suit, take a shower . . . "

"You don't need a shower . . . and baby, leave the suit on, will you?"

They went at it.

"You know how I want it," she said.

"Yeah. Doggie style."

"Good boy."

After sex, Shella liked to scratch his belly and behind his ears. He used the tail-wagging device to show how much he appreciated it. This wasn't so bad, he thought. He got less when he was a man.

Though his sex life had improved, Spot found himself being put outside a lot, having to relieve himself in a corner of the yard while his wife looked in the other direction, her hand in a plastic bag, ready to use to pick up his deposits.

He only removed his dog suit now when Shella wasn't around. She liked it on him at all times. At first he was insulted, but the sex was so good, and his life was so good, he relented. He even let her call him Spot all the time.

When she wasn't around, he washed and dried his suit carefully, ironed it. But he never wore anything else. When he rode the bus to work, everyone wanted to pet him. One woman even asked if he liked poodles because she had one.

* * *

At work he was well respected, and enjoyed being taken to schools with the Fire Chief. The Chief talked about fire prevention. Spot wagged his tail, sat up, barked, looked cute by turning his head from side to side.

He was even taken to his daughter's class once. He heard her say proudly to a kid sitting next to her, "That's my Daddy. He's the fire dog."

His chest swelled with pride. He made his tail wag enthusiastically.

The job really was the pip. You didn't have fires every day, so Spot laid around all day most days, on the couch sometimes, though some of the fireman would run him off and make him lie on the floor when they came in. But the floor had rugs on it and the television was always on, though he was not allowed to change the channels. Some kind of rule, a union thing. The fire dog cannot and will not change channels.

He did hate having to take worm medicine, and the annual required trips to the vet were no picnic either. Especially the thermometer-up-the-ass part.

But, hell, it was a living, and not a bad one. Another plus was after several months of trying, he was able to lick his balls.

At night, when everyone was in their bunks and there were no fires, Spot would read from Call of the Wild, White Fang, Dog Digest, or such, or lie on his back with all four feet in the air, trying to look cute.

He loved it the when the firemen came in and caught him that way and ooohheeed and ahhhhhed and scratched his belly or patted his head.

This went on for just short of nine years. Then, one day, while he was lying on the couch, licking his ass -- something he cultivated after three years on the job -- the Fire Chief and a guy in a dog suit came in.

"This is your replacement, Spot," the Chief said.

"What?"

"Well, it has been nine years."

"You didn't tell me. Has it been? You're sure? Aren't you supposed to warn me? Rex knew his time was up. Remember?"

"Not exactly. But if you say so. Spot, meet Hal."

"Hal? What kind of dog's name is that? Hal?"

But it was no use. By the end of the day he had his personal dog biscuits, pin ups from Dog Digest, and his worm-away medicine packed. There was also a spray can the firemen used to mist on his poop to keep him from eating it. The can of spray didn't really belong to him, but he took it anyway.

* * *

He picked up his old clothes, went into the changing room. He hadn't worn anything but the fire-dog suit in years, and it felt odd to try his old clothes on. He could hardly remember ever wearing them. He found they were a bit moth-eaten, and he had gotten a little too plump for them. The shoes fit, but he couldn't tolerate them.

He kept the dog suit on.

He caught the bus and went home.

"What? You lost your job?" his wife said.

"I didn't loose anything. They retired me."

"You're not the fire dog?"

"No. Hal is the fire dog."

"I can't believe it. I give you nine great years --"

"We've been married eleven."

"I only count the dog years. Those were the good ones, you know."

"Well, I don't have to quit being a dog. Hell, I am a dog."

"You're not the fire dog. You've lost your position, Spot. Oh, I can't even stand to think about it. Outside. Go on. Git. Outside."

Spot went.

After a while he scratched on the door, but his wife didn't let him in. He went around back and tried there. That didn't work either. He looked in the windows, but couldn't see her.

He laid down in the yard.

That night it rained, and he slept under the car, awakened just in time to keep his wife from backing over him on her way to work.

That afternoon he waited, but his wife did not return at the usual time. Five o'clock was when he came home from the fire house, and she was always waiting, and he had a feeling it was at least five o'clock, and finally the sun went down and he knew it was late.

Still, no wife.

Finally, he saw headlights and a car pulled into the drive. Shella got out. He ran to meet her. To show he was interested, he hunched her leg.

She kicked him loose. He noticed she was holding a leash. Out of the car came Hal.

"Look who I got. A real dog."

Spot was dumbfounded.

"I met him today at the fire house, and well, we hit it off."

"You went by the fire house?"

"Of course."

"What about me?" Spot asked.

"Well, Spot, you are a little old. Sometimes, things change. New blood is necessary."

"Me and Hal, we're going to share the house?"

"I didn't say that."

She took Hal inside. Just before they closed the door, Hal slipped a paw behind Shella's back and shot Spot the finger.

When they were inside, Spot scratched on the door in a half-hearted way. No soap.

Next morning Shella hustled him out of the shrubbery by calling his name. She didn't have Hal with her.

Great! She had missed him. He bounded out, his tongue dangling like a wet sock. "Come here, Spot."

He went. That's what dogs did. When the master called, you went to them. He was still her dog. Yes sirree, Bob.

"Come on, boy." She hustled him to the car.

As he climbed inside on the back seat and she shut the door, he saw Hal come out of the house stretching. He looked pretty happy. He walked over to the car and slapped Shella on the butt.

"See you later, baby."

"You bet, you dog you."

Hal walked down the street to the bus stop. Spot watched him by turning first to the back glass, then rushing over to the side-view glass.

Shella got in the car.

"Where are we going?" Spot asked.

"It's a surprise," she said.

"Can you roll down the window back here a bit?"

"Sure."

Spot stuck his head out as they drove along, his ears flapping, his tongue hanging.

They drove down a side street, turned and tooled up an alley.

Spot thought he recognized the place.

Why yes, the vet. They had come from another direction and he hadn't spotted it right off, but that's where he was.

He unhooked the little tag that dangled from his collar. Checked the dates of his last shots.

No. Nothing was overdue.

They stopped and Shella smiled. She opened the back door and took hold of the leash. "Come on, Spot."

Spot climbed out of the car, though carefully. He wasn't as spry as he once was.

Two men were at the back door. One of them was the doctor. The other an assistant.

"Here's Spot," she said.

"He looks pretty good," said the doctor.

"I know. But . . . Well, he's old and has his problems. And I have too many dogs."

She left him there.

The vet checked him over and called the animal shelter. "There's nothing really wrong with him," he told the attendant that came for him. "He's just old, and well, the woman doesn't want to care for him. He'd be great with children."

"You know how it is, Doc," said the attendant. "Dogs all over the place."

Later, at the animal shelter he stood on the cold concrete and smelled the other dogs. He barked at the cats he could smell. Fact was, he found himself barking anytime anyone came into the corridor of pens.

Sometimes men and woman and children came and looked at him.

None of them chose him. The device in his tail didn't work right, so he couldn't wag as ferociously as he liked. His ears were pretty droopy and his jowls hung way too low.

"He looks like his spots are fading," said one woman whose little girl had stuck her fingers through the grating so Spot could lick her hand.

"His breath stinks," she said.

As the days went by, Spot tried to look perky all the time. Hoping for adoption.

But one day, they came for him, wearing white coats and grim faces, brandishing a leash and a muzzle and a hypodermic needle.

FISH NIGHT

It was a bleached-bone afternoon with a cloudless sky and a monstrous sun. The air trembled like a mass of gelatinous ectoplasm. No wind blew.

Through the swelter came a worn, black Plymouth, coughing and belching white smoke from beneath its hood. It wheezed twice, backfired loudly, died by the side of the road.

The driver got out and went around to the hood. He was a man in the hard winter years of life, with dead brown hair and a heavy belly riding his hips. His shirt was open to the navel, the sleeves rolled up past his elbows. The hair on his chest and arms was gray.

A younger man climbed out on the passenger side, went around front too. Yellow sweat-explosions stained the pits of his white shirt. An unfastened, striped tie was draped over his neck like a pet snake that had died in its sleep.

"Well?" the younger man said.

The old man said nothing. He opened the hood. A calliope note of steam blew out from the radiator in a white puff, rose to the sky, turned clear.

"Damn," the old man said, and he kicked the bumper of the Plymouth as if he were kicking a foe in the teeth. He got little satisfaction out of the action, just a nasty scuff on his brown wingtip and a jar to his ankle that hurt like hell.

"Well?" the young man repeated.

"Well what? What do you think? Dead as the can-opener trade this week. Deader. The radiator's chickenpocked with holes."

"Maybe someone will come by and give us a hand."

"Sure."

"A ride anyway."

"Keep thinking that, college boy."

"Someone is bound to come along," the young man said.

"Maybe. Maybe not. Who else takes these cutoffs? The main highway, that's where everyone is. Not this little no account shortcut." He finished by glaring at the young man.

"I didn't make you take it," the young man snapped. "It was on the map. I told you about it, that's all. You chose it. You're the one that decided to take it. It's not my fault. Besides, who'd have expected the car to die?"

"I did tell you to check the water in the radiator, didn't I? Wasn't that back as far as El Paso?"

"I checked. It had water then. I tell you, it's not my fault. You're the one that's done all the Arizona driving."

"Yeah, yeah," the old man said, as if this were something he didn't want to hear. He turned to look up the highway.

No cars. No trucks. Just heat waves and miles of empty concrete in sight.

They seated themselves on the hot ground with their backs to the car. That way it provided some shade-but not much. They sipped on a jug of lukewarm water from the Plymouth and spoke little until the sun fell down. By then they had both mellowed a bit. The heat had vacated the sands and the desert chill had settled in. Where the warmth had made the pair snappy, the cold drew them together.

The old man buttoned his shirt and rolled down his sleeves while the young man rummaged a sweater out of the backseat. He put the sweater on, sat back down. "I'm sorry about this," he said suddenly.

"Wasn't your fault. Wasn't anyone's fault. I just get to yelling sometime, taking out the can-opener trade on everything but the can-openers and myself. The days of the door-to-door salesman are gone, son."

"And I thought I was going to have an easy summer job," the young man said.

The old man laughed. "Bet you did. They talk a good line, don't they?"

"I'll say!"

"Make it sound like found money, but there ain't no found money, boy. Ain't nothing simple in this world. The company is the only one ever makes any money. We just get tireder and older with more holes in our shoes. If I had any sense I'd have quit years ago. All you got to make is this summer-"

"Maybe not that long."

"Well, this is all I know. Just town after town, motel after motel, house after house, looking at people through screen wire while they shake their heads No. Even the cockroaches at the sleazy motels begin to look like little fellows you've seen before, like maybe they're door-to-door peddlers that have to rent rooms too."

The young man chuckled. "You might have something there."

They sat quietly for a moment, welded in silence. Night had full grip on the desert now. A mammoth gold moon and billions of stars cast a whitish glow from eons away.

The wind picked up. The sand shifted, found new places to lie down. The undulations of it, slow and easy, were reminiscent of the midnight sea. The young man, who had crossed the Atlantic by ship once, said as much.

"The sea?" the old man replied. "Yes, yes, exactly like that. I was thinking the same. That's part of the reason it bothers me. Part of why I was stirred up this afternoon. Wasn't just the heat doing it. There are memories of mine out here," he nodded at the desert, "and they're visiting me again."

The young man made a face. "I don't understand."

"You wouldn't. You shouldn't. You'd think I'm crazy."

"I already think you're crazy. So tell me."

The old man smiled. "All right, but don't you laugh."

"I won't."

A moment of silence moved in between them. Finally the old man said, "It's fish night, boy. Tonight's the full moon and this is the right part of the desert if memory serves me, and the feel is right-I mean, doesn't the night feel like it's made up of some fabric, that it's different from other nights, that it's like being inside a big dark bag, the sides sprinkled with glitter, a spotlight at the top, at the open mouth, to serve as a moon?"

"You lost me."

The old man sighed. "But it feels different. Right? You can feel it too, can't you?"

"I suppose. Sort of thought it was just the desert air. I've never camped out in the desert before, and I guess it is different."

"Different, all right. You see, this is the road I got stranded on twenty years back. I didn't know it at first, least not consciously. But down deep in my gut I must have known all along I was taking this road, tempting fate, offering it, as the football people say, an instant replay."

"I still don't understand about fish night. What do you mean, you were here before?"

"Not this exact spot, somewhere along in here. This was even less of a road back then than it is now. The Navajos were about the only ones who traveled it. My car conked out like this one today, and I started walking instead of waiting. As I walked the fish came out. Swimming along in the starlight pretty as you please. Lots of them. All the colors of the rainbow. Small ones, big ones, thick ones, thin ones. Swam right up to me... right through me! Fish just as far as you could see. High up and low down to the ground.

"Hold on boy. Don't start looking at me like that. Listen: You're a college boy, you know what was here before we were, before we crawled out of the sea and changed enough to call ourselves men. Weren't we once just slimy things, brothers to the things that swim?"

"I guess, but-"

"Millions and millions of years ago this desert was a sea bottom. Maybe even the birthplace of man. Who knows? I read that in some science books. And I got to thinking this: If the ghosts of people who have lived can haunt houses, why can't the ghosts of creatures long dead haunt where they once lived, float about in a ghostly sea?"

"Fish with a soul?"

"Don't go small-mind on me, boy. Look here: Some of the Indians I've talked to up North tell me about a thing they call the manitou. That's a spirit. They believe everything has one. Rocks, trees, you name it. Even if the rock wears to dust or the tree gets cut to lumber, the manitou of it is still around."

"Then why can't you see these fish all the time?"

"Why can't we see ghosts all the time? Why do some of us never see them? Time's not right, that's why. It's a precious situation, and I figure it's like some fancy time lock-like the banks use. The lock clicks open at the bank; and there's the money. Here it ticks open and we get the fish of a world long gone."

"Well, it's something to think about," the young man managed.

The old man grinned at him. "I don't blame you for thinking what you're thinking. But this happened to me twenty years ago and I've never forgotten it. I saw those fish for a good hour before they disappeared. A Navajo came along in an old pickup right after and I bummed a ride into town with him. I told him what I'd seen. He just looked at me and grunted. But I could tell he knew what I was talking about. He'd seen it too, and probably not for the first time.

"I've heard that Navajos don't eat fish for some reason or another, and I bet it's the fish in the desert that keep them from it. Maybe they hold them sacred. And why not? It was like being in the presence of the Creator; like crawling around in the liquids with no cares in the world."

"I don't know. That sounds sort of..."

"Fishy?" The old man laughed. "It does, it does. So this Navajo drove me to town. Next day I got my car fixed and went on. I've never taken that cutoff again-until today, and I think that was more than accident. My subconscious was driving me. That night scared me, boy, and I don't mind admitting it. But it was wonderful too, and I've never been able to get it out of my mind."

The young man didn't know what to say.

The old man looked at him and smiled. "I don't blame you," he said. "Not even a little bit. Maybe I am crazy."

They sat awhile longer with the desert night, and the old man took his false teeth out and poured some of the warm water on them to clean them of coffee and cigarette residue.

"I hope we don't need that water," the young man said.

"You're right. Stupid of me! We'll sleep awhile, start walking before daylight. It's not far to the next town. Ten miles at best." He put his teeth back in. "We'll be just fine."

The young man nodded.

No fish came. They did not discuss it. They crawled inside the car, the young man in the front seat, the old man in the back. They used their spare clothes to bundle under, to pad out the cold fingers of the night.

Near midnight the old man came awake suddenly and lay with his hands behind his head and looked up and out the window opposite him, studied the crisp desert sky.

And a fish swam by.

Long and lean and speckled with all the colors of the world, flicking its tail as if in good-bye. Then it was gone.

The old man sat up. Outside, all about, were the fish- all sizes, colors, and shapes.

"Hey, boy, wake up!"

The younger man moaned.

"Wake up!"

The young man, who had been resting face down on his arms, rolled over. "What's the matter? Time to go?"

"The fish."

"Not again."

"Look!"

The young man sat up. His mouth fell open. His eyes bloated. Around and around the car, faster and faster in whirls of dark color, swam all manner of fish.

"Well, I'll be... How?"

"I told you, I told you."

The old man reached for the door handle, but before he could pull it a fish swam lazily through the back window glass, swirled about the car, once, twice, passed through the old man's chest, whipped up and went out through the roof.

The old man cackled, jerked open the door. He bounced around beside the road. Leaped up to swat his hands through the spectral fish. "Like soap bubbles," he said. "No. Like smoke!"

The young man, his mouth still agape, opened his door and got out. Even high up he could see the fish. Strange fish, like nothing he'd ever seen pictures of or imagined. They flitted and skirted about like flashes of light.

As he looked up, he saw, nearing the moon, a big dark cloud. The only cloud in the sky. That cloud tied him to reality suddenly, and he thanked the heavens for it. Normal things still happened. The whole world had not gone insane.

After a moment the old man quit hopping among the fish and came out to lean on the car and hold his hand to his fluttering chest.

"Feel it, boy? Feel the presence of the sea? Doesn't it feel like the beating of your own mother's heart while you float inside the womb?"

And the younger man had to admit that he felt it, that inner rolling rhythm that is the tide of life and the pulsating heart of the sea.

"How?" the young man said. "Why?"

"The time lock, boy. The locks clicked open and the fish are free. Fish from a time before man was man. Before civilization started weighing us down. I know it's true. The truth's been in me all the time. It's in us all."

"It's like time travel," the young man said. "From the past to the future, they've come all that way."

"Yes, yes, that's it... Why, if they can come to our world, why can't we go to theirs? Release that spirit inside of us, tune into their time?"

"Now wait a minute..."

"My God, that's it! They're pure, boy, pure. Clean and free of civilization's trappings. That must be it! They're pure and we're not. We're weighted down with technology. These clothes. That car."

The old man started removing his clothes.

"Hey!" the young man said. "You'll freeze."

"If you're pure, if you're completely pure," the old man mumbled, "that's it... yeah, that's the key."

"You've gone crazy."

"I won't look at the car," the old man yelled, running across the sand, trailing the last of his clothes behind him. He bounced about the desert like a jack-rabbit. "God, God, nothing is happening, nothing," he moaned. "This isn't my world. I'm of that world. I want to float free-in the belly of the sea, away from can openers and cars and-"

The young man called the old man's name. The old man did not seem to hear.

"I want to leave here!" the old man yelled. Suddenly he was springing about again. "The teeth!" he yelled. "It's the teeth. Dentist, science, foo!" He punched a hand into his mouth, plucked the teeth free, tossed them over his shoulder.

Even as the teeth fell the old man rose. He began to stroke. To swim up and up and up, moving like a pale pink seal among the fish.

In the light of the moon the young man could see the pooched jaws of the old man, holding the last of the future's air. Up went the old man, up, up, up, swimming strong in the long-lost waters of a time gone by.

The young man began to strip off his own clothes. Maybe he could nab him, pull him down, put the clothes on him. Something... God, something... but, what if he couldn't come back? And there were the fillings in his teeth, the metal rod in his back from a motorcycle accident. No, unlike the old man, this was his world and he was tied to it.

There was nothing he could do.

A great shadow weaved in front of the moon, made a wriggling slat of darkness that caused the young man to let go of his shirt buttons and look up.

A black rocket of a shape moved through the invisible sea: a shark, the granddaddy of all sharks, the seed for all of man's fears of the deep.

And it caught the old man in its mouth, began swimming upward toward the golden light of the moon. The old man dangled from the creature's mouth like a ragged rat from a house cat's jaws. Blood blossomed out of him, coiled darkly in the invisible sea.

The young man trembled. "Oh God," he said once.

Then along came that thick dark cloud, rolling across the face of the moon.

Momentary darkness.

And when the cloud passed there was light once again, and an empty sky.

No fish.

No shark.

And no old man.

Just the night, the moon and the stars.

FOR WHOM THE BELL BLOWS

When the waiter saw us come into the McDonald's he put the straws and napkins under the counter out of sight. We looked like men who needed straws and napkins and he did not want us to have them.

"What will you have?" he asked.

"A Big Mac," I said.

"A beer," Larry said.

"We don't serve beer here," said the waiter. "We only serve food. There's the menu."

"Then make it a chocolate shake and a Big Mac."

The waiter brought the food and the shake and he used a large plastic spoon to cut the foamy top off the shake. It looked good. I wished then I had ordered a shake.

"I'll have a shake too," I said.

"Bite me," he said. "You had your chance to say what you wanted. Now pay up."

"What kind of joint is this," Larry said, and he sipped from his shake and spat a large stream of chocolate and milk onto the waiter's clean shirt.

The waiter turned good and red. "You punks hike," he said.

"We aren't punks," I said. "We just have a bad barber. His hair is not really orange and he has not dyed it that way. We camped out last night. He rolled in his Jell-O. We are not punks."

"Then why the safety pin in your chest?" the waiter asked.

I looked. There was a safety pin in my chest. "I'll be damned," I said. "My mother pinned a note there. I thought it was on my shirt. I thought the pain there was from an insect bite."

"You're punks," the waiter said, and he took off his cap and slapped it on the counter top and my Big Mac fell off on the floor and splattered. The meat lay in the sauce like an island in a stream.

"To hell with you," Larry said.

"Yeah," I said.

"Get out," the waiter said.

"We'll come back," Larry said.

"No you won't."

"There are other McDonald's," Larry said. "You can't be at them all."

"I can try," the waiter said.

We walked down to Taco Bell and ordered a burrito and a taco and some good firm chips. We ate the food and it was all very good and the air conditioning was good and the waiter was fine, not like the bad waiter at McDonald's.

We ate and did not talk. We were looking out the window across Strawberry Street and we saw that it was growing dark.

"Looks like rain," Larry said.

"It looks like a tornado," I said.

It was a tornado. It roared across the street and carried buildings with it and hit the Taco Bell, and the Taco Bell shook and rattled and the roof came off and blew away. If it had been Harry's Bar and Grill, which is well founded, that would not have happened. Harry's Bar and Grill would not have blown away.

The wind kept blowing and the walls followed after the roof and then the table we were holding onto. We fell in a ditch behind where the Taco Bell had been.

Larry raised his head when the storm had passed.

"Has it all blown away," I asked, but I did not raise my head. I did not want to see the damage to the Taco Bell and I did not want to think about the other half of my burrito I had not eaten.

"Ask not to where the Bell blows," said Larry with sadness. "It blows to sea along with our lunch."

We climbed out of the ditch and started walking away. I found that I had the other half of the burrito in my hand and I was very happy because the burrito was good. From where we stood we could also see the McDonald's and it had blown away like the Taco Bell.

"It is a bad thing to think," I said, "but I hope that snotty waiter has blown away with it."

"If it is a bad thing to think," said Larry, "then you better not think about it."

THE FULL COUNT

The scarred face, bulky body, gnarled knuckles and go-to-hell look seemed out of place with the green-and-yellow plain sports coat, lavender slacks, white shoes and blue-and-grey striped tie the man was wearing.

He closed the door of his shiny, black Lincoln, put a nickel in the meter, and made his way up the hot mid-day sidewalk to a little bar with a sign overhead that read The Idle Hour Lounge.

It was cool dark inside, just right for groping couples. Not many couples were there to grope at the moment, however. Just one old man who should have been with his wife and TV set, was putting the clutch on the plump thigh of a bleached blonde working girl about twenty years past her prime. Her plastic giggles were shrill enough to shatter a beer mug.

A couple of not-so-young, executive types with loose ties and tired eyes were sitting alone at booths looking as if they might break down and cry in their beer at any moment. A pot-bellied patron in a green leisure suit with more quarters than good sense or musical taste was keeping the jukebox in business.

The bartender, a young blond man in a red-and-white pinstripe shirt with black elbow garters and a matching bow tie, was leaning over the bar with a rag dangling from his right hand and a look as distant as the Sahara in his eyes.

In the rear booth, Raymond Slater, private detective, was passing an idle hour with a lukewarm beer and a cigarette. It was almost time for the evening stampede and elbow war, coupled with the seemingly endless coinage of the music lover, and Slater decided to break his routine a little early. He was finishing up his beer when the big man in the expensively mismatched outfit came in.

Slater wasn't the only one who noticed him. The ill-clad bruiser pushed his six-three, 240 pounds up to the bar and called for a beer. His voice sounded as if it had been fished from the bottom of a deep barrel.

He was interesting enough for the old man and the hooker to stop their play for a look. The two lonely executive types checked him out. Even Music Lover lost a few foot-pats over it.

The bartender brought him a beer, snapped up the change, fed the register and went back to his bar leaning. The old man and the hooker returned to the business at hand. The sad boys returned to the bottom of their glasses for comfort, and Music Lover clacked two more quarters.

Beer in hand, the man went directly to Slater's table and sat down across from the detective.

The neon light was dim, but not so dim for Slater to get a look at the man's features. They looked as if they had been chiseled out of a coral reef. He had a flat nose, wadded ears and dark, liquid eyes that looked eerie in the pulsating blue and white of the neon sign that blinked BEER. Later, in better light, Slater would see that the man's close-cropped black hair was peppered with grey.

"You Raymond Slater?" he asked.

"Uh-huh," Slater said cautiously, "You're...?"

"Yank Callahan, Ray," the bottom of the barrel voice said. "Call me Yank." He shoved a hand the size of a catcher's mitt at Slater. They pumped. Slater thought it was like shaking hands with a mechanic's vise.

"How do you know me?" Slater asked.

Yank drank the beer down almost in one glug, licked his lips. "Burn down at the cop-shop told me this is where I'd most likely find you this time of day. Gave me a good description. Said you looked like a well dressed street fighter."

"Flattering!"

"You see, Slater, I checked with the cops in Gulf City and here in Pasadena about advising me on a private dick. When I found out that my buddy Burn worked for the Pasadena bunch, I asked his advice and quit looking. We used to be pretty tight buddies, me and Burn. He told me this was a Monday through Friday routine with you. Want a beer?"

Slater said that he did. Yank turned and yelled over the wailing of the jukebox-no minor feat-at the bartender for two beers.

A skinny waitress who had just come on duty brought them over with an exaggerated wiggle and a smile that would have looked more at home in a beaver's mouth. Yank gave her a bill. She set the beers down, took his empty glass and went away, the wiggle still at work.

Slater drank some beer, got out another cigarette, offered Yank one. Yank declined.

Slater lit up.

"What exactly do you have in mind?" Slater asked.

"I need you to find someone, Slater. My trainer, Jason Krim."

"Trainer?"

"Uh-huh. I'm a fight manager. Do a little promoting, too. Maybe you've heard of my man. Anibal Martinez."

Indeed Slater had. Martinez had been a nothing until recently. His surprise victory over the number-two contender for the crown had jumped his ratings by more than a few notches, and since he was a Pasadena, Texas, fighter, the papers had been chock full of it.

"I've heard of him," Slater said. "Seen him fight on TV a couple of times. He's good. Probably got a good shot at the championship."

Yank nodded. "Real good chance. Listen, Slater, Burn told me you were the best private detective in Pasadena-Houston for that matter."

"Burn told you that?"

"Sure did. But I don't imagine he wants you to know. He doesn't like to let on he likes anybody."

"Doesn't do a bad job of it, either."

Yank laughed shortly. "That he don't." Then: "About the job, Slater?"

"I'm listening."

"You see, I got my own gym. It ain't much, but I'm proud of it. I used to fight some-hell, a lot. I didn't get this mug from tennis. Wasn't ever a number-one contender or nothing, but I was pretty good. I had the size and the strength, a little talent. I was good enough so that when I retired from the ring I got some training jobs. Trained some pretty good fighters. Remember Kit Miller, Miller the Killer? Ted Niven?"

Slater nodded. "I remember. They your boys?"

"Yep. I trained those pugs. Made some pretty good bread on account of it. Bought this gym in Gulf City. It ain't much, but it's paid for and I've lined up some pretty good local talent."

"One of them is Anibal Martinez."

"That's right. Anyway, I've done okay, and I got myself one fine trainer, Jason Krim."

"And Krim's missing?"

"Almost a week now. The police haven't found a single lead, least not anything that's helped."

"And you saw him last, when?"

"A week ago Tuesday."

"Krim ever do this before?"

"Plenty, but not for this long. That's why I waited a couple of days to report it. He's a pretty temperamental guy, very apt to do this sort of thing-and, to tell the truth, he and Anibal don't get along so good. Least not outside of the ring. That might have had something to do with it. When Jason feels pushed, he does funny stuff."

"Like walks out?"

"Uh-huh. Odd thing, though, is, when it comes to boxing, things are different. They respect each other there, least on how a fight is won. They've just got the kind of personalities that grate on one another.

"I don't think there's a trainer alive that can work with and get more out of Anibal than Jason." Yank paused and drank the rest of his beer. "Yeah, he's done it before, but it's only three weeks before the fight, and there isn't any way in hell Jason would do anything to hurt the fight."

"You said that he and Anibal didn't get along very well. Wouldn't this be a good time for him to get even? Say they had an argument, and-"

Yank threw up a hand. "No way. Jason and Anibal can go at each other like starved rats, but there ain't no way you could get Jason to hurt a fight. He may not like Anibal in ways, but the guy's his handiwork.

"It's like a car in a way. You may not like the paint job, but if you tuned the engine it holds something special for you." Yank gave Slater a stiff look. "Whatayasay, Slater? Burn said that you could probably find him before they did on account of how busy they are."

Slater was still thinking, humorlessly, about Yank's car-tuning analogy. "All right, Yank," he said. "I'll find him. But I won't guarantee he'll come back. That's his decision."

Yank nodded. "That's fair enough, Slater." With that, he groped a huge wallet from his pocket and picked three hundreds from an ample collection of same. "This do for a retainer?"

Slater managed not to lick his lips. "Quite."

"You can bill me for the rest," Yank held out his hand. They shook and Slater got the address of Yank's gym. After that, they went out into the glaring sunshine together.

"Tomorrow at nine," Slater said.

"Right. Nine."

Yank went to his sleek, black Lincoln and drove away. Slater got into his red '65 Chevy with the stuffing leaking out of the seats and drove home.

II

Early the next morning Slater showered, dressed, had a grease-and-egg sandwich and drove over to the address Yank had given him. He spotted the Lincoln right off. It looked conspicuous in this dreary neighborhood. He parked, got out, took a look at the gym. It appeared overdue for the wrecking ball. He lit a cigarette and went inside.

The interior was unexpectedly slick. All new equipment, all shiny to the eye. Never judge a gym by its cover, Slater thought.

There were Nautilus weight machines, speed bags, heavy bags, racks of jump ropes and lots of people scuttling about making shadow moves and noises like boxers. On a raised platform, between the ropes, a stylish boxer Slater recognized as Anibal Martinez was slamming the hell, left and right, out of his puffing sparring partner.

No doubt about it the kid had the moves. There was champ written all over him. A half dozen men were gathered about the ring, hanging on the ropes. One of them was Yank. Slater went over and stood by him.

"Ain't he somethin'!" Yank said after shaking hands with Slater. The big detective agreed that he was in fact something all right. A real hell of a boxer.

"That's enough," Yank yelled to Anibal, and the grateful sparring partner dropped his tired hands for a rest.

Anibal spit his mouthpiece into a gloved hand. A short man wearing a grey sweatshirt and sweat pants slid through the ropes and untied his gloves, took off the head protector. That done he made his way over to the sparring partner. Anibal slid between the ropes, flopped down next to Slater and Yank.

"You the detective Yank hired to find Krim?" The boxer asked with just the slightest trace of a Mexican accent.

"That's me," Slater said.

"If I was you, I'd do my looking in the bars. Under some bar stool preferably."

"Something serious could have happened," Yank cut in. "For goodness sake..."

Anibal tossed Yank a cold stare. "Could be the best thing that ever happened to us," he said slowly. With that he went over to the speed bag and put his taped knuckles to work.

"Nice fellow," Slater said.

"Foolish pride, Slater," Yank said. "He won't admit it, but without Jason he just ain't the same."

"Could have fooled me."

"I tell you, Slater, it's pride. The kid's got a chip on his shoulder for some reason and Jason is his prime target. Got some fool notion Jason's pushing him too fast."

"Is he?"

"No way. Won all his fights. He just can't stand the fact that he has to depend on the man so much. Likes to think he can do it all by himself."

"He doesn't have him to depend on now."

Yank nodded. "And it shows."

"Yeah, he's all torn up."

"Just believe me, Slater. I know him."

"All right," Slater said, "you know him." With that he took the folded contract from his pocket. "Shall we fill this out, and then I've got a few questions."

"Let's go back to the office."

The office, unlike the interior of the gym, was not the Ritz. It was so small that the two big men were almost enough to overload the straining air conditioner.

When the contract was completed and Slater had folded it away in his coat pocket, he asked for a list of the people who worked with Jason. None of the names, other than Anibal and Yank, were familiar to him. He gave Slater a newspaper clipping with Anibal and Krim's picture. They were both smiling.

Krim was a fiftyish black man with a once-muscular body now coated with fat. Even in the picture he maintained a certain air of reserve and capability. Slater put the clipping in his pocket with the contract. Last, but not least, Slater had Yank write out a list of Jason's hangouts. He could only think of three.

Yank and Slater shook hands, expressed hopes that Krim would be found soon and Slater left the office.

On the way out he stopped by the speed bag that Anibal was flogging. The bag thumped to a stop. Anibal looked at the burly detective with flat, brown eyes.

"Yank says you need Krim," Slater said, not trying to be the least bit cagey, watching carefully for the fighter's reaction.

"I don't need nothing but time. Krim don't give a damn about me and the feeling's mutual. He treats me like a side of beef. He only wants me to do well so he can pat his own goddamn self on the back. To hell with that! To hell with him!" Scowling, Anibal turned to the bag and slammed it a hard one.

"I don't need Krim," he snapped, looking back at Slater's impassive face.

"See you later," Slater said and moved away.

When he reached the door Anibal yelled, "If you find that sonofabitch, tell him not to come back. I don't need him. I don't want him."

Slater nodded in a disinterested way, pushed out the door. Behind him, even through the closed door, he could hear the speed bag. Anibal Martinez was going at it to kill.

He had driven two blocks when he decided that the late-model grey Plymouth was following him. Not too close. Not too far away. Just about right. Coincidence, maybe.

Slater took a few quick lefts, a right, then gassed it till he hit Pearl street. He eased up to a YIELD sign and waited.

He didn't see the Plymouth.

Deciding maybe that he was becoming paranoid in his old age-too much TV and Watergate-he chalked it up to stupidity. Feeling like a Junior G-Man, he drove the 25 miles from Gulf City to Pasadena and his office on Strawberry Street.

III

Slater sat in his office, heels on desk, looking at the paint-peeling walls till four o'clock, then locked up and drove back to Gulf City and one of Jason's hangouts, Happy's Good Time Bar.

Happy's was an ugly building with more beer and wine advertisements splattered on the outside than the off-white paint that showed between them. Red neon curlicue writing in a large, dirty window announced that there was live entertainment inside. Strippers.

Inside, it was the usual seedy little honkytonk with sticky tables, an unpolished bar, rows of bottles, a beer tap, a huge mirror that looked as if someone had deliberately wiped it with a greasy rag, and a small stage for the strippers.

The place stank of stale cigarette smoke and alcohol.

Behind the bar was a bored bartender with black curly hair, a lantern jaw and eyes like a lynx. It was too early for the strip show, and only one die-hard drunk was present. He sat at the table in the back, contemplating the empty glass before him.

Slater went up to the bar, perched on a stool and ordered a beer. The bored bartender squeezed one out of the tap and slammed it down hard enough for some to slosh out on Slater's hand. The bartender saw it happen, but if it bothered him he didn't let on.

Slater showed him his grillwork. "You look kind of bored, Curly. Maybe you'd like to talk."

He gave Slater a sour look. "The name's not Curly and talk from drunks I don't need. It's that that makes me bored."

Touchy, Slater thought. He showed him the nice smile again. "I haven't even had a beer yet, so how come I'm a drunk. Maybe I could even salt up the conversation some." Slater took out his wallet, removed a one, put it on the counter.

The bartender gave it the experienced eye. "Nothing but the big time, huh, Charlie?"

Slater pursed his lips, took a fin from his wallet, put it with the single, kept his fingers on them, but just lightly. "Nice job you got here," Slater said. "Bet you even make some money. But not off the joint."

He gave Slater a sigh and a smile. Neither was exactly first rate. "Something I can do for you, Charlie?"

Slater took his fingers off the bills and watched the bartender palm them with the professional ease of a sleight-of-hand artist. The bills disappeared into his shirt pocket. He looked at Slater out of the corner of his eye.

He said, "You just giving them away or have you got questions?"

Slater drank some of his beer. It was bad enough to spit out, but the big detective restrained himself. "I've got questions," Slater said, a bit tired of the cat and mouse. "Ever hear of a guy named Jason Krim?"

The bartender lifted his eye brows, wiggled his mouth from side to side, said, "Nope. Sorry."

"For six bucks you didn't give the question a whole lot of thought."

"Don't know any Jason Krim. It's as simple as that."

"Maybe I can refresh your memory. He's been in here quite a lot. Trains fighters, Anibal Martinez in particular. Krim's a big black guy about fifty. Here."

Slater got the clipping out of his pocket and laid it on the bar.

The bartender picked up a glass and a rag, made like he was polishing the glass, looked down at the clipping.

"Maybe I've seen him," he said.

Slater let out a sigh. "Either you've seen him or you haven't. Which is it?"

Very carefully, as if it were fine china, the bartender set down the glass, put the rag away beneath the counter, kept his left hand there. "You a cop or something?"

"Private investigator. I'm looking for Krim," Slater said, all the while watching the hidden hand. "How about it? You seen him?"

The bartender brought his hand from beneath the counter. It was empty. He picked up the clipping and looked at it. "Okay. Yeah, I've seen him. Used to come in here a couple of times a week, drink himself bananas and watch the strip show."

"You told the cops about this?"

"Now why should I do that?"

"Surely they've been around asking. He's on the missing persons list."

"Not to me, they haven't. Cops I don't need, Charlie. Look, I'm telling you, I used to see the guy a couple of times a week. Last time was a week ago, a Tuesday night, and that's the truth." He held up his hand. Slater had the feeling that if a stack of bibles had been available, he would have sworn an oath on them.

"Seem awful nervous about cops. Wouldn't be running some kind of action out of this joint, would you?"

"I just work here. As far as I know the joint's as straight as Robins arrow."

"Uh-huh."

"I'm not kiddin'. Anything that goes on illegal here, I don't know nothing about it."

"Sure, the joint's a regular Sunday school." Slater looked at the bartender hard enough to crack an ice block. "Okay, preacher, wouldn't be more you'd want to tell me about this Krim fellow?"

"Okay now, don't get sore. It's just that chatty bartenders don't do an establishment any good. Weather and dames is one thing but..."

"I get the picture." Slater picked another five from his wallet, handed it to the bartender. It went, quickly, into the shirt pocket with the other bills.

He licked his lips, leaned over the bar, said to Slater in an almost whisper, "This Krim fellow is a regular. Like I said, a couple of times a week."

"That line's starting to sound like an echo."

"Just listen. He sits over there." Slater turned to look where he was pointing. A corner table next to the stage. "He drinks like a fish and watches the strip show. Passes a lot of bills around to the girls."

"The last time you saw him-leave with anybody?"

The bartender put an elbow on the bar, leaned close to Slater. "Just between you, me and the wall, I did see him leave with someone, more or less."

"How do you leave with someone more or less?"

"This Mexican, the one here in the picture, came in and did some yelling at the old guy, finally jerks up the old dude by the shirt."

"What were they yelling?"

The bartender threw up his hands. "What am I, a tape recorder? This place was crowded and noisy. Ain't nothing worse than a bunch of noisy drunks."

"So what else happens?"

"Nothing. I go out back and empty the garbage, bottles and stuff. Out back I see the Mexican putting the old man in the back seat of a Lincoln. Can you believe that? The geezer's got a god-damned Lincoln! I drive a sixty-eight Ford. Well, anyway, the old man's as drunk as Cooter Brown, I reckon. The Mex puts him in the back, gets behind the wheel and drives off."

"Anyone with the driver?"

"Might have been. Wasn't paying that close attention."

"I guess you see that sort of thing every day? Often enough not to bother with calling the police."

"You see everything here after a while."

"Customers make a habit of parking out back?"

"They park anywhere the tires will set."

"Think the Mexican could have clouted the old guy?"

"Could have. A passed-out drunk and a punched-out one look a whole hell of a lot alike. If you know what I mean."

"The old man talk to anyone else that night?"

"Hell, I don't remember. I mean I wasn't keeping tabs on the guy."

"Give it some real deep thought. I mean, I could have the cops start checking around."

"Okay, okay, don't start with the cop talk. He did talk to Leona Blue some. She's a stripper here."

"Blue her real name?"

"No. Stage. I don't know what her real name is. What's it matter?"

"Maybe it doesn't. She here now?"

"No. Comes on at six-thirty, has her act at seven."

"Thanks."

The bartender didn't tell Slater he was welcome. The detective left Happy's and went to the other two places on his list. There was someone at both who had seen Jason, but not after Monday. It looked like Happy's was the last spot before his vanishing act.

Slater made a phone call to Yank, and in as casual a manner as possible, confirmed that Anibal sometimes drove his Lincoln, and that it was quite possible that he drove it the night in question. With that information in tow, Slater ended the conversation by telling Yank not to worry and that things were shaping up.

At six-thirty he drove back to Happy's.

IV

Leona Blue was not a movie queen, but she certainly had sex appeal. She was voluptuously built, and her costume, if you can call a G-string and a handful of sequins and gauze a costume, did nothing to conceal the fact.

She had nice things to go with the body-shoulder-length brown hair, beautiful smoky blue eyes and a quick smile that showed just the slightest trace of wrinkles at the corners. Slater quickly deduced that she wasn't old, but she was certainly not as young as she appeared at first glance.

After he made it clear that he wasn't a cop or one of the local lechers, Leona agreed to talk to him. She pulled a man's shirt over her "outfit" and sat with Slater at the table the bartender had said was Jason's usual spot.

After taking in the view for a period that Slater felt was just within being polite, he said, "How long have you known Jason?"

"Almost a year," she said. Her voice was soft and musical, the sort that could whisper sweet passion in the dark.

"Last saw him when?"

Her full lips quivered slightly. She leaned forward and said in a low voice. "He's not in some kind of trouble, is he?"

"None that I know of," Slater said. "I'm a private detective. His employer, Yank, hired me to find him. He's a little worried, that's all."

Leona nodded, bobbed her brown hair in a manner Slater thought was sensual. "I know about Yank. Jason speaks highly of him." She picked a pack of cigarettes out of her shirt pocket, shook one out. Slater took out his lighter and lit it for her, lit one of his own.

"To tell the truth," she said, "I'm a little worried myself."

"That right?"

"Uh-huh. He's done this sort of thing before, going off for awhile without letting anyone know-but somehow, I'm really worried this time. I've called his place and even went by. Nothing. Locked, and the landlady claims she hasn't seen him. Not that she'd care to help anyway."

"I take it you and Jason are better than friends."

She rested her elbow on the table top, her head in her palm. The cigarette drooped languidly from her fingers, soft, grey ash floated down across the table.

"That's right," she said. "Much better than friends. I suppose you don't approve?"

Slater shrugged his shoulders. "Why should I approve or disapprove. What's it to you, anyway? It's your business, not mine."

She lifted her head from her palm, stretched both arms out on the table top. "Sorry. I get to hear so many lectures about how nice, white girls ought not to run around with the niggers, I'm a little touchy. Bitter, too, I guess."

"You won't be hearing that from me."

"I can believe that," she said. "I'm just a little touchy, that's all."

"I can see how you would be. Gulf City isn't exactly the culture spot of the world, and the work you do doesn't cater to the upper crust. No offense intended."

"Nor your work."

"Touche. Right you are, present company excluded, of course."

They laughed, then Leona became solemn. She said, "Do you think Jason's all right?"

"I don't know what to think," Slater said truthfully. "From the way you talk, I take it no policemen have been around to ask you questions."

She wrinkled up her pretty face with concern. "Police? I thought you said he wasn't in any kind of trouble."

"I did. The police have a missing persons report on him. Yank hired me as insurance."

"No police," she said. "I haven't talked to any cops and the only cops I know are the two that show up here regularly for their payoffs. They must have a racket with half the dives in this area and no telling what else."

"Prostitution?"

"No. Drugs is my suspicion, and it's just that, a suspicion. I think James, that's the bartender, and the owner deal a lot of stuff from this joint. The cops are in on it. Just guessing, mind you, but when you've been around these places enough, you get to be a pretty good guesser. As it is, I just keep my mouth shut." She took a hard look at Slater. "Do you think you can find him?"

"If I didn't, I wouldn't be looking," Slater said, and for a rare moment his rugged face looked almost soft and vulnerable.

Leona blew smoke out with a sigh. "You know," she began, and she didn't really seem to be talking to Slater in particular, just addressing gentle memories, "Jason's a very special kind of guy. Tough, but gentle. That means something to me. I don't go for the old fashioned make-it-or-break-it kind of guy.

"You know what he likes to do?" She smiled briefly. "He likes to have me drive him down by the gulf. He has a special spot there. It's just an old ragged stretch with a little pier that sticks out in some oily junk-filled water. But that's where he has me take him.

"We always take my car because Jason doesn't drive, takes a taxi wherever he goes, one of his quirks. Anyway, he has me drive him out there and we park and look out over that ugly stretch of water and talk. He tells me that he used to go there as a kid to sort out his problems and he has a lot of childhood memories about that place.

"It's almost like an honor to share it with him." She looked out from her dreams and cigarette smoke. "Damn!" she said. "I must be getting old and sentimental. I sound like a fool."

"Not hardly," Slater said. "Not hardly."

They sat for a moment in awkward silence, then Slater said, "Leona, you were here the night of the argument?"

"Argument? Oh!" she said. "You mean with Anibal? How'd you know about that?"

"Bartender. You know Anibal very well?"

"No. I've never really met him. Matter of fact, the night of the argument was the only time I've ever seen him in the flesh. I've seen pictures of him, but that's it. Why Jason worries about that fool kid I'll never know. It bothers him to no end that the kid dislikes him. It's almost like a father-son generation-gap thing."

"That might be putting it lightly from what I've heard. Tell me about the argument."

She put her cigarette out in the ashtray. "Not much to tell. The kid got steamed up about the way he thought Jason was pushing him, had a few beers too many and came to tell Jason what he thought of him.

"Jason gave him hell for drinking, breaking training, something like that, and Anibal got mad enough to jerk him up from the table. They shouted at each other a bit, then Anibal let go and stomped out."

"No blows?"

"No. Just a lot of yelling. Jason told me after the kid left that he was going out back for some fresh air and that he'd see me at closing time. He didn't come back. It worried me, but not a lot. Jason was a temperamental guy and did that sort of thing now and then, often enough that I was used to it and didn't worry too much. Till now. Right now I'm worried."

"The night of the argument, the bartender tells me Jason was pretty drunk. That right?"

"He'd been drinking, but he wasn't drunk. I've never seen him drunk. James would tell you that though. He thinks I should stick with young white men, like him. James isn't my type by a long shot. He loves to think Jason is a no-good drunk. It builds his ego."

"A little thing. James tells me that Anibal went out the front way. What about that?"

"Uh-huh. And Jason went out the back. They didn't leave five seconds apart of each other."

"Okay. Another thing. James says Jason passes out a lot of bucks. That true?"

"Yeah. He's a heavy tipper. I've told him that sort of thing could get him in trouble. I hope..."

The lights went suddenly dim. A redheaded woman with a movie starlet's build, if not a starlet's face, came out on the little stage wrapped in a Chinese-style robe and yelled, "Five minutes, Leona." The redhead's voice was as sharp as a knife.

Leona waved a hand at her, turned back to Slater. "Head honcho. I've got to get a move on."

"One more thing, and I'll make it quick."

"Shoot."

"This spot where the two of you go-the pier. Could you tell me where it is?"

She had stood up from the table to go, now she sat back down, clasped her hands together, said, "May I ask why?"

"No particular reason. Just following a few hunches. Nothing really."

Leona stared at Slater's trained impassiveness for a long moment. "Got a pen?" she finally said.

Slater picked an old ballpoint from his coat pocket, gave it to her.

"It's easy to find," she said, and she pulled a napkin from the holder and started drawing. When she was almost finished, the redhead came out and screamed at her again. The knife-edged voice was sharper than before. Over his shoulder Leona said, "Coming, coming."

She handed Slater the map and pen. The shadows clung to her face like spiders. She said, "Listen, I love Jason, very much. I know it sounds silly but I'm telling you this because when you find him, even if it's bad, I want to know. My phone number is there on the napkin."

Slater looked at it, folded it away in his pocket.

"Promise me you'll let me know," she said. "Promise me that."

"I promise," Slater said.

"Good." She wiped at her eyes. "Contacts. I never have gotten used to them. Find him, please."

Slater nodded.

Leona turned and walked away quickly. Slater watched her go up the stage steps, across to the once dark-blue curtains and disappear behind them. He got up and made his way through the gathering crowd and out to the car, drove away feeling strangely small and very, very alone.

It was about a five-block drive to the place on Leona's map. More than a rock's throw, but no real trek. Slater eased his Chevy down an embankment made by recent bull-dozing, and parked near a rickety weather-chewed stretch of pier. He took a flashlight from the glove box and got out.

The salt spray blew cold against his cheek and stung his nostrils. The timber pilings of the pier creaked with the rolling motion of the water. Paper and other debris discarded by beach lovers blew up around his ankles and crunched underfoot.

He went down to the pier and walked out on it. It creaked ominously. There was an odor of decaying fish closer to the water, and when Slater played the beam on the shadowed sea, it looked dead, dirty and forgotten. Across the way, the lights of some factory's night shift showed their smoke rising into the blackness of the night, fading the moon. Down on the water the lights cast murky shadows. Behind him, over the rise, he could hear the hurry of traffic.

He flashed the light all around, turned, walked off the pier and went up and down the beach with the same lack of results.

Then he had a hunch. He didn't know what else to call it-just a thought, a strong thought. He went back to the pier and walked out on the lip, got down on his stomach, hung his upper body over and worked the flash around.

It was a good hunch.

It floated in the shallow brine halfway between the embankment and the shabby creosote piling that held up the left rear of the pier. Only half of it was showing. The torso bloated. The shirt that covered it was black from water and stuffed as tight as a German sausage. The head was grey, shapeless, with a lot of flesh missing. The arms were the same. Most likely crabs had been feeding. The body seemed to be held in place by the debris collected beneath the pier-a bobbing cork once human.

Slater flicked off the flash and vomited in the water.

V

It was hard to tell positively at such quick notice, as no identification was on the body, but the Gulf City cops agreed with Slater that it was most likely what was left of Jason Krim. As to the cause of death-too early to tell. But neither the police nor Slater thought it an accidental drowning.

Slater refused to tell how he found out about the pier or about Anibal Martinez and the borrowed Lincoln. He told them it was coincidence. He didn't think they believed him for a moment. Slater and the Gulf City cops were not on the best of terms.

Slater wanted to talk to Yank first before he tipped his hand. Of course the cops would get to Yank first. That's why he wanted to wait. Yank, solid as he was, might be inexperienced in these matters and let slip more than the cops need know at the moment. Besides, Slater decided, he needed time to think and rest.

After the usual hard time, the cops surprised him and let him go with a promise to stay in touch. Getting while the getting was good, Slater drove away from the station at just the proper speed, made sure to use his signals.

He tried to sort the whole business out in his mind. He decided he should feel pretty relieved about the whole matter, but somehow the decision wasn't enough. The missing persons case had been wrapped up in less that 24 hours and the cops, for some unknown generous reason, weren't holding him for withholding information, downright lying, in fact. As for the reason behind Krim's death...

Not his worry-Slater tried to convince himself. His job was to find Krim, nothing more. That he had done. It didn't help the image of Krim's bloated mutilated body fade from his thoughts however. He wasn't looking forward to sleep and dreams.

Maybe, if Slater had not been so intent on his thoughts, he would have noticed earlier than he did that a grey late-model Plymouth was following him. It looked just like the one he had seen after leaving Yank's gym. He could see it clearly beneath the street lights.

The Plymouth swung up behind Slater with a sudden burst of power, hung on his tail so close he felt as if he were pulling it with a chain. He gave the Chevy the gas, darted in and out of traffic, which was reasonably heavy, and scared the hell out of more than a few motorists. One of them gave Slater her middle finger to look at. The pursuing Plymouth received the same salute.

Slater made a quick turn in front of a brake-screeching Volkswagen, darted off the main drag onto a lightless street called Pleasant. In the rearview mirror, he saw the Plymouth make the same corner, still hot on his trail.

The Chevy was making a sound like a strangled pig, but Slater kept pushing it. He took a quick right, almost on two wheels, then a quicker left, certainly on two wheels, then a more reserved right up a residential street.

He almost ran over a luminous DEAD END sign. Slamming hard on the brakes, he slid slightly to a stop, killed the lights, put it in reverse. He checked the rearview mirror for lights. Nothing. He backed a hundred feet, caught a flick of lights out of the corner of his eye. Jerking it in D, he pulled up in a driveway and sat.

No dogs barked. No lights in the house came on.

Beams that might have belonged to the Plymouth paused at the intersection, then went on. After sitting for another 20 minutes, avoiding the cigarette he was dying to have, he eased out of the drive with his lights off. He had the window down and his ears cocked. Straining his eyes into the darkness, he eased up to the intersection.

The Plymouth wasn't hiding around the corner.

Slater turned on his lights and drove home.

Old age, Slater figured, was probably not a very good excuse, but it just might have been part of the reason he drove home not expecting them to be waiting for him. They had done their homework.

He pulled the Chevy up the drive and parked it in front of the garage and got out. He was starting up the walk when the metal door to the garage flew up with a shrieking sound.

A big man with a shaved head, grey squinty eyes and a nose that could have pecked its way through a cement block stood where the door had been. He held a.45 automatic in his hand. It was pointing at Slater's chest.

"Hi, sugar," the bald man said. "We've been waiting for you."

Slater raised his hands slowly. Even if he had been wearing a gun it would have been of no avail. Baldy had him dead to rights. Behind him he heard a car pull up the drive and park behind his Chevy.

Baldy waved the.45. "Turn around and move."

Slater turned toward the grey Plymouth. The man behind the wheel looked every bit as bright and handsome as a lobotomized gorilla. Almost as big, too.

Moving before the prod of the.45, Slater walked around to the passenger side and got in. Baldy sandwiched Slater in between himself and Gorilla. "Let's go," Baldy said.

Gorilla backed the Plymouth out on Mulberry and drove over to Southmore. From there he made a left off Southmore and down a dark narrow street that led away from the sights, sounds and lights of Pasadena proper. Slater realized that pretty soon they'd be out in the boondocks. The thought did not cheer him.

"Guess where we're taking you, snooper?" Gorilla asked sweetly.

"The drive-in movies?" Slater answered.

"Hey!" Gorilla growled across to Baldy. "The snooper's got a sense of humor."

Baldy threw a heavy arm around Slater's shoulders. "Good. That's real good, snoop, 'cause you're gonna need a sense of humor for what we've got in mind. We're gonna give you somethin' to scream about."

Slater sat quietly, thinking, weighing his chances. Baldy removed his arms, put his fingers together and cracked his knuckles.

"Impatient?" Slater asked.

Baldy just smiled.

Gorilla turned off at a dark dirt road decorated with storage buildings and an all-too-occasional burglar light. When they had gone a little less than half a block, he pulled over next to a row of aluminum warehouses and parked. Baldy got out and waved Slater to follow with the barrel of his.45. Gorilla got out on his side and went around to meet them.

Gorilla said, "You know, snooper, we could make this easy on you. Just one shot between the peepers and no more snooper." Gorilla showed the detective a tight grin. "But me and Sol don't go for no cheap way out.

"You see, I sort of enjoy my work, if you know what I mean. What's the fun of blowing a guy's brains out and making a lot of noise, when I can beat them out and enjoy myself a whole lot better."

He was cracking his knuckles now, warming up to the task. The knuckle-cracking, Slater thought dryly, must be something of a trademark for the pair.

Sol moved up close on Slater's right side.

Slater said, "Sol's going to hold me while you prove how tough you are, or is he going to shoot a leg out from under me so I won't be able to play rough?"

Gorilla scowled. "You like playing the tough guy, don't you, peeper?"

"It's not like I have a lot of competition in you boys."

"Ahhh!" Gorilla growled. "Okay, snooper, I'm gonna give you your big break, if you catch my drift. I hate you snoopers. Always with your big nose where it don't belong. So instead of beating your brains in real quick, I'm gonna make it hurt so bad you're gonna wish I would kill you."

"Your mouth is doing that now.

Gorilla snarled and threw up his big fist.

"The hell with this, Jerry," Sol said. He pointed the.45 at Slater. Slater winced.

Gorilla reached out and slapped his hand over Sol's gun and pushed it down. "Naw, let me have my fun."

Sol sighed, looked at his watch. "Make it quick. Put him away.

"Unh-unh, I'm gonna make him beg some first."

Gorilla took a boxer's stance and shuffled forward.

VI

Even while picking a fight with Gorilla, Slater had used the distraction to examine his surroundings. To the right of him was a row of storage stalls. To the left was a dirt road, a pasture and, in the distance, a few anemic house lights. Behind him was a chest-high chain-length fence and, behind that, a small stock pond that the moon showed to be below the water line.

Across the way was another fence and, opposite it, lightless houses. The only remaining direction was forward, and in that path lay the Plymouth, Gorilla, and Sol with his worthy companion, Colt.45. That was Slater's last choice.

Gorilla was three feet away from Slater, bobbing and weaving. It looked as if he knew something about the fight game.

So did Slater.

Slater went up on his toes, started shuffling.

Gorilla went for him like a heat-seeking missile.

Slater sidestepped nimbly and lashed out with a roundhouse kick to the burly man's groin. It struck Gorilla with a whap. He stumbled, blew out some air. Slater stepped in deep and slammed an elbow down, hard, into the small of the man's back. He made sure the blow wasn't too hard. He didn't want to put him away quick. That would mean a.45 slug in the head. Slater had other plans. He stepped back.

Gorilla got his back straight, blew out some short, choppy breaths, took in a few deep ones.

"Something take your breath away?" Slater chided.

The injured man got his back straight, said through wheezes, "I'm gonna... huhhuh... tear you... huhuhu... apart."

"Do tell," Slater said and the moonlight flicked off his smile. He stepped in quick and popped a few sucker punches at the big man's face.

Bulling his way forward, the Gorilla flicked out a lucky left and nipped Slater on the cheek. Slater managed to slip it well enough so as to get only a buzz from the blow. It got Gorilla excited, however. He thought he was moving in for the kill.

Slater let him come, flicked two stinging lefts to his eyes, went for the same combination of lefts. This time Gorilla parried. That was what Slater wanted.

He faked another left and, when the big man's hands went up to protect his face, the detective surprised him with a sharp kick to the kneecap by a sizzling right cross that staggered the enraged behemoth, but didn't send him down for the full count.

Slater slacked off, danced a little. Gorilla followed.

Slater's snazzy footwork was gradually moving him backward, carrying him eventually to the fence. He pressed his back tight against it, put up his hands and looked determined to hold his ground.

Gorilla smiled. He felt he had the detective penned now, and without room to move he concluded that his size and strength would win the day.

Slater had other plans. When Gorilla was nearly on top of him, he bent his knees, ducked his head and kicked back and up with all his might. The effort sent him over the fence backwards. He hit on his side and rolled to his feet running.

"Sonofabitch," Sol, or Baldy, as Slater unaffectionately thought of him, said.

"What the...?" Gorilla said.

"Out of my way," Sol yelled and jerked the.45 up to fire. His aim was dead on target.

But Slater suddenly became a zigging target. The shot missed by inches, sang off into the night. Another blast and Slater's neck burned, but it was only a graze.

Slater zigged and zagged all the way to the other fence, went over it like a professional high jumper and landed in an unprofessional heap on the far side.

The two goons jumped into the Plymouth, turned it around with a screech of tires and headed around the other way, hoping to cut their prey off.

Slater stumbled to his feet, realized he was in someone's backyard. He veered wide of the house. He had no intention of drawing innocent bystanders into this. Crossing the blacktop road in front of the dwelling, he melted into a thick clump of trees that a real estate sign said was ready to be bought and contracted.

He caught the lights of the Plymouth out of the corner of his eye when he dove into the undergrowth. The grey car came by slowly and Sol hung a flashlight out the window, bobbed it into the trees.

Slater was lying behind a clump of thick foliage, making like ground moss. The beam didn't hit him.

They made several passes flashing the light. Finally they stopped, got out of the car and went down into the trees for a looksee.

Slater inched his way into a wet ditch that smelled of sewer or something equally rank, pressed himself down tight in the mulch and held his breath.

He listened to the crunching of leaves and the talking of hushed voices for what seemed like an hour but could have been only minutes. Then, when the sounds stopped, he listened some more. Silence reigned for another hour or so. Finally, he heard grumbled cursing, the sound of leaf-crunching feet about their business again.

They came right up to him, flashed their beam into the ditch once, but the shadows and Lady Luck protected him. He didn't breathe.

More time passed and the cursing began again, and he heard the sound of heavy feet going away. Car doors slammed, and engine coughed to life.

Slater crawled out of the ditch and elbowed his way back to where he could get a good look. The moonlight showed the Plymouth pulling away lickety split for Pasadena. It seemed that the goons had given him up.

Perhaps, thought Slater, they would have looked longer had they known he had memorized their license plates, and of course, he knew their first names, Sol and Jerry. Obviously these were not things that would have worried them earlier. That sort of information doesn't help a dead man.

Brushing himself off as best he could, Slater made his stealthy way over to the house next to the fence. He wrote a nice note of signed explanation on a check stub, stuffed it in the screen door of the house, hot-wired the '69 Galaxy in the drive with his pocket knife and drove the long way back to Strawberry Street.

Keeping an eye out for the Plymouth, he parked a block from his office and walked back. He used his key and took the stairs up. He unlocked his office door and went inside cautiously. No one was waiting.

He got some fresh clothes out of the closet, washed up in the bathroom, and changed. Next he got the.38 out of the desk drawer and loaded it. He put it in his coat pocket, went back down to the Galaxy and drove over to Gulf City and Happy's Good Time Bar, stopping along the way to make a phone call.

VII

Happy's wasn't closed but preparations were being made. All the outside lights were off, even the neon, curlicue beer, wine and stripper signs. The inside lights were on. That meant the crowd had cleared or was clearing rapidly. Honkytonkers don't honkytonk under the glare of lights. It cramps the style.

The last couple in the place was coming out as Slater went in. James the bartender was wiping off tables, pushing chairs around. Slater didn't see any other employees. It seemed they had all gone home. James looked up.

"Closing, Mr. Private Eye," James sneered.

Slater got out a cigarette and lit it, slowly. Said, "Do I denote a touch of sarcasm in your voice?"

James shrugged, balled up the rage and started back for the bar, scooping up a couple of empty beer mugs as he went. He eased around behind the bar, plumped down the beer mugs.

"I said, I'm closing."

"So you did," Slater said and he walked over to a stool, sat down across the bar from James.

"Shall I call the cops?"

"That won't be necessary. I've already taken care of that. They ought to be here at any moment." For emphasis, Slater glanced at the clock on the wall. "I think you and I have the time we need, however."

"Time for what?"

"Chit-chat. Wouldn't want to draw us up a couple of beers, would you?"

James didn't move.

"You know," Slater continued, "I really had my doubts about who murdered Krim." Slater looked at James for a reaction. He looked bored.

James put both hands on the bar top with the rag stretched out nicely between them. "Say your little piece if it'll make you feel better-then, get out!"

Slater put his cigarette out on the bar top and watched James frown.

"You see," Slater said, "I thought Martinez was the man at all times. I mean he was right for it, and with your telling me how you saw him lead Krim into the Lincoln... well, that was good, James, real good.

"But no, it wasn't Martinez. The persons responsible for that were a couple of cops. I met them personally. You knew I would, I'm sure of that. Actually, you're kind of surprised to see me, aren't you?" James didn't look surprised. Slater continued.

"The only bad thing is the cops slipped. I got away with their descriptions, the car's description and their license number. They didn't try to keep that stuff concealed. Why would they? With me dead, it wouldn't matter.

"Now, I don't know it for positive, but when I called the police, which was right before I came here, I left that license number with them. I'm sure when they run it down, it'll belong to a plain-clothes, Gulf City cop that looks like a gorilla. I'm sure, too, that discovery will lead to the identification of his egghead friend.

"You see, James, they have to be cops-the same cops this place passes the payoff money to. That's why there wasn't any investigation in this area. Those two were the officers in charge. Slick, James, real slick."

"And why am I hearing all this?"

Slater ignored him. "Oh yeah, they have to be cops. How else would they know Yank was hiring himself a private detective. He asked around at the Gulf City and the Pasadena stations, that's how. I'll even narrow it down a little more. They were Gulf City cops. I know that because, when I left the Gulf City station tonight and started home, these two goons show up and try to do me in."

"Like I said, Slater. Why am I hearing all this?"

"What I'm getting at is the murder of Jason Krim."

"Can't pin that on me. I was right here all the time."

"Oh, I believe you were here. Like I said, the cops did it." Slater glared into the bartender's eyes. "But I think you paid them to lean on the old man."

James flipped the rag from under his hands and draped it over the edge of the bar, got a cigarette out and lit it with a disposable lighter. He put the cigarette pack and the lighter back in his pocket. Slater thought maybe his hands were shaking just a little.

James said, "Atso?"

"Uh-huh, atso."

James took some puffs on his weed, smiled around it. "You're not sticking me with no bum rap."

"I figured maybe you didn't mean for them to kill him," Slater admitted. "Just teach him a lesson. Too bad. Those guys like their work. Maybe the old warhorse put up a bigger fight than they expected. He was old, but no pushover."

"If you're trying to scare me to death," James said, "you're doing a lousy job." He moved down the bar toward the spot where his hand had disappeared during his and Slater's first heart-to-heart talk.

Slater eased his.38 out of his pocket and laid it on the bar, kept his hand on top of it.

Slater said, "My memory's better than that. Both hands on deck."

James put his hands where Slater could see them, opened and closed them. He tried to maintain his confident air, but there was sweat on his upper lip and the sarcastic smile was a little crooked now.

"May I have a drink," he asked.

"Sure. Why not-but do be careful. I'm very excitable."

James turned to the counter slowly, picked up a shot glass and a bottle, poured himself a healthy one, went back to his station at the bar.

"Remember the hands," Slater advised.

"And just why should I go to all this trouble?" James asked, then tossed off half the drink.

"It would be nice if it were really complex, some kind of boxing-world scandal, drugs, that sort of thing. It's a lot older and less complicated, however. Jealousy, or, maybe more directly, rejection. You couldn't stand that Leona turned you down for an older man, and a black one at that."

"You can't prove a damn thing."

"Now I'll grant you that a lot of this is guesswork, but when the cops start looking, I bet they find a lot of juicy material to work with. Not that they'll need it. Those two-bit cops will probably sing to high heaven. You'll be in the song, James."

James turned his shot glass around and around in his hand. His eyes were hooded, his lips drawn.

Slater went on, "Here's how I got it figured. Jason comes in and makes a hit with Leona. Too bad for James-boy. He's not quite the romancer he thought and, worse yet, in your mind, it's a turndown for an inferior. What a blow to the ego!

"Now let's take two crooked cops who like the long green and, since they don't mind stretching the rules to get it, and, since you're onto their little racket here, maybe you have a little talk with them.

"Maybe you tell them that if they'll lean on the old man, you'll see that they get a few extra bucks. You know Jason's routine, so, you point him out and they wait for him to leave. You might even be hoping that Leona will be with him, most likely would be since he doesn't drive.

"Anyway, damned if things don't work out better than expected. You even get your fall guy. Martinez comes in, gives Jason a hard time and stomps out mad in plain sight of everybody. Your cop friends are posted nearby and they spot him leaving, know who he is.

"That's when they catch that he's driving the Lincoln, and that little piece of information is good for later. That makes a nice believable touch when you tell me you saw Martinez loading the old man in the back seat.

"Okay, Jason goes out and decides to take a walk. Why not? He hasn't got a car and he hasn't called a taxi. He wants to walk off his anger. His favorite meditating place is nearby. Okay, he walks down into the boonies and the cops couldn't have planned it better themselves, so they follow him down to the pier, and zap! The old man's out for the full count.

"That's the mess-up. It's unlikely that Martinez would have enough time to beat it around back and clobber Krim just in time for you to take out the garbage. But I'll give you that possibility.

"What I won't give you is the coincidence that the spot Anibal chooses to dump the body is Krim's one special spot. I suppose you could have lied about the Lincoln, and he could have still followed Krim and done him in, but in that case the cops wouldn't be on my tail.

"Too many things, James. Far too many. You were reluctant to talk to me, worried about the cops. Then I learned this place has a couple of cops on the payroll and two guys start following me around. Well, it just started to add up.

"You know, James, maybe if you'd kept those cops off me the three of you might have gotten away with it."

"Might yet," James snapped and there was a blur of glass and whisky whirling in Slater's face. The detective ducked left, caught sight of James' hand snaking out from beneath the bar. There was a revolver in it.

Slater's move carried him down and behind the bar just as the shot slammed into the wood and sent splinters into his face.

The worse part about it was Slater had left his.38 on the bar top. In the movies, he would have leapt up, grabbed it at a roll and shot the culprit between the eyes. This wasn't the movies. Slater had made a frightened, stupid move and that was all there was to it.

James palmed himself over the bar top and pointed the revolver at Slater's head. His smile was as chill as the arctic wind. "Goodbye, Mr. Private Eye." He cocked back the hammer.

The room was a cannon roar.

VIII

James threw up his left hand like a man tossing confetti to the wind. The revolver flew up and into the bottles behind the bar. The sound of tinkling glass seemed every bit as loud as an avalanche. James' feet went out from under him and he fell against the bar and began to slide languidly to the floor. A red stream blew high and wide from his shoulder and seemed to come down in slow, mesmerized droplets. In the doorway, gun in hand, stood Homicide dick Randle Burney. Two blue suits came in behind him. He walked over to Slater, putting the gun away. He picked a yellow handkerchief that was supposed to be white from his pocket and wiped his perspiring forehead with it. His hand was shaking ever so slightly.

"You know, Slater," he said. "You're a lot of trouble."

Slater let himself breathe, got up and went over to the bar for his.38. "I seem to have misplaced this in a moment of crisis," he said in a voice calmer than he felt.

Burney turned to the blue suits who were hovering over James. One of them said, "Nice shooting. Put the shoulder out of commission."

"Swell," Burney lied. "I was aiming for his head."

The blue suit smiled at him. "No notch this time. This one will live. I'll radio an ambulance."

Burney turned back to Slater, who had gone around behind the bar and poured himself a stiff one. "What was the idea of calling and telling us to meet you here pronto?" That was crazy, Slater. Why?"

"I don't know for sure. I had to talk it out, get some kind of result. I just had a few clues and a lot of hunches."

"Uh-huh, and if we'd been one second later we'd have been picking you off the floor with a vacuum cleaner."

"The license number I left with you. Was it what I thought?"

"Halfway here we got the radio message. It's the number belonging to a Gulf City cop, just like you thought. We've already got feelers out for him and whoever his partner is. It shouldn't be hard, considering they aren't expecting us to know."

Slater nodded, went over to look at James. He was mercifully unconscious and breathing heavily. The blue suit had stopped the flow of blood with simple first aid. "I think it hit the bone and went out the back of his arm," the cop said.

"It's up to the ambulance now," Burney said. "I've got my car outside. I think we better go down to the station, Slater."

"Fine," the detective said. "But first I need to return a stolen car."

By the time Slater had finished with the cops and talked with Yank it was almost daybreak. He went home and sat in the dying dark, drank a beer, smoked a cigarette and thought about poor old Jason and the sweet stripper named Leona Blue who loved him.

He kept rolling the napkin with her phone number on it around and around between his fingers, wishing that when he finally got up the nerve to keep his promise, there would be something comforting he could say.

He picked up the phone and dialed.

THE GENTLEMAN'S HOTEL

A little dust devil danced in front of Jebidiah Mercer's horse, twisted up a few leaves in the street, carried them skittering and twisting across the road and through a gap made by a sagging, wide door and into an abandoned livery stable. Inside, the tiny windstorm died out suddenly, dropping the leaves it had hoisted to the ground like scales scraped from a fish. Dust from the devil puffed in all directions and joined the dirt on the livery floor.

Jebidiah rode his horse to the front of the livery, looked inside. The door groaned on the one hinge that held it, moved slightly in the wind, but remained open. The interior of the livery was well lit from sunlight slicing through cracks in the wall like the edges of sharp weapons. Jebidiah saw a blacksmith's anvil, some bellows, a few old, nasty clumps of hay, a pitchfork and some horse tackle gone green with mold draped over a stall. There were no human footprints in the dirt, but it was littered with all manner of animal prints.

Jebidiah dismounted, glanced down the street. Except for an overturned stagecoach near a weathered building that bore a sign that read Gentleman's Hotel, the street was as empty as a wolf's gut in winter. The rest of the buildings looked equally as worn, and one, positioned across the street from the hotel, had burned down, leaving only blackened ruins and a batch of crows that moved about in the wreckage. The only sound was of the wind.

Jebidiah thought, Welcome to the town of Falling Rock.

He led his horse inside the livery, looked about. The animal tracks were what you would expect. Possum. Coon. Squirrel. Dog and cat. There were also some large and odd tracks that Jebidiah did not recognize. He studied them for a while, gave up on their recognition. But he knew one thing for sure. They were not human and they were not truly animal tracks. They were something quite different.

This was the place. Any place where evil lurked was his place. For he was God's messenger, that old celestial sonofabitch. Jebidiah wished he were free of him, and even thought sometimes that being the devil's assistant might be the better deal. But he had once gotten a glance at hell, and it was well short of appealing. The old bad devil was one of God's own, because God liked hell as much as heaven. It was God's game, heaven and hell, good and evil. That's all it was, a game, and Jebidiah despised and feared God because of it. He had been chosen to be God's avenger against evil, and he couldn't give the job back. God didn't work that way. He was mighty mean-spirited. He created man, then gave him a choice, but within the choice was a whore's promise. And instead of making it easy for man, as any truly kind spirit might, he allowed evil and sin and hell and the devil to exist and blamed it all on man. God's choice was simple: Do as I say, even if I make it hard on you to do so. It didn't make sense, but that's how it was.

Jebidiah tied his horse in one of the stalls, took the pitchfork and moved the old hay about. He found some good hay in the middle of the stack, forked it out, shook the dust from it and tossed it to his horse. It wasn't the best there was, but it would do, along with the grain he carried in a bag on his saddle. While the horse ate, Jebidiah put the fork aside, went into the stall and loosened the saddle, slid it off and hung it over the railing. He removed the bridle and reins, briefly interrupting his horse's feed, slung it over the stall, went out and shut the gate. He didn't like leaving his horse here in this bleak, unattended stable, but he had come up on another of life's evils and he had to be about his business. He didn't know the particulars, but he could sense evil. It was the gift, or the curse, that God had given him for his sins. And this sense, this gift, had come alert the minute he had ridden into the ghost town of Falling Rock. His urge was to ride away. But he couldn't. He had to do whatever it was that needed to be done. But for the moment, he needed to find water for his horse and himself, grain the horse, then find a safe place to bed down. Or as safe a place as possible.

Jebidiah walked down the street, and even though it was fall, he felt warm. The air was humid and the wind was hot. He walked until he came to the end of the street, finally walked back toward the Gentleman's Hotel. He paused for a brief look at the overturned stagecoach, then turned and went into the hotel.

He saw immediately from the look of it that it had been a brothel. There was a bar and there were a series of stalls, not too unlike horse stalls. He had seen that sort of thing once before, in a town near Mexico. Women worked the stalls. Once there might have been curtains around the stalls, which would have come to the women's waist. But business would have been done there in each of them, the women hiking up their dresses so that cowboys, at two-bits a pop, could clean their pipes and happy up their spirits, be cheered on by their comrades as they rode the whores like bucking horses. Upstairs, in the beds, the finer girls would work, bringing in five Yankee dollars per roll on the sheets.

Jebidiah slid in behind the bar, saw that on the lower shelf were all manner of whiskey bottles. He chose one, held it up to the light. It was corked and full. He sat it on the bar and found some beer bottles with pry-up pressure caps. He took a couple of those as well. Clutching it all in his arms, he climbed the stairs. He kicked a few doors open, found a room with a large bed covered in dust. He placed the bottles on a night table, pulled the top blanket back, shook the dust onto the floor. After replacing the blanket, he went to the window and pushed it up. There wasn't much air, and it was warm, but it was welcome in comparison to the still humidity of the room.

Jebidiah had found his camp. He sat on the bed and opened one of the beers and took a cautious sip. It was as flat as North Texas. He took it and the other beer, which he didn't bother to open, and tossed them out the window, sent them breaking and splattering into the dry, dirt street below. He wasn't sure what had possessed him to do such a thing, but now it was done and he felt better for having done it.

He went back to the nightstand, tugged the cork from the whisky with his teeth. He took a swig. The whiskey was warm both in temperature and spirit, and he could have cleaned his pistols with it, but it did the trick. He felt a comfortable heat in his throat and his stomach, a wave of relaxation soaking into his brain. It wasn't food, and it wasn't water, but it beat nothing in his stomach at all. After a moment, and a few more swigs, the whisky warmed him from head to toe, set a bit of a fire in his balls.

He sat on the bed and took several sips before returning the cork to the bottle and going downstairs. He went out into the street again, still looking for some place with water. He glanced at the stagecoach lying on its side, horseless, and noted something he had not noted before: the runner to which the horses would be hooked was dark with blood. Jebidiah examined it. Dried gore was all along the runner. And now he noted there were horse hooves, bits of hair, even a gray horse ear, and what looked like a strip of skin lying in the street. Not to mention a hat and a shotgun. There was a smell, too. Not just the smell of dried blood, but a kind of wet stink smell in the air. Jebidiah was sure the source was not from the blood or the horse remains. It was the stink of evil, and the smell of it made him absently push back his long black coat and touch the revolvers in their holsters.

He heard a moan. It was coming from the stagecoach. Jebidiah scampered onto the runner and onto the side of the coach, moved along to the door with its cutaway window, looked down and inside. Lying against the far side door that lay on the ground was a woman. Jebidiah reached through the open gap, grabbed the interior latch, swung the door open and climbed inside. He touched the woman's throat. She moved a little, groaned again. Jebidiah turned her face and looked at it. She was a handsome woman with a big, dark bruise on her forehead. Her hair was as red as a campfire. She wore a tight-fitting green dress, some fancy green shoes. She wore a lot of makeup. He lifted her to a sitting position. She fluttered her eyes open, jumped a little.

Jebidiah tried to give her a smile, but he was no good at it. "It's okay, lady" he said. "I am here to help."

"Thanks. But I need you to let me lift my ass. I'm sitting on my umbrella."

--

Jebidiah helped her out of the stagecoach, into the hotel and upstairs. He put her on the bed he had shaken the dust from, gave her a snort of the whisky, which she took like a trooper. In fact, she took the bottle from him and took a long deep swig. She slapped the umbrella--which had a loop for her wrist--against the bed.

"Damn, if that don't cut the dust," she said.

Jebidiah pulled a chair beside the bed and sat. "What's your name?" he said.

"Mary," she said, disengaging herself from the umbrella, tossing it onto the end of the bed.

"I'm Jebidiah. What happened? Where are the stage horses?"

"Eat up," she said. "Them, the driver, and the shotgunner too."

"Eaten?"

Mary nodded.

"Tell me about it."

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you."

"You might be surprised."

And then, after another shot of whisky, she told it.

--

"I'm a working girl, as you may have already noticed. I am late of Austin, Texas, and Miss Mattie Jane's establishment. But Mattie met a man, got married, sold her place, made a deal with the madam here in Falling Rock for my services, as well as the remaining girls. I was the only one that took her up on the deal. The others spread out across Texas like prairie chickens.

"Must say, I thought there would be more to Falling Rock than this. Thought it would be a sizable town. And maybe it was. I figure whatever got the driver and shotgunner, as well as a whisky drummer in the coach with me, got most of the town too. Hadn't been for my umbrella, I'd be dead. I was surprised at how well I was able to protect myself with it.

"We came into town late last night, me ready to start my job here at the Gentleman's Hotel, ready to buck pussy, when a strange thing occurred. No sooner had the stage entered the town than a shadow, heavy as if it had weight, fell across the place, and sort of lay there. You could see the moon, you could see the town, but the shadow flowed between buildings and into the stagecoach. It became hard to breathe. It was like trying to suck down flannel instead of air.

"Then the stage shadow flowed away and the stage rolled on, stopped in front of the hotel. The stage shook real hard and then I heard a noise. A kind of screech, unlike anything I had ever heard. Then I remembered one of my old johns telling about being in an Indian fight, and that it had been close and hand to hand, and the horses had been wounded, and there had been a fire in a barn that the Indians set, and the horses inside burned alive. He said the horses screamed. Somehow, I knew that was what I was hearing. Screaming horses. Except there wasn't any fire to burn them. But something was scaring them, causing them pain.

"The stage coach shook and tumbled over. I heard the shotgun go off a couple of times, and next thing I knew the driver and the shotgunner were yelling. The whisky drummer stuck his head out of the overturned window, jerked it back again. He turned and looked at me. His face, even in the night, was as white as the hairs on an albino's ass. He pulled a derringer, then there was a face at the window. I ain't never seen a face like it. I couldn't place it. My mind wouldn't wrap around it.

"The drummer fired his derringer, and the face jerked back, then it filled the window again. An arm--a hairy arm with what looked like hooks on it--snapped through the window and caught the drummer in the face, peeled him from his left ear to the side of his lip. I remember seeing his teeth exposed through a gap in his jaw. Then the hairy, hooked hand had him by the throat. The drummer fought, slamming the derringer into the thing's face, pounding on its hands with the butt of the gun. He was snatched through the window in a spray of blood.

"I didn't know nothing but to grab up my umbrella. It's all I had. Then the face was there again, tugging at the door, about to pull it off, I figured, so I jumped forward

and stabbed out with the tip of the umbrella and got the thing in the eye. It let out a horrible howl, moved away. But two more ugly, hairy faces took its place. Yellow eyes glowing, and all those teeth, dripping spit. I'm not brave, but fear drove me to jump at them and stab into them, and I got one of them, and it, he, whatever it was, jumped back and went away.

"I don't think I scared them, I just think they sort of, well, got bored or something. Or more likely. . . full. 'Cause I could hear them prowling around and around the stage, and I could hear other things, snapping sounds, gnawing sounds, a kind of excitement that sounded like miners at a free lunch.

"They climbed up on the stage and looked in the window a few times, and I struck at one of them, missed. The thing almost swatted me with that hairy arm, those big claws, then there was pink light through the window, and it went silent outside. I considered coming out, but couldn't. I was too frightened. I was exhausted too. More than I realized. I dreamed I was awake. I had no idea I had fallen asleep until you came. Good thing I dropped my umbrella while I slept, otherwise you would have found it in your ribs, your eye, someplace."

Jebidiah picked up the umbrella and looked at it. It was ragged and broken in spots, tipped with wood. He touched it with his fingers. Oak. He gave it to her. "The tip is sharp," he said.

"I broke it off some time ago. Never did get another."

"Good thing," Jebidiah said. "The broken tip made a good weapon."

Mary looked at the window. "It's growing dark. We need to leave this town."

Jebidiah shook his head. "No. I have to be here. But you should leave. I'll even give you my horse to do it."

"I don't know why you have to stay, that's your business, but I won't lie. I'm ready to go. And I'll tell you, I was just lucky. I think the daylight ran them. Had it been earlier in the night, I wouldn't be here right now. I'd be some turd, digested and dropped on a hill somewhere, maybe drawing flies in an alley. I'll take you up on that horse, mister. But I'd like to do it now. And I'm telling you, you damn sure don't need to be here afoot. Or on horseback, or in a stage, or no kind of way. You need to ride on out with me."

"I'll leave when my job is done."

"What job?"

"His job . . . God."

"You some kind of preacher?"

"Some kind."

"Well, sir, that's your business if you say so. I don't pray to God much. He ain't never answered any of my prayers."

"I don't know that he's answered anyone's," Jebidiah said.

--

Darkness was edging into the street when Jebidiah and Mary left the hotel, began to walk briskly toward the barn. The oppressive humidity was gone, and now there was a chill in the air. By the time they reached the livery and Jebidiah had saddled his horse, the night had slipped in smooth and solid.

Outside the livery, leading the horse, Jebidiah looked toward the woods that lay beyond the town, saw that they were holding thick shadows between leaves and limbs.

"I'm not going anywhere," Mary said. "I've waited too long. Bad enough it's dark, but me out there without anyone to help, damn if I will. I'd rather stay here till morning. Provided I'm here in the morning."

"You are probably right," Jebidiah said. "It wouldn't be good for you to go now. It's best to go back to the hotel."

They started back down the street, Jebidiah leading his horse, and as they went, a kind of dark cloud fled out of the woods and covered the quarter moon and fell on the town and came apart, shadows skittering in all directions.

"What in hell is that?" Mary said.

"The mantle of darkness," Jebidiah said, and picked up his pace. "It sometimes comes when a place is full of evil."

"It's cold."

"Odd, isn't it? Something from the devil, from the bowels of Hell, and it's cold."

"I'm scared," Mary said. "I don't normally scare up easy, but this shit is making my asshole pucker."

"Best not to think about being scared," Jebidiah said. "Best to think about survival. Let's get back to the hotel."

--

When they got to the hotel it was full of ghosts.

Jebidiah tried to lead his horse inside. It pulled at the reins, not wanting to enter.

"Easy, boy," Jebidiah said to the horse, stroked its nose, and the horse settled down slightly. Jebidiah continued to soothe the horse as he and Mary watched the ghosts move about. There were many ghosts and they seemed not to notice Jebidiah and Mary at all. They were white and thin as clean smoke, but were identifiable shapes of cowboys and whores, and they moved across the floor and into the stalls. Women hiked their ghostly dresses, and ghostly men dropped their trousers and entered them. The bartender behind the bar walked up and down its length. He reached and took hold of bottles that were not bottles, but shapes of bottles that could be seen through. At a piano a ghostly presence sat, hatless, in striped shirt and suspenders, all of which could be seen through. The ghost moved his hands over the keys but the keys didn't move, but the player seemed to move as if he heard the music. A few cowboys and whores were dancing about to the lively tune that was heard to them, but not the living.

"My God," Mary said.

"Funny how he always gets mentioned," Jebidiah said.

"What?"

"Nothing. Don't fear these. They can't hurt you. Most of them don't even know you're here."

"Most?"

"They are spirits of habit. They do this over and over. It was what they were doing, or wanted to do before they died. But that one--"

Jebidiah pointed to a ghostly but much more distinct shape sitting in a chair against the far wall. He was a stubby cowboy in a big ghostly hat. He was almost solid, but the wall and the furniture could be seen through him. "He knows we're here. He sees us as we see him. He has been here a while. He has begun to accept his death."

At that statement, the ghostly figure Jebidiah referred to rose and crossed the room toward them, walking, but not quite touching the floor.

Mary moved toward the door.

Jebidiah grabbed her arm. "Best not. The street will be a far less welcome place shortly, perhaps already. There's more out there than an oppressive cloud."

"Will he hurt us?" Mary asked.

"I don't think so."

The ghost sauntered toward them, and as he neared, he showed a lopsided grin, stopped, stood directly in front of Jebidiah. Beside him, Mary shook like a leaf in a high wind. Jebidiah's horse tugged at the reins. Jebidiah pulled the horse forward slightly, glanced at it. Its visible eye rolled in its head. "Easy, boy," Jebidiah said to the horse, then turned to the ghost, said, "Can you speak?"

"I can," said the spirit, and the voice was odd, as if it were climbing up to them from the bottom of a deep, dark well.

"How did you die?"

"Must I answer that?"

"You are bound to answer nothing at all, or anything you wish," Jebidiah said. "I have no control over you."

"I want to pass on," the ghost said, "but for some reason, I cannot. I am here alone, because the others, they don't know they're dead. This town, it holds us. But I seem to be the only one that knows what has happened."

"Evil has claimed it," Jebidiah said. "When that happens, all manner of things can occur. Not always the same, but always evil. You have decided to embrace the truth, they have not. But in time, they must."

"I'm not evil. I'm just a cowpoke that got dead."

"The evil is what's holding you," Jebidiah said.

The cowboy nodded. "Them."

"The hairy ones," Mary said.

"Yes, the hairy ones," the ghost said. "What they did left me in this place. There are other places, places I would like to move to, but I can't, and it's because of them--who they are and what they are."

"It's the way you died," Jebidiah said. "You are caught in one of God's little jokes."

The ghost twisted its head to the side like a curious dog.

"What kind of joke?" the cowboy said. "Because I assure you, I don't find it all that funny."

"And, in time, you will find it less and less humorous, and then you will get angry, and then you will react, and your reactions will not be of the best nature."

"I have no intent of haunting anyone," said the ghost.

"Time and frustration turns the spirit dark," Jebidiah said. "But I can help you pass on."

"You can?"

"I can."

"Then do it, for Christ's sake."

"The evil must be destroyed."

"Do it."

"I would ask a small favor of you, first."

"Of me?"

"Tell me about this town. What happened to you. If I know about it, I can fight what's here, and I can help you pass on. That is my promise."

"Oh, you can't fight what's here. Soon, you and her will be like me."

"Perhaps," Jebidiah said.

"I don't like the sound of that," Mary said.

"First things first," Jebidiah said. "I don't want to stand here with my horse and my back against the door."

"Understood," said the ghost.

--

Jebidiah found a big room, a kind of sitting room, and that was where he put his horse, fed it grain that he poured out onto the hardwood floor. Then, as the ghost watched, he pushed a long cabinet across the doorway and pulled the curtains on the window. He and Mary took a seat on a kind of settee that was before the large window with the pulled curtains. There was no light inside, and Jebidiah did nothing to find one, though an oil lamp stood out from the wall in brass fixtures. They sat in the dark, it being nothing to the ghost. Jebidiah's and Mary's eyes adjusted in time, enough to make out shapes, and of course the ghost was forever constant, white and firm.

Once seated, the Reverend pulled both his revolvers and laid them on his thighs. Mary sat tight against him. The ghost took a chair as he might have in real life. He pulled a ghostly chaw from his pocket and put it in his jaw. The room grew darker and the night grew more still.

"There's no taste," the ghost said after a few jaw movements. "It's just the idea of a chaw. It's there, and I can put it in my mouth, but it's like the liquor the bartender serves, it's not really there. Thing that makes me feel a bit better about that is the fact the money I pay him, it ain't there either. Ain't nothing really there but my urges."

"So the bartender knows you're here?" Jebidiah said.

"Sometimes. Sometimes not."

"I'm sure it is a misery," Jebidiah said. "But now, if I'm to help you, help us. I feel that we are short of time. Already the street is full of the night, and the great shadow lays heavy on the town. I can taste it when I breathe."

"You talk funny."

"I was educated funny."

The ghost nodded. "That shadow comes down on the town before they do. It comes, they are not far behind. When they show up, and that's at the beat of twelve," and with that the ghost nodded toward a big grandfather clock in the near corner of the room, "that's when things get hairy, so to speak."

Jebidiah struck a match and leaned it in the direction of the clock. It said seven p.m.

"Then we have some time," Jebidiah said, shaking out the match.

"So maybe we can and should get out of town now," Mary said.

The ghost shook its head. "Nope. You don't want to go out there. They don't get serious until midnight, but being out in the street, under that big ole shadow, that ain't the place to be. The things to worry about the most ain't gonna be here for awhile, but, still, there's things out there under and in that shadow, and you don't want no part of that. I'm dead, and I don't want no part of it. And besides, time ain't the same here. Take a look at the clock."

Jebidiah struck another match, held it up. The clock had moved a full fifteen minutes. Jebidiah shook out his match.

"It's messed up," Mary said.

The ghost shook its head.

Jebidiah said, "The devil's time is different from mine and yours." Jebidiah turned to the ghost. "Do you have some helpful advice for us? I believe we could use any you might possess, and considering your situation, you are bound to have experiences that we do not."

"And if you're lucky," said the ghost, "you'll never have them. Let me tell you, this ain't no dosey-doe, being dead, being hung up between here and wherever."

The ghost paused for a moment, as if gathering his energies, and in fact, he seemed to become brighter, more solid, and as he did, he leaned forward and told his story.

--

"My name was Dolber Gold, but everyone called be Dol when I was alive. Me and all these cowboys and whores once lived in, or worked in, or passed through this town. And this here establishment, which could be called a kind of house of pleasure, a sure-enough gentleman's hotel, minus the goddamn gentleman, was always packed and full of piano music and dancing, and if you'll pardon me, ma'am, the riding of asses and the drinking of liquor."

"Mine has been ridden plenty," Mary said. "I'm a working girl. So no begging your pardon is necessary."

"I thought as much," Dol said, "and I mean that with no disrespect. My favorite women were always of the loose nature, and I respect the job they do and the pleasure they give. And if I were able, I'd be glad to lay coins down to buck a bit with you."

"Tell your story," Jebidiah said.

"The hairy ones," Dol said. "That's your problem."

Dol nodded at the grandfather clock. "Go outside now you'll be covered in a kind of sickness, a feeling that will make you weak. It's them a'comin'. There's bad things in that shadow in the street, but it ain't nothing to what's gonna be here when that clock hits high midnight."

"You've said as much," Jebidiah said, throwing a glance at the clock. His eyes had adjusted enough he could make out the fact that the hands had moved again. Another fifteen minutes. There was still time, but it was best to be prepared, and have time to do it. Dol was as chatty as a squirrel, and nowhere near on point.

"Me and some of the boys got liquored up and rode out to the old graveyard for some fun. I didn't have no respect, 'cause I was full of rotgut to the gills. We rode out there with bad intentions. Graveyard there is what used to be for all them folks settled here, but there was graves older than that on top of the hill, lost in amongst the trees. And it was said Conquistadores come through here, gave trouble to the Indians. Story went that they come through this part of East Texas, up the Sabine River, searching for gold. Course, wasn't none. But they searched anyway. These woods, deep as they are now, were deeper then, and there was things in there from times before we know'd about time.

"Conquistadores began to die out, and the six that was left, they camped here a'bouts, and in the night, a hairy one came. Maybe he was an Indian. Who knows? The Indians tell the story. But he was hairy and he came into the center of them and killed the lot of them, tore them up. Their bones were left to rot on the hill. But Indians said them Conquistadores, every full moon, gathered flesh and hair on their bones, and come into camp searching for food and fun killin'. It was said this thing that killed them had passed along a piece of himself to them, making them like him. Wolves that walked like men.

"Indians finally captured these six and even the original hairy one, who they claimed came from some hole in the ground, came up to plague man and spread evil. But they captured them somehow, and buried them deep and pinned them to the ground."

"Pinned them?" Jebidiah said.

"Comin' to that," Dol said. "So me and my buddies, we thought it might be fun to dig up them old graves. We wasn't worried about no curse, but we figured there might be something inside them graves worth somethin', if it was no more than just a look. Armor, maybe. Swords. Might even have been something in there worth a few dollars. Truth is, we didn't figure there really was no Conquistadores buried there. But, you get bottle smart when you've drunk enough, and we'd drunk enough, and we rode up there and found some old, unmarked mounds at the top of the hill, trees and vines grown up on and around them. There was a big old stick, like a limb, stuck down in one of the mounds. It looked fresh, like it had just been put there."

"What kind of limb?" Jebidiah asked.

"What?"

"What sort of wood was it?"

"Hell, I don't know. I think it was hickory or something like that."

"Oak?"

"Could have been," Dol said. "I ain't for certain, but I sure wish I could remember, and maybe figure on what kind of trees grew around there and the name of all the plants and birds and such. What is wrong with you, fella? Who gives a shit?"

"My guess is it was oak," Jebidiah said. "Like the tip of Mary's umbrella."

The ghost just looked at him.

"Never mind," Jedidiah said. "Go on with your story."

"Tim, he'd brought some shovels and he passed them out, and we started digging. I remember we come to this stick in the ground, a stick carved on with symbols and such, and I pulled it out and tossed it, and, well, drunk like we was, we didn't last too long. But before we passed out, we did make some progress on one of them mounds, enough to open it. But I don't remember much about that.

"Next thing I knowed, I was on my back looking up at the full moon shining down through the trees. I got up on one elbow, and that's when I seen it. It was the grave we had dug into. There was a hairy arm pushing up out of the ground, and then this long snout sheddin' dirt, and then this thing pulled its way out of the hole and wobbled up there on the edge of the grave. It was about seven feet tall. It was like a wolf, only it had a long snout and ten times the teeth. Them teeth hung out and twisted ever which way, and tall as it was, it was still bent some, and its paws was tipped out with long, shiny claws. But the eyes, that was the worst. They was as yellow as old custard, except when they rolled, cause then they showed a kind of bloody white around them.

"I tried to get up. But I couldn't move at first. Drunk and scared like I was, kind of going in and out of being awake. This thing bent over and started digging in the ground, and pretty soon it was tearing at the dirt and tossing it all over the place. It didn't seem to take no time at all before it had dug into a hole and pulled out another stick like that one I pulled, and then up come another of them things, and he went on to do this time and again, and I tried to get up, tried to shake one of my buddies awake, but he wouldn't budge. Got my gun out and shot at it, but it ignored me. It just went on getting them others out of the ground until there were six. Well, even drunk like I was, by this time I knew I wasn't having no dream, and I was scared sober.

"One of them things picked up one of my buddies by the ankle, held him up high and bit into his head, started slurping at the brain. Well, I'll tell you, I was up then and running. I heard one of my buddies scream up there on the hill, then after that I was running so fast through the trees, getting hit in the face by limbs and such, I didn't hear nor notice nothing. It come to me that I might have been better to have grabbed up my horse, but I don't remember if it was even around no more. Good as it was about being trained to stand, I had either forgotten it, or it had run off first sight of that thing comin' out of the ground.

"I ran and I ran, thought I was making pretty good time and doing well, then I seen a shadow moving through the woods, and pretty soon it was everywhere. It made me feel sick and weak, like I'd walked into a cloud of poison. Then there was these other shadows that come out of the darker shadow, and they moved, and they changed, took shape. It was them hairy things, kind of wolf-like, they were. I got my brains back for a moment, started firing my six-gun, but it wasn't doing no good. I'd have done about as much good to try and stop them by peeing on them. But I didn't even have that kind of ammunition, having already peed all over myself from being so scared. And I guess, since I've gone this far, got to say I messed myself, too. I was so scared my goose bumps had goose bumps.

I ran and ran, then come to a break in the woods, climbed to the top of a hill, and then I heard them growl, and they was on me. It happened faster than you can skin your foreskin back for a soapin'.

"But they didn't kill me. Not right off. They slapped me around, bit on me some. Finally one of them threw me over his shoulder like I was a sack of taters, carried me off. I tell you, I was one scared cowpoke. Didn't know if they was gonna eat me or stick their pecker's in my asshole. What they did was carry me to the woods and they brought me back to where we had been, up the top of the graveyard. As they carried me I tried to take note of things, see where I was goin', thinking maybe I stayed alert I had a chance. But there wasn't no chance. They got to the graveyard they threw me down and one of them stood there with his big paw on my chest, the claws cutting into me like knives, and the others took to digging. Down on their knees, digging like dogs, or wolves, or whatever they was, and soon they had a big hole dug out and they pulled this big run of bones out of the ground, and yanked a long, carved stick out of between its forehead, which wasn't nothin' but a skull, and while I'm lookin', I seen the moonlight come down on that head and I seen that hole in the head seal up, then I seen flesh start to run over them bones, and then I seen it get pink with blood and the chest start to breathe, and then hair started to grow, in patches at first, then finally all over, and when it was thick as wild prairie grass, the thing sat up, and finally stood up. It was a male, that was obvious. Male like all the others, 'cause the thing that let me know they was all male was hanging out for all to see, long as a razor strap, thick as my ankle. And then it looked right at me.

"Well now, this is the ugly part, and I start to almost feel humanly sick when I think about it, even though I'm deader than Custer and his whole outfit. Still feel the fear, dead or not, thinking back on it. This thing, it come at me slow and easy, pulled its lips back on that long old snout and showed me all them teeth, and I went to screamin', just like a little girl who's seen a spider. And boy, that thing liked that. It pulled those lips back even more and spit started dripping off its teeth, and then it crouched like, and finally I realized I was screamin', 'cause at first I was just doin' it, not knowing I was, you know, and I heard the quality of it, and I thought, well, 'You go to hell, I ain't screamin' another sound.' And I shut my mouth and went quiet and made to go like a man . . . only, I didn't.

"He started to move fast then, a funny kind of move, like some of the moves was left out, and then just before he had me his pecker got stiff, like he was gonna do some business, and maybe he was, I thought, and I screamed again. Big and loud and I couldn't stop till he stopped me, his teeth in my throat. I don't remember much after that, but the next thing I knowed I was here in this hotel, and thinkin' I'd dreamed. But I couldn't get nobody to see me. And then gradually, there was more spirits like me, 'cause that cloud come through the street every night, and then them wolves would come. Kind of folded out of the shadows. Caught everyone here eventually. Before they did, they once got trapped in the old hotel across the street. The real hotel. And the folks in the town burned it down. And them things, they come out of there afire, their hair and flesh growing back fast as bullets fly. They went on a rampage, and then there wasn't no one left in this town but ghosts, like me. They took to eating horses and cats and rats and dogs, whatever stray animal might wander in. After that, there wasn't nothing. And then they kept coming around. Kept waiting for something. More meat, I guess. I don't know why they didn't go off somewhere else, but they didn't. Maybe far as the trees where me and my poor pals found them was as far as they could go, 'cause I know one night I seen the big one up there on the hill, howling at the moon. I figure it was 'cause he was so hungry his stomach thought its throat was cut."

"They're confined to this area," Jebidiah said. "The cloud is part of the evil that came out of the graves. They were held there by the sharp ends of the oak. Some evil can't stand oak. And this, obviously, is that evil. Unfortunately, you released them."

"Unless it's hickory," Dol said. "Or some kind of other tree. Ain't nothing says it's oak. I didn't tell you it was oak. I don't remember."

"You have a point," Jebidiah said, "but from my experience, I'm betting on oak."

"It's your bet," Dol said.

"I don't understand," Mary said. "He bit you, like he bit them Spaniards so long ago. They become wolves until the Indians killed them . . . or held them down with the sticks. But you got bit, the others got bit, why ain't you and them wolf-things?"

Dol shook his head. "Ain't got a nugget on that. Nothin'."

"Because," said Jebidiah, "the leader, he is one, and they are six, and together they are seven."

"Well now, that clears it right up," Dol said.

"Satan's minions, that's what they are. And there is one directly from Satan, and there are six that he made. That allows seven. They can kill others, but they can only make so many, and seven is their number. If they were vampires, or ghouls, they could make more, but the hairy things, they can only make seven."

"Who made that rule?" Mary said.

"My guess is the gentleman in charge," Jebidiah said.

"God?" Dol said.

"He likes his little games," the Reverend said. "They have no rhyme or reason to us, or perhaps to him, but, they are his games and they are real and they effect us all. Seven. That is the number for the hairy ones."

"How do you know that?" Mary asked.

"I've seen more than I would like, read tomes that are not that delightful to read."

"So you seen it, or you read about it?" Mary said.

"In this case, I read about it."

"So you ain't had no practical experience on the matter?" Mary said.

"On this, no. On things like it, yes."

"Well, Mary said, "I hope this is some like them other things, or otherwise, we can bend over now and look up between our legs and piss on ourselves."

--

The night grew heavy and the shadow fled through all parts of the town. In the hotel, and in the other buildings, it was nothing more than a dark, cool fog, a malaise that swept over Jebidiah and Mary. Jebidiah removed the barrier from the setting-room door, and as he did, the clock ticked eight thirty. Dol and the other ghosts returned to what substituted for lives; the limbo of the hotel; the existence of the not-quite-gone and the not-quite-present.

Jebidiah led his horse out of the sitting room, into the saloon. In there they watched the ghosts for a moment, and then Jebidiah took a candle from one of the tables where it was melted to a saucer, broke the saucer free, and put the candle in his pocket. He found two kerosene lamps with kerosene still in them, and gave those to Mary to carry. He and Mary went up the stairs to the hotel room where Jebidiah's whisky resided. Jebidiah led his horse up there with him. The animal was reluctant at first, but then made the stairs easily and finally arrived at the landing, snorting in protest.

When Jebidiah looked down on the hotel, the dark fog had lay down on the floor like a black-velvet carpet, was slowly seeping out of sight into the wood.

"You don't go far without that horse, do you?" Mary said, causing Jebidiah to turn his head and look.

"I'll save him if I can. No use leaving him to be eaten. He's the best horse I ever had. Smart. Brave. Worth more than most humans."

"That may be true, but he just shit on the floor. And it smells like a horse stall now."

"We'll live with it."

They went into the bedroom, Jebidiah leading his horse. He let go of the animal and took Mary's umbrella off the bed and pulled out his pocketknife, and began to whittle pieces off of it.

"I'm glad you got a hobby," Mary said. "Me, I'm scared shitless."

"And so am I. Whittling relaxes me. Especially when it has a purpose."

"What purpose?"

"These little shards of oak. For it to affect the wolves, it has to bear some of the wood's insides. Oak itself, that doesn't do it. Shaved oak. Sharpened oak. Anything that takes the husk off and shows the meat of the tree."

"What you gonna do, chase them down and poke them with that little stuff? I don't see you're doing no good."

"I'm going to take these little fragments, and I'm going to make them smaller. Then I'm going to take my bullets, use my pocketknife to noodle a small hole in the tips of the loads. I'm going to put wood fragments in those little holes, then, I'm going to take this--" He produced the candle from his pocket. "I'm going to seal the little wood-shaving-stuffed holes with wax. When I shoot these guns, the oak goes into the wolves along with the bullets."

"Ain't you the smart one?" Mary said, and she took a swig from Jebidiah's bottle.

He took it from her. "No more. We had best have our wits about us."

Mary said, "You want, you could knock you off a piece. No charge."

"I would hardly have my wits about me doing that, now would I?"

"Reckon not. Just a friendly offer."

"And a fine one. But I fear I'll have to pass."

Jebidiah went back to whittling, but not before he waved a match under the bottom of the candle and stuck it up on the nightstand and lit the wick. When he finished whittling, the wax was soft. He went to work inserting the miniature wood shavings, sealing them with wax. Mary helped.

Howls came down from the piney hills and filled the streets and filled the Gentleman's Hotel.

"They're coming," Jebidiah said.

--

Jebidiah went out on the landing, looked down. The ghosts had gone, except Dol, and he had wandered behind the bar and laid down flat on the floor. The wolves couldn't hurt him, but Jebidiah assumed he didn't want to see them. Dead or not, he still knew fear. Jebidiah watched his silent, still, white figure for a while, then returned to the room and closed the door. He hefted the revolvers in their holsters. They were packing his specially prepared bullets. He had done the same for his Winchester ammunition. And he had done it for his gun-belt reloads until the wax ran out. The umbrella he had whittled on was little more now than a thin, sharp stick, as Jebidiah had torn off the umbrella itself, and worked on the shaft with his knife.

Mary sat in the center of the bed. He had given her the rifle.

She said, "You know, I can't hit the back end of an elephant with a tossed shot glass."

"Wait until they're close."

"Jesus," Mary said.

"He'll be of no help," Jebidiah said. "Put your faith in that Winchester."

"Maybe they won't know we're here," Mary said.

"They'll know. They're hungry. They can smell us."

The sound of Mary swallowing was as loud as a cough.

--

Jebidiah sat in a chair by the window and watched Mary, who had fallen asleep. He was surprised she could sleep. Every nerve in his body was crawling. He lit one of the lanterns and put it on the floor by his chair, then sat back down, took out his pocket watch. He popped the metal cover and looked at it. Even as he watched the hands crawled from eight-thirty to nine. He took a breath, shut his eyes, looked again. It had already moved five minutes past. He went to the window and looked out. Something moved across the street, through the low-hanging shadow that had mostly seeped into the ground, like a dark oil of evil. Jebidiah had gotten only a glance, but it was something big and hairy, and it had moved from the far side of the street to the back of the hotel. His horse stirred in the corner of the room, where it had taken up residence by backing its ass against the wall.

Jebidiah took a breath and moved away from the window. He went over and stroked the horse's nose, then went to the door, opened it, stepped out on the landing.

It was dead dark down there and he couldn't see a thing. Not even Dol lying behind the bar; perhaps he had gone wherever the others had gone, some other part of the town, all scrunched up and wadded together in a mass of white mist in a closet somewhere. He could see that the door to the hotel was partially opened. When they had come into the hotel, he had closed it.

Jebidiah stood there for a long time, one hand on the rail, looking down. Gradually his eyes became somewhat more adjusted. He thought he saw something moving near the bar.

There was a shape.

It was still.

Perhaps it was nothing.

All right, Jebidiah thought, it's not like they don't know we're here. He took a small Bible from the inside of his coat pocket and tore off the front page and took out a wooden match, struck it, lit the paper and dropped it.

In the falling light of the paper, which lasted briefly, he saw the shape was not just a shadow, but was in fact a thing. Dark fur was glimpsed, hot, yellow eyes, teeth, and then the beast was moving, darting around the bar, heading for the stairs, climbing two or three steps at a bound. In that brief moment, Jebidiah saw that there was another in the corner. A large beast with even larger, yellow eyes. That would be the King Wolf, he thought, the one who would command the others, the one who would send them on their missions.

Jebidiah stepped to the mouth of the stairway and pulled his revolver, pointed it casually and comfortably at the shape that was bounding up the stairs, its chest covered in a metal Spanish breastplate. In the darkness he could only tell it was there, couldn't make out features, could catch glimpses of that breastplate by the thin moonlight that came through the hotel windows. He aimed a little low, toward the groin, so that when he pulled the trigger on the Colt .45 it bucked and rode up, throwing the bullet into the upper part of the thing's body, clanging the armor, but traveling through it. The beast grunted, twisted slightly, kept coming. White smoke twisted up from its breastplate where the bullet had gone in, and from its back where it had come out.

Jebidiah cocked back the hammer again, thought, My God, I hit it straight on. A .45 slug should have knocked him down the stairs and on his ass, flat, breastplate or no breastplate.

The Colt jumped again, a burst of red flame coughed from the barrel, the bullet struck the beast in the face just as it reached the top of the stairs and was within six inches of Jebidiah's gun barrel. There was a barking sound. The beast twisted and slammed against the wall and rolled down the stairs, smashed through the railing, bounced onto the bar and lay silent and dark in the shadows.

One, thought Jebidiah.

He looked down into the shadows, but couldn't really make out much. He thought he still saw the shape lying there, but he wasn't sure. He glanced toward the corner of the room. The King Wolf moved. And it was like Dol said. It seemed to move with some of the moves torn out. One moment it was in the corner, the next it was consumed by shadows.

Okay. One down. Maybe.

He squinted and looked again. He couldn't be sure what was down there. He had hit it solid, and with the oak in the bullet, so he thought perhaps he had done the old boy in.

The front door of the hotel burst open wider and in came four hairy, black shapes, moving so fast it was hard to realize at first what they were. They leaped about, two hitting the stairs and coming up fast, another striking the wall, moving along the side of it, scuttling there with its claws like a giant, hairy roach. The fifth was running on all fours up the railing.

Jebidiah shot at the one on the railing, hit it in the head and saw it fall, but now the others were coming at top speed. Jebidiah felt his nerves grow taut, about to snap.

Red flames and a loud bark came from his left and one of the wolves on the stairway fell and hit the other and they both went tumbling through the already-damaged railing. One hit the floor and didn't move, the other scrambled, ran in a circle like a frightened dog.

Jebidiah glanced left. It was Mary with the rifle. He grabbed her elbow and twisted her and pushed her through the open doorway and into the room and slammed the door even as the beast running alongside the wall--causing plaster and wood to fly every which way from its claws--climbed to the ceiling, turned upside down and scuttled across that. They heard the creature drop to the floor outside the doorway, heard its breathing, loud as the pumping of blacksmith bellows.

Then it hit the door, knocking a large gap in it. But as it did it screeched and drew back its paw. There was a roar and the sound of something clambering wildly on the landing.

Inside the room, the horse reared and came down hard on the floor with its hooves. Jebidiah feared he had made a mistake bringing the horse up there with them. It could do as much damage to them as the wolves if it became frightened.

Well, maybe not that much.

Mary stood staring at the gap in the door. "What happened?"

"The door is oak. He snagged his arm on it, a sharp piece of wood."

"Then they can't come through?"

"I think they can, just not easily."

"Did I kill the one I shot?"

"I don't know. I think the bullet still has to strike a vital organ, and if it does, the oak splinter in it should act like poison. But maybe it has got to be a solid hit. Not just a leg, a shoulder. But the heart. The brain. Liver. Something like that. Looked to me you had a good shot, right in the head. But it was dark. It happened so fast . . . I can't say for sure."

Jebidiah went over and took his horse's reins and pulled at them gently and stroked the horse's nose. Its eyes rolled wildly and it lifted its nose and dropped it back down, repeated the motion numerous times. Slowly the horse calmed.

They stood for a while, then sat on the edge of the bed, facing the door, guns in hand.

Nothing.

The night crawled on.

Mary said, "It couldn't have been midnight. Not already. My God, did you see those things?"

Jebidiah took out his watch, looked at it in the lantern glow. The hands indicated two a.m.

"I thought it was just after nine," he said. "Advantage to this limbo time is that it will be day soon, and then time will slow. They don't come out in the day."

"You know that for a fact?"

"No," Jebidiah said. "I don't."

--

They had sat for only a moment when they heard a kind of scratching sound, coming from the street. Jebidiah went to the window to look out, saw nothing. But the sound increased. He leaned against the window glass and looked down. Something was coming up the side of the wall. He opened the window quickly, stuck his head out. A wolf was scratching its way up, moving fast, its head lifted to look up at Jebidiah. It was almost on him.

Jebidiah grabbed up the lantern, flung it out the window and down on the wolf. Flames burst in all directions and rose up on the thing's head like a dunce hat of flame, whipped about and caught the fur on fire. The beast let go with its front paws, slapped at the flames, held itself out from the side of the building with its back claws, then lost purchase. First one foot came loose, then the other, and it fell. It dropped in a twist of fire, hit the ground on its back, rolled on its belly. The flames licked down and along its spine and it screeched and crawled along the street, then went still in the middle of it. The flames lapped its fur clean and cooked the charred meat and the meat fell off in puddles; then there were only the bones, blackened and smoking. The eye sockets in the thick wolf skull chugged out wafts of dark smoke that rose up to the sky and made little black, dissipating mushroom shapes. The skull shifted and cracked and fell apart. Jebidiah blinked. It was the skeleton of a man now. The wolf bones had twisted and changed.

Jebidiah, trembling slightly, pulled his head in. "They don't like fire," he said. "That and oak splinters. Make a note."

Mary had moved to the window to stand beside him. She looked down at the bones in the street. "Noted," she said, but the word sounded as if she were clearing her throat.

--

Jebidiah reloaded his six-gun. "If I got one with a shot, and you got one, and now there's this dead one in the street, we've done all right so far."

"If? So we either have four left, or six," Mary said.

"That sounds about right," Jebidiah said. "And we haven't even seen the big boy, the pack leader. Least not well. He might be a whole different kettle of fish. One thing is for sure, he lets his boys do the dirty work."

"What time is it?"

Jebidiah looked. "Damn," he said.

"What?"

"The watch. It's moving backwards. It's midnight again."

--

Jebidiah thought: If we can last until morning, it won't matter if we stop them all. Perhaps then I can catch them where they sleep, someplace dark and well hidden, most likely. But if I can get them now, I can be sure. I won't have to search for them. Of course, there's the problem of time. It moves forward and backward. It could do that until we are hunted down, eaten, shat out brown and greasy on a distant hill.

He walked up and down the floor, stopping now and then to soothe the horse that now he wished he had not bothered with. Yet, the thought of leaving a fine animal to the monsters, that wasn't good, couldn't do that. Even God, the old sonofabitch, might appreciate a good horse.

He paced and he thought and he felt his nerves twist around inside of him, his feelings and impressions coming fast like rifle shots, jumping from one thought to another. Mary was sitting dead center in the bed, the rifle across her knees, watching the split in the door, turning her head now and then to look behind her, toward the open window, out into the night which seemed to have gone more dark and bleak than before, leaving only thin silver moonlight.

Jebidiah went to the window and looked out. The bones were still there.

He walked across the room, trying to make himself sit and rest. But he couldn't do it, felt like he had drank two or three pots of coffee. Shit. Coffee. That would be good right now. Some bacon and eggs. Hell, he was hungry enough to eat the ass out of a menstruating mule.

What was that? A flutter?

A moth beat at the window.

Okay. A moth. No problem there. It moved beneath the window and through the gap where Jebidiah had opened it to drop one of the lanterns. The remaining lantern hung from a hook in the ceiling and bled pollen-yellow light all over the place.

Jebidiah watched the moth. It was a big one and dark of wing and fuzzy. It flew into the room over the bed, up against the ceiling where it flittered about, the lantern light causing its shadow to flick and swell and flap along the wall. Jebidiah turned to look at the shadow and the shadow seemed larger than before. Jebidiah felt something move on the back of his neck, like prickly pear needles. It was his hair, standing on end. He turned to look at the moth again, up there on the ceiling, and it was a wolf; it had shifted shape. It clung upside down over the bed and Mary. Jebidiah wheeled, cross drew pistols and fired rapidly. One. Two. Three.

Mary was moving then, off the bed, running across the floor.

The wolf dropped, hit the bed, blew slats and frame in all directions, tossing fur and flesh, scattering dry bones. Then the door was hit, and Jebidiah caught a glimpse of a big yellow eye through the rent in the wood. He jerked off a shot. Mary wheeled toward the door, fired and cocked the rifle and fired and cocked the rifle and fired again, banging holes through the door. Outside the door came a noise like someone sticking a hot branding iron up a bull's ass.

The horse ran around the room, nearly knocking Jebidiah and Mary over. The door banged. Another bang, louder this time, and the frame cracked and the door came flying in. Two of the wolves bounded in.

The horse went wild. It reared. It slammed its hooves down on one of the wolves. The beast was driven beneath it. It latched its teeth into the horse's belly. The horse bolted toward the door, clattered through it, dragging the wolf beneath it as it went. Jebidiah could hear his mount clattering down the stairs, then there was a breaking sound, and Jebidiah knew the horse had lost its step and gone through the railing. He could hear a cracking sound as it fell, the horrible noise of a horse screaming.

He didn't have time to consider it. The other wolf was there. The revolvers bucked in his hands and the wolf took two shots in the teeth and the teeth flew like piano ivory. Mary, who had dropped to her knees, was cocking and firing with amazing accuracy, hitting the staggering beast with shot after shot in the chest. One went low and took off his balls. The wolf fell backwards, skidded, hit the wall, slammed up against it in a sitting position. Immediately it transformed. Its characteristics changed. The snout dove back into its face. The ears shrunk. Hair dropped off. A moment later where the odd version of a wolf had been was a naked Conquistador. Flesh fell off its frame like greasy bacon and its bones clattered to the floor like a handful of dice.

They waited.

They breathed.

They continued to look toward the gaping doorway.

Nothing.

Just silence.

After a long time Jebidiah picked up the lantern and carried it out on the landing, pistol at the ready. Nothing jumped him.

He walked to the railing and dangled the lantern over it and looked down. His horse lay dead with its back broken across the bar. The wolf was not visible. Without fire or oak splinters, it had survived the fall.

He waved the lantern around, saw the bones of two other wolves. The ones he and Mary had shot on the stairway. All right, he thought, that's good. One in the street. Two in the room. And two out here. That's five. Two left. One of them the big guy.

Jebidiah saw movement. Something white. Or gray. It was Dol. He was gliding up the stairs.

"Why are you hiding?" Jebidiah said. "They can't hurt you now."

"It's a habit," Dol said, more or less standing on the landing beside Jebidiah. "I still think they can hurt me, even though I know they can't. There ain't no reason to it, but that's the way it is."

"So why did you come out now?"

"To tell you the big fella's coming. I can sense it. And he's mad. He ain't got but one wolf left. Thing is, he can make five others. That means you and her or two more. Least that's the way I see it from what you've told me. Long as there's six he can't make no more. But now for fresh meat. Fresh wolves. Put a gun in your mouth. Don't let him take you like he did them Conquistadores. You did them a favor. But don't let the big boy or the last wolf have you, boy. You won't like it."

"Thanks for the warning," Jebidiah said. "So there are just the two? We got the others?"

"Yep." Dol lifted his ghostly hat, slid past Jebidiah, across the floor and melted into the wall.

Jebidiah turned to see Mary in the doorway with the rifle.

"Dol," he said.

"I heard," she said. "Jeb?"

"Yeah," he said, as the two of them moved back inside the room.

"Looks like I ain't gonna make it . . . shoot me."

"We'll make it."

"Promise. You'll shoot me."

"We'll make it."

"Promise."

"It looks bad, you got my word."

"And if I can, I'll do the same for you."

"Well, just do not be in any hurry. I am in no rush. Make damn sure the end is nigh."

--

No sooner had they ceased speaking than they heard steps on the stairs. The lantern light gave the room a soft glow. A cool wind came through the open window and blew against their backs. Jebidiah said, "You turn, watch the window. See a moth, a bird, a bat, if you can hit it, shoot it."

"I can't hit it," she said. "I have to be standing right in front of it to hit it."

"You've done well enough tonight."

"Once with luck, once because no one could miss, not even a blind man."

"Well, if it's small, swat it."

They went silent again. Boards creaked on the landing.

Jebidiah wiped his hand on his coat, took hold of his revolver again. Then he did the same with the other hand. He pointed both revolvers in the direction of the door.

A slat of darkness fell into the room, but Jebidiah couldn't see its source in the hall. The shadowy slat began to move, a kind of oily thing that took shape, flowed over the floor, rose up large and solid.

It was a wolf thing with barred teeth. Jebidiah had been so amazed, he had done nothing, and now the wolf was on him. It came at him so hard it knocked him across the room, to the window, forcing him through the opening.

He fell. A boot caught on the window frame. The wolf leaned way out and grabbed him, pulled him up by his pants legs. Its mouth opened so wide Jebidiah felt as if he could see all the way to Hell. Its breath was every dead thing and rotten thing that had ever existed. It was about to bite him in the crotch.

Mary's rifle cracked two times and the wolf let him go. Jebidiah fell, twisting to land on his back with a white puff of dust. He hit so hard his breath was knocked out and he was unconscious.

When he awoke, he realized he had only been out for moments. He could hear screaming in the room upstairs. He moved, and it hurt to do so. His back felt as if it were on fire. He eased to a sitting position and tried flexing his legs. They still worked. All of him worked. His head ached as if he had been on a ten-day drunk.

He found his revolvers in the dust. Started back toward the hotel.

The screaming stopped with a loud shot. Jebidiah looked up. The wolf thing was at the window now, its snout dripping blood. It crawled out the window and scuttled down the side of the hotel toward Jebidiah.

Jebidiah opened fire. Hit the beast in the head the moment it dropped to the ground, a good shot just above the left eye.

The thing charged him. Jebidiah dropped the revolvers and grabbed at the wolf's shoulders, pushing away its head, its snapping teeth. He fell back, placing his boot in the creature's stomach, kicked up, launching the wolf.

When Jebidiah whirled to his feet and snatched up the revolvers, the wolf lay in the dirt. Not moving. Jebidiah realized his shots had been well placed, if slow in having effect.

The wolf lost fur, changed shape, shifted to a naked Conquistador. The flesh fell off, and instantly it was nothing but bones scattered in the street.

--

When Jebidiah had reloaded his revolvers, he walked around to the front door of the hotel, stood for a moment in the street. The door to the hotel was still wide open. He eased inside, pistols at the ready. He thought about Mary, took a deep breath, started up the stairs. Every step he took made a squeak. He thought he saw a shadow move on the landing. He squinted, saw nothing solid. But the wallpaper appeared darkly stained in one spot, and he had a feeling that his huckleberry was there, part of the shadows, part of the wallpaper.

Easing on up, he paused, turned his head like a curious dog. The spot on the wall moved, and as it did it swelled. It was the great wolf, easily eight feet tall. It clacked its claws as it walked. It bent slightly at the waist and stood at the top of the stairs.

"Could not wait, could you?" Jebididah said. "Too impatient."

The King Wolf's ears flicked, its tongue came out of its mouth and licked at the air and lapped across its own snout.

"You are not tasting me yet," Jebidiah said.

And then the King Wolf bent forward and came down on its front paws in a dive, came down the stairs at a run. Jebidiah's pistols barked, once each, and then the King Wolf hit him and he went tumbling backwards, step by step, landing at the base of the stairs.

He looked up. Smoke was twisting out of the King Wolf's body where the bullets had struck and it seemed frozen on the stairs, and he could see the creature better. It was unlike the others. Not only bigger, but there was a peculiar countenance about the horror that made Jebidiah feel as if he were in the presence of Satan himself.

And unlike the others, the bullets had done damage, but the King Wolf had been able to take it. Jebidiah got to his feet in a kind of shuffle, backed towards the door, the pistols held before him, his back aching, his side on fire. So far he had fallen out of a window and been knocked down a flight of stairs and he could still walk, so he felt he was doing well enough. And he hadn't even added in the werewolves.

When he was in the street, the doorway of the Gentleman's Hotel filled with the King Wolf's shape. It stood on its hind legs and its cock and balls swung about when it moved as if they were a clockwork mechanism. It bent its head to accommodate the doorway and moved out into the street, its teeth dripped saliva in thick strings.

"Guess it's you and me, Mr. Wolf. I know your boss. Both of them. One high, one low. I have not got such a great opinion of either."

The King Wolf charged off the hotel porch and into the street on its hind legs. Jebidiah fired with his revolvers, two shots, and though the shots had effect, they didn't stop the beast.

Jebidiah bolted and ran. He felt pain in every muscle, but fear of what was about to happen was stronger than pain. He ran. He ran fast. He was nearly to the overturned stagecoach when he looked back to find that the King Wolf was loping along rapidly, closing the gap. He could feel its burning breath on the back of his neck.

Jebidiah jumped up on the stage, dove through the open side window, dropped down inside. The King Wolf's face dunked into the open space and it let out with a wild howl that shook Jebidiah's already tormented insides.

Jebidiah let loose with both revolvers. Firing twice.

King Wolf jerked back. Jebidiah quickly began to reload. He had three bullets in one revolver when the thing showed itself again. Jebidiah fired a shot that hit the King Wolf solid in the forehead, made a hole and smoke twisted up from the hole, but the beast took the shot and didn't pull back. It stuck an arm through, caught Jebidiah by the ankle, jerked him up and out of the stage window, banging his head and causing him to drop one of his revolvers as he was pulled free.

King Wolf held Jebidiah high above the ground with one hand, its face easing closer toward him. Slowly. Making the triumphant moment last. The King Wolf's mouth opened wide.

Jebidiah jerked up the loaded revolver he still clutched in his fists, and fired his last shots straight into the King Wolf's open mouth.

The King Wolf snapped its mouth shut. Smoke came out of its nostrils. It stepped back a step. It opened its mouth so wide Jebidiah could hear the bones in its jaws pop. And then the King Wolf dropped Jebidiah on his head. The Reverend rolled and came up with the empty revolver. He supported himself on one knee, began reloading, glad he still had some wax-and-wood-shaving shells left, not happy that it seemed to be taking him forever to fumble the bullets into the gun. He glanced up fearfully as he loaded. The King Wolf was stepping backwards, slowly. Then it paused, its head tilted . . . and fell off, splatting heavily into the street, rolling over and over, losing hair, showing nothing but a skull, white as purity.

The rest of the torso fell over.

Finally, thought Jebidiah, the accumulated bullets, the shavings, have done their duty.

The great cold shadow rose out of the ground and filled the street. Jebidiah stood. The shadow rose thick and to the height of his neck, then the shadow fled, and with its passing came a cool wind, and when the wind was gone, there was nothing in the street, not even the shadow, which was melting into the tree line at the far end of the town.

The King Wolf was gone. There was only a twist of fur flying by. It clung to his cheek for a moment, then was blown away.

Out of the hotel came the white wraiths that had hidden there, among them the more solid Dol. All of the spirits rose up toward the sky, toward the stars, gathered into a fluffy, white formation that fled upward to join the Milky Way. In a moment they were all gone and the stars in the sky winked out like snuffed candles. The sun rose as if out of the ground and took a position at high noon immediately. The sky turned blue. White clouds boiled across it quickly, and then stopped, looking like mounds of mashed potatoes on a shiny blue china plate.

Jebidiah turned his head toward a sound. Birds chirping in a tree on the edge of the north end of the street. Brightly colored birds so thick that at first Jebidiah thought they were fall leaves gone red and yellow and blue and golden. The birds made a sudden burst to the sky, as if confetti had been tossed, and the sunlight behind them made them look strange and otherworldly.

--

In the hotel room Jebidiah found Mary. She lay on the floor. She had the rifle under her chin. She had managed to pull the trigger, shooting herself. He could see why. She had been bit all over. Maybe she had been in time. He decided to make sure.

He took her body out to the street, then brought the mattress out. He broke up chairs from the hotel and made a bonfire and got it started and put the mattress on that, put Mary's body on top of the mattress. He leaned against the stagecoach and watched her burn. When there was nothing left, he went up the hill to the trees where Dol had said the graveyard was. He saw it and walked among it, went up the hill and into the deeper trees where he found gutted graves. The wolves' graves. He used his pocketknife to shave off pieces of oak, and he made crosses from them, tying them together with strips of cloth from his shirt. One cross for each grave. Just in case. He tore pages out of his Bible and put those in the graves with them. Another just-in-case.

He went back to the hotel and got his saddle and saddlebags off of his dead horse, threw it over his shoulder, went out into the street and started walking south.

A crow followed, flying just above him, casting a shadow.

GOD OF THE RAZOR

Richards arrived at the house about eight.

The moon was full and it was a very bright night, in spite of occasional cloud cover; bright enough that he could get a good look at the place. It was just as the owner had described it. Run down. Old. And very ugly.

The style was sort of gothic, sort of plantation, sort of cracker box. Like maybe the architect had been unable to decide on a game plan, or had been drunkenly in love with impossible angles.

Digging the key loaned him from his pocket, he hoped this would turn out worth the trip. More than once his search for antiques had turned into a wild goose chase. And this time, it was really a long shot. The owner, a sick old man named Klein, hadn't been inside the house in twenty years. A lot of things could happen to antiques in that time, even if the place was locked and boarded up. Theft. Insects. Rats. Leaks. Any one of those, or a combination of, could turn the finest of furniture into rubble and sawdust in no time. But it was worth the gamble. On occasion, his luck had been phenomenal.

As a thick, dark cloud rolled across the moon, Richards, guided by his flashlight, mounted the rickety porch, squeaked the screen and groaned the door open.

Inside, he flashed the light around. Dust and darkness seemed to crawl in there until the cloud passed and the lunar light fell through the boarded windows in a speckled and slatted design akin to camouflaged netting. In places, Richards could see that the wallpaper had fallen from the wall in big sheets that dangled halfway down to the floor like the drooping branches of weeping willows.

To his left was a wide, spiraling staircase, and following its ascent with his light, he could see there were places where the railing hung brokenly askew.

Directly across from this was a door. A narrow, recessed one. As there was nothing in the present room to command his attention, he decided to begin his investigation there. It was as good a place as any.

Using his flashlight to bat his way through a skin of cobwebs, he went over to the door and opened it. Cold air embraced him, brought with it a sour smell, like a freezer full of ruined meat. It was almost enough to turn Richards' stomach, and for a moment he started to close the door and forget it. But an image of wall-to-wall antiques clustered in the shadows came to mind, and he pushed forward, determined. If he were going to go to all the trouble to get the key and drive way out here in search of old furniture to buy, then he ought to make sure he had a good look, smell or no smell.

Using his flash, and helped by the moonlight, he could tell that he had discovered a basement. The steps leading down into it looked aged and precarious, and the floor appeared oddly glass-like in the beam of his light.

So he could examine every nook and cranny of the basement, Richards decided to descend the stairs. He put one foot carefully on the first step, and slowly settled his weight on it. Nothing collapsed. He went down three more steps, cautiously, and though they moaned and squeaked, they held.

When Richards reached the sixth step, for some reason he could not define, he felt oddly uncomfortable, had a chill. It was as if someone with ice-cold water in their kidneys had taken a piss down the back of his coat collar.

Now he could see that the floor was not glassy at all. In fact, the floor was not visible. The reason it had looked glassy from above was because it was flooded with water. From the overall size of the basement, Richards determined that the water was most likely six or seven feet deep. Maybe more.

There was movement at the edge of Richards' flashlight beam, and he followed it. A huge rat was swimming away from him, pushing something before it; an old partially deflated volleyball perhaps. He could not tell for sure. Nor could he decide if the rat was trying to mount the object or bite it.

And he didn't care. Two things that gave him the willies were rats and water, and here were both. To make it worse, the rats were the biggest he'd ever seen, and the water was the dirtiest imaginable. It looked to have a lot of oil and sludge mixed in with it, as well as being stagnant.

It grew darker, and Richards realized the moon had been hazed by a cloud again. He let that be his signal. There was nothing more to see here, so he turned and started up. Stopped. The very large shape of a man filled the doorway.

Richards jerked the light up, saw that the shadows had been playing tricks on him. The man was not as large as he'd first thought. And he wasn't wearing a hat. He had been certain before that he was, but he could see now that he was mistaken. The fellow was bareheaded, and his features, though youthful, were undistinguished; any character he might have had seemed to retreat into the flesh of his face or find sanctuary within the dark folds of his shaggy hair. As he lowered the light, Richards thought he saw the wink of braces on the young man's teeth.

"Basements aren't worth a damn in this part of the country," the young man said. "Must have been some Yankees come down here and built this. Someone who didn't know about the water table, the weather and all."

"I didn't know anyone else was here," Richards said. "Klein send you?"

"Don't know a Klein."

"He owns the place. Loaned me a key."

The young man was silent a moment. "Did you know the moon is behind a cloud? A cloud across the moon can change the entire face of the night. Change it the way some people change their clothes, their moods, their expressions."

Richards shifted uncomfortably.

"You know," the young man said, "I couldn't shave this morning."

"Beg pardon?"

"When I tried to put a blade in my razor, I saw that it had an eye on it, and it was blinking at me, very fast. Like this... oh, you can't see from down there, can you? Well, it was very fast. I dropped it and it slid along the sink, dove off on the floor, crawled up the side of the bathtub and got in the soap dish. It closed its eye then, but it started mewing like a kitten wanting milk. Ooooowwwwaaa, Oooowwwaa, was more the way it sounded really, but it reminded me of a kitten. I knew what it wanted, of course. What it always wants. What all the sharp things want.

"Knowing what it wanted made me sick and I threw up in the toilet. Vomited up a razor blade. It was so fat it might have been pregnant. Its eye was blinking at me as I flushed it. When it was gone the blade in the soap dish started to sing high and silly-like.

"The blade I vomited, I know how it got inside of me." The young man raised his fingers to his throat. "There was a little red mark right here this morning, and it was starting to scab over. One or two of them always find a way in. Sometimes it's nails that get in me. They used to come in through the soles of my feet while I slept, but I stopped that pretty good by wearing my shoes to bed."

In spite of the cool of the basement, Richards had started to sweat. He considered the possibility of rushing the guy or just trying to push past him, but dismissed it. The stairs might be too weak for sudden movement, and maybe the fruitcake might just have his say and go on his way.

"It really doesn't matter how hard I try to trick them," the young man continued, "they always win out in the end. Always."

"I think I'll come up now," Richards said, trying very hard to sound casual.

The young man flexed his legs. The stairs shook and squealed in protest. Richards nearly toppled backward into the water.

"Hey!" Richards yelled.

"Bad shape," the young man said. "Need a lot of work. Rebuilt entirely would be the ticket."

Richards regained both his balance and his composure. He couldn't decide if he was angry or scared, but he wasn't about to move. Going up he had rotten stairs and Mr. Looney Tunes. Behind him he had the rats and water. The proverbial rock and a hard place.

"Maybe it's going to cloud up and rain," the young man said. "What do you think? Will it rain tonight?"

"I don't know," Richards managed.

"Lot of dark clouds floating about. Maybe they're rain clouds. Did I tell you about the God of the Razor? I really meant to. He rules the sharp things. He's the god of those who live by the blade. He was my friend. Donny's god. Did you know he was Jack the Ripper's god?"

The young man dipped his hand into his coat pocket, pulled it out quickly and whipped his arm across his body twice, very fast. Richards caught a glimpse of something long and metal in his hand. Even the cloud-veiled moonlight managed to give it a dull, silver spark.

Richards put the light on him again. The young man was holding the object in front of him, as if he wished it to be examined. It was an impossibly large straight razor.

"I got this from Donny," the young man said. "He got it in an old shop somewhere. Gladewater, I think. It comes from a barber kit, and the kit originally came from England. Says so in the case. You should see the handle on this baby. Ivory. With a lot of little designs and symbols carved into it. Donny looked the symbols up. They're geometric patterns used for calling up a demon. Know what else? Jack the Ripper was no surgeon. He was a barber. I know, because Donny got the razor and started having these visions where Jack the Ripper and the God of the Razor came to talk to him. They explained what the razor was for. Donny said the reason they could talk to him was because he tried to shave with the razor and cut himself. The blood on the blade, and those symbols on the handle, they opened the gate. Opened it so the God of the Razor could come and live inside Donny's head. The Ripper told him that the metal in the blade goes all the way back to a sacrificial altar the Druids used."

The young man stopped talking, dropped the blade to his side. He looked over his shoulder. "That cloud is very dark... slow moving. I sort of bet on rain." He turned back to Richards. "Did I ask you if you thought it would rain tonight?"

Richards found he couldn't say a word. It was as if his tongue had turned to cork in his mouth. The young man didn't seem to notice or care.

"After Donny had the visions, he just talked and talked about this house. We used to play here when we were kids. Had the boards on the back window rigged so they'd slide like a trap door. They're still that way... Donny used to say this house had angles that sharpened the dull edges of your mind. I know what he means now. It is comfortable, don't you think?"

Richards, who was anything but comfortable, said nothing. Just stood very still, sweating, fearing, listening, aiming the light.

"Donny said the angles were honed best during the full moon. I didn't know what he was talking about then. I didn't understand about the sacrifices. Maybe you know about them? Been all over the papers and on the TV. The Decapitator they called him.

"It was Donny doing it, and from the way he started acting, talking about the God of the Razor, Jack the Ripper, this old house and its angles, I got suspicious. He got so he wouldn't even come around near or during a full moon, and when the moon started waning, he was different. Peaceful. I followed him a few times, but didn't have any luck. He drove to the Safeway, left his car there and walked. He was as quick and sneaky as a cat. He'd lose me right off. But then I got to figuring... him talking about this old house and all... and one full moon I came here and waited for him, and he showed up. You know what he was doing? He was bringing the heads here, tossing them down there in the water like those South American Indians used to toss bodies and stuff in sacrificial pools... It's the angles in the house, you see."

Richards had that sensation like ice-cold piss down his collar again, and suddenly he knew what that swimming rat had been pursuing, and what it was trying to do.

"He threw all seven heads down there, I figure," the young man said. "I saw him toss one." He pointed with the razor. "He was standing about where you are now when he did it. When he turned and saw me, he ran up after me. I froze, couldn't move a muscle. Every step he took, closer he got to me, the stranger he looked... he slashed me with the razor, across the chest, real deep. I fell down and he stood over me, the razor cocked," the young man cocked the razor to show Richards. "I think I screamed. But he didn't cut me again. It was like the rest of him was warring with the razor in his hand. He stood up, and walking stiff as one of those wind-up toy soldiers, he went back down the stairs, stood about where you are now, looked up at me, and drew that razor straight across his throat so hard and deep he damn near cut his head off. He fell back in the water there, sunk like an anvil. The razor landed on the last step.

"Wasn't any use; I tried to get him out of there, but he was gone, like he'd never been. I couldn't see a ripple. But the razor was lying there and I could hear it. Hear it sucking up Donny's blood like a kid sucking the sweet out of a sucker. Pretty soon there wasn't a drop of blood on it. I picked it up... so shiny, so damned shiny. I came upstairs, passed out on the floor from the loss of blood.

"At first I thought I was dreaming, or maybe delirious, because I was lying at the end of this dark alley between these trashcans with my back against the wall. There were legs sticking out of the trashcans, like tossed mannequins. Only they weren't mannequins. There were razor blades and nails sticking out of the soles of the feet and blood was running down the ankles and legs, swirling so that they looked like giant peppermint sticks. Then I heard a noise like someone trying to dribble a medicine ball across a hardwood floor. Plop, plop, plop. And then I saw the God of the Razor.

"First there's nothing in front of me but stewing shadows, and the next instant he's there. Tall and black... not Negro... but black like obsidian rock. Had eyes like smashed windshield glass and teeth like polished stickpins. Was wearing a top hat with this shiny band made out of chrome razor blades. His coat and pants looked like they were made out of human flesh, and sticking out of the pockets of his coat were gnawed fingers, like after-dinner treats. And he had this big old turnip pocket watch dangling out of his pants pocket on a strand of gut. The watch swung between his legs as he walked. And that plopping sound, know what that was? His shoes. He had these tiny, tiny feet and they were fitted right into the mouths of these human heads. One of the heads was a woman's and it dragged long black hair behind it when the God walked.

"Kept telling myself to wake up. But I couldn't. The God pulled this chair out of nowhere-it was made out of leg bones and the seat looked like scraps of flesh and hunks of hair-and he sat down, crossed his legs and dangled one of those ragged-head shoes in my face. Next thing he does is whip this ventriloquist dummy out of the air, and it looked like Donny, and was dressed like Donny had been last time I'd seen him, down there on the stair. The God put the dummy on his knee and Donny opened his eyes and spoke. 'Hey, buddy boy,' he said, 'how goes it? What do you think of the razor's bite? You see, pal, if you don't die from it, it's like a vampire's bite. Get my drift? You got to keep passing it on. The sharp things will tell you when, and if you don't want to do it, they'll bother you until you do, or you slice yourself bad enough to come over here on the Darkside with me and Jack and the others. Well, got to go back now, join the gang. Be talking with you real soon, moving into your head.'

"Then he just sort of went limp on the God's knee, and the God took off his hat and he had this zipper running along the middle of his bald head. A goddamned zipper! He pulled it open. Smoke and fire and noises like screaming and car wrecks happening came out of there. He picked up the Donny dummy, which was real small now, and tossed him into the hole in his head way you'd toss a treat into a Great Dane's mouth. Then he zipped up again and put on his hat. Never said a word. But he leaned forward and held his turnip watch so I could see it. The watch hands were skeleton fingers, and there was a face in there, pressing its nose in little smudged circles against the glass, and though I couldn't hear it, the face had its mouth open and it was screaming, and that face was mine. Then the God and the alley and the legs in the trashcans were gone. And so was the cut on my chest. Healed completely. Not even a mark.

"I left out of there and didn't tell a soul. And Donny, just like he said, came to live in my head, and the razor started singing to me nights, probably a song sort of like those sirens sang for that Ulysses fellow. And come near and on the full moon, the blades act up, mew and get inside of me. Then I know what I need to do... I did it tonight. Maybe if it had rained I wouldn't have had to do it... but it was clear enough for me to be busy."

The young man stopped talking, turned, stepped inside the house, out of sight. Richards sighed, but his relief was short-lived. The young man returned and came down a couple of steps. In one hand, by the long blond hair, he was holding a teenaged girl's head. The other clutched the razor.

The cloud veil fell away from the moon, and it became quite bright.

The young man, with a flick of his wrist, tossed the head at Richards, striking him in the chest, causing him to drop the light. The head bounced between Richards' legs and into the water with a flat splash.

"Listen..." Richards started, but anything he might have said aged, died and turned to dust in his mouth.

Fully outlined in the moonlight, the young man started down the steps, holding the razor before him like a battle flag.

Richards blinked. For a moment it looked as if the guy were wearing a... He was wearing a hat. A tall, black one with a shiny, metal band. And he was much larger now, and between his lips was a shimmer of wet, silver teeth like thirty-two polished stickpins.

Plop, plop came the sound of his feet on the steps, and in the lower and deeper shadows of the stairs, it looked as if the young man had not only grown in size and found a hat, but had darkened his face and stomped his feet into pumpkins... But one of the pumpkins streamed long, dark hair.

Plop, plop... Richards screamed and the sound of it rebounded against the basement walls like a superball.

Shattered starlight eyes beneath the hat. A Cheshire smile of argentine needles in a carbon face. A big dark hand holding the razor, whipping it back and forth like a lion's talon snatching at warm, soft prey.

Swish, swish, swish.

Richards' scream was dying in his throat, if not in the echoing basement, when the razor flashed for him. He avoided it by stepping briskly backward. His foot went underwater, but found a step there. Momentarily. The rotting wood gave way, twisted his ankle, sent him plunging into the cold, foul wetness.

Just before his eyes, like portholes on a sinking ship, were covered by the liquid darkness, he saw the God of the Razor-now manifest in all his horrid form-lift a splitting head shoe and step into the water after him.

Richards torqued his body, swam long, hard strokes, coasted bottom; his hand touched something cold and clammy down there and a piece of it came away in his fingers.

Ripping it from him with a fan of his hand, he fought his way to the surface and broke water as the blonde girl's head bobbed in front of him, two rat passengers aboard, gnawing viciously at the eye sockets.

Suddenly, the girl's head rose, perched on the crown of the tall hat of the God of the Razor, then it tumbled off, rats and all, into the greasy water.

Now there was the jet face of the God of the Razor and his mouth was open and the teeth blinked briefly before the lips drew tight, and the other hand, like an eggplant sprouting fingers, clutched Richards' coat collar and plucked him forward and Richards-the charnel breath of the God in his face, the sight of the lips slashing wide to once again reveal brilliant dental grill work-went limp as a pelt. And the God raised the razor to strike.

And the moon tumbled behind a thick, dark cloud.

White face, shaggy hair, no hat, a fading glint of silver teeth... the young man holding the razor, clutching Richards' coat collar.

The juice back in his heart, Richards knocked the man's hand free, and the guy went under. Came up thrashing. Went under again. And when he rose this time, the razor was frantically flaying the air.

"Can't swim," he bellowed, "can't-" Under he went, and this time he did not come up. But Richards felt something touch his foot from below. He kicked out savagely, dog paddling wildly all the while. Then the touch was gone and the sloshing water went immediately calm.

Richards swam toward the broken stairway, tried to ignore the blond head that lurched by, now manned by a four-rat crew. He got hold of the loose, dangling stair rail and began to pull himself up. The old board screeched on its loosening nail, but held until Richards gained a hand on the door ledge, then it gave way with a groan and went to join the rest of the rotting lumber, the heads, the bodies, the faded stigmata of the God of the Razor.

Pulling himself up, Richards crawled into the room on his hands and knees, rolled over on his back... and something flashed between his legs... It was the razor. It was stuck to the bottom of his shoe... That had been the touch he had felt from below; the young guy still trying to cut him, or perhaps accidentally striking him during his desperate thrashings to regain the surface.

Sitting up, Richards took hold of the ivory handle and freed the blade. He got to his feet and stumbled toward the door. His ankle and foot hurt like hell where the step had given way beneath him, hurt him so badly he could hardly walk.

Then he felt the sticky, warm wetness oozing out of his foot to join the cold water in his shoe, and he knew that he had been cut by the razor.

But then he wasn't thinking anymore. He wasn't hurting anymore. The moon rolled out from behind a cloud like a colorless eye and he just stood there looking at his shadow on the lawn. The shadow of an impossibly large man wearing a top hat and balls on his feet, holding a monstrous razor in his hand.

GOOD BUDDY

The snake hit Jake in the dark. He went down. "Black mamba," he said. "I only have seconds left."

His buddy acted fast, chopped off the leg with an axe, cauterized the wound with his knife and the flames from the campfire. Jake died anyway. Wrong leg.

The End.

THE HONEYMOON

It was his sixth honeymoon, her first.

The night was clear and cold, the moon full, and he was eager.

The couple checked into a little motel just off I-20. He unlocked the door and looked at her. She was radiant. He hadn't lost his touch. He still knew how to pick them, how to get them. He could hardly wait.

The bit about carrying her over the threshold was a little silly, but always effective. Impressed them. Made them giggle. To do this right, humor was necessary. Laughter removed inhibition-and suspicion-more than any other emotion.

She was still giggling when he put her down, and another hard look at her assured him that she was undoubtedly the loveliest of his six brides. A beautiful blonde with brown, liquid eyes like a faithful pup. And she was stacked like a magazine fold-out. Everywhere you looked she offered delightful diversions to the hands. And she was compassionate. Worked with The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Somehow that was very important to him, knowing that she was compassionate. It made what was to come all the better.

Of all his brides, she had been the easiest to woo. She had had that husband-shopping look in her eyes, a look he knew well. He also knew exactly what to say and when to say it. Three weeks after they met she fell for him hook, line and sinker and accepted his proposal. Piece of cake. Tonight she became Mrs. O'Sullivan.

O'Sullivan. Nice name. He hated to give it up. It had been his favorite of all his aliases. The last two had been so, so plain. Smith and Jones. Grief!

Angela leaned forward and kissed him. Her lips burned with passion. God, he couldn't wait to get on with it.

When they finished kissing, he held her at arms length and smiled, drank in her beauty once more. For a moment he wished her complexion were not so milky. Maybe that was one flaw with her. The others had been darker skinned and the bruises hadn't shown. With her they might, and he always liked them to look like an unmarred work of art when he was finished.

For a moment he contemplated another technique, but finally decided to stick to the old tried and true thumbs behind the windpipe. It was the only method he had had success with, and now with his most beautiful specimen, there was no need to risk all by deviation. As for the bruises, he'd just have to hope for the best. Or perhaps he could tie an attractive ribbon around her throat, sort of a gift-wrapped body for the police. Yes, that definitely had possibilities. In fact, that was a perfect idea. When it was all over he'd go out for some ribbon, fix her up before leaving to call the cops.

"Why don't you get ready for bed, darling," Angela said, breaking his train of thought. "I'll change into something more comfortable."

He smiled at her. Passion stretched his veins. Soon she would be his, and during that moment when they were riding the crest of the wave, just when she thought ecstasy was hers, he'd fasten his thumbs behind her windpipe and watch the fear swell into her eyes as she realized she was on the descending end of a totally different sort of orgasm.

Oh yeah, it was his night to howl.

Angela blew him a kiss and hip-swung seductively toward the bathroom. The light went on, the door closed. He took off his clothes and slipped into bed, waited.

Beneath the sheet his hands opened and closed. A thick slab of moonlight edged through the sheer curtains. That was good. He'd be able to see her face. That was one reason he waited for a full moon. The papers had caught on to it, and referred to him as THE FULL MOON STRANGLER or THE HONEYMOON STRANGLER. He preferred the latter title, it was more romantic. Besides, he wasn't responsible for those sloppy ripper jobs that took place on the full moon, the ones that were sometimes blamed on him. He'd have to write the police about that and set them straight. Seemed to him a drastically different M.O. like that would make them realize that the killers were not one and the same, in spite of the coincidence of the full moon. Why, they had even tried to blame him for some silly killings over in Dallas that had turned out to be nothing more than husband and wife squabbles.

The bathroom door opened and Angela stood framed in the light. She was magnificent. No, that description was too cheap. There were no words to describe her.

The light shone through her gown and outlined her body-110 pounds of sexual dynamite! With the light hitting her hair that way, it made it look like a golden mane, and even from where he lay he could see her eyes sparkling with passion.

"Well," he said, "I see you've changed into something more comfortable."

She smiled and walked to the bedside. Moonlight washed in over her. Suddenly she grunted. Her face began to twist and her mouth opened impossibly wide. Her nose and lips stretched out and thickened into a snout. Ropy saliva dripped from between her sharp, bared teeth. There was a sound like snapping sticks as her body writhed, grew. The negligee burst into flimsy strands that dangled from a thick, gnarled, hairy body-the body of a huge, blonde, upright wolf!

Her voice became a hoarse parody of human speech. "Now, darling, I've changed into something more comfortable."

As she bent toward him, and the cry he wanted to make hung in his throat, he realized to his horrible dissatisfaction, that it was not, in fact, his night to howl.

IN THE COLD, DARK TIME

It was the time of the Icing, and the snow and razor winds blew across the lands and before and behind them came the war and the war went across the lands worse than the ice, like a plague, and there were those who took in the plague and died by it, or were wounded deeply by it, and I was one of the wounded, and at first I wished I was one of the dead.

I lay in bed hour on hour in the poorly heated hospital and watched the night come, then the day, then the night, then the day, and no time of night or day seemed lost to me, for I could not sleep, but could only cough out wads of blood-tainted phlegm and saliva that rose from my injured lungs like blobby bubbly monsters to remind me of my rendering flesh. I lay there and prayed for death, for I knew all my life had been lost to me, and that my job in the war was no longer mine, and when the war was over, if it was ever over, I would never return to civilized life to continue the same necessary job I had pursued during wartime. The job with the children. The poor children. Millions of them. Parentless, homeless, forever being pushed onward by the ice and the war. It was a horror to see them. Little, frost-bitten waifs without food or shelter or good coats and there was no food or shelter or good coats to give them. Nothing to offer them but the war and a cold, slow death.

There were more children than adults now, and the adults were about war and there were only a few like myself there to help them. One of the few that could be spared for the Army's Children Corp. And now I could help no one, not even myself.

In the bed beside me in the crumbling, bomb-shook hospital, was an old man with his arm blown off at the elbow and his face splotched with the familiar frost-bite of a front-line man. He lay turned toward me, staring, but not speaking. And in the night, I would turn, and there would be his eyes, lit up by the night-lamp or by the moonlight, and that glow of theirs would strike me and I would imagine they contained the sparks of incendiary bombs for melting ice, or the red-hot destruction of rockets and bullets. In the daylight the sunlight toured the perimeters of his eyes like a firefight, but the night was the worst, for then they were the brightest and the strangest.

I thought I should say something to him, but could never bring myself to utter a word because I was too lost in my misery and waiting for the change of day to night, night to day, and I was thinking of the children. Or I tell myself that now. My thoughts were mostly on me and how sad it was that a man like me had been born into a time of war and that none of what was good in me and great about me could be given to the world.

The children crossed my mind, but I must admit I saw them less as my mission in life than as crosses I had borne on my back while climbing Christlike toward the front lines. Heavy crosses that had caused me to fall hard to the ground, driving the pain into my lungs, putting me here where I would die in inches far from home.

"Why do you fret for yourself," the old man said one morning. I turned and looked at him and his eyes were as animal bright as ever and there was no expression on his crunched, little face.

"I fret for the children."

"Ah," he said. "The children. Your job in the Corp."

I said nothing in reply and he said not another word until the middle of the night when I drifted into sleep momentarily, for all my sleep was momentary, and opened my eyes to the lamp light and the cold hospital air. I pulled a Kleenex from the box beside my bed and coughed blood into it.

"You are getting better," he said.

"I'm dying," I said.

"No. You are getting better. You hardly cough at all. Your sleep is longer. You used to cough all night."

"You're a doctor, I suppose?"

"No, but I am a soldier. Or was. Now I am a useless old man with no arm."

"In the old days a man your age would have been retired or put behind a desk. Not out on the front lines."

"I suppose you're right. But this is not the old days. This is now, and I'm finished anyway because of the arm."

"And I'm finished because of my wound."

"The lungs heal faster than anything. You are only finished if you are too bitter to heal. To be old and bitter is all right. It greases the path to the other side. To be young and bitter is foolish."

"How do you know so much about me?"

"I listen to the nurses and I listen to you and I observe."

"Have you nothing else to do but meddle in my affairs?"

"No."

"Leave me be."

"I would if I could, but I'm an old man and will not live long anyway, wounded or not I have the pains of old age and no family and nothing I would be able to do if I leave here. All I know is the life of a soldier. But you will recover if you believe you will recover. It is up to you now."

"So you are a doctor?"

"An old soldier has seen wounds and sickness, and he knows a man that can get well if he chooses to get well. A coward will die. Which are you?"

I didn't answer and he didn't repeat the question. I turned my back to him and went to sleep and later in the night I heard him calling.

"Young man."

I lay there and listened but did not move.

"I think you can hear me and this may be the last I have to say on the matter. You are getting better. You sleep better. You cough less. The wound is healing. It may not matter what your attitude is now, you may heal anyway, but let me tell you this, if you heal, you must heal with your soul intact You must not lose your love for the children, no matter what you've seen. It isn't your wound that aches you, makes you want to die, it's the war. There are few who are willing to do your job, to care for the children. They need you. They run in hungry, naked packs, and all that is between them and suffering is the Children's Corp and people like you. The love of children, the need not to see them hungry and in pain, is a necessary human trait if we are to survive as a people. When, if, this war is over, it must not be a war that has poisoned our hopes for the future. Get well. Do your duty."

I lay there when he was finished and thought about all I had done for the children and thought about the war and all that had to be done afterwards, knew then that my love for the children, their needs, were the obsessions of my life. They were my reason to live, more than just living to exist I knew then that I had to let their cause stay with me, had to let my hatred of the world and the war go, because there were the children.

The next day they came and took the old man away. He had pulled the bandage off of the nub of his arm during the night and chewed the cauterized wound open with the viciousness of a tiger and had bled to death. His sheets were the color of gun-metal rust when they came for him and pulled the stained sheet over his head and rolled him away.

They brought in a young, wounded pilot then, and his eyes were cold and hard and the color of grave dirt. I spoke to him and he wouldn't speak back, but I kept at it, and finally he yelled at me, and said he didn't want to live, that he had seen too much terror to want to go on, but I kept talking to him, and soon he was chattering like a machine gun and we had long conversations into the night about women and chess and the kind of beers we were missing back home. And he told me his hopes for after the war, and I told him mine. Told him how I would get out of my bed and go back to the frontlines to help the refugee children, and after the war I would help those who remained.

A month later they let me out of the bed to wander.

I think often of the old man now, especially when the guns boom about the camp and I'm helping the children, and sometimes I think of the young man and that I may have helped do for him with a few well-placed words what the old man did for me, but mostly I think of the old one and what he said to me the night before he finished his life. It's a contradiction in a way, him giving me life and taking his own, but he knew that my life was important to the children. I wish I had turned and spoken to him, but that opportunity is long gone.

Each time they bring the sad little children in to me, one at a time, and I feed them and hold them, I pray the war will end and there will be money for food and shelter instead of the care of soldiers and the making of bullets, but wishes are wishes, and what is, is.

And when I put the scarf around the children's necks and tighten it until I have eased their pain, I am overcome with an even simpler wish for spare bullets or drugs to make it quicker, and I have to mentally close my ears to the drumming of their little feet and shut my nose to the smell of their defecation, but I know that this is the best way, a warm meal, a moment of hope, a quick, dark surrender, the only mercy available to them, and when I take the scarf from their sad, little necks and lay them aside, I think again of the old man and the life he gave me back and the mercy he gives the children through me.

JACK'S PECKER

Jack awoke to find the redhead beside him had thrown off the covers. She looked good lying there, long and lean and white. Well, not all of her was lean. There were parts of her that were full and rounded and very fine, and she had certainly been fine to him earlier, readily allowing him access to the lean parts and the rounded parts. It was a one-night stand that might have one more bonus round available.

As he looked at her body, lean and muscular, lying there on his satin sheets, he realized that he felt nothing. Sure, he had used up a lot of energy, as had she, but he felt certain that he should be able to do the deed at least one more time.

Yet, that should-be familiar tingling in his groin was absent.

Finally, he pulled back the sheets and gave himself a look.

His penis and testicles were gone. He was all smooth down there. He came out of bed in one leap, yelled loud enough the red head rolled over, but didn't awake. She merely began to snore.

Jack was of the opinion that perhaps he should scream her awake, check out her vagina, see if it had sucked up his equipment, but then he realized that was ridiculous. He had had his penis and testicles when he had finished with her, and now he didn't. Where had the little bastards gone?

Jack looked in the bathroom, and all about the house, but no dick and balls. Finally he heard the redhead awake in the bedroom, calling his name. He went to the bathroom, wrapped a towel around his waist and went to her.

"Listen," he said. "I've got a problem."

"Problem?" she said, sitting up in bed, nude, tossing back her hair with a slight shake of her head. "What kind of problem?"

"My penis is gone."

"Say what?"

He removed the towel. The redhead let out a scream.

After she left, Jack dressed, felt odd pulling on underpants and feeling no weight there. He went back to the bathroom, stood in front of the full-length mirror and pulled down his underwear, took a peak at his reflection.

No doubt about it. His penis and testicles were gone. They hadn't been hiding behind his ass. They were gone. He looked like a Ken doll. He pulled up his underwear and sat on the floor and wept.

He really liked that penis, those testicles, and now they had deserted him.

* * *

In the kitchen, he found a note.

It was written on a note pad page, and he had not noticed it before, partially because it had been covered slightly by a placemat.

He snatched up the note and read it.

Jack,

You keep me way too busy with all the girls.

I like girls as much as the next dick, but you change around too much.

I fear a disease. Besides, to be perfectly honest, I needed a rest.

All the best,

Your Penis.

P.S. Your balls say hi.

Jack spent the day walking the streets. He went to all his old haunts, thinking they too would be the haunts of his penis, knowing the penis was the brains of the trio, and besides, what could his penis know that he couldn't know?

But, alas, in all the gin joints and in all the restaurants and movie houses and places he knew, he found no sign of his penis. Girls he knew saw him and said hi, but he was too depressed to wave. He had only wanted one thing from those girls anyway, and now that was over with. You couldn't good time them or good time yourself without a penis. Oh, you had the tongue and you had your hands to do them good, but where was the good for yourself?

The only advantage he had found was that he could walk more comfortably. He had never known his dick and balls had been in the way before, and, of course, he felt light in the trousers, not an entirely uncomfortable feeling.

He went by the police station, placed a missing person report, but no answers there. They said his dick turned up, they'd give him a call.

Sitting home late at night, drinking, feeling lousy, wanting to have the warmth of his privates between his legs--for he discovered that without his equipment, he was quite cool down there, a little on the uncomfortable side--he brooded. Finally, growing colder in the crotch, he packed his underwear with cotton, went back to drinking.

As he sat there sipping, the phone rang. Reluctantly he picked it up.

On the other end was a sound like something smacking, a kind of snapping sound that he knew instinctively was the uncircumcised tip of his foreskin smacking together. The sound came again and again, repeating itself. Jack grabbed up a pen and paper, took notes. There were long smacks and short smacks.

Code.

Then the phone went dead.

Next day, with the help of a book, Jack deciphered the longs and shorts. They were in fact Morse code. He penciled down the results.

Miss me? I'm out here seeing the world.

Doing all the things you never had time to do, because you were always using me to satisfy yourself. I have a greater purpose than you've given me, and I've discovered it.

Your pecker.

P.S. Hope this doesn't cause you too much problem when you need to urinate.

Days went by, and Jack did not leave the house. He thought his pecker might call. But the phone remained dead. A week later, when the mail came through the slot in the door he found a post card. It had a picture of the Eiffel Tower on it. On the back was a note.

It read:

Having a good time. Glad you're not here. Miss me? Miss what I can do?

By the way, French food is overrated.

Sincerely,

Your Pecker and Balls.

The next card was from Germany. On the front was a shot of the Rhine river and the city of Cologne. The note was simple: Wheeeeee! Your pecker.

Jack went for days without shaving. He found he no longer had to pee. This was a plus. He kind of lost his will as well. Finally, with a last push of determination, he cleaned up and went out on the town. Hemet a very nice, but not overly attractive woman in a bar. Fact was, she was kind of pudgy. They sat and talked for hours. He discovered he was really listening. Without his pecker pushing at his pants, he was not preoccupied. He didn't worry about who saw him with her either. Before, just being seen with a not-so-beautiful girl would have embarrassed him.

But tonight . . . well, he discovered that he was enjoying himself. The girl's name was Janet and she had brown hair and she was a little plump, but she was very smart.

A week later he was still seeing her. All they did was hold hands.

Two weeks later he invited her home to his apartment.

"It doesn't matter," she said. "I like you with or without a pecker. A pecker is nice, don't misunderstand me. But, well, it's not like I've been invited to see a lot of them. Not someone plain looking like me."

They were sitting on his sofa, holding hands. He found it very comfortable, and as far as Janet being plain, she had begun to look just fine to him. He was having a hard time remembering what beautiful was or what it meant.

Next day he got a series of photographs from his pecker. In one his penis and testicles had crawled up on the statue of David in a museum in Florence. They had nestled on top of David's stone penis so that the only dick and balls available to view now were Jack's. It was kind of funny. On the back of the photo it read: Yours is bigger.

The other photos were of his dick and balls being held in the palms of young women and friendly men. Jack had no idea who was taking the photographs. Probably some volunteer.

The last couple of photographs showed his pecker sitting on a stack of phone books in a restaurant, a plate of spaghetti in front of it. The tip of his pecker was red with sauce.

The cards and notes and photographs continued to come in from all over the world. Sometimes they were taunting, sometimes merely comical.

Jack discovered he was less interested. He had his mind on other things now. Like Janet. She was smart and he had learned to just sit with her for hours and talk, snuggle in bed. He even used his tongue and fingers to get her off. What he got in return were kisses. He found this was enough.

Fact was, he had come to the conclusion that his dick and balls had been a nuisance. They had guided his life more than his brain, and made him stupid. For the first time in his life he was truly happy. And the reason was Janet.

Janet. Janet. Janet.

About six months later, on a rainy night, Jack was awakened in his bed by a noise at the window. It was raining outside. Lightning was flashing this way and that across the sky and thunder was tumbling. At the window he saw a small shape.

He sat up in bed and strained for a look.

When the lightning flashed he saw that it was his penis, pressing its uncircumcised "face" against the glass, smearing it, dragging his balls around on the outside brick windowsill.

He watched it for awhile. It pecked at the glass. Finally it wrote a note on the wet glass backwards, so that it looked correct from inside the house. It was a simple note. It read: I'm back. Let me in.

Jack got out of bed and went over to the window and gazed out at his dick and balls. It was pathetic-looking out there on the sill, like an oversized grub worm with huge warts on its ass and nowhere to go.

Jack thought of all the good times he and his pecker had experienced, and a slight pang of regret moved inside of him. But it moved only a short distance, then laid down.

Jack studied his pecker on the sill for a full minute. Resting on the testicles, the pecker rose up and moved about, and finally grew hard. He thought he remembered how that hard-on had felt, but it was distant memory.

Lighting flashed. The rain pounded.

Jack pulled the curtains and went back to bed. He put his arm around Janet and pushed his face into her hair.

After a little while, he no longer heard his pecker tapping on the glass, because it no longer mattered.

LONG GONE FOREVER

Old man Savage's driveway seemed full of a cool beige limousine. It looked as comfortable as a high floating cloud and made Raymond Slater, private detective, all the more aware of his ragged '69 red Chevy. Slater clattered up behind the limo, parked and got out.

The Savage residence was a vast expanse of emerald grass and brilliant design with a circular drive and plenty of well-clipped flower beds. There was a white marble fountain on the front lawn, and two naked pixy statuettes perched on its rim spat water into it. A more than warm breeze blew across the grass as if it were trespassing and trying to be damn quiet about it.

It was easily 98 degrees and, with no air-conditioning in his car, Slater was as hot and damp as a piece of steamed fish. But that was Pasadena, Texas, for you in July.

Around the edge of the mansion, and that was some distance away, a tall man all dressed in black, looking as cool as a polar bear, moved out across the lawn toward the detective. When he reached Slater he held out his hand, said, "I'm Mr. Savage's assistant, Jason Neely. Mr. Savage is expecting you."

"Raymond Slater," the big detective said, and while they shook he took a good look at Jason. He was tall and bald with a face that might have been thirty or fifty years old. He had a thin nose and lips, sharp chin and blue eyes that could have been any color and looked the same: bored. Or maybe it was just indifferent.

The black suit he was wearing was not a uniform as Slater had thought originally, but it certainly gave that impression. Jason looked perfectly comfortable and correct in it, as natural as an English butler. His grey shirt and little black bow tie looked as unworn as if they had been on the department store manikin all day, and never once exposed to the humidity of July. There wasn't a drop of sweat on him.

"Please come with me," Jason said and he led Slater to the house, up a trio of steps as wide and white as marble tombstones, then inside a wide blue-tiled hall.

"Wait here a moment, please," Jason said, "and I'll inform Mr. Savage that you have arrived."

Slater nodded and Jason went down the long hall and through a set of metal-banded doors that looked large enough and strong enough to protect a castle. Slater got out a cigarette, lit it, sat in an expensive lobby chair with an ornamental knee high ashtray by it and smoked.

After a while Jason came through the castle doors, walked over to the detective, said, "He'll see you now, but please don't let him overdo. He's a very sick man."

"I understand," Slater said, standing. "I'll just go on in."

"Surely," Jason said. "Meg will bring refreshments. Excuse me. I need to put the car away." They half-nodded at one another. Jason went outside and Slater went down the hall and through the huge doors.

It was very cool inside, almost uncomfortable. The carpet was as white as the peaks of the Himalayas and Slater thought whoever did the vacuuming must have a hell of a hard time. The curtains were white and so were the walls and so was Kerwin R. Savage.

The old man sat in a rattan chair on a mass of white cushions with a low, glass topped table at his right elbow. He looked very small and like a plantation owner without his broad brimmed hat. He had milky white hair and he wore a white suit with white shirt and glossy white tie. Even his socks and shoes were white. His pale face and faded grey eyes were topped by bushy brows of snow. He looked very worn and, oddest of all, he was sweating. Even his hair looked damp.

Slater stepped over to the chair and took the hand Savage was offering. The old man shook weakly with his damp little paw, rather like a dying rat giving one last shake before the trap did him in.

"Mr. Slater, of course," the old man wheezed. "I'm Kerwin R. Savage." He gave Slater a thin glimpse of his pearly dentures. Even his lips seemed white. "Hell of a name for a wimp like me, isn't it?"

Slater just smiled, thought maybe the old man had dressed up for his arrival and was obviously hot and uncomfortable, so he slipped off his battered sports jacket and draped it over his arm, said, "Hot day for a coat and tie of any kind."

"Proper breeding," Savage said, splitting his thin little smile, "has ruined my common sense, Mr. Slater. Actually, I never had proper breeding, just money." He waved Slater at a chair, added, "Drag it over close, son. My voice is weak enough. And put your jacket on. This room isn't fit for normal healthy folk."

Slater pulled his jacket on, picked up the chair with its white cushion, carried it over and sat it less than six feet from the old man.

"How do you like the decor?" Savage said. "I had it done in early Antarctica to help me feel cool and comfortable. It's like this damn body of mine, all screwed up."

Slater didn't say anything about the interior decoration. Savage slipped off his coat, draped it over the arm of his chair, loosened his shiny white tie and unbuttoned his shirt at the neck. He was perspiring like an Eskimo in the Congo.

"How can I be of service to you?" Slater asked.

Savage fished a handkerchief, white of course, from his draped coat and wiped his face and neck with it. "I want you to find my wife, Reba. Lieutenant Burney at police headquarters recommended you."

Savage went back to his jacket and this time he brought out a long brown wallet and removed a string of celluloid picture casings. He handed them to Slater.

All five pictures were of a beautiful woman with ebony hair and eyes to match. She had perfect teeth and a ripe mouth that said, "Kiss me," at the least. The body in two full-view photos was less subtle. She didn't look a day over twenty-five.

Savage said, "Young, isn't she? You're wondering what an old coot like me could do for a woman like that?"

"It is a bit unusual," Slater said, handing the pictures back.

"Keep them," Savage said. "You may need them."

Slater put the pictures in his coat pocket.

"I want to tell you right away," Savage said, "I have no illusions. None whatsoever. Reba married me for my money. I knew that from the start, but I was lonely and sick. I love her and I want her back. Most of all I want her happy.

"What I'm saying so clumsily is this: Find her, find out what she's doing, if she's happy. If she doesn't want to come back, don't try and make her. I don't even care why she left, just that she's all right and doesn't need anything."

"You think she left on her own?" Slater asked.

"I think she may have. An old man like me, money or not, isn't a lot of fun. Socially or at home. The home part no amount of money can substitute for."

"Tell me everything about Reba that you believe is relevant," Slater asked. "Start with how long ago she disappeared."

"It'll be a week Tuesday," Savage said. "Sometimes she leaves and doesn't come back for a day. Boyfriends, I suppose. I don't blame her for that. But six days. That's a long time."

Just then a side door opened to the left and a young lass with black hair arranged like a southern belle entered with a silver tray. On the tray were two glasses and a beaded pitcher of yellow-white liquid with ice cubes tinkling within.

The woman wore a crisp white dress, simple but well tailored, with black trim about the hem and short sleeves. There was a black sash belt to go with that. The dress fell almost to her knees. She looked very prim and dependable and, except for her hot, wet, black eyes and long, sleek legs, just like a maid.

She sat the tray down on the table, poured the two glasses full, looked at Slater out of the corner of her eye, then more fully when she handed him his glass.

Savage took that in.

"Meg, this is Mr. Slater-Mr. Slater, this is Meg Bailey. I've employed Mr. Slater to do me a service. I'll be wanting you to show him around after a bit. I'm much too worn."

"Certainly," she said.

"You may go now," Savage said, and she did, but she looked back smiling and Slater smiled at her.

Savage said, "I could have one that was old and fat and far more experienced but what fun's in that. When you get my age scenery is very important. Anything pleasant is."

Slater laughed at that and took a swig of his drink. It was lemonade. The old man sipped his, picked up where he had left off

"Last time I saw Reba was last Tuesday morning about eight. She was going to play tennis and swim at the club. She does that every Tuesday. It's an exclusive club called The Green Lawn. It's been in Pasadena less than a year. Big place for the rich, a bit snobby, if I say so myself. It offers tennis, swimming, health bar, steam room and, when they're finished building, a golf course.

"The best I can remember she was wearing a red tank top, white-and-red tennis shorts and white tennis shoes. She had a racquet with her, of course, and a bathing suit and towel. I don't think anything was missing from her room. My maid looked and thought the same. Her car was at The Green Lawn the next day and she had a few things in her locker. I had Meg drive Jason over to pick up the car."

"What are the police doing about this?" Slater asked.

"They have more missing persons than they can shake a stick at. They hardly have time to chase down some old, rich coot's young, promiscuous wife. Lieutenant Burney said, if I wanted something done right away, I should see you. He said missing persons is your specialty.

"Besides, I'd rather not embarrass her if possible. The police can't afford that luxury. You see, Mr. Slater, there was a night club in Dallas I used to frequent. Reba had an act there. The place was called the Blue Derrick and her act went quite a bit beyond the floor show."

"Prostitute?"

"On the head. Our crowd beats about the bush on these things. You'd never make it in our group, Mr. Slater. Not even with money. Be glad as hell for that. Okay, I went to the club regularly to drink and to see Reba and, like I said before, I was lonely and she was friendly and had no particular distaste for money or a marriage of convenience."

"You're trying to tell me to play hush-hush because you might be shown with a dirty nose?" Slater suggested.

"Not at all. I gave up giving a fat damn about the Yacht Club and the cocktail parties long ago. I'm in a rut and now I'm too old to crawl out with a step ladder. It's Reba I care about. She got to me for money, no guesswork there. She spends more in a week than you probably make in a month. I don't even try to keep count.

"I don't care where it goes or what for. Reba didn't come up with a silver spoon in her mouth and, if the truth be known, neither did I. I was lucky. I had a rich uncle who died and liked me. Reba had a whore for a mother and no father that she knew about. Maybe there's a sort of Oedipal note to be read into all of this. Can't say.

"Reba married me, and for the first time in her life she didn't have to scrape and show her flesh to make a living. I don't want her reminded of her past. Not at any cost. She may not love me, but I've given her a sort of respect. It's all she's got. And now, knowing I've done that for her, it's all I've got.

"Petty business to a man like you," Savage concluded, sitting his half-empty glass on the table, "but that's how I want it."

"I'll keep it quiet as I can," Slater said. "Jason and Meg know about all this?"

"Yes. Jason has been with me a long time and I trust Meg dearly. Son"-Savage drew out the word-"to tell the truth, I'm not a very good judge of character. I've been taken to the cleaners more times than a Clergyman's collar, but I trust you. I honestly believe you'll do your best to keep this whole thing as quiet as possible. Now, let's talk money."

"I brought along a contract," the detective said.

Slater took out the contract and pen, watched painfully as Savage's wet, claw-like hand scribbled with the ballpoint. When that was done, Savage leaned back on his cushions, crossed his hands in his lap. There were beads of sweat on his forehead and upper lip. He seemed too weary to use the handkerchief on them.

"Damn if I'm not all done in, son," Savage said. "I'd like to rest. You just go through that door," he lifted a bloodless finger in the direction Meg had made her exit, "on down that hall and you'll find Meg. She'll show you around. You look all and anywhere you like, son."

"Thank you," Slater said and drained his glass. The clattering of the ice sounded as loud as a maraca in that sterile room. The detective put the glass on the table as he stood, said, "I'll do my best. You can count on that."

The old man's eyes were half closed. He whispered. "I am, son, I am." Then he closed his eyes completely and rested his chin on his chest.

Slater went out and closed the door softly.

II

Meg was outside Reba's room, waiting.

Slater went up to her, said, "This is it?"

"Uh-huh." Meg opened the door and led Slater inside to a room that was definitely feminine, almost childlike. It had light blue walls and a big bed decorated with fluffy blue-and-green flowered pillows and a bedspread to match. There were several stuffed animals and pleasant surroundings. Nothing really odd in that.

After the room, Meg took Slater for a tour of the labyrinth that was the Savage estate. Nothing really caught his eye. Meg walked him to the door.

"How many employees besides yourself?" Slater asked.

"Three others. Two women who work at the same thing I do part time, and that's almost everything. One gardener-Jason-handles several jobs. He's incredibly efficient, if a bit boring."

"The others know about Mrs. Savage's disappearance?"

"I don't think so. If they ask about her, Jason and I just say she's on a trip. That's what Mr. Savage told us to tell them."

"Thank you," Slater said. They exchanged smiles. With that, the private detective went out to his steaming car and climbed inside. Meg, standing in the doorway, waved to him as he rolled out of the drive.

The luxurious Green Lawn Health Spa and Athletic Club lay on the outskirts of Pasadena and it smelled of money a block away. The oldest car Slater could see parked there was last year's model. Out back were several large tennis courts, and except for the players, they looked as if the builders had just cleaned up the place and the first net had gone up ten minutes ago.

The pool lay beyond that, large, blue and crowded with people. Behind it all lay several acres of red dirt sparsely patched with fresh planted grass and trees-the soon-to-be golf course. There was also a parked bulldozer out there.

Slater parked in front of a modern hunk of redwood, glass and several thousand dollars worth of architectural know-how, got out and went inside. The interior was bright with pale green walls and blue plastic furniture. There was a man just to the left of Slater, sitting at a see-through plastic table.

He was wearing peroxide-blonde hair, beige slacks and a tight white tee-shirt that displayed a whole Charles Atlas course worth of muscles. He got up, flexing the Atlas course, and went over to the detective.

"Pardon me," the blonde said, "but this is a private club, sir."

"Oh, I'm very private," Slater said.

The man's eyes went from brown to muddy.

"I'm thinking of joining," Slater added quickly. "Could I speak to whoever is in charge."

"I'm the manager."

"Is there someone over you, a superior."

The blonde nodded heavily. "Yes, but I assure you..."

"Thanks," Slater said, "But it's your superior I want to see."

"Very well," the blonde said, rippling the muscles in his chest. "If you'll just sit down over there a moment." He nodded at the table where he had been sitting, then turned and walked stiffly toward the back.

Slater went to the table and sat down. Not long afterward a tall, slightly overweight but formidable-looking man, with a blue tee-shirt stretched tightly over a size fifty chest, came out with a peroxide blonde and sat down across from Slater. The manager sat next to the burly detective.

The man in the blue tee-shirt had iron grey hair, black eyes, a boxer's nose and a silver-studded ring on his left middle finger that could have anchored a ship. He held out his ringless hand, said, "I'm Jasper Clewson, the owner.

"This"-he nodded at the scowling blonde-"is my manager Anthony Kyd." Clewson and Slater shook. When it was Kyd's turn he tried to mix up the detective's knuckles.

"First of all," Slater said holding his injured paw against his thigh, "I've got to straighten one thing out. I'm not here to join. I'm Raymond Slater, a private detective."

Slater took out his license and passed it to Clewson, who in turn passed it to Kyd. After Kyd had made a more-than-thorough examination, he handed it to the detective.

Slater slipped it away and brought out the pictures of Reba Savage. He passed them in the same manner, said, "Know her?"

"Sure," Clewson said. "Reba Savage. Tomorrow's her day." Slater watched Kyd look at the pictures. His face was impassive, perhaps a bit too impassive.

"Her day?" Slater asked, feigning ignorance.

"She comes for her workouts on Tuesday," Clewson said. "Plays tennis, swims, saunas, that sort of thing."

"Have any regular tennis partners?" Slater asked.

"Anyone available," Kyd snapped. "This is a private club. We don't pair folks two by two at the door, and we don't keep tabs on our members. They pay their money and do what they like, as long as it's within the rules."

"I didn't ask what she did in the manager's office," Slater said.

Kyd half-rose out of his chair. Slater's voice held a chilled razor edge. "Sit down, muscles. I don't think you'd look so good on crutches."

"You talk tough," Kyd started, but Clewson reached up and clapped a heavy hand on his shoulder.

"Sit," Clewson said gently. Kyd had raised out of his chair for a moment, then, very slowly, sat down. His face was as red as a Hawaiian sunset.

Clewson gave Kyd a disparaging look, said to Slater, "My manager is a bit excitable. Over-protective of the members. If Mrs. Savage is missing we'll be glad to help. You asked about tennis partners. I don't see what bearing that has on anything, but here goes. Tony here was one of her partners from time to time. Then there's Marilyn Cunningham and a nut named Eric Stroheim."

"Nut?" Slater asked.

"Member of the Pasadena Nazi Party. Bunch of weirdos. Reba played with him from time to time, and maybe some games besides tennis."

Kyd's mouth fell open. He took a deep breath, pushed back his chair and stood. "Clewson, you sonofabitch, you can take this job and bounce it." With that, Kyd went out the way Slater had come in, doing his stiff walk.

"Now what the hell did I say?" Clewson growled.

Slater dug a notepad and pen out of his pocket, tossed them on the table, said, "I'm sorry about your manager. He's a hothead. Maybe something's riding him and he'll be asking for his job back when he cools off."

Clewson sat with a perplexed look on his face. "I certainly hope so."

"I hate to persist, but I'd be obliged if you'd write down the names and addresses of Stroheim and Cunningham."

Clewson sighed. "Yeah, sure. I'll have to go back to the office to get them. Be right back." He picked up the pad and pen and went toward the rear.

Slater sat and thumped his fingers on the glass tabletop. Something was spinning around in his head like a roulette wheel, something important, something that had to stop eventually to show its colors.

When Clewson came back with the addresses, he said, "The Stroheim kid will probably be easy to find. He doesn't work. Parents foot his bill. Marilyn works nights at the Del Rio, some kind of singer. Late afternoon, before work, is probably your best bet with her."

Slater thanked him, tucked the addresses away and went outside, hoping his car hadn't been towed away as a public nuisance.

Kyd was leaning on the driver's side of Slater's Chevy, picking absently at his fingernails. Slater thought he had looked big inside. Out in the sober light of day he was Apollo and Hercules rolled up in a tight tee-shirt.

Slater sauntered over to him as if he was no more than a gutless fly on the windshield. The detective said, "You waiting for me?"

Kyd leaned away from the car. "Yeah," he said. "I want to apologize."

That caught Slater off guard. "What the hell for? I think maybe I lost you a job in there. I owe you the apology. I'm the one with the big mouth."

"Naw, you didn't cost me nothin'. I was a sap. I was sick and tired of the job anyway. Sick and tired of Reba, for that matter."

Slater didn't say anything, just got out his pack and lipped a cigarette but didn't light it.

"Clewson's a jerk," Kyd went on. "That stuff about Stroheim is true enough, but after all the crap he's fed me about the customers' privacy, he's sure quick with the lip. Pays small potatoes anyway."

Slater said, "Uh-huh."

"See that big tree up there?" Kyd asked.

Slater walked over by him and looked. There were several big trees. He said, "Which one?"

"The oak, the biggest one out there, on the other side of the bulldozer." "Uh-huh. I see it. What about it?"

"That's where I saw her last. That help any?"

Slater got out his folder of matches, peeled one off and lit his cigarette, took a short drag, said, "Reba, you mean."

"Yep. Reba. Damn good-looking broad."

"Howsabout you backtrack some for me."

Kyd turned to Slater. "Okay. Why not? I'm not working for nobody. I don't owe Clewson a cold drink. He didn't even try to keep his mouth shut.

"Last Tuesday, Reba came like always and we played tennis for a while. She always, no matter what, plays first with Marilyn. They don't spend fifteen minutes on the court, but they always play first. I don't see what fun's in a fifteen minute game, do you?"

Slater told him he didn't know a tennis racquet from a baseball bat.

"So Reba and Marilyn played, and then me and Reba and then she played Stroheim. Stroheim was always putting the hustle on that Savage chick and getting nowhere."

"And you?" Slater asked. "You always played it straight down the line, just a sports fan?"

Kyd smiled thinly. "Okay. I hustled the chick, scored even. I knew she was married and that bothered me. I mean, I got scruples, but she didn't seem to think she was married. Said she married the old geezer for his money and he didn't have the stamina to even hug her hard let alone sack up with her."

"This all leads to the tree!" Slater said pleasantly.

"Yeah. You see, last Tuesday Reba and I had this argument. I tried to set us up for the evening, but she was giving me these nutty excuses. Her hair needed washing, her nails needed doing, the old man wanted her around, that sort of stuff.

"A bit later she and Stroheim are batting the ball. I'm working, but part of my job was to watch the customers, play tennis and swim from time to time, that sort of thing. Anyway. I come out and see that jerk Stroheim leaning on her, pawing at her.

"She starts to push and he keeps on, and to make it short, I get my big nose in and Stroheim tries to land a haymaker on me. I pushed him down on the court, skinned his knees, slapped him a couple of times. That's all there was to that."

"Somehow," Slater said, "the part about the tree bothers me. I keep trying to work it in."

Kyd chuckled. "I'm getting to that. This place closes at 9:00 PM. I stayed till ten to do some paperwork on new members. I don't drive a car to work. I live on the other side of the golf course, Northridge Apartments, and I jog over here every morning coming to work and every night going home. Health nut.

"So it was a pretty bright night, and I'm starting to head out, and I see these two walking up by the big tree over there. The 'dozer wasn't parked exactly where it is now. It was shadowy underneath that tree, but before they were completely beneath it I recognized the woman.

"I'd recognize that build anywhere. It was Reba, no doubt of it. The guy with her was in the shadows and he seemed to be dressed all in black. I figured it must have been Stroheim. Well, that made me mad as hell after all that stuff that afternoon; fending him off, me acting like a fool, and there they were under the tree, and when he started to reach out and paw her, I said what the hell and just turned and went on.

"This is probably about as important as what I had for breakfast, isn't it?"

"You never know," Slater said. "The tree fits in."

Kyd screwed up his face. "Meaning?"

"Meaning nothing," Slater said. "I think maybe you could get your job back if you really wanted it."

"Nuts to Clewson and his silly job. I'm tired of fat old hags who think I come with the place."

"What about young married ones?" Slater said, walking over to his car.

Kyd followed. "Them, too. I don't care if I never see Reba again."

Slater got in the red wreck, coughed the engine to life, said through the open window, "See you." He drove down the circular drive and back to smoggy Pasadena.

III

A little preliminary research in the form of Slater's pal Lt. Randle Burney at the Pasadena Police Station informed him that Eric Stroheim was a legal name change from Ted Louderdale. He'd been in a few minor scrapes with the police, but nothing serious, so far.

Stroheim was, as Clewson had said, a member of Pasadena's growing Nazi party. He was also, according to Burney, very bored and very rich.

Slater called at his house, pretending to be a friend and his mommy dear, with whom he still lived, let him know that Teddy was out with friends at a little place called Adolf's. She gave Slater the address and the detective drove over there.

Adolf's was a burger stand converted to a club by the use of lots of paint and little taste. There was a '70 Dodge pickup parked out front, two motorcycles and a just-off-the-production-line Mercedes Benz. Slater presumed the Mercedes was rich Teddy's.

Three crudely painted signs, on and at either side of the door, told him the place inside was private. Slater opened the door and went into a reasonably cool bar laced with cigarette smoke, the clacking of pool balls and jukebox polka music.

A beefy, crewcut bartender sporting a Nazi uniform with a swastika arm band was sitting on a stool behind the bar, picking at his teeth with a shredded match. On the wall behind him was a three-dollar picture of dear old smiling Hitler bordered by a twenty-dollar picture frame.

None of the little round tables dotting the place was occupied, but the two pool tables in the back had customers-a couple of men at each and one kibitzer. None of them was in uniform, but Slater had the impression that they had left theirs at home on hangers.

The thing that was a bartender discarded his match on the floor and said, "Hey dumplin'. This ain't no regular joint. This here's a private club for the Pasadena Nazi Party. No membership, no admittance." He sounded about as German as Slim Pickens.

Slater walked over to the bar, got out a cigarette and managed to light it without his hand shaking, said, "That's the second time today I've heard that private hogwash and the first time was a lot classier place that this outhouse. I'm liking the sound of that line less and less."

The bartender smiled, showed Slater some teeth that could have chewed an elephant's hind leg off. "Well, well," he said easing off his stool to stand six-foot five worth of rock quarry. That reminded Slater that his.38 was in the glove box of his wreck. Not that he would have been within his rights to use it, but it would have made him feel less like a worm that was about to be stepped on.

"I'm with the police," Slater said, "and I'm looking for Teddy Louderdale."

"Well, well," the bartender repeated.

The fellows at the pool tables had stopped their play to listen, and now one of them stepped forward with a pool stick in his hand and, pointing it at Slater, said, "Fellow, I don't know who in the hell you are, but I'd better not hear you call me by that name again. Police or not, that don't buy nothing from me."

Rock Quarry, the bartender, made a casual step in Slater's direction. Slater said evenly, "We can save ourselves a lot of grief if you'll just let me ask you a few questions, Stroheim, in private."

Stroheim, a large but gangly youth with side-walled blond hair and a mustache like a sick caterpillar about to drop off a limb, walked slowly toward Slater, still holding the pool stick. All the pool players at the tables had stopped playing pool and were holding their cues in an unprofessional manner, for pool. The kibitzer picked up a cue ball and practiced his curve-ball grip on it.

Slater dropped his cigarette on the floor and crushed it slowly with his heel. He tried to keep an expression of bored disinterest on his face. Teddy was now within distance to strike a vicious blow. Up close, he looked more baby faced than Audie Murphy.

"Boy," Slater said, "I may not have made the best entrance that I could have, but I'm short on time. I'm looking for someone that I feel could be in big trouble. If you know something about it and I don't, you could be in big trouble. Got me?"

The bartender leaned over the bar, said, "Well, well."

Stroheim didn't say anything for a moment. His Adam's apple seemed to be trying to find a nice place to lie down. He worked the sick caterpillar with the tip of his tongue, licked the sweat off it. "All right," he said, "I'll talk at him."

The boys in the back relaxed. The bartender didn't bother to say well, well. He just sneered. Stroheim led the way to a table next to the wall, pulled out a chair and sat. Slater sat across from him, back to the wall.

"Make it quick," Stroheim said.

"I just want to know when you last saw Reba Savage. And do you know where she is?"

"Probably shacked up with somebody."

"You know from experience, I guess."

"Hell yeah."

"Manager at the Green Lawn says different."

"Just jealous 'cause he couldn't make the grade."

"You see her a lot then?"

"Any time I want. Any way I want."

Slater tried a long shot. "Ever want to see her dead?"

"What?" Stroheim blinked.

"She's dead. That missing business was jive. She's colder than a carp."

"Now wait just a doggone minute."

"Maybe a big stud like you takes her out and she says no go and you kill her."

Stroheim was swearing heavily now. "Hey, I ain't killed nobody."

"You say."

Suddenly, Stroheim let out a squeal of frustration and came out of his chair with a wild swing at the detective's head. Slater caught Stroheim's wrist, slid out of his chair simultaneously and jerked him across the table head-first into the wall. Stroheim's head sounded like a beaver's tail slapping water.

No sooner had Stroheim crumpled, unconscious against the wall, than Fritz, the rock quarry that walked like a man, flew out from behind the bar with a longneck in hand.

Slater stepped directly into the huge goon, ducked beneath his downward swing with the bottle and blocked the striking arm with a glancing edge of the hand, a blow that sent the bottle flipping from the assailant's grasp.

He threw a hard right into the man's solar plexus and bent him, then, with both hands, grabbed him by the back of the neck and brought him down into his updriving knee. Fritz went back amidst a spurt of blood and flying molars.

Then the others were on him.

Instinctively, Slater spun, threw up his hands in a defensive position.

The closest attacker swung his pool stick at the big detective's head. Slater ducked. The stick whizzed by close enough to lift his hair. When the cue-wielding Nazi started with the backhand swing, Slater slid, catlike, toward him, in close where the power of his blow would be weakest, he took some of the stick in the ribs, sent a right uppercut between the man's arms and clipped his chin hard enough to lift him a couple inches off the floor.

No sooner had that Nazi bit the dust than Slater felt the lash like sting of a cracking cue across his broad back. Ignoring the pain, he bent forward and grabbed the stick his recent assailant had dropped. He turned and lashed out blindly, struck no one, but forced the three remaining to fall back.

One of the Nazis, the one that had struck Slater across the back, held a jagged piece of cue in his hand. To his left, another held a whole cue. The third guy was the one with the cue ball. He was bouncing it up and down in his paw.

Slater backed toward the door, waving the stick before him. The one with the cue ball yelled, "Get him!" and then there was a white, expanding blur before the detective's eyes. He leaned just enough for the cue ball to miss, slam into the door sill behind him and bounce all the way back to the tables.

The goons rushed.

Slater tossed the stick just right. It caught between the foremost attacker's legs and tripped him. He went sprawling in the path of the other two.

Slater wheeled, jerked the door open and sprinted for his car. He snagged the.38 out of the glove box only seconds before they were on him. The sliding of their heels churned up gravel. The one that had thrown the cue ball said, "Now wait a minute, pal. That gun makes things permanent."

"Yeah," the hard-breathing detective said, "and that cue-ball would have just bounced off my noggin and we could have had a few laughs together later, while we were picking up what was left of my nose." Slater cocked back the hammer on the.38. "Back inside, scum."

They went back inside and closed the door. Slater thought he heard a key turn even from where he stood.

With his back screaming for help, he climbed in behind the wheel, tossed the.38 on the seat and steered for home, hunched over the steering column like Quasimodo.

After a couple of hours in a tub of hot water and Epsom Salts, the pain in his back had slackened to the point that he could dry off with a very soft towel, very gingerly. He managed to swab some iodine on the wound and a wrap around body bandage without having to grow a third arm. He dressed in an old cotton workshirt, blue corduroy pants and white tennis shoes without socks. After that, he treated himself to a beer and a few stale pretzels. He was enjoying an after-snack cancer stick when the phone rang. It was Meg Bailey.

"I'm calling for Mr. Savage," she explained. "He's gotten worse, much so."

"How worse?"

"He's checking into the hospital right now. Jason drove him. Mr. Savage insisted that I let you know and tell you to call him at the hospital-his room-the minute you know anything about Reba."

"Tell him he can rest assured," Slater said. "I'll find her and he'll know the instant I do. What's the room and phone number there?"

She told him, said softly, "I don't think he's going to make it this time. He's trying to be a tough old soldier, but I don't think he's gonna make it. If it weren't for Reba, his waiting, wanting to hear from her, he'd be already gone."

"Don't count the old bird out yet," Slater said and they made their goodbyes.

Slater groaned off the couch, checked his watch. Quarter to four. Enough time to get over and check on Marilyn Cunningham before she went to work at the Del Rio in downtown Houston.

IV

It was a nice house of pink brick but not the sort Slater imagined the average Green Lawn member owned. That place took bread, and not the sort with yeast.

The detective parked at the curb, went up and pushed the doorbell. A long silence went on behind the door. He pushed the bell again. More of the same nothing.

Slater went around to the garage and looked through the little windows there. Last year's economy Chevy was taking a nap inside. He went back to the door and tried the bell again. No dice. He tried the knob. It wasn't locked.

Accidentally-on-purpose, the big detective twisted the knob, and accidentally-on-purpose he slipped inside. He called a few times and got no answer. He made a few light steps through the living room and into the kitchen, called again. He was alone with his voice.

Looking around the kitchen, he found a few unwashed plates and two glasses in the sink. He picked the glasses up and sniffed. Someone had had a drink of whisky not long ago. The plates smelled of lemon and fish.

He went into the bedroom and found her.

She wore only her long blonde hair. She lay halfway on the fluffy green bedroom carpet and halfway on the blue tile of the bathroom. Her hair fanned around her head and onto the bathroom tile like the golden sun slowly sinking into the sea.

Slater went over to her and touched her neck for a pulse. You could have chilled drinks with her flesh.

Pulling back her hair-the part that wasn't glued to her face by drying blood-he found what had done her in. She had a nasty wound on her right temple. Her right eye was bulged from the socket-the blow on the head had done that. It had been a good solid lick.

Slater got up and checked the room. Her robe and undergarments were folded neatly on the chair. The covers on her bed were thrown back. Nobody was under it or hiding in the closet with a tire iron.

He went into the kitchen and made a couple of phone calls. The last one was to the police.

Lt. Burney said, "You should take up being a freelance mortician, Ray. It seems more your line of work. Every time I see you it's over a dead body. 'Cept when you're trying to con me into some kind of fool deal."

"Without me," Slater said, "you'd have half the business."

"And twice the rest."

Slater covered a yawn with the back of his hand, put a heel on Burney's desk, a position he had taken a half dozen times in the last two hours. "You about through with me, Burn. I've told you ten times how I came to find the body."

"Uh-huh," Burney said, pushing at Slater's foot with the toe of his shoe. "And about ten times you haven't told me who your client is. How do Stroheim and Marilyn tie in with you? What are you up to?"

"I'd rather not say." Slater said moving his foot so that Burney couldn't kick it.

"Get your damn heel off my desk," Burney said.

"You got yours there," Slater said.

"It's my desk. Any ideas about the murder?"

"Same ones you got," Slater said, inspecting a hangnail.

"You don't think she was raped either, do you, Ray?"

Slater put his other heel with its companion. "No. The coroner told you she had had sexual intercourse recently, that much he could tell right off. He didn't say she had been raped."

"He hasn't had time for a thorough examination," Burney reminded Slater.

"Uh-huh," Slater replied. "But he won't find she's been raped. The robe and the underclothes were all folded neatly on a chair next to the bed, for one. I'd say that's odd."

"So she got attacked by a tidy rapist," Burney said.

"Maybe. There were two glasses in the sink. They had the smell of whiskey. There were also two plates, unwashed."

"So? I've got a setup like that at home."

"I called the Del Rio right before I called you. I pretended to be a cousin from out of town trying to find Marilyn. They told me she had asked for the night off and that she was home."

"I know," Burn said. "I checked that out myself. What you're saying is she had planned the afternoon and maybe the night."

"Yep. I think after they spent their time in the sack, they had an argument. She made a break for it, probably to lock herself in the bathroom, he caught her and crowned her with something. By the way. What's the coroner say about that?"

"He doesn't say anything. Just that she was killed by that blow, that it was probably something heavy."

"A fist maybe?"

"Heavier, he thinks. Something round and smooth. That's guess work, but he's pretty damn good at it," Burney said.

Slater lit up a cigarette, took the feet Burney resented off the desk, said, "Maybe I could help you out, Burn."

Burney sighed, leaned back in his chair and held himself in place with his heels. He took a slightly bent cigar out of his coat pocket and put it in his mouth. He dragged a wooden match across his desktop, lit it, puffed, said, "Help me? Sure, Ray. I'll believe that when I see it."

"Say you let me look at the info you guys have dug up on Marilyn in the last two hours."

"Against the rules."

Slater frowned at him. "You've done it before."

"Against my better judgment," Burney said, scowling. Then, "Oh hell-here." Burney swung his feet on the floor, picked a manila folder off his desk and handed it to the detective.

What Slater read was little more than three solid paragraphs and only one thing caught his eye. Marilyn Cunningham had worked as a waitress, in Dallas, at the Blue Derrick.

Slater kept his wooden Indian face and handed the folder back to Burney. "No help there," he said. "Guess maybe I'll be going now. That is all right, isn't it?"

Burney took the cigar out of his mouth and spit a bit of tobacco off his tongue. "Ray," he said, "you wouldn't be holding out on something, would you?"

"Burn," Slater said sadly, "have I ever done that?"

Burney puffed a big blue-grey plume of smoke, said, "Yep. Believe you have."

Slater got up and went to the door.

Burney said, "Of course, you'll let me know all about it the minute it's too late."

"Of course," Slater said, and went out.

Out in the parking lot, Slater checked his watch beneath a bug-swarmed pole lamp. Eight thirty-two. The night was young. He got in his heap and drove home to get a couple of shovels, then went over to the Northridge Apartments. Something was trying to burrow its way out of his subconscious, and maybe, just maybe, thought Slater, he had a grasp on it now.

It was a nice place. Slater got the room number from the night manager, climbed up the stairs and knocked.

Anthony Kyd had his shirt off when he answered the door. He wore grey sweat-pants and jogging shoes. He looked like Tarzan about to try out for the track team. In the background, sitting on the couch, was a girl with long, red hair. She wore only a short nightie. She didn't seem concerned about that. She smiled at Slater before Kyd had time to step outside on the landing and close the door behind him.

"Your mother visiting?" Slater asked.

"How would you like to go downstairs over the rail, gumshoe? You better not have come up here just to crack wise."

"Get your job back?"

"Wha-no. Totally disconnected with the place."

"That's handy," Slater said.

"You trying out lines and riddles, or are you here for a reason?"

"Get dressed," Slater said. "We're on our way to the golf course."

"Oh, I see. Just passing this way and you happened to have your clubs in the car. That does it. I'm bending you."

"That wasn't a smart remark," Slater said quickly. "I meant it. We're going to the golf course. I want you to get dressed now. It's me or the police."

"I don't think I follow you," Kyd said.

"You will. Come on."

"I got a date, man."

"Put her on hold, Kyd."

Kyd looked at Slater for a long moment. Shadows clouded his face, hid his expression. He wiped his palms on his sweatpants. "All right. Give me fifteen minutes to get dressed."

It took Kyd more like 25 minutes and Slater didn't think that he spent all that time pulling on his pants. When Kyd got in he said, "This had better be good."

"It won't be nearly as good as what you just had," Slater said and started up the engine.

The golf course clay was the color of blood in the moonlight. The huge oak seemed eerie and unreal. A gentle breeze moved its limbs in a manner that made them seem to clutch at the night like a dying man.

Slater parked, got the flashlight and two shovels our of the trunk, gave one of them to Kyd. Kyd said, "Are you crazy?"

"Maybe," Slater said. "Let's go on up to the oak."

Shadow lay thick beneath the oak and Slater used the light to check around for a spot that looked as if it might have been dug recently.

He probed a few places with the shovel, skipped over those where a few anemic patches of grass grew.

Kyd said, "Exactly what is it you're looking for?"

"A place fresh dug with a bulldozer and covered."

"The contractors haven't been here in weeks, not since that hellish rain."

Slater felt a knot in his stomach. "Stupid of me!" he said. "A key. No way in the world you or Clewson could have a key for that thing?"

"Of course not but..."

"But what?"

"Well, if it matters, there's a key beneath the seat in a magnetic box." Kyd went over to the 'dozer, climbed up on it and pulled out the little container. "Got to visiting with the 'dozer operator one day. Saw him put the key there."

Slater said, "Can you drive that thing?"

Kyd said, "Can a duck tread water?"

"Back it off ten feet and kill it. I got an idea."

"Can't see any reason for that" Kyd said, "but all right." He got the 'dozer cooking, backed it off about ten feet.

When Kyd climbed down, Slater told him to pick up a shovel and help. They started digging directly where the 'dozer had stood. Fifteen minutes later they found something long and white protruding from the muck. It seemed to point to the stars. Flesh had already begun to peel from the bone, insects had been at work. A slaughterhouse odor floated on the night wind. It was a human finger. Kyd stumbled back. "Oh Christ!"

Slater took his shovel and began to scrape until he uncovered the once-beautiful face of Reba Savage. He covered his nose with his handkerchief to wipe the clay from her face. Part of what appeared to be clay was dried blood. The right side of her head was smashed. The method of death was familiar.

"How long," Kyd gasped, "has she been there?"

Slater stood up. "Say last Tuesday, shortly after you saw her and the man in black."

Kyd tightened his grip on the shovel. He dropped the light. "You think I did it, don't you?"

"I didn't say that," Slater said.

"But you're thinking it."

"I'm thinking you're making a damn fool of yourself. If you're innocent, what are you so excited about? Put down that damn shovel before I dig your liver out with it." Slater kept his hand on his shovel in what appeared a loose unconcerned grip, but he was ready to swing it if need be.

After a moment of consideration Kyd threw down the shovel. "Christ!" he moaned. "It looks bad for me."

"That it does," Slater agreed, "but I know someone who can help us find the killer, pronto."

Slater could almost hear Kyd's heart pounding, "Who? Who can help me?"

"Come on," Slater said, throwing down his shovel. "we'll get over there right now, and I'll need your help."

V

The rain had arrived suddenly and by the time Slater pulled up at Clewson's house it was in full blow. Slater thought, looking at Clewson's place, old man Savage can put this house in his garage, but Clewson can put my place in his living room.

There were no lights. Slater checked his watch-12:26.

Kyd said, "I couldn't remember if it was this street or the next."

"No matter," the detective said. "You got us here."

They got out of the car and splashed their way up to Clewson's front porch, rang the bell. After a while lights went on and a voice behind the door said groggily, "Stand in front of the peep-hole so I can see who it is."

Kyd did that, said, "It's me, Clewson, Tony."

The door opened. Clewson in dark robe and slippers said, "Get in before you drown."

Slater and Kyd went inside and Clewson closed out the wet chill of the rain. Slater said, "We found Reba. She's dead, buried at The Green Lawn."

"Some kind of joke?" Clewson said.

"No joke," Tony said. "Slater's got an idea who did it. I'm in a tight spot. I had a quarrel with Reba and one with Stroheim. It could be interpreted as a jealousy fight. I need help."

"Sure. But what can I do?"

Tony turned to Slater. Slater dug his pad and pen out of his damp shirt pocket, handed them to Clewson, said, "I want you to write down the very date that Eric Stroheim started at your club."

Clewson gave Slater a puzzled look. "What difference does that make? How can that help anything?"

"Just write," Slater said. "I guarantee an explanation."

"All right," Clewson said. He rested the pad in the palm of his right hand, and with his heavy ringed left began to scrawl.

Slater said, "You even wear that big ring to bed?"

Clewson looked up. "Huh?"

Slater hit him. It was a hard punch and the burly detective put every bit of his weight into it. The shoulder rolled, the hips turned and Slater's big scarred knuckles connected with Clewson's chin like a slaughterhouse hammer. The pad and pen went up in a flurry and Clewson went off his feet as if they had been jerked out from beneath him by a trip-wire.

Clewson hit the carpet on his buttocks, slid, rolled to the left and got up!

Slater said, "Oh hell!"

Kyd said, "What the-"

Clewson lunged at the detective and even as Slater began to lash out with a hard front snap-kick, Clewson suddenly seemed to dangle in mid-air and start back for the floor.

Kyd's hand had shot out like a badger and nabbed Clewson by the neck of his robe. As he fell for the floor, Kyd followed him down and slammed a hard right into his face. He pressed a knee across the fallen man's mid-section and clipped him another trip-hammer right that sent him out.

"You just got yourself a killer, Tony," Slater said.

Kyd blew our a long breath, looked up at Slater. "I hope like hell you know what you're talking about."

"I know," Slater said. "You done good. Call the cops while I tie this cookie up with his robe belt."

They sat in Homicide Detective Lt. Burney's office-Slater, Burney and Kyd.

Tony Kyd said, "Clewson's confessed, but I still don't see how you put it all together. You said the pad and pen trick was to check and see if he was left handed. What did that have to do with anything?"

Burney lit up a cigarette. "Shouldn't ask the bastard that," he said. "He loves to gloat and show me how big a snoop he is." Burney blew out some smoke, looked at Slater's grinning face. "Get the hell on and tell us, Sherlock."

Slater got out his cigarettes, lit one, put a heel on Burney's desk, rocked back in his chair.

"First of all, I missed out on the most important clue right from the first, at least consciously. My subconscious stored it away and it eventually surfaced. If I could have pulled it out earlier I might have saved Marilyn's life."

"When I first met Clewson, he said something to the effect that 'if Mrs. Savage is missing we'll be glad to help.' I never said she was missing. I just asked if he knew her. I should have caught that immediately, but I'm afraid your animosity was distracting me, Tony."

"Sorry," Tony said.

"All right. You were just trying to keep a tight lip on the Green Lawn's members. I can sympathize with that. Another thing was Clewson's capsule histories of Stroheim and Marilyn. He was trying to throw me off the track. He also tried to make you look suspect and to be perfectly honest, he did a damn good job."

"He painted Stroheim as the nut he really was and threw suspicion that way. When it came to Marilyn, who is at the bottom of all this, he was careful to let me know she worked nights and slept during the day and that Stroheim was free all the time.

"He thought, as long as I was just making with the routine questioning, that this would distract me from Marilyn for a while and I'd see Stroheim first. That would give him a chance to get to Marilyn."

"He killed Marilyn?" Tony asked.

"It's in the confession," Burney said.

"But why her?" Tony said. "And how is she at the bottom of all this?"

"I know the answer to that. I've read the confession, but Slater hasn't. How about that one, Sherlock?" Burney said, grinning.

"Okay," Slater said. "I learned from you, Burn, that Reba and Marilyn had worked together at a place in Dallas called The Blue Derrick. Marilyn was a waitress and she knew what Reba's job was. Anyway, Marilyn liked money but didn't make much as a singer, and since she knew Reba before her marriage to Savage, knew what she was. She threatened to reveal Reba's past to the newspapers and make a big scandal. I prefer to think Reba paid off to keep the old man from getting hurt instead of herself. If she'd known the old man would have loved her if she'd run through the streets of downtown Houston naked, this all might not have happened.

"On the other side of the coin, maybe she was just covering for herself. Reba had access to all the money she wanted. It wasn't beans to Savage how much she spent, and those trips to The Green Lawn were for payoffs to Marilyn, not tennis."

"That's why the short games," Tony said.

"Un-huh," Slater said. "Marilyn had to have known Clewson better than it appeared. Maybe they were keeping their relationship quiet so that the blackmail wouldn't be traced to Clewson and The Green Lawn."

"What your saying," Tony said, "is that Marilyn and Clewson had a racket going."

"Yep. Clewson and her must have got together. He found out about Marilyn knowing Reba from The Blue Derrick, played up to Marilyn and cut himself in on the action. It had to be that way. When I found Marilyn's body it was apparent that she'd had company, and since she'd taken the night off from work, she and Clewson had expected to make a holiday out of it.

"What Clewson really wanted was to go over there and explain that I was on her tail and not to get nervous and spill the beans. She must have panicked and decided to deal herself out, but Clewson, being cautious, dealt her out. He grabbed her and slammed her with his fist.

"That's why I was checking to see if he was left handed. Both death blows for Reba and Marilyn were on their right temples, and both were delivered by a heavy object. With those big arms of his, Clewson could swing a mean blow. With that massive ring he had a perfect murder weapon."

"Well I'll be damned!" Tony said. "Then that was Clewson I saw with Reba that night."

"Right. I figure Reba decided there was no end to the mess and told Marilyn to do her worst. Clewson, aware of Reba's loose reputation, made a false play for her and lured her to the oak. He must have revealed that he was in on the blackmail business and that he could make it a damn sight hotter than Marilyn had promised. Reba called his bluff and he killed her."

"What about the bulldozer? How'd you know about that?"

"Partly hunch. And part of it was a misconception that just worked out. It never even occurred to me to consider the contractors. I was looking through a knothole. You said the bulldozer wasn't in the same spot when you saw the pair beneath the oak. It never occurred to me that the contractors might not have the key.

"That was just pure stupidity on my part, and luck that you knew about the key. Once I discovered you did, it seemed logical that Clewson might have found out about it in the same way, and taken advantage of it to dispose of the body. He forgot to consider that someone might notice the 'dozer had been moved a bit."

"And why did you drag me out there tonight?" Tony asked.

"One, I'm a gregarious grave-digger. Two, if I was right about the body, I was going to need some directions to Clewson's place. Three, you're bigger than he is."

"You're not exactly a midget," Tony said.

"If that's all," Burney said, "you may tip your deerstalker and depart."

"That's all," Slater said.

Dead tired, Slater was about to drop into bed when the phone rang. It was Meg.

"Ray, I've been trying to get you for an hour. Mr. Savage has taken a drastic turn for the worse. Have you found out anything? He keeps asking."

"I found out things all right."

"I'm at the hospital right now with Jason. Can you get over here right away."

"I'm on my way," Slater said.

Meg and Jason met Slater at the elevator, walked with him to Savage's room. A lean, mustached doctor was coming out, along with a worn looking, young nurse when they got there.

Meg said, "How is he?"

"Not good." The doctor's voice was professional but kind. "I don't give him an hour. I don't see how he's hung on this long."

"He's waiting for the word," Slater said.

"What's that?" the doctor asked.

"Nothing," Slater said. "May we see him?"

The doctor nodded. "And if he has any next of kin, you might notify them."

"We're it," Jason said solemnly.

Slater took Meg by the arm and the trio went into the room, closed the door behind them.

The old man in his white hospital pajamas with his equally pale face lying against white sheets looked as lifeless as a china doll. The tubes that seemed to stick out of him everywhere gave the appearance of a collapsed marionette. They went over and stood by the bed and Meg leaned over and managed to kiss Savage on the cheek without disconnecting anything.

The old man smiled briefly, demureless, said, "Reba?"

"I've got word," Slater said.

Savage swallowed with difficulty. "My head," he said, "Raise it, please."

Jason reached through the tubes and wires, got a pillow doubled and positioned under Savages's head.

Savage said, "Not that it really matters anymore, but I'd like to see Mr. Slater alone for a moment."

Meg patted Savage's hand. Then, with Jason holding her arm, they went out of the room.

"I found her," Slater said. "She's doing fine and she's coming home. She's on her way to see you right now."

Savage cracked his mouth in a dry grin. "Thank you. But try again. You don't lie to a dying man so well."

"Very well," Slater said and pulled a chair over and sat down close to Savage's face and held his hand. It was as thin and fragile as tissue paper. "She's not coming home. A guy and a gal tried to blackmail her. They knew about the Derrick and they threatened to embarrass you if she didn't pay them off.

"She's been paying them for a while. I found out, told her you didn't give a damn. I got her to understand. Now here's the hard part-she's not coming back. Says she's not good for you and all she'll do is cause you trouble. She loves you too much for that.

"She's going to play it straight down the line from now on. She's gone and didn't tell me where and she said she wouldn't. That's the thick and thin of it."

Slater leaned back in his chair and tried to look sad instead of like a liar. There was no way in hell he could tell Savage that Reba was gone forever.

Savage smiled and for the first time his eyes seemed to have fire. He said, "That's good, son. It's the best an old man like me could ask for. You did a fine job." Then he turned his head away from the detective, closed his eyes and coughed a spittle onto his lips.

After a moment, Slater stood up, went quietly to the door and closed it softly behind him as if the old man were merely sleeping.

LOVE DOLL

I buy a plastic love doll because I want something to fuck that I don't have to talk to. Right on the box it says Love Doll. I take her home and blow her up. She locks pretty and sexy and innocent.

I fuck her. I sit with her on the couch and watch TV and put an arm around her plastic shoulders and hold my dick with my other hand.

I fuck her some more. In the morning I let the air out of her and fold her up and put her in a drawer.

When I come home from work at night I give her a blow job and she is full and stiff again. I take her into the bedroom and fuck her. I watch TV with my arm around her, one hand on my dick.

This goes on for a while.

I start to talk to the doll. I never wanted to talk to a woman, but I talk to the doll. I name her Madge. I had a dog named Madge that I liked.

I stop letting the air out of her in the mornings. I leave her in bed. I fix breakfast on a tray, enough for two. I come in and eat beside her on the bed. There's plenty of food left when I stop and get ready for work.

When I come home the tray is where it was and the doll is gone. There's no food left on the tray.

I find Madge in the shower. She smiles at me when I slide the shower door back.

"I was going to clean up for you," she said. "Be sexy. I'm sorry the house isn't clean and dinner isn't ready. It won't happen again."

I get in the shower with her. We have sex and soap each other. We dry off and go to bed and have sex again. We lie in bed and talk afterward. She talks some about girl things. She talks about me mostly. She has good things to say about my sexual prowess. We have sex again.

Next day she drives me to work, picks me up at the end of the day. All the fellas are jealous when they see her, she's such a good-looking piece.

She always looks nice. Wears frilly things, short skirts. For bop-around she wears tight sweaters and T-shirts and jeans. She smells good. She puts her hands on me a lot. The house is clean when I get home. Dinner is ready in a jiffy.

A year passes. Quite happily. Life couldn't be better. Lots of sex. A clean house. Food when I need it. Conversation. She tells me I'm a real man when I mount her, that she needs me, calls me her stallion, makes good noises beneath me and scratches at my back, she makes a lalala noise when she comes. She likes my muscles, the scruffiness of my beard. We watch movies on the couch, my arm around her. She holds my dick in her hand. When I tell her to, she gives me a blow job while I watch the movie. She always swallows my load.

One night we're laying in bed and she says, "I think maybe I should go to school."

"What for?" I ask.

"To bring in more money. We could buy some things."

"I make enough money."

"I know. You're a hard-working man. But I want to help."

"You help enough. You be here for me at night, keep the house clean and the meals ready. That's a woman's place."

"Whatever you want, dear."

But she doesn't mean it. It comes up now and again, her going to school. Finally I think, so what? She goes off to school. The house isn't quite so clean. The meals aren't always ready on time. I drive myself to work. Some nights she doesn't feel like sex. I jack off in the bathroom a lot. We sit on the couch and watch movies. She sits on one end, I sit on the other. We wear our clothes. I have a beer in one hand, the remote control in the other. We argue about little things. She doesn't like the way I spend my money.

She gets a degree. She gets a job in business. She wears suits. For bop-around the stuff she wears is less tight. She doesn't wear makeup or perfume around the house. She keeps her hands to herself. No kissing goodbye and hello anymore. We have sex less. When we have it, she seems distracted. She doesn't call me her King, her Big Man like she used to. After sex she'll sometimes stay up late reading books by people called Sartre or Camus. She's writing something she calls a business manifesto. She sits at the typewriter for hours. She goes to business parties, and I go with her, but I can tell they think I'm boring. I don't know what they're talking about. They talk about business and books and ideas. I hear Madge say a woman has to make her own way in the world. That she shouldn't depend on a man, even if she has one. Thing to do is to be your own person. She tells a man that. Guy in a three-piece blue suit with hair spray on his hair. He agrees with her. I feel sick.

I tell her so in the car on the way home. She calls me a prick. We don't fuck that night.

I watch a lot of movies alone. She yells from the bedroom for me to turn them down, and why don't I watch something else other than car chase movies, and why don't I read a book, even a stupid one?

I feel small these days. I go to the store and look at the love dolls. They all look so sexy and innocent. I think I might buy one, but find I can't. I don't feel man enough. I can't control the one I have. I get a new one, she might change, too. Course, a new one I could let the air out of when I finished fucking her, never let her have a day alone full blown.

I go home. Madge is there. She's writing her book. I get angry. I tell her I've been patient long enough. I'm the man around here. I tell her to stop that typing, get her clothes off and get in bed and grab her ankles. I'm going to fuck her unconscious.

She laughs. "You skinny, little, stupid pencil-dick, you couldn't fuck a gnat unconscious. You're about as manly as a Kotex."

I feel as if I've been hit in the face with a fist. I go into the bedroom and close the door. I sit on the edge of the bed. I can hear her typing in there. I get up and go over to the dresser and open the bottom drawer. I take off all my clothes and find the air spigot on the head of my dick and pull it open and listen to the air go out of me. I crumple into the open drawer, and lay there like a used prophylactic.

An hour or so later the typing stops. I hear her come into the room. She looks in the drawer. No expression. I try to say something manly, but nothing will come. I have no air and no voice. She moves away.

I hear the water running while she takes a shower. She comes out naked. I can see her pubic hair above me. I note how firm and full of air her thighs are. She opens the top drawer. She takes out panties. She puts them on. She goes away. I hear her sit on the bed. She dials the phone. She tells someone to come on over, that her thing with me is finished.

Time passes. The doorbell rings. Madge gets up and goes past me. I get a glimpse of her, her hair combed out long and pretty, a robe on.

I hear her laugh in the other room. She comes back with a man. As they go by the drawer I see it's the man in the business suit from the party. I hear them sit on the bed. They laugh a lot. She says something rude about me and my sexual abilities. I can tell she has his dick out of his pants because they're laughing about something. I realize they're laughing about sex. He's making fun of his equipment. I never like being laughed at when it's about sex. I don't like being laughed at at all, especially by a woman.

The bathrobe flies across the room and lands in the drawer on top of me and everything is dark. I hear the bedsprings squeak. They squeak for hours. They talk while they screw. After a while they stop talking. He grunts like a hog. She sings like a lark. Afterward I hear them talking. He asks her if she came. She says only a little. He says let me help you. I can't be sure, but I think he's doing something to her with his hand. I can't believe it. She doesn't seem to mind this at all.

I hear her sing again, this time louder than ever. Then they talk again. She tells him she never really came for me, that she always faked it. That I was a lousy fuck. That I didn't care if she came. That I got on and did it and got off.

A little air caught at the top of my head floats down and out of my open mouth.

They talk some more. They don't talk about him. She doesn't talk girl things. They talk about ideas. Politics. History. The office. Movies-films they call them-and books.

In the middle of the night the robe is lifted off of me. It's Madge. She's down on her knees looking in the drawer. She smiles at me. She picks me up and folds me gently. She has a box with her. It's the box she came in. The one that says Love Doll on it. The words Love Doll have been marked through with a magic marker and Fuck Toy has been written in above it. She puts me in the box and seals the lid and puts me back in the drawer and closes it.

THE MAN WHIO DREAMED

The old man drove a red pickup that looked ready to fall apart. He went up one street of Mud Creek and down another, driving slowly, looking out the window, sweating inside the pickup, cooking in the summer sunshine like a turkey in the oven.

Finally he found what he was looking for. A small white frame house with a freshly mown lawn that you could smell from three blocks away. There was a low, decorative, white fence that encased the yard and the old man parked in front of the curb next to that, got out on his rickety legs, went through the gate and up the walk.

A tricycle lay overturned near the front steps. The old man picked it up and set it right. He went up the steps and knocked on the door.

A young woman with her blonde hair tied back in a pony tail answered his knock. She had a white apron tied over her jeans and sweatshirt. She was barefoot. And very pretty. She smelled faintly of fried chicken.

"Yes," she asked the old man.

The old man wore a sweaty cowboy hat and he took that off with a wave of his hand and held it in front of his stomach in a manner reminiscent of one clutching a wound. His face certainly seemed to show some sort of hurt--something deep and sour and unrelenting.

"Ma'am, my name is Homer Wall and I'm from Tulsa, Oklahoma--"

"Tulsa? I've got relatives there, the Mayners. This hasn't got anything to do with them, does it? They're okay?"

"I guess so. I don't know them. I'm not here about your relatives."

Her eyes housed some suspicion now. "Then you're selling something?"

"No ma'am, I'm not. I've come to tell you something very important. You see, Mrs. James--"

"How'd you know my name?"

"I'll explain that. I've got this gift, you see, and--"

"For me?"

"No ma'am. I mean, yes ma'am, in a way. But not the sort of gift you're thinking of ... let me explain."

"Mr. Wall, I don't give to religious organizations, and I really have some work to do."

He shook his head. "No ma'am, I'm not a religious organization."

"Well now," she said, smiling, "I didn't think you were the whole thing."

The old man produced a pocket watch from his pants pocket and looked at the time. He felt the mainspring of his heart wind a little tighter. "We haven't got much time, Mrs. James. If you'll just give me a moment."

"Much time? What on earth are--"

"Please. It takes some explaining to make it so you'll understand it right. My gift is special. I got struck by lightning three years ago. Just one of those things. I was working in my garden. Didn't hurt me at all. But it cured my bad hearing, made my hair grow back--"

"You are selling something! My husband has a full head of hair--"

"No ma'am, I'm not selling anything. Please listen. The lightning, it caused me to start having dreams. Dreams that come true. Like I dreamed my wife was going to die three weeks before she did. Happened just like I dreamed it. Her heart quit. You see, I dreamed my way right into her chest, saw her heart stop pumping, and three weeks later she died. Just like I'd seen it.

"After that it got worse. The dreams would come and grow more terrible each night; and then, finally it would stop, and three weeks after it stopped it would happen."

"What would happen?"

"The dream would come true. I dreamed about this air crash, and each night the dream showed me more. I even dreamed the headlines that would be written long before they were put into print, before the words were even thought up. It was terrible, the bodies in the water, the horror. . . always bad dreams. Never good ones. I dreamed about this little baby and the well down at my granddad's old place. I'd played there when I was a kid. And I dreamed this baby fell in, and I knew that child, and I talked to the parents and they listened, and it didn't happen. You see, they were thinking about buying that land, and there wasn't any way I could have known.

"So I put it together, that this lightning hadn't been any accident, that I was special and I was supposed to go out and try and stop these things. And sometimes, when folks listened, I found that I could--"

"Now, Mr. Wall--"

"Listen, three weeks ago to this day my dreams about you, this house, your husband and your little boys, they stopped--"

"How'd you know I have little boys? What are you--"

"For God's sake, listen. I'm telling you. I dreamed it. And I could see them and you, and your husband, burning--"

She tried to close the door on him, but he moved fast, put his foot in the doorway. She pressed but made no progress. He didn't remove his foot.

"--dreamed this sign post that said: Mud Creek, and I dreamed the newspaper headlines off your local paper. I just kept dreaming enough things that I put it together, figured out the town's location. And when I saw your house, I knew it was the one in the dream. The one that was burning."

"Mr. Wall, my husband'll be home any minute."

"Yes, I know. And at five-thirty, while you're eating dinner--I know the time because I dreamed the clock over your kitchen sink and it showed five-thirty--there's going to be--"

"There's my husband. You best go."

The old man did not turn around. He heard a car pull up to the curb. "Listen to me, please. There will be a storm." A car door slammed. "Lightning will strike this house and you'll all die, horribly." The gate creaked open. "I tried to get here earlier, to warn you in plenty of time, but the truck broke down and I had to take some odd jobs to buy the parts it needed, and by the time I got that done and found you, well, it was the day, nearly the time--" A hand clamped the old man's bony shoulder.

"Get your foot out of the door."

The old man turned to look the other in the face. He was a young handsome man in a blue business suit. "Mr. James, you've got to listen."

"Oh Robert, he's telling some awful thing about how he dreamed we were all going to die in a fire, that lightning is going to strike the house at five-thirty, that he's here to warn us--"

"I am here to warn you," the old man said. "I dreamed this place. Your names will be in tomorrow's paper, they'll call it a freak accident."

"Tomorrow's paper!" Mr. James said. "You are some kind of kook. Take your witchcraft stuff somewhere else."

"Mr. James." The old man's hand clutched at the man's lapel like a claw.

"I mean it."

"You've got to--"

Robert snatched the old man's hand free, pushed him back.

The old man stumbled over the tricycle and fell onto the grass.

"Robert! He's just a crazy old man. You'll hurt him."

"I didn't mean to do that," Robert said. "I didn't know I pushed that hard. I didn't mean for you to fall, but if you don't go, now, I'm going to call the police."

"Lightning will strike this house," the old man said, getting up, recovering his hat and placing it on his head. "And you'll all die. You've got to get out of this house."

"Get out of here," Robert said. "I mean it. Hon, call the police."

The old man sighed, nodded. "Very well, I tried."

"You tried something," Robert said.

The old man got in his truck. He looked longingly out the window at them for a moment, finally started the motor and drove away, heading north.

"Oh Robert, such a strange old man."

"A kook."

"Could... I mean--?"

"Of course not. That's hocus pocus nonsense. Besides, there's not a cloud in the sky. It's sunny and blue. He's just a nut, well meaning maybe, but still a nut."

"Poor man."

"Forget it. What's for dinner? Are the boys home?"

"Fried chicken and mashed potatoes. And yes, they're home and hungry and ready to see their daddy." He put his arm around her and kissed her on the cheek and they went inside.

The old man stopped just outside of Mud Creek and looked at his pocket watch. Five-twenty.

He shook his head sadly, a tear ran down his cheek. He put the truck in gear and drove on northward. Above him, blowing fast, a dark mass of clouds moved south.

MAN WITH TWO LIVES

It was July the Fourth and Nacogdoches, the oldest town in Texas, was hung with banners declaring the holiday. The old man read them and continued walking. He was not in a festive mood at all. It was too hot and he was too old. He continued around the square toward the general store.

Yes, too hot and too old, but he kept going full steam ahead, for this was how he had always lived, and he knew no other way.

Sometimes, especially when it was hot he had noticed, he thought perhaps it would have been better had he really died in that saloon facedown on the card table; really been buried in a good hard box in that dark, rocky ground.

Certainly it would have been better than this. Less painful than this; wasting away of old age, being a man out of place and time, a nobody. Considering the fact that in his first life he had been very important made this all the worse.

Once he had carried a brace of revolvers, but now it was all he could do to carry himself down the street.

Once his calm voice was enough to quiet violent men in a Wild West saloon, but now he did well to talk above the screams of his grandchildren.

Sometimes he considered telling family and friends who he really was. But who would believe him? They would think he had finally gone over the lip.

No. They would not believe him and there was no way for him to prove otherwise. Even digging up the grave wouldn't help. Inside they would find a rotted corpse, and though not his, how would he prove to the contrary? There just wasn't any way he could convince people he was that famous man about whom stories were told and books were written.

John Spradley, sheriff of Nacogdoches, strolled by and nodded at him. "How're you doing, Jim?"

"Fine, fine," he said, but wanted to yell, "Miserable, that's how I'm doing. I was a famous man in my time and now no one even knows who I am."

But he said nothing beyond his false reply. Just walked on, toting his memories like a peddler toting his sack.

God, but it was hard to believe he had begun a new life thirty-eight years ago. Here it was 1914 and he remembered that day as if it were yesterday. he should. He had had the rare honor of attending his own funeral and walking away.

In those days he had been a famous gunhand, a man known far and wide as a great pistoleer. But his hand was slowing and his eyes were dimming. Not so unusual for a man in his late thirties, but very disconcerting for a man whose life depended on the speed of his draw, the accuracy of his aim.

He was in Dakota Territory in those days, and as always, his reputation had preceded him. It was a newly formed mining town where he stopped, and immediately his arrival set some concerned parties to buzzing. In the past he had had a reputation as a town tamer, and that just wouldn't do. Not when a handful of folks had it going good for them with illicit gambling and vice. They feared he'd clean up the town, institute law and order.

Rumor of that got around to him and he chuckled. No, he was through cleaning up towns, he'd had his fill of town marshaling. But he decided to use that to his advantage.

There was a guy named Varnes who probably had the biggest bite in the town, and more to lose than anyone should law and order be established and enforced. He went directly to Varnes and did not mince words.

"Varnes," he said, "I'll tell you this, and tell you straight. I'm thinking about cleaning up this rathole and making it decent. But I can make a deal with you. I'm a bit tired of all this, and to tell you the truth, I fear this just might be my last camp. So, before one of your hired guns kills me, I'm going to arrange it so you can get it done proper."

He could still remember the way Varnes looked at him, mouth open, eyes startled.

"No," he told Varnes, "I'm not about to commit suicide. I won't make it that easy for you, but I do have a plan. A plan that'll leave the town to you and free of my reputation."

The plan was simple: Varnes was to help him fake his death. For insurance, in case Varnes decided to make it for real, Varnes was to sign out a statement of his involvement beforehand and leave it with Charlie Utter, a friend of Jim's. Once the deal was pulled off, Charlie was to return the paper to Varnes to do as he chose.

If Charlie did not return the paper, and should Varnes appear to be in hot water, he could always have the body exhumed to prove that the man in question was not there, and had not actually been murdered.

To do the deed, and to keep his hands out of it, Varnes had hired a cross-eyed drunk to do the shooting; gave him a snootful of whiskey and a gun full of defective cartridges, though the one that would fall under the hammer was designed to go pop. That would make the assassination appear real to any witnesses in the saloon.

The old man laughed thinking back on it. He remembered how he had sat with his back to the door for the first time ever, and how right on schedule the drunk had entered and walked up behind him. "Take that," the drunk has said pulling and firing his pistol, and he, the great gunman, who had some acting experience from a Wild West show, fell forward on the table with a moan.

So he lay there on his side until the doctor came in-a man on Varnes's payroll. The doctor quickly pronounced him dead, and with the aid of Charlie, carried him away.

A few days later, after hiding out in Charlie's tent, playing hand after hand of poker, he had to perform an even greater acting job-be the corpse t his own funeral.

Charlie, the doctor, and Varnes helped him into a coffin and carried him out to be put on display. It was an odd feeling to have all those people passing by, and him trying to concentrate on shallow breathing and not moving a muscle, but Charlie had helped by not allowing viewers to linger, kept saying, "Move on, please, there are a lot of folks that want to pay their respects." He could still hear some of the talking as they passed.

"Isn't he lifelike?"

"He has a smile on his lips."

"Oh, did you see that? Didn't he breathe?"

"Hell no, he didn't breathe. He's dead and he looks it."

"Prettiest corpse I've ever seen."

And then they placed the lid on him and put him six feet down, with Charlie and Varnes supervising.

It was no mean trick to relax in the darkness, breathe easily and calmly while dirt clods sounded n the lid of the box, while it grew warm and sweaty within. He still remembered that moment, remembered wanting to kick and yell, scream out, "The deal is off!"

But he had remained calm, and shortly thereafter he heard the sound of spades, then hands on the box, and up he came.

Once out of the coffin, he had Charlie return Varnes's affidavit, and made Charlie promise to let him "stay dead."

"You've got it, old pard," Charlie told him. "You're a corpse from here out."

And Charlie had lived by his word. For that matter, so had Varnes. And why not? He had gotten what he wanted most, control of Deadwood, and to reveal that the great gunman was still alive would have made him a fool.

A few years later Jim had read a newspaper account of "his" body having been dug up-due to the expansion of Deadwood-and reburied. The body had been examined for some ghoulish reason, and good old Charlie had been on hand to state that "The body still maintained its features, and even the pleatings in the dress shirt were intact."

Since there were a number of witnesses present, Jim wondered just whose body Charlie had put in that coffin to substitute for him. He sort of hoped it was Varnes.

Yes, Charlie had been a true friend to the end. And perhaps that was what he missed most, friends like Charlie. He had never seen him again after that day at the grave site, for he had left Deadwood, shaved his mustache, cut his long hair, and ventured down South to eventually end up in Nacogdoches, Texas.

If anyone had told him that someday he'd give up his guns and meet up with some Texas farm girl and become a farmer, he'd have shot them on the spot. But that was exactly what had happened. He and Mattie had married, raised a beautiful daughter who married in turn and was raising his two lovely grandchildren, a boy and a girl.

Sometimes he wished he'd told Mattie who he really was, instead of making up a past for her. She would have believed him.

But he hadn't told her, and now she was gone.

God, but he missed her.

He strolled into the general store and bought a bag of hard rock candy and a few peppermints.

"Thank you, Mr. Butler," the storekeeper said.

"You're welcome," Jim said, and he strolled out, thinking, in my prime folks used to stand and stare when I walked in. Not only because of my reputation as a gunman, but because I was a fine figure of a man, tall and clear-eyed. Now I'm bent and half blind and do good to get a nod and a smile.

Sometimes he wished he'd really died that day in Deadwood, gone out at the top of his form.

He walked around the square and headed north down the tree-lined streets, toward his daughter's house.

After a while he stepped into her yard and started for the door, sighing heavily as he went.

"Grandpa!" came a voice from the side of the house. Turning, he saw nine-year-old Jimmy darting toward him, and not far behind came his five-year-old granddaughter, Lottie, who was now saying, "Gwanpa, Gwanpa," fast as revolver fire.

Stooping, his old bones creaking as he did, he took them in his arms, hugged them close.

"What you got in the sack, Grandpa?" Jimmy asked. "What you got?"

"Sack?" the old man said, as though he had not noticed it before. "What sack?"

"Oh, Grandpa," Jimmy said.

"Oh, Gwanpa," Lottie echoed.

Jim laughed and stood, opened his bag and poured candy into the two sets of hands that greedily reached up.

"You'll spoil them," came a voice, and he turned to see his daughter standing in the doorway. My, but she was the spitting image of her mother, a beautiful woman.

Especially with her hands on her hips like that, and that half-concerned look on her face.

"I certainly hope so," Jim said. "What grandbabies are for."

She smiled. "Children, put the candy up until after supper. Come into this house, all three of you. Let's eat. Right now! Time for supper."

The children ran ahead of him, and he watched them with pride. Following them inside, he went to the dinner table, hung his hat on the back of a chair as he sat. His son-in-law, Bob, was already at the table and he said, "Hi, Dad. Got you favorite today, mashed potatoes."

"Bring 'em on," the old man said with a grin.

After dinner, while June washed the dishes and Bob fed the chickens out back, he seated himself on the front porch swing and lit his pipe.

The evening had brought a bit of a cool spell with it, and it was a comfortable contrast to the muggy heat of the earlier day.

The grandchildren came out on the porch to bathe in the aroma of his pipe smoke. Little Lottie, making quite a chore of it, climbed up on his knee and hugged him. Jimmy sat beside him on the swing.

"Going to stay the night, Grandpa?" Jimmy asked.

"I think so."

Somewhere, not far away, a horde of firecrackers went off in celebration of the Fourth of July. They sounded like gunfire, and for a moment the old man's thoughts went back to the old days; back to when he had pulled his revolvers and heard them sing.

Yes, sometimes he wished he had died that day in the Ten Spot saloon.

"I wuv you Gwanpa," Lottie said.

And sometimes not, he thought, smiling at the pretty little girl.

"Grandpa," Jimmy said, "tell us a story."

The old man smiled, and said in a conspiratorial whisper, "I'll tell you a story, a secret one. Did you know that I'm really Wild Bill Hickok?"

"Oh Grandpa," Jimmy said. "He's dead."

The old man laughed again. "Yes," he said taking Lottie under one arm and Jimmy under the other. "I suppose he is."

"I wuv you Gwanpa," Lottie repeated.

"And I love you too," the old man said, and he told them a story. But it had nothing to do with Wild Bill Hickok.

THE MULE RUSTLERS

On a blustery, San Jacinto day, when leggy black clouds appeared against the pearl-gray sky like tromped-on spiders, Elliot and James set about rustling the mule.

A week back, James had spotted the critter while out casing the area for a house to burglarize. The burglary idea went down the tubes because there were too many large dogs in the yards, and too many older people sitting in lawn chairs flexing their false teeth amongst concrete lawn ornaments and sprinklers. Most likely they owned guns.

But on the way out of the neighborhood James observed, on a patch of about ten acres with a small pond and lots of trees, the mule. It was average-sized, brown in color, with a touch of white around the nostrils, and it had ears that tracked the countryside like radar instruments.

All of the property was fenced in barbed wire, but the gate to the property wasn't any great problem. It was made of hog wire stapled to posts, and there was another wire fastened to it and looped over a creosote corner post. There was a chain and padlock, but that was of no consequence. Wire cutters, and you were in.

The road in front of the property was reasonably traveled, and even as he slowed to check out the hog wire, three cars passed him going in the opposite direction.

James discovered if he drove off the gravel road and turned right on a narrow dirt road and parked to the side, he could walk through another piece of unfenced wooded property and climb over the barbed wire fence at the back of the mule's acreage. Better yet, the fence wasn't too good there, was kinda low, two strands only, and was primarily a line that marked ownership, not a boundary. The mule was in there mostly by her own goodwill.

James put a foot on the low, weak fence and pushed it almost to the ground. It was easy to step over then and he wanted to take the mule immediately, for he could see it browsing through a split in the trees, chomping up grass. It was an old mule, and its ears swung forward and back, but if it was aware of his presence, only the ears seemed to know and failed to send the signal to the critter's brain, or maybe the brain got the signal and didn't care.

James studied the situation. There were plenty of little crop farmers who liked a mule to plow their garden, or wanted one just because mules were cool. So there was a market. As for the job, well, the work would be holding the fence down so the mule could step over, then leading it to the truck. Easy money.

Problem was, James didn't have a truck. He had a Volvo that needed front-end work. It had once been crushed up like an accordion, then straightened somewhat, if not enough. It rattled and occasionally threatened to head off to the right without benefit of having the steering wheel turned.

And the damn thing embarrassed him. His hat touched the roof, and if he went out to the Cattleman's Cafe at the auction barn, he felt like a dork climbing out of it amidst mud-splattered pickups, some of them the size of military assault vehicles.

He had owned a huge Dodge Ram, but had lost it in a card game, and the winner, feeling generous, had swapped titles. The card shark got the Dodge, and James got the goddamn Volvo, worn out with the ceiling cloth dripping, the floor rotted away in spots, and the steering wheel slightly bent where an accident, most likely the one that accordioned the front end, must have thrown some un-seat-belted fella against it. At the top of the steering wheel, in the little rubber tubing wrapped around it, were a couple of teeth marks, souvenirs of that same unfortunate episode. Worse yet, the damn Volvo had been painted yellow, and it wasn't a job to be proud of. Baby-shit-hardened-and-aged-on-a-bedpost yellow.

Bottom line was, the mule couldn't ride in the front seat with him. But his friend Elliot owned both a pickup and a horse trailer.

Elliot had once seen himself as a horseman, but the problem was he never owned but one horse, a pinto, and it died from neglect, and had been on its last legs when Elliot purchased it for too much money. It was the only horse James had seen in Elliot's possession outside of stolen ones passing through his hands, and the only one outside of the one in the movie Cat Ballou that could lean against a wall at a forty-five-degree angle.

One morning it kept leaning, stiff as a sixteen-year-old's woody, but without the pulse. Having been there, probably dead, for several days, part of its hide had stuck to the wall and gone liquid and glue-ish. It took him and Elliot both with a two-by-four and a lot of energy to pry it off the stucco and push it down. They'd hooked it up to a chain by the back legs and dragged it to the center of Elliot's property.

Elliot had inherited his land from his grandfather Clemmons, who hated him. Old Man Clemmons had left him the land, but it was rumored he first salted the twenty-five acres and shit in the well. Sure enough, not much grew there except weeds, but as far as Elliot could tell the well water tasted fine.

According to Elliot, besides the salt and maybe the shit, he was given his grandfather's curse that wished him all life's burdens, none of its joys, and an early death. "He didn't like me much," Elliot was fond of saying when deep in his sauce.

They had coated the deceased pinto with gasoline and set it on fire. It had stunk something awful, and since they were involved with a bottle of Wild Turkey while it burned, it had flamed up and caught the back of Elliot's truck on fire, burning out the rubber truck bed lining. James figured they had just managed to beat it out with their coats moments before the gas tank ignited and blew them over and through the trees, along with the burning pinto's hide and bones.

* * *

James drove over to Elliot's place after his discovery of the mule. Elliot had grown him a few garden vegetables, mostly chocked with bugs, which he had been pushing from his fruit and vegetable stand next to the road.

James found him trying to sell a half bushel of tomatoes to a tall, moderately attractive blonde woman wearing shorts and showing lots of hair on her legs. Short, bristly hair, like a hog's. James had visions of dropping her in a vat of hot water and scraping that hair off with a knife. Course, he didn't want it hot as hog-scalding water, or she wouldn't be worth much when he got through. He wanted her shaved, not hurt.

Elliot had his brown, sweat-stained Stetson pushed up on his head and he was talking the lady up good as he could, considering she was digging through a basket and coming up with some bug-bit tomatoes.

"These are all bit up," she said.

"Bugs attack the good'ns," Elliot said. "Them's the ones you want. These ain't like that crap you get in the store."

"They don't have bugs in them."

"Yeah, but they don't got the flavor these do. You just cut around the spots, and those tomatoes'll taste better than any you ever had."

"That's a crock of shit," the lady said.

"Well now," Elliot said, "that's a matter of opinion."

"It's my opinion you put a few good tomatoes on top of the bug-bit ones," she said. "That's my opinion, and you can keep your tomatoes."

She got in a new, red Chevrolet and drove off.

"Good to see you ain't lost your touch," James said.

"Now, these here tomatoes have been goin' pretty fast this morning. Since it's mostly women buyin', I do all right. Fact is that's my first loss. Charm didn't work on her. She's probably a lesbian."

James wanted to call bullshit on that, but right now he wanted Elliot on his side.

"Unless you're doin' so good here you don't need money, I got us a little job."

"You case some spots?" Elliot asked.

"I didn't find nothin' worth doin'. Besides, there's lots of old folks where I was lookin'."

"I don't want no part of them. Always home. Always got dogs and guns."

"Yeah, and lawn gnomes and sprinklers made of wooden animals."

"With the tails that spin and throw water?"

"Yep."

"Kinda like them myself. You know, you picked up some of them things, you could sell them right smart."

"Yeah, well, I got somethin' better."

"Name it."

"Rustlin'."

Elliot worked his mouth a bit. James could see the idea appealed to him. Elliot liked to think of himself as a modern cowboy. "How many head?"

"One."

"One? Hell, that ain't much rustlin'."

"It's a mule. You can get maybe a thousand dollars for one. They're getting rarer, and they're kind of popular now. We rustle it. We could split the money."

Elliot studied on this momentarily. He also liked to think of himself as a respected and experienced thief.

"You know, I know a fella would buy a mule. Let me go up to the house and give him a call."

"It's the same fella I know, ain't it?"

"Yeah," Elliot said.

* * *

Elliot made the call and came out of the bedroom into the living room with good news.

"George wants it right away. He's offerin' us eight hundred."

"I wanted a thousand."

"He's offering eight hundred, he'll sell it for a thousand or better himself. He said he can't go a thousand. Already got a couple other buys goin' today. It's a deal and it's now."

James considered on that.

"I guess that'll do. We'll need your truck and trailer."

"I figured as much."

"You got any brown shoe polish?"

"Brown shoe polish?"

"That's right," James said.

* * *

The truck was a big, four-seater Dodge with a bed big enough to fill, attach a diving board, and call a pool. The Dodge hummed like a sewing machine as it whizzed along on its huge tires. The trailer clattered behind and wove precariously left and right, as if it might pass the truck at any moment. James and Elliot had their windows down, and the cool, April wind snapped at the brims of their hats and made the creases in their crowns deeper.

By the time they drove over to the place where the mule was, the smashed spider clouds had begun to twist their legs together and blend into one messy critter that peed sprinkles of rain all over the truck windshield.

They slowed as they passed the gate, then turned right. No cars or people were visible, so Elliot pulled over to the side of the road, got out quick with James carrying a rope. They went through the woods, stepped over the barbed wire fence, and found the mule grazing. They walked right up to it, and Elliot bribed it with an ear of corn from his garden. The mule sniffed at the corn and bit it. As he did, James slipped the rope over its neck, twisted it so that he put a loop over the mule's nose. Doing this, he brushed the mule's ears, and it kicked at the air, spun and kicked again. It took James several minutes to calm it down.

"It's one of them that's touchy about the ears," Elliot said. "Don't touch the ears again."

"I hear that," James said.

They led the mule to the fence. Elliot pushed it almost to the ground with his boot, and James and the mule stepped over. After that, nothing more was required than to lead the mule to the trailer and load it. It did what was expected without a moment's hesitation.

There was some consternation when it came to turning truck and trailer around, but Elliot managed it and they were soon on the road to a rendezvous with eight hundred dollars.

* * *

The place they had to go to meet their buyer, George Taylor, was almost to Tyler, and about sixty miles from where they had nabbed the mule. They often sold stolen material there, and George specialized in livestock and just about anything he could buy quick and sell quicker.

The trailer was not enclosed, and it occurred to James that the mule's owner might pass them, but he doubted the mule would be recognized. They were really hauling ass, and the trailer, with the weight of the old mule to aid it, had slowed in its wobbling but still sounded like a train wreck.

When they were about twenty-five miles away from Taylor's place, James had Elliot pull over. He took the brown shoe polish back to the trailer and, reaching between the bars while Elliot fed the mule corn on the cob, painted the white around the mule's nose brown. It was raining lightly, but he managed the touch-up without having it washed away.

He figured this way Taylor might not notice how old the critter was and not try to talk them down. He had given them a price, but they had dealt with Taylor before and what he offered wasn't always what he wanted to give, and it was rare you talked it up. The trick was to keep him from going down. George knew once they had the mule stolen they'd want to get rid of it, and it would be his plan to start finding problems with the animal and to start lowering his price.

When the mule was painted, they got back in the truck and headed out.

Elliot said, "You are one thinker, James."

"Yes sir," James agreed, "you got to get up pretty goddamned early in the morning to get one over on me. It starts raining hard, it won't wash off. That stuff'll hold."

* * *

When they arrived at Taylor's place, James looked back through the rear truck window and saw the mule with its head lowered, looking at him through sheets of rain. James felt less smart immediately. The brown he had painted on the mule had dried and was darker than the rest of its hide and made it look as if it had dipped its muzzle in a bucket of paint, searching for a carrot on the bottom.

James decided to say nothing to Elliot about this, lest Elliot decide it really wasn't all that necessary to get up early to outsmart him.

Taylor's place was a kind of ranch and junkyard. There were all manner of cars damaged or made thin by the car smasher that Taylor rode with great enthusiasm, wearing a gimme cap with the brim pushed up and his mouth hanging open as if to receive something spoon-fed by a caretaker.

Today, however, the car smasher remained silent near the double-wide where Taylor lived with his bulldog Bullet and his wife, Kay, who was about one ton of woman in a muumuu that might have been made from a circus tent and decorated by children with finger paints. If she owned more than one of these outfits, James was unaware of it. It was possible she had a chest full of them, all the same, folded and ready, with a hole in the center to pull over her head at a moment's notice.

At the back of the place a few cows that looked as if they were ready to be sold for hide and hooves stumbled about. Taylor's station wagon, used to haul a variety of stolen goods, was parked next to the trailer, and next to it was a large, red Cadillac with someone at the back of it closing the trunk.

As they drove over the cattle guard and onto the property, the man at the trunk of the Cadillac looked up. He was wearing a blue baseball cap and a blue T-shirt that showed belly at the bottom. He and his belly bounced away from the Caddy, up the steps of the trailer, and inside.

Elliot said, "Who's that?"

"Can't say," James said. "Don't recognize him."

They parked beside the Cadillac, got out, went to the trailer door, and knocked. There was a long pause, then the man with the baseball cap answered the door.

"Yeah," he said.

"We come to see Taylor," Elliot said.

"He ain't here right now," said the man.

"He's expectin' us," James said.

"Say he is?"

"We got a mule to sell him," James said.

"That right?"

"Mrs. Taylor here?" James asked.

"Naw. She ain't. Ain't neither one of them here."

"Where's Bullet?" Elliot asked.

"He don't buy mules, does he?"

"Bullet?" Elliot said.

"Didn't you ask for him?"

"Well, yeah, but not to buy nothin'."

"You boys come on in," came a voice from inside the trailer. "It's all right there, Butch, stand aside. These here boys are wantin' to do some business with George. That's what we're doin'."

Butch stood aside. James and Elliot went inside.

"So is he here?" James asked.

"No. Not just now. But we're expectin' him shortly."

Butch stepped back and leaned against the trailer's kitchen counter, which was stacked with dirty dishes. The place smelled funny. The man who had asked them to come inside was seated on the couch. He was portly, wearing black pants and black shoes with the toes turned up. He had on a big, black Hawaiian-style shirt with hula girls in red, blue, and yellow along the bottom. He had greasy, black hair combed straight back and tied in a little ponytail. A white, short-brimmed hat with a near flat crown was on a coffee table in front of him, along with a can of beer and a white substance in four lines next to a rolled dollar bill. He had his legs crossed and he was playing with the tip of one of his shoes. He had a light growth of beard and he was smiling at them.

"What you boys sellin'?" he asked.

"A mule," James said.

"No shit?"

"That's right," Elliot said. "When's George coming back?"

"Sometime shortly after the Second Coming. But I doubt he'll go with God."

Elliot looked at James. James shrugged, and at that moment he saw past Elliot, and what he saw was Bullet lying on the floor near a doorway to the bedroom, a pool of blood under him. He tried not to let his eyes stay on Bullet long. He said, "Tell you what, boys. I think me and Elliot will come back later, when George is here."

The big man lifted up his Hawaiian shirt and showed him his hairy belly and against it a little, flat black automatic pistol. He took the pistol out slowly and put it on his knee and looked at them.

"Naw. He ain't comin' back, and you boys ain't goin' nowhere."

"Aw shit," Elliot said, suddenly getting it. "He ain't no friend of ours. We just come to do business, and if he ain't here to do business, you boys got our blessing. And we'll just leave and not say a word."

Another man came out of the back room. He was naked, and carrying a bowie knife. He was muscular, bug-nosed, with close-cut hair. There was blood on him from thighs to neck. From the back room they heard a moan.

The naked man looked at them, then at the man on the couch.

"Friends of Taylor's," the man on the couch said.

"We ain't," James said. "We hardly know him. We just come to sell a mule."

"A mule, huh," said the naked man. He didn't seem bashful at all. His penis was bloody and stuck to his right leg like some kind of sucker fish. The naked man nodded his head at the open doorway behind him, spoke to the man on the couch. "I've had all of that I want and can take, Viceroy. It's like cutting blubber off a whale."

"You go on and shower," Viceroy said, then smiled, added: "And be sure and wash the parts you don't normally touch."

"Ain't no parts Tim don't touch," Butch said.

"I tell you what," Tim said. "You get in there and go to work, then show me how funny you are. That old woman is hardheaded."

Tim went past Butch, driving the bowie knife into the counter, rattling the dishes.

Viceroy stared at Butch. "Your turn."

"What about you?" Butch said.

"I don't take a turn. Get with it."

Butch put his cap on the counter next to a greasy plate, took off his shirt, pants, underwear, socks, and shoes. He pulled the knife out of the counter and started for the bedroom. He said, "What about these two?"

"Oh, me and them are gonna talk. Any friend of Taylor's is a friend of mine."

"We don't really know him," James said. "We just come to sell a mule."

"Sit down on the floor there, next to the wall, away from the door," Viceroy said, and scratched the side of his cheek with the barrel of the automatic.

A moment later they heard screams from the back room and Butch yelling something, then there was silence, followed shortly by more screams.

"Butch ain't got Tim's touch," Viceroy said. "Tim can skin you and you can walk off before you notice the hide on your back, ass, and legs is missin'. Butch, he's a hacker."

Viceroy leaned forward, took up the dollar bill, and sucked up a couple lines of the white powder. "Goddamn, that'll do it," he said.

Elliot said, "What is that?"

Viceroy laughed. "Boy, you are a rube, ain't you? Would you believe bakin' soda?"

"Really?" Elliot said.

Viceroy hooted. "No. Not really."

From the bedroom you could hear Butch let out a laugh. "Crackers," he said.

"It's cocaine," James said to Elliot. "I seen it in a movie."

"Good God," Elliot said.

"My, you boys are delicate for a couple of thieves," Viceroy said.

Tim came out of the bathroom, still naked, bouncing his balls with a towel.

"Put some clothes on," Viceroy said. "We don't want to see that."

Tim looked hurt, put on his clothes and adjusted his cap. Viceroy snorted the last two lines of coke. "Damn, that's some good stuff: You can step on that multiple."

"Let me have a snort," Tim said.

"Not right now," Viceroy said.

"How come you get to?" Tim said.

" 'Cause I'm the biggest bull in the woods, boy. And you can test that anytime you got the urge."

Tim didn't say anything. He went to the refrigerator, found a beer, popped it, and began to sip.

"I don't think she knows nothing," Tim said. "She wouldn't hold back havin' that done to her for a few thousand dollars. Not for a million."

"I reckon you're right," said Viceroy. "I just don't like quittin' halfway. You finish a thing, even if it ain't gonna turn out. Ain't that right, boys?"

James and Elliot didn't reply. Viceroy laughed and picked up the beer on the coffee table and took a jolt of it. He said to himself, "Yeah, that's right. You don't do a thing half-ass. You do it all the way. What time is it?"

Tim reached in his pocket and took out a pocket watch. James recognized it as belonging to George Taylor. "It's four."

"All right," Viceroy said, satisfied, and sipped his beer.

* * *

After a time Butch came out of the bedroom bloody and looking tired. "She ain't gonna tell nobody nothin'. She's gone. She couldn't take no more. She'd have known somethin', she'd have told it."

"Guess Taylor didn't tell her," Tim said. "Guess she didn't know nothin'."

"George had more in him than I thought, goin' like that, takin' all that pain and not talkin'," Viceroy said. "I wouldn't have expected it of him."

Tim nodded his head. "When you shot his bulldog, I think he was through. Took the heart right out of him. Wasn't a thing we could do to him then that mattered."

"Money's around here somewhere," Viceroy said.

"He might not have had nothin'," Butch said, walking to the bathroom.

"I think he did," Viceroy said. "I don't think he was brave enough to try and cross me. I think he had the money for the blow, but we double-crossed him too soon. We should have had him put the money on the table, then done what we needed to do. Would have been easier on everybody all the way around, them especially."

"They'd have still been dead," Tim said, drinking the last of his beer, crushing the can.

"But they'd have just been dead. Not hurt a lot, then dead. Old fat gal, that wasn't no easy way to go, and in the end she didn't know nothin'. And Taylor, takin' the knife, then out there in that car in the crusher and us telling him we were gonna run him through, and him still not talkin'."

"Like I said, we killed the bulldog I think he was through. Fat woman wasn't nothin' to him, but he seemed to have a hard-on for that dog. He'd just as soon be crushed. But I still think there might not have been any money. I think maybe they was gonna do what we were gonna do. Double cross."

"Yeah, but we brought the blow," Viceroy said.

Tim grinned. "Yeah, but was you gonna give it to 'em?"

Viceroy laughed, then his gaze settled lead-heavy on the mule rustlers. "Well, boys, what do you suggest I do with you pickle heads?"

"Just let us go," James said. "Hell, this ain't our business, and we don't want it to be our business. It ain't like Taylor was a relative of ours."

"That's right," Elliot said. "He's cheated us plenty on little deals."

Viceroy was quiet. He looked at Tim. "What do you say?"

Tim pursed his lips and developed the expression of a man looking in the distance for answers. "I sympathize with these boys. I guess we could let 'em go. Give us their word, show us some ID, so they spill any beans we can find them. You know the littlest bit these days and you can find anybody."

"Damn Internet," Viceroy said.

Butch came out of the bathroom, naked, toweling his hair.

"You think we should let 'em go?" Viceroy asked.

Butch looked first at Viceroy and Tim, then at James and Elliot. "Absolutely."

"Get dressed," Viceroy said to Butch, "and we'll let 'em go."

"We won't say a word," Elliot said.

"Sure," Viceroy said. "You look like boys who can be quiet. Don't they?"

"Yeah," Tim said.

"Absolutely," Butch said, tying his shoe.

"Then we'll just go," James said, standing up from his position on the floor, Elliot following suit.

"Not real quick," Viceroy said. "You got a mule, huh?"

James nodded.

"What's he worth?"

"Couple thousand dollars to the right people."

"What about people ain't maybe quite as right?"

"A thousand. Twelve hundred."

"What were you supposed to get?"

"Eight hundred."

"We could do some business, you know."

James didn't say anything. He glanced toward the door where the men had been at work on Mrs. Taylor. He saw the bulldog lying there on the linoleum in its pool of hardened blood, and flowing from the bedroom was fresh blood. The fresh pool flowed around the crusty old pool and bled into the living room of the trailer and died where the patch of carpet near the couch began; the carpet began to slowly absorb it.

James knew these folks weren't going to let them go anywhere.

"I think we'll take the mule," Viceroy said. "Though I ain't sure I'm gonna give you any eight hundred dollars."

"We give it to you as a gift," Elliot said. "Just take it, and the trailer it's in, and let us go."

"That's a mighty nice offer," Viceroy said. "Nice, huh, boys?"

"Damn nice," Tim said.

"Absolutely," Butch said. "They could have held out and tried to deal. You don't get much nicer than that."

"And throwing in the trailer too," Tim said. "Now, that's white of 'em."

James took hold of the doorknob, turned it, said, "We'll show him to you."

"Wait a minute," Viceroy said.

"Come on out," James said.

Butch darted across the room, took hold of James's shoulder. "Hold up."

The door was open now. Rain was really hammering. The mule, its head hung, was visible in the trailer.

"Ain't no need to get wet," Viceroy said.

James had one foot on the steps outside. "You ought to see what you're gettin'."

"It'll do," Viceroy said. "It ain't like we're payin' for it."

Butch tightened his grip on James, and Elliot, seeing how this was going to end up and somehow feeling better about dying out in the open, not eight feet from a deceased bulldog, a room away from a skinned fat woman, pushed against Butch and stepped out behind James and into the yard.

"Damn," Viceroy said.

"Should I?" Butch said, glancing at Viceroy, touching the gun in his pants.

"Hell, let's look at the mule," Viceroy said.

Viceroy put on his odd hat and they all went out in the rain for a look. Viceroy looked as if he were some sort of escapee from a mental institution, wearing a hubcap. The rain ran off of it and made a curtain of water around his head.

They stood by the trailer staring at the mule. Tim said, "Someone's painted its nose, or it's been dippin' it in shit."

James and Elliot said nothing.

James glanced at the trailer, saw there was no underpinning. He glanced at Elliot, nodded his head slightly. Elliot looked carefully. He had an idea what James meant. They might roll under the trailer and get to the other side and start running. It wasn't worth much. Tim and Butch looked as if they could run fast, and all they had to do was run fast enough to get a clear shot.

"This is a goddamn stupid thing," Butch said, the rain hammering his head. "Us all standing out here in the rain lookin' at a goddamn mule. We could be dry and these two could be--"

A horn honked. Coming up the drive was a black Ford pickup with a camper fastened to the bed.

The truck stopped and a man the shape of a pear with the complexion of a marshmallow, dressed in khakis the color of walnut bark, got out smiling teeth all over the place. He had a rooster under his arm.

He said, "Hey, boys. Where's George?"

"He ain't feelin' so good," Viceroy said.

The man with the rooster saw the gun Viceroy was holding. He said, "You boys plinking cans?"

"Somethin' like that," Viceroy said.

"Would you tell George to come out?" the man said.

"He won't come out," Butch said.

The man's smile fell away. "Why not? He knows I'm comin'."

"He's under the weather," Viceroy said.

"Can't we all go inside, it's like being at the bottom of a lake out here."

"Naw. He don't want us in there. Contagious."

"What's he got?"

"You might say a kind of lead poisonin'."

"Well, he wants these here chickens. I got the camper back there full of 'em. They're fightin' chickens. Best damn bunch there is. This'n here, he's special. He's a stud rooster. He ain't fightin' no more. Won his last one. Got a bad shot that put blood in his lungs, but I put his head in my mouth and sucked it out, and he went on to win. Just come back from it and won. I decided to stud him out."

"He's gettin' all wet," Butch said.

"Yeah he is," said the chicken man.

"Let's end this shit," Tim said.

James reached over and pulled the bar on the trailer and the gate came open. He said, "Let's show him to you close-up."

"Not now," Viceroy said, but James was in the trailer now. He took the rope off the trailer rail and tied it around the mule's neck and put a loop over its head, started backing him out.

"That's all right," Viceroy said. "We don't need to see no damn mule."

"He's a good'n," James said when the mule was completely out of the trailer. "A little touchy about the ears."

He turned the mule slightly then, reached up, and grabbed the mule's ears, and it kicked.

The kick was a good one. Both legs shot out and the mule seemed to stand on its front legs like a gymnast that couldn't quite flip over. The shod hooves caught Viceroy in the face and there was a sound like a pound of wet cow shit dropping on a flat rock, and Viceroy's neck turned at a too-far angle and he flew up and fell down.

James bolted, and so did Elliot, slamming into Tim as he went, knocking him down. James hit the ground, rolled under the trailer, scuttled to the other side, Elliot went after him. Butch aimed at the back of Elliot's head and the chicken man said, "Hey, what the hell."

Butch turned and shot the chicken man through the center of the forehead. Chicken man fell and the rooster leaped and squawked, and just for the hell of it, Butch shot the rooster too.

Tim got up cussing. "I'm all muddy."

"Fuck that," Butch said. "They're gettin' away."

Even the mule had bolted, darting across the yard, weaving through the car crusher and a pile of mangled cars. Their last view of it was the tips of its ears over the top of the metallic heap.

Tim ran around the trailer and saw James and Elliot making for a patch of woods in the distance. It was just a little patch that ran along both sides of the creek down there. The land sloped just enough and the rain and wind were hard enough that the shot Tim got off didn't hit James or Elliot. It went past them and smacked a tree.

Tim came back around the trailer and looked at Butch bending over Viceroy, taking his gun, sticking it in his belt.

"He bad?" Tim asked.

"He's dead. Fuckin' neck's broke. If that's bad, he's bad."

"We gonna get them hillbillies?"

"There ain't no hills around here for a billy to live in. They're just the same ole white trash they got everywhere, you idiot."

"Well, this ain't Dallas . . . we gonna chase 'em?"

"What for? Let's get the TV set and go."

"Got a stereo too. I seen it in there. It's a good'n."

"Get that too. I don't think there is no money. I think he was gonna try and sweet-talk Viceroy out of some of that blow. A pay-later deal."

"He damn sure didn't know Viceroy, did he?"

"No, he didn't. But you know what, I ain't gonna miss him."

A moment later the TV and the stereo were loaded in the Cadillac. Then, just for fun, they put the chicken man and Viceroy in the chicken man's truck and used the car crusher on it. As the truck began to crush, chickens squawked momentarily and the tires blew with a sound like mortar fire.

With Viceroy, the chicken man, and the chickens flattened, they slid the truck onto a pile of rusted metal, got in the Cadillac, and drove out of there, Butch at the wheel.

On the way over the cattle guard, Tim said, "You know, we could have sold them chickens."

"My old man always said don't steal or deal in anything you got to feed. I've stuck by that. Fuck them chickens. Fuck that mule."

Tim considered that, decided it was sage advice, the part about not dealing in livestock. He said, "All right."

* * *

Along the creek James and Elliot crept. The creek was rising and the sound of the rain through the trees was like someone beating tin with a chain.

The land was low and it was holding water. They kept going and pretty soon they heard a rushing sound. Looking back, they saw a wall of water surging toward them. The lake a mile up had overflowed and the creek and all that rain were causing it to flood.

"Shit," said James.

The water hit them hard and knocked them down, took their hats. When they managed to stand, the water was knee-deep and powerful. It kept bowling them over. Soon they were just flowing with it and logs and limbs were clobbering them at every turn.

They finally got hold of a small tree that had been uprooted and hung to that. The water carried them away from the trees around the creek and out into what had once been a lowland pasture.

They had gone a fair distance like this when they saw the mule swimming. Its neck and back were well out of the water and it held its head as if it were regal and merely about some sort of entertainment.

Their tree homed in on the mule, and as they passed, James grabbed the mule's neck and pulled himself onto it. Elliot got hold of the mule's tail, pulled himself up on its back where James had settled.

The mule was more frantic now, swimming violently. The flood stopped suddenly, and James realized this was in fact where the highway had been cut through what had once been a fairly large hill. The highway was covered and not visible, but this was it, and there was a drop-off as the water flowed over it.

Down they went, and the churning deluge went over them, and they spun that way for a long time, like they were in a washing machine cycle. When they came up, the mule was upside down, feet pointing in the air. Its painted nose sometimes bobbed up and out of the water, but it didn't breathe and it didn't roll over.

James and Elliot clung to its legs and fat belly and washed along like that for about a mile. James said, "I'm through with livestock."

"I hear that," Elliot said.

Then a bolt of lightning, attracted by the mule's upturned, iron-shod hooves, struck them a sizzling, barbecuing strike, so that there was nothing left now but three piles of cooked meat, one with a still visible brown nose and smoking, wilting legs, the other two wearing clothes, hissing smoke, blasting along with the charge of the flood.

ON A DARK OCT0BER

The October night was dark and cool. The rain was thick. The moon was hidden behind dark clouds that occasionally flashed with lightning, and the sky rumbled as if it were a big belly that was hungry and needed filling.

A white Chrysler New Yorker came down the street and pulled up next to the curb. The driver killed the engine and the lights, turned to look at the building that sat on the block, an ugly tin thing with a weak light bulb shielded by a tin-hat shade over a fading sign that read BOB'S GARAGE. For a moment the driver sat unmoving, then he reached over, picked up the newspaper-wrapped package on the seat and put it in his lap. He opened it slowly. Inside was a shiny, oily, black-handled, ball peen hammer.

He lifted the hammer, touched the head of it to his free palm. It left a small smudge of grease there. He closed his hand, opened it, rubbed his fingers together. It felt just like ... but he didn't want to think of that. It would all happen soon enough.

He put the hammer back in the papers, rewrapped it, wiped his fingers on the outside of the package. He pulled a raincoat from the back seat and put it across his lap. Then, with hands resting idly on the wheel, he sat silently.

A late model blue Ford pulled in front of him, left a space at the garage's drive, and parked. No one got out. The man in the Chrysler did not move.

Five minutes passed and another car, a late model Chevy, parked directly behind the Chrysler. Shortly thereafter three more cars arrived, all of them were late models. None of them blocked the drive. No one got out.

Another five minutes skulked by before a white van with MERTZ'S MEATS AND BUTCHER SHOP written on the side pulled around the Chrysler, then backed up the drive, almost to the garage door. A man wearing a hooded raincoat and carrying a package got out of the van, walked to the back and opened it.

The blue Ford's door opened, and a man dressed similarly, carrying a package under his arm, got out and went up the driveway. The two men nodded at one another. The man who had gotten out of the Ford unlocked the garage and slid the door back.

Car doors opened. Men dressed in raincoats, carrying packages, got out and walked to the back of the van. A couple of them had flashlights and they flashed them in the back of the vehicle, gave the others a good view of what was there-a burlap wrapped, rope-bound bundle that wiggled and groaned.

The man who had been driving the van said, "Get it out."

Two of the men handed their packages to their comrades and climbed inside, picked up the squirming bundle, carried it into the garage. The others followed. The man from the Ford closed the door.

Except for the beams of the two flashlights, they stood close together in the darkness, like strands of flesh that had suddenly been pulled into a knot. The two with the bundle broke away from the others, and with their comrades directing their path with the beams of their flashlights, they carried the bundle to the grease rack and placed it between two wheel ramps. When that was finished, the two who had carried the bundle returned to join the others, to reform that tight knot of flesh.

Outside the rain was pounding the roof like tossed lug bolts. Lightning danced through the half-dozen small, barred windows. Wind shook the tin garage with a sound like a rattlesnake tail quivering for the strike, then passed on.

No one spoke for awhile. They just looked at the bundle. The bundle thrashed about and the moaning from it was louder than ever.

"All right," the man from the van said.

They removed their clothes, hung them on pegs on the wall, pulled their raincoats on.

The man who had been driving the blue Ford-after looking carefully into the darkness-went to the grease rack. There was a paper bag on one of the ramps. Earlier in the day he had placed it there himself. He opened it and took out a handful of candles and a book of matches. Using a match to guide him, he placed the candles down the length of the ramps, lighting them as he went. When he was finished, the garage glowed with a soft amber light. Except for the rear of the building. It was dark there.

The man with the candles stopped suddenly, a match flame wavering between his fingertips. The hackles on the back of his neck stood up. He could hear movement from the dark part of the garage. He shook the match out quickly and joined the others. Together, the group unwrapped their packages and gripped the contents firmly in their hands- hammers, brake-over handles, crowbars, heavy wrenches. Then all of them stood looking toward the back of the garage, where something heavy and sluggish moved.

The sound of the garage clock-a huge thing with DRINK COCA-COLA emblazoned on its face-was like the ticking of a time bomb. It was one minute to midnight.

Beneath the clock, visible from time to time when the glow of the candles was whipped that way by the draft, was a calendar. It read OCTOBER and had a picture of a smiling boy wearing overalls, standing amidst a field of pumpkins. The 31st was circled in red.

Eyes drifted to the bundle between the ramps now. It had stopped squirming. The sound it was making was not quite a moan. The man from the van nodded at one of the men, the one who had driven the Chrysler. The Chrysler man went to the bundle and worked the ropes loose, folded back the burlap. A frightened black youth, bound by leather straps and gagged with a sock and a bandana, looked up at him wide-eyed. The man from the Chrysler avoided looking back. The youth started squirming, grunting, and thrashing. Blood beaded around his wrists where the leather was tied, boiled out from around the loop fastened to his neck; when he kicked, it boiled faster because the strand had been drawn around his neck, behind his back and tied off at his ankles.

There came a sound from the rear of the garage again, louder than before. It was followed by a sudden sigh that might have been the wind working its way between the rafters.

The van driver stepped forward, spoke loudly to the back of the garage. "We got something for you, hear me? Just like always we're doing our part. You do yours. I guess that's all I got to say. Things will be the same come next October. In your name, I reckon."

For a moment-just a moment-there was a glimmer of a shape when the candles caught a draft and wafted their bright heads in that direction. The man from the van stepped back quickly. "In your name," he repeated. He turned to the men. "Like always, now. Don't get the head until the very end. Make it last."

The faces of the men took on an expression of grimness, as if they were all playing a part in a theatric production and had been told to look that way. They hoisted their tools and moved toward the youth.

What they did took a long time.

When they finished, the thing that had been the young black man looked like a gigantic hunk of raw liver that had been chewed up and spat out. The raincoats of the men were covered in a spray of blood and brains. They were panting.

"Okay," said the man from the van.

They took off their raincoats, tossed them in a metal bin near the grease rack, wiped the blood from their hands, faces, ankles and feet with shop rags, tossed those in the bin and put on their clothes.

The van driver yelled to the back of the garage. "All yours. Keep the years good, huh?"

They went out of there and the man from the Ford locked the garage door. Tomorrow he would come to work as always. There would be no corpse to worry about, and a quick dose of gasoline and a match would take care of the contents in the bin. Rain ran down his back and made him shiver.

Each of the men went out to their cars without speaking. Tonight they would all go home to their young, attractive wives and tomorrow they would all go to their prosperous businesses and they would not think of this night again. Until next October.

They drove away. Lightning flashed. The wind howled. The rain beat the garage like a cat-o'-nine-tails. And inside there were loud sucking sounds punctuated by grunts of joy.

ON THE FAR SIDE OF THE CADILLAC DESERT WITH DEAD FOLKS

I

After a month's chase, Wayne caught up with Calhoun one night at a little honky-tonk called Rosalita's. It wasn't that Calhoun had finally gotten careless, it was just that he wasn't worried. He'd killed four bounty hunters so far, and Wayne knew a fifth didn't concern him.

The last bounty hunter had been the famous Pink Lady McGuire-one mean, mama-three hundred pounds of rolling, ugly meat that carried a twelve-gauge Remington pump and a bad attitude. Story was, Calhoun jumped her from behind, cut her throat, and as a joke, fucked her before she bled to death. This not only proved to Wayne that Calhoun was a dangerous sonofabitch, it also proved he had bad taste.

Wayne stepped out of his '57 Chevy reproduction, pushed his hat back on his forehead, opened the trunk, and got the sawed-off double barrel and some shells out of there. He already had a .38 revolver in the holster at his side and a bowie knife in each boot, but when you went into a place like Rosalita's it was best to have plenty of backup.

Wayne put a handful of shotgun shells in his shirt pocket, snapped the flap over them, looked up at the red-and-blue neon sign that flashed ROSALITA'S: COLD BEER AND DEAD DANCING, found his center, as they say in Zen, and went on in.

He held the shotgun against his leg, and as it was dark in there and folks were busy with talk or drinks or dancing, no one noticed him or his artillery right off.

He spotted Calhoun's stocky, black-hatted self immediately. He was inside the dance cage with a dead buck-naked Mexican girl of about twelve. He was holding her tight around the waist with one hand and massaging her rubbery ass with the other like it was a pillow he was trying to shape. The dead girl's handless arms flailed on either side of Calhoun, and her little tits pressed to his thick chest. Her wire-muzzled face knocked repeatedly at his shoulder and drool whipped out of her mouth in thick spermy ropes, stuck to his shirt, faded and left a patch of wetness.

For all Wayne knew, the girl was Calhoun's sister or daughter. It was that kind of place. The kind that had sprung up immediately after that stuff had gotten out of a lab upstate and filled the air with bacterium that brought dead humans back to life, made their basic motor functions work and made them hungry for human flesh; made it so if a man's wife, daughter, sister, or mother went belly up and he wanted to turn a few bucks, he might think: "Damn, that's tough about ole Betty Sue, but she's dead as hoot-owl shit and ain't gonna be needing nothing from here on out, and with them germs working around in her, she's just gonna pull herself out of the ground and cause me a problem. And the ground out back of the house is harder to dig than a calculus problem is to work, so I'll just toss her cold ass in the back of the pickup next to the chain saw and the barbed-wire roll haul her across the border and sell her to the Meat Boys to sell to the tonks for dancing.

"It's a sad thing to sell one of your own, but shit, them's the breaks. I'll just stay out of the tonks until all the meat rots off her bones and they have to throw her away. That way I won't go in some place for a drink and see her up there shaking her dead tits and end up going sentimental and dewey-eyed in front of one of my buddies or some ole two-dollar gal."

This kind of thinking supplied the dancers. In other parts of the country, the dancers might be men or children, but here it was mostly women. Men were used for hunting and target practice.

The Meat Boys took the bodies, cut off the hands so they couldn't grab, ran screws threw their jaws to fasten on wire muzzles so they couldn't bite, sold them to the honky-tonks about the time the germ started stirring.

Tonk owners put them inside wire enclosures up front of their joints, started music, and men paid five dollars to get in there and grab them and make like they were dancing when all the women wanted to do was grab and bite, which muzzled and handless, they could not do.

If a man liked his partner enough, he could pay more money and have her tied to a cot in the back and he could get on her and do some business. Didn't have to hear no arguments or buy presents or make promises or make them come. Just fuck and hike.

As long as the establishment sprayed the dead for maggots and kept them perfumed and didn't keep them so long hunks of meat came off on a fella's dick, the customers were happy as flies on shit.

Wayne looked to see who might give him trouble, and figured everyone was a potential customer. The six foot two, two-hundred fifty pound bouncer being the most immediate concern.

But, there wasn't anything to do but to get on with things and handle problems when they came up. He went into the cage where Calhoun was dancing, shouldered through the other dancers and went for him.

Calhoun had his back to Wayne, and as the music was loud, Wayne didn't worry about going quietly. But Calhoun sensed him and turned with his hand full of a little .38.

Wayne clubbed Calhoun's arm with the barrel of the shotgun. The little gun flew out of Calhoun's hand and went skidding across the floor and clanked against the metal cage.

Calhoun wasn't outdone. He spun the dead girl in front of him and pulled a big pigsticker out of his boot and held it under the girl's armpit in a threatening manner, which with a knife that big was no feat.

Wayne shot the dead girl's left kneecap out from under her and she went down. Her armpit trapped Calhoun's knife. The other men deserted their partners and went over the wire netting like squirrels.

Before Calhoun could shake the girl loose, Wayne stepped in and hit him over the head with the barrel of the shotgun. Calhoun crumpled and the girl began to crawl about on the floor as if looking for lost contacts.

The bouncer came in behind Wayne, grabbed him under the arms and tried to slip a full nelson on him.

Wayne kicked back on the bouncer's shin and raked his boot down the man's instep and stomped his foot. The bouncer let go. Wayne turned and kicked him in the balls and hit him across the face with the shotgun.

The bouncer went down and didn't even look like he wanted up.

Wayne couldn't help but note he liked the music that was playing. When he turned he had someone to dance with.

Calhoun.

Calhoun charged him, hit Wayne in the belly with his head, knocked him over the bouncer. They tumbled to the floor and the shotgun went out of Wayne's hands and scraped across the floor and hit the crawling girl in the head. She didn't even notice, just kept snaking in circles, dragging her blasted leg behind her like a skin she was trying to shed.

The other women, partnerless, wandered about the cage. The music changed. Wayne didn't like this tune as well. Too slow. He bit Calhoun's earlobe off.

Calhoun screamed and they grappled around on the floor. Calhoun got his arm around Wayne's throat and tried to choke him to death.

Wayne coughed out the earlobe, lifted his leg and took the knife out of his boot. He brought it around and back and hit Calhoun in the temple with the hilt.

Calhoun let go of Wayne and rocked on his knees, then collapsed on top of him.

Wayne got out from under him and got up and kicked him in the head a few times. When he was finished, he put the bowie in its place, got Calhoun's .38 and the shotgun. To hell with pig sticker.

A dead woman tried to grab him, and he shoved her away with a thrust of his palm. He got Calhoun by the collar, started pulling him toward the gate.

Faces were pressed against the wire, watching. It had been quite a show. A friendly cowboy type opened the gate for Wayne and the crowd parted as he pulled Calhoun by. One man felt helpful and chased after them and said, "Here's his hat, Mister," and dropped it on Calhoun's face and it stayed there.

Outside, a professional drunk was standing between two cars taking a leak on the ground. As Wayne pulled Calhoun past, the drunk said, "Your buddy don't look so good."

"Look worse than that when I get him to Law Town," Wayne said.

Wayne stopped by the '57, emptied Calhoun's pistol and tossed it as far as he could, then took a few minutes to kick Calhoun in the ribs and ass. Calhoun grunted and farted, but didn't come to.

When Wayne's leg got tired, he put Calhoun in the passenger seat and handcuffed him to the door.

He went over to Calhoun's '62 Impala replica with the plastic bull horns mounted on the hood-which was how he had located him in the first place, by his well known car-and kicked the glass out of the window on the driver's side and used the shotgun to shoot the bull horns off. He took out his pistol and shot all the tires flat, pissed on the driver's door, and kicked a dent in it.

By then he was too tired to shit in the backseat, so he took some deep breaths and went back to the '57 and climbed in behind the wheel.

Reaching across Calhoun, he opened the glove box and got out one of his thin, black cigars and put it in his mouth. He pushed the lighter in, and while he waited for it to heat up, he took the shotgun out of his lap and reloaded it.

A couple of men poked their heads outside of the tonk's door, and Wayne stuck the shotgun out the window and fired above their heads. They disappeared inside so fast they might have been an optical illusion.

Wayne put the lighter to his cigar, picked up the wanted poster he had on the seat, and set fire to it. He thought about putting it in Calhoun's lap as a joke, but didn't. He tossed the flaming poster out the window.

He drove over close to the tonk and used the remaining shotgun load to shoot at the neon ROSALITA'S sign. Glass tinkled onto the tonk's roof and onto the gravel drive.

Now if he only had a dog to kick.

He drove away from there, bound for the Cadillac Desert, and finally Law Town on the other side.

II

The Cadillac's stretched for miles, providing the only shade in the desert. They were buried nose down at a slant, almost to the windshields, and Wayne could see skeletons of some of the drivers in the car, either lodged behind the steering wheels or lying on the dashboards against the glass. The roof and hood guns had long since been removed and all the windows on the cars were rolled up, except for those that had been knocked out and vandalized by travelers, or dead folks looking for goodies.

The thought of being in one of those cars with the windows rolled up in all this heat made Wayne feel even more uncomfortable than he already was. Hot as it was, he was certain even the skeletons were sweating.

He finished pissing on the tire of the Chevy, saw the piss had almost dried. He shook the drops off, watched them fall and evaporate against the burning sand. Zipping up, he thought about Calhoun, and how when he'd pulled over earlier to let the son of a bitch take a leak, he'd seen there was a little metal ring through the head of his dick and a Texas emblem dangling from that. He could understand the Texas emblem, being from there himself, but he couldn't for the life of him imagine why a fella would do that to his general. Any idiot who would put a ring through the head of his pecker deserved to die, innocent or not.

Wayne took off his cowboy hat and rubbed the back of his neck and ran his hand over the top of his head and back again. The sweat on his fingers was thick as lube oil, and the thinning part of his hairline was tender; the heat was cooking the hell out of his scalp, even through the brown felt of his hat.

Before he put his hat on, the sweat on his fingers was dry. He broke open the shotgun, put the shells in his pocket, opened the Chevy's back door and tossed the shotgun on the floorboard.

He got in the front behind the wheel and the seat was hot as a griddle on his back and ass. The sun shone through the slightly tinted windows like a polished chrome hubcap; it forced him to squint.

Glancing over at Calhoun, he studied him. The fucker was asleep with his head thrown back and his black wilted hat hung precarious on his head-it looked jaunty almost. Sweat oozed down Calhoun's red face, flowed over his eyelids and around his neck, running in riverlets down the white seat covers, drying quickly. He had his left hand between his legs, clutching his balls, and his right was on the arm rest, which was the only place it could be since he was handcuffed to the door.

Wayne thought he ought to blow the bastard's brains out and tell God he died. The shithead certainly needed shooting, but Wayne didn't want to lose a thousand dollars off his reward. He needed every penny if he was going to get that wrecking yard he wanted. The yard was the dream that went before him like a carrot before a donkey, and he didn't want anymore delays. If he never made another trip across this goddamn desert, that would suit him fine.

Pop would let him buy the place with the money he had now, and he could pay the rest out later. But that wasn't what he wanted to do. The bounty business had finally gone sour, and he wanted to do different. It wasn't any goddamn fun anymore. Just met the dick cheese of the earth. And when you ran the son of a bitches to ground and put the cuffs on them, you had to watch your ass till you got them turned in. Had to sleep with one eye open and a hand on your gun. It wasn't anyway to live.

And he wanted a chance to do right by Pop. Pop had been like a father to him. When he was a kid and his mama was screwing the Mexicans across the border for the rent money, Pop would let him hang out in the yard and climb on the rusted cars and watch him fix the better ones, tune those babies so fine they purred like dick-whipped women.

When he was older, Pop would haul him to Galveston for the whores and out to the beach to take potshots at all the ugly, fucked-up critters swimming around in the Gulf. Sometimes he'd take him to Oklahoma for the Dead Roundup. It sure seemed to do the old fart good to whack those dead fuckers with a tire iron, smash their diseased brains so they'd lay down for good. And it was a challenge. Cause if one of those dead buddies bit you, you could put your head between your legs and kiss your rosy ass goodbye.

Wayne pulled out of his thoughts of Pop and the wrecking yard and turned on the stereo system. One of his favorite country-and-western tunes whispered at him. It was Billy Conteegas singing, and Wayne hummed along with the music as he drove into the welcome, if mostly ineffectual, shadows provided by the Cadillacs.

My baby left me,

She left me for a cow,

But I don't give a flying fuck,

She's gone radioactive now,

Yeah, my baby left me,

Left me for a six-tittied cow.

Just when Conteegas was getting to the good part, doing the trilling sound in his throat he was famous for, Calhoun opened his eyes and spoke up.

"Ain't it bad enough I got to put up with the fucking heat and your fucking humming without having to listen to that shit? Ain't you got no Hank Williams stuff, or maybe some of that nigger music they used to make? You know, where the coons harmonize and one of them sings like his nuts are cut off."

"You just don't know good music when you hear it, Calhoun."

Calhoun moved his free hand to his hatband, found one of his few remaining cigarettes and a match there. He struck the match on his knee, lit the smoke and coughed a few rounds. Wayne couldn't imagine how Calhoun could smoke in all this heat.

"Well, I may not know good music when I hear it, capon, but I damn sure know bad music when I hear it. And that's some bad music."

"You ain't got any kind of culture, Calhoun. You been too busy raping kids."

"Reckon a man has to have a hobby," Calhoun said, blowing smoke at Wayne. "Young pussy is mine. Besides, she wasn't in diapers. Couldn't find one that young. She was thirteen. You know what they say. If they're old enough to bleed, they're old enough to breed."

"How old they have to be for you to kill them?"

"She got loud."

"Change channels, Calhoun."

"Just passing the time of day, capon. Better watch yourself bounty hunter, when you least expect it, I'll bash your head."

"You're gonna run your mouth one time too many, Calhoun, and when you do, you're gonna finish this ride in the trunk with ants crawling on you. You ain't so priceless I won't blow you away."

"You lucked out at the tonk, boy. But there's always tomorrow, and every day can't be like at Rosalita's."

Wayne smiled. "Trouble is, Calhoun, you're running out of tomorrows."

III

As they drove between the Cadillacs, the sky fading like a bad bulb, Wayne looked at the cars and tried to imagine what the Chevy-Cadillac Wars had been like, and why they had been fought in this miserable desert. He had heard it was a hell of a fight, and close, but the outcome had been Chevy's and now they were the only cars Detroit made. And as far as he was concerned, that was the only thing about Detroit that was worth a damn. Cars.

He felt that way about all cities. He'd just as soon lie down and let a diseased dog shit in his face than drive through one, let alone live in one.

Law Town being an exception. He'd go there. Not to live, but to give Calhoun to the authorities and pick up his reward. People in Law Town were always glad to see a criminal brought in. The public executions were popular and varied and brought in a steady income.

Last time he'd been to Law Town he'd bought a front-row ticket to one of the executions and watched a chronic shoplifter, a red-headed rat of a man, get pulled apart by being chained between two souped-up tractors. The execution itself was pretty brief, but there had been plenty of buildup with clowns and balloons and a big-tittied stripper who could swing her tits in either direction to boom-boom music.

Wayne had been put off by the whole thing. It wasn't organized enough and the drinks and food were expensive and the front-row seats were too close to the tractors. He had gotten to see that the red-head's insides were brighter than his hair, but some of the insides got sprinkled on his new shirt, and cold water or not, the spots hadn't come out. He had suggested to one of the management that they put up a big plastic shield so the front row wouldn't get splattered, but he doubted anything had come of it.

They drove until it was solid dark. Wayne stopped and fed Calhoun a stick of jerky and some water from his canteen. Then he handcuffed him to the front bumper of the Chevy.

"See any snakes, Gila monsters, scorpions, stuff like that," Wayne said, "yell out. Maybe I can get around here in time."

"I'd let the fuckers run up my asshole before I'd call you," Calhoun said.

Leaving Calhoun with his head resting on the bumper, Wayne climbed in the backseat of the Chevy and slept with one ear cocked and one eye open.

Before dawn Wayne got Calhoun loaded in the '57 and they started out. After a few minutes of sluicing through the early morning grayness, a wind started up. One of those weird desert winds that come out of nowhere. It carried grit through the air at the speed of bullets, hit the '57 with a sound like rabid cats scratching.

The sand tires crunched on through, and Wayne turned on the windshield blower, the sand wipers, and the head beams, and kept on keeping on.

When it was time for the sun to come up, they couldn't see it. Too much sand. It was blowing harder than ever and the blowers and wipers couldn't handle it. It was piling up. Wayne couldn't even make out the Cadillacs anymore.

He was about to stop when a shadowy, whale like shape crossed in front of him and he slammed on the brakes, giving the sand tires a workout. But it wasn't enough.

The '57 spun around and rammed the shape on Calhoun's side. Wayne heard Calhoun yell, then felt himself thrown against the door and his head smacked metal and the outside darkness was nothing compared to the darkness into which he descended.

IV

Wayne rose out of it as quickly as he had gone down. Blood was trickling into his eyes from a slight forehead wound. He used his sleeve to wipe it away.

His first clear sight was of a face at the window on his side; a sallow, moon-terrain face with bulging eyes and an expression like an idiot contemplating Sanskrit. On the man's head was a strange, black hat with big round ears, and in the center of the hat, like a silver tumor, was the head of a large screw. Sand lashed at the face, embedded in it, struck the unblinking eyes and made the round-eared hat flap. The man paid no attention. Though still dazed, Wayne knew why. The man was one of the dead folks.

Wayne looked in Calhoun's direction. Calhoun's door had been mashed in and the bending metal had pinched the handcuff attached to the armrest in two. The blow had knocked Calhoun to the center of the seat. He was holding his hand in front of him, looking at the dangling cuff and chain as if it were a silver bracelet and a line of pearls.

Leaning over the hood, cleaning the sand away from the windshield with his hands, was another of the dead folks. He too was wearing one of the round-eared hats. He pressed a wrecked face to the clean spot and looked in at Calhoun. A string of snot-green saliva ran out of his mouth and onto the glass.

More sand was wiped away by others. Soon all the car's glass showed the pallid and rotting faces of the dead folks. They stared at Wayne and Calhoun as if they were two rare fish in an aquarium.

Wayne cocked back the hammer of the .38.

"What about me," Calhoun said. "What am I supposed to use?"

"Your charm," Wayne said, and at that moment, as if by signal, the dead folk faded away from the glass, leaving one man standing on the hood holding a baseball bat. He hit the glass and it went into a thousand little stars. The bat came again and the heavens fell and the stars rained down and the sand storm screamed in on Wayne and Calhoun.

The dead folks reappeared in full force. The one with the bat started through the hole in the windshield, unheeding of the jags of glass that ripped his ragged clothes and tore his flesh like damp cardboard.

Wayne shot the batter through the head, and the man, finished, fell through, pinning Wayne's arm with his body.

Before Wayne could pull his gun free, a woman's hand reached through the hole and got hold of Wayne's collar. Other dead folks took to the glass and hammered it out with their feet and fist. Hands were all over Wayne; they felt dry and cool like leather seat covers. They pulled him over the steering wheel and dash and outside. The sand worked at his flesh like a cheese grater. He could hear Calhoun yelling, "Eat me, motherfuckers, eat me and choke."

They tossed Wayne on the hood of the '57. Faces leaned over him. Yellow teeth and toothless gums were very near. A road kill odor washed through his nostrils. He thought: now the feeding frenzy begins. His only consolation was that there were so many dead folks there wouldn't be enough of him left to come back from the dead. They'd probably have his brain for dessert.

But no. They picked him up and carried him off. Next thing he knew was a clearer view of the whale-shape the '57 had hit. It was a yellow school bus.

The door to the bus hissed open. The dead folks dumped Wayne inside on his belly and tossed his hat after him. They stepped back and the door closed, just missing Wayne's foot.

Wayne looked up and saw a man in the driver's seat smiling at him. It wasn't a dead man. Just fat and ugly. He was probably five feet tall and bald except for a fringe of hair around his shiny bald head the color of a shit ring in a toilet bowl. He had a nose so long and dark and malignant looking it appeared as if it might fall off his face at any moment, like an overripe banana. He was wearing what Wayne first thought was a bathrobe, but proved to be a robe like that of a monk. It was old and tattered and moth-eaten and Wayne could see pale flesh through the holes. An odor wafted from the fat man that was somewhere between the smell of stale sweat, cheesy balls and an upwiped asshole.

"Good to see you," the fat man said.

"Charmed," Wayne said.

From the back of the bus came a strange, unidentifiable sound. Wayne poked his head around the seats for a look.

In the middle of the aisle, about halfway back, was a nun. Or sort of a nun. Her back was to him and she wore a black-and-white nun's habit. The part that covered her head was traditional, but from there down was quite a departure from the standard attire. The outfit was cut to the middle of her thighs and she wore black fishnet stockings and thick high heels. She was slim with good legs and a high little ass that, even under the circumstances, Wayne couldn't help but appreciate. She was moving one hand above her head as if sewing the air.

Sitting on the seats on either side of the aisle were dead folks. They all wore the round-eared hats, and they were responsible for the sound.

They were trying to sing.

He had never known dead folks to make any noise outside of grunts and groans, but here they were singing. A toneless sort of singing to be sure, some of the words garbled and some of the dead folks just opening and closing their mouths soundlessly, but, by golly, he recognized the tune. It was "Jesus Loves Me."

Wayne looked back at the fat man, let his hand ease down to the bowie in his right boot. The fat man produced a little .32 automatic from inside his robe and pointed at Wayne.

"It's small caliber," the fat man said, "but I'm a real fine shot, and it makes a nice, little hole."

Wayne quit reaching in his boot.

"Oh, that's all right," said the fat man. "Take the knife out and put it on the floor in front of you and slide it to me. And while you're at it, I think I see the hilt of one in your other boot."

Wayne looked back. The way he had been thrown inside the bus had caused his pants legs to hike up over his boots, and the hilts of both his bowie's were revealed. They might as well have had blinking lights on them.

It was shaping up to be a shitty day.

He slid the bowies to the fat man, who scooped them up nimbly and dumped them on the other side of his seat.

The bus door opened and Calhoun was tossed in on top of Wayne. Calhoun's hat followed after.

Wayne shrugged Calhoun off, recovered his hat, and put it on. Calhoun found his hat and did the same. They were still on their knees.

"Would you gentleman mind moving to the center of the bus?"

Wayne led the way. Calhoun took note of the nun now, said, "Man, look at that ass."

The fat man called back to them. "Right there will do fine."

Wayne slid into the seat the fat man was indicating with a wave of the .32, and Calhoun slid in beside him. The dead folks entered now, filled the seats up front, leaving only a few stray seats in the middle empty.

Calhoun said, "What are those fuckers back there making that noise for?"

"They're singing," Wayne said. "Ain't you got no churchin'?"

"Say they are." Calhoun turned to the nun and the dead folks and yelled, "Ya'll know any Hank Williams?"

The nun did not turn and the dead folks did not quit their toneless singing.

"Guess not," Calhoun said. "Seems like all the good music's been forgotten."

The noise in the back of the bus ceased and the nun came over to look at Wayne and Calhoun. She was nice in front too. The outfit was cut from throat to crotch, laced with a ribbon, and it showed a lot of tit and some tight, thin, black panties that couldn't quite hold in her escaping pubic hair, which grew as thick and wild as kudzu. When Wayne managed to work his eyes up from that and look at her face, he saw she was dark-complected with eyes the color of coffee and lips made to chew on.

Calhoun never made it to the face. He didn't care about faces. He sniffed, said into her crotch, "Nice snatch."

The nun's left hand came around and smacked Calhoun on the side of the head. He grabbed her wrist, said, "Nice arm, too."

The nun did a magic act with her right hand; it went behind her back and hiked up her outfit and came back with a double-barreled derringer. She pressed it against Calhoun's head.

Wayne bent forward, hoping she wouldn't shoot. At that range the bullet might go through Calhoun's head and hit him too.

"Can't miss," the nun said.

Calhoun smiled. "No you can't," he said, and let go of her arm.

She sat down across from them, smiled, and crossed her legs high. Wayne felt his Levis snake swell and crawl against the inside of his thigh.

"Honey," Calhoun said, "you're almost worth taking a bullet for."

The nun didn't quit smiling. The bus cranked up. The sand blowers and wipers went to work, and the windshield turned blue, and a white dot moved on it between a series of smaller white dots.

Radar. Wayne had seen that sort of thing on desert vehicles. If he lived through this and got his car back, maybe he'd rig up something like that. And maybe not, he was sick of the desert.

Whatever, at the moment, future plans seemed a little out of place.

Then something else occurred to him. Radar. That meant these bastards had known they were coming and had pulled out in front of them on purpose.

He leaned over the seat and checked where he figured the '57 hit the bus. He didn't see a single dent. Armored, most likely. Most school buses were these days, and that's what this had been. It probably had bullet-proof-glass and puncture-proof sand tires too. School buses had gone that way on account of the race riots and the sending of mutated calves to school just like they were humans. And because of the Codgers-old farts who believed kids ought to be fair game to adults for sexual purposes, or for knocking around when they wanted to let off some tension.

"How about unlocking this cuff?" Calhoun said. "It ain't for shit now anyway."

Wayne looked at the nun. "I'm going for the cuff key in my pants. Don't shoot."

Wayne fished it out, unlocked the cuff, and Calhoun let it slide to the floor. Wayne saw the nun was curious and he said, "I'm a bounty hunter. Help me get this man to Law Town and I could see you earn a little something for your troubles."

The woman shook her head.

"That's the spirit," Calhoun said. "I like a nun that minds her own business... You a real nun?"

She nodded.

"Always talk so much?"

Another nod.

Wayne said, "I've never seen a nun like you. Not dressed like that and with a gun."

"We are a small and special order," she said.

"You some kind of Sunday school teacher for these dead folks?"

"Sort of."

"But with them dead, ain't it kind of pointless? They ain't got no souls now, do they?"

"No, but their work adds to the glory of God."

"Their work?" Wayne looked at the dead folks sitting stiffly in their seats. He noted that one of them was about to lose a rotten ear. He sniffed. "They may be adding to the glory of God, but they don't do much for the air."

The nun reached into a pocket on her habit and took out two round objects. She tossed one to Calhoun, and one to Wayne. "Menthol lozenges. They help you stand the smell."

Wayne unwrapped the lozenge and sucked on it. It did help overpower the smell, but the menthol wasn't all that great either. It reminded him of being sick.

"What order are you?" Wayne asked.

"Jesus Loved Mary," the nun said.

"His mama?" Wayne said.

"Mary Magdalene. We think he fucked her. They were lovers. There's evidence in the scriptures. She was a harlot and we have modeled ourselves on her. She gave up that life and became a harlot for Jesus."

"Hate to break it to you, sister," Calhoun said, "but that do-gooder Jesus is as dead as a post. If you're waiting for him to slap the meat to you, that sweet thing of yours is going to dry up and blow away."

"Thanks for the news," the nun said. "But we don't fuck him in person. We fuck him in spirit. We let the spirit enter into men so they may take us in the fashion Jesus took Mary."

"No shit?"

"No shit."

"You know, I think I feel the old boy moving around inside me now. Why don't you shuck them drawers, honey, throw back in that seat there and let ole Calhoun give you a big load of Jesus."

Calhoun shifted in the nun's direction.

She pointed the derringer at him, said, "Stay where you are. If it were so, if you were full of Jesus, I would let you have me in a moment. But you're full of the Devil, not Jesus."

"Shit, sister, give ole Devil a break. He's a fun kind of guy. Let's you and me mount up... Well, be like that. But if you change your mind, I can get religion at a moment's notice. I dearly love to fuck. I've fucked everything I could get my hands on but a parakeet, and I'd have fucked that little bitch if I could have found the hole."

"I've never known any dead folks to be trained," Wayne said, trying to get the nun talking in a direction that might help, a direction that would let him know what was going on and what sort of trouble he had fallen into.

"As I said, we are a very special order. Brother Lazarus," she waved a hand at the bus driver, and without looking he lifted a hand in acknowledgement, "is the founder. I don't think he'll mind if I tell his story, explain about us, what we do and why. It's important that we spread the word to the heathens."

"Don't call me no fucking heathen," Calhoun said. "This is heathen, riding around in a fucking bus with a bunch of stinking dead folks with funny hats on. Hell, they can't even carry a tune."

The nun ignored him. "Brother Lazarus was once known by another name, but that name no longer matters. He was a research scientist, and he was one of those who worked in the laboratory where the germs escaped into the air and made it so the dead could not truly die as long as they had an undamaged brain in their heads.

"Brother Lazarus was carrying a dish of the experiment, the germs, and as a joke, one of the lab assistants pretended to trip him, and he, not knowing it was a joke, dodged the assistant's leg and dropped the dish. In a moment, the air conditioning system had blown the germs throughout the research center. Someone opened a door, and the germs were loose on the world.

"Brother Lazarus was consumed by guilt. Not only because he dropped the dish, but because he helped create it in the first place. He quit his job at the laboratory, took to wandering the country. He came out here with nothing more than basic food, water and books. Among these books was the Bible, and the lost books of the Bible: the Apocrypha and the many cast-out chapters of the New Testament. As he studied, it occurred to him that these cast out books actually belonged. He was able to interpret their higher meaning, and an angel came to him in a dream and told him of another book, and Brother Lazarus took up his pen and recorded the angel's words, direct from God, and in this book, all the mysteries were explained."

"Like screwing Jesus," Calhoun said.

"Like screwing Jesus, and not being afraid of words that mean sex. Not being afraid of seeing Jesus as both God and man. Seeing that sex, if meant for Christ and the opening of the mind, can be a thrilling and religious experience, not just the rutting of two savage animals.

"Brother Lazarus roamed the desert, the mountains, thinking of the things the Lord had revealed to him, and lo and behold, the Lord revealed yet another thing to him. Brother Lazarus found a great amusement park."

"Didn't know Jesus went in for rides and such," Calhoun said.

"It was long deserted. It had once been part of a place called Disneyland. Brother Lazarus knew of it. There had been several of these Disneylands built about the country, and this one had been in the midst of the Chevy-Cadillac Wars, and had been destroyed and sand had covered most of it."

The nun held out her arms. "And in this rubble, he saw a new beginning."

"Cool off, baby," Calhoun said, "before you have a stroke."

"He gathered to him men and women of a like mind and taught the gospel to them. The Old Testament. The New Testament. The Lost Books. And his own Book of Lazarus, for he had begun to call himself Lazarus. A symbolic name signifying a new beginning, a rising from the dead and coming to life and seeing things as they really are."

The nun moved her hands rapidly, expressively as she talked. Sweat beaded on her forehead and upper lip.

"So he returned to his skills as a scientist, but applied them to a higher purpose-God's purpose. And as Brother Lazarus, he realized the use of the dead. They could be taught to work and build a great monument to the glory of God. And this monument, this coed institution of monks and nuns, would be called Jesus Land."

At the word "Jesus," the nun gave her voice an extra trill, and the dead folks, cued, said together, "Eees num be prased."

"How the hell did you train them dead folks?" Calhoun said. "Dog treats?"

"Science put to the use of our Lord Jesus Christ, that's how. Brother Lazarus made a special device he could insert directly into the brains of dead folks, through the tops of their heads, and the device controls certain cravings. Makes them passive and responsive-at least to simple commands. With the regulator, as Brother Lazarus calls the device, we have been able to do much positive work with the dead."

"Where do you find these dead folks?" Wayne asked.

"We buy them from the Meat Boys. We save them from amoral purposes."

"They ought to be shot through the head and put in the goddamn ground," Wayne said.

"If our use of the regulator and the dead folks was merely to better ourselves, I would agree. But it is not. We do the Lord's work."

"Do the monks fuck the sisters?" Calhoun asked.

"When possessed by the Spirit of Christ. Yes."

"And I bet they get possessed a lot. Not a bad setup. Dead folks to do the work on the amusement park-"

"It isn't an amusement park now."

"-and plenty of free pussy. Sounds cozy. I like it. Old shithead up there's smarter than he looks."

"There is nothing selfish about our motives or those of Brother Lazarus. In fact, as penance for loosing the germ on the world in the first place, Brother Lazarus injected a virus into his nose. It is rotting slowly."

"Thought that was quite a snorkel he had on him," Wayne said.

"I take it back," Calhoun said. "He is as dumb as he looks."

"Why do the dead folks wear those silly hats?" Wayne asked.

"Brother Lazarus found a storeroom of them at the site of the old amusement park. They are mouse ears. They represent some cartoon animal that was popular once and part of Disneyland. Mickey Mouse, he was called. This way we know which dead folks are ours, and which ones are not controlled by our regulators. From time to time, stray dead folks wander into our area. Murder victims. Children abandoned in the desert. People crossing the desert who died of heat or illness. We've had some of the sisters and brothers attacked. The hats are a precaution."

"And what's the deal with us?" Wayne asked.

The nun smiled sweetly. "You, my children, are to add to the glory of God."

"Children?" Calhoun said. "You call an alligator a lizard, bitch?"

The nun slid back in the seat and rested the derringer in her lap. She pulled her legs into a cocked position, causing her panties to crease in the valley of her vagina; it looked like a nice place to visit, that valley.

Wayne turned from the beauty of it and put his head back and closed his eyes, pulled his hat down over them. There was nothing he could do at the moment, and since the nun was watching Calhoun for him, he'd sleep, store up and figure what to do next. If anything.

He drifted off to sleep wondering what the nun meant by, "You, my children, are to add to the glory of God."

He had a feeling that when he found out, he wasn't going to like it.

V

He awoke off and on and saw that the sunlight filtering through the storm had given everything a greenish color. Calhoun seeing he was awake, said, "Ain't that a pretty color? I had a shirt that color once and liked it lots, but I got in a fight with this Mexican whore with a wooden leg over some money and she tore her. I punched that little bean bandit good."

"Thanks for sharing that," Wayne said, and went back to sleep.

Each time he awoke it was brighter, and finally he awoke to the sun going down and the storm having died out. But he didn't stay awake. He forced himself to close his eyes and store up more energy. To help him nod off he listened to the hum of the motor and thought about the wrecking yard and Pop and all the fun they could have, just drinking beer and playing cars and fucking the border women, and maybe some of those mutated cows they had over there for sell.

Nah. Nix the cows, or any of those genetically altered critters. A man had to draw the line somewhere, and he drew it at fucking critters, even if they had been bred so that they had human traits. You had to have some standards.

Course, those standards had a way of eroding. He remembered when he said he'd only fuck the pretty ones. His last whore had been downright scary looking. If he didn't watch himself he'd be as bad as Calhoun, trying to find the hole in a parakeet.

He awoke to Calhoun's elbow in his ribs and the nun was standing beside their seat with the derringer. Wayne knew she hadn't slept, but she looked bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. She nodded toward their window, said, "Jesus Land."

She had put that special touch in her voice again, and the dead folks responded with, "Eees num be prased."

It was good and dark now, a crisp night with a big moon the color of hammered brass. The bus sailed across the white sand like a mystical schooner with a full wind in its sails. It went up an impossible hill toward what looked like an aurora borealis, then dove into an atomic rainbow of colors that filled the bus with fairy lights.

When Wayne's eyes became accustomed to the lights, and the bus took a right turn along a precarious curve, he glanced down into the valley. An aerial view couldn't have been any better than the view from his window.

Down there was a universe of polished metal and twisted neon. In the center of the valley was a great statue of Jesus crucified that must have been twenty-five stories high. Most of the body was made of bright metals and multicolored neon, and much of the light was coming from that. There was a crown of barbed wire wound several times around a chromium plate of a forehead and some rust-colored strands of neon hair. The savior's eyes were huge, green strobes that swung left and right with the precision of an oscillating fan. There was an ear to ear smile on the savior's face and the teeth were slats of sparkling metal with wide cavity-black gaps between them. The statue was equipped with a massive dick of polished, interwoven cables and coils of neon; the dick was thicker and more solid looking than the arthritic steel-tube legs on either side of it; the head of it was made of an enormous spotlight that pulsed the color of irritation.

The bus went around and around the valley, descending like a dead roach going down a slow drain, and finally the road rolled out straight and took them into Jesus Land.

They passed through the legs of Jesus, under the throbbing head of his cock, toward what looked like a small castle of polished gold bricks with an upright drawbridge interlayed with jewels.

The castle was only one of several tall structures that appeared to be made of rare metals and precious stones: gold, silver, emeralds, rubies and sapphires. But the closer they got to the buildings, the less fine they looked and the more they looked like what they were: stucco, cardboard, phosphorescent paint, colored spotlights, and bands of neon.

Off to the left Wayne could see a long, open shed full of vehicles, most of them old school buses. And there were unlighted hovels made of tin and tar paper; homes for the dead, perhaps. Behind the shacks and the bus barn rose skeletal shapes that stretched tall and bleak against the sky and the candy-gem lights; shapes that looked like the bony remains of beached whales.

On the right, Wayne glimpsed a building with an open front that served as a stage. In front of the stage were chairs filled with monks and nuns. On the stage, six monks-one behind a drum set, one with a saxophone, the others with guitars-were blasting out a loud, rocking rhythm that made the bus shake. A nun with the front of her habit thrown open, her headpiece discarded, sang into a microphone with a voice like a suffering angel. The voice screeched out of the amplifiers and came in through the windows of the bus, crushing the sound of the engine. The nun crowed "Jesus" so long and hard it sounded like a plea from hell. Then she lept up and came down doing the splits, the impact driving her back to her feet as if her ass had been loaded with springs.

"Bet that bitch can pick up a quarter with that thing," Calhoun said.

Brother Lazarus touched a button, the pseudo-jeweled drawbridge lowered over a narrow moat, and he drove them inside.

It wasn't as well lighted in there. The walls were bleak and gray. Brother Lazarus stopped the bus and got off, and another monk came on board. He was tall and thin and had crooked buck teeth that dented his bottom lip. He also had a twelve-gauge pump shotgun.

"This is Brother Fred," the nun said. "He will be your tour guide."

Brother Fred forced Wayne and Calhoun off the bus, away from the dead folks in their mouse-ear hats and the nun in her tight, black panties, jabbed them along a dark corridor, up a swirl of stairs and down a longer corridor with open doors on either side and rooms filled with dark and light and spoiled meat and guts on hooks and skulls and bones lying about like discarded walnut shells and broken sticks; rooms full of dead folks (truly dead) stacked neat as firewood, and rooms full of stone shelves stuffed with beakers of fiery-red and sewer green and sky blue and piss yellow liquids, as well as glass coils through which other colored fluids fled as if chased, smoked as if nervous, and ran into big flasks as if relieved; rooms with platforms and tables and boxes and stools and chairs covered with instruments or dead folks or dead-folk pieces or the asses of monks and nuns as they sat and held charts or tubes or body parts and frowned at them with concentration, lips pursed as if about to explode with some earth-shattering pronouncement; and finally they came to a little room with a tall, glassless window that looked out upon the bright, shiny mess that was Jesus Land.

The room was simple. Table, two chairs, two beds-one on either side of the room. The walls were stone and unadorned. To the right was a little bathroom without a door.

Wayne walked to the window and looked out at Jesus Land pulsing and thumping like a desperate heart. He listened to the music a moment, leaned over and stuck his head outside.

They were high up and there was nothing but a straight drop. If you jumped, you'd wind up with the heels of your boots under your tonsils.

Wayne let out a whistle in appreciation of the drop. Brother Fred thought it was a compliment for Jesus Land. He said, "It's a miracle, isn't it?"

"Miracle?" Calhoun said. "This goony light show? This ain't no miracle. This is for shit. Get that nun on the bus back there to bend over and shit a perfectly round turd through a hoop at twenty paces, and I'll call that a miracle, Mr. Fucked-up Teeth. But this Jesus Land crap is the dumbest, fucking idea since dog sweaters.

"And look at this place. You could use some knick-knacks or something in here. A picture of some ole naked gal doing a donkey, couple of pigs fucking. Anything. And a door on the shitter would be nice. I hate to be straining out a big one and know someone can look in on me. It ain't decent. A man ought to have his fucking grunts in private. This place reminds me of a motel I stayed at in Waco one night, and I made the goddamn manager give me my money back. The roaches in that shit hole were big enough to use the shower."

Brother Fred listened to all this without blinking an eye, as if seeing Calhoun talk was as amazing as seeing a frog sing. He said, "Sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite. Tomorrow you start to work."

"I don't want no fucking job," Calhoun said.

"Goodnight, children," Brother Fred said, and with that he closed the door and they heard it lock, loud and final as the clicking of the drop board on a gallows.

At dawn, Wayne got up and took a leak, went to the window to look out. The stage where the monks had played and the nun had jumped was empty. The skeletal shapes he had seen last night were tracks and frames from rides long abandoned. He had a sudden vision of Jesus and his disciples riding a roller coaster, their long hair and robes flapping in the wind.

The large crucified Jesus looked unimpressive without its lights and night's mystery, like a whore in harsh sunlight with makeup gone and wig askew.

"Got any ideas how we're gonna get out of here?"

Wayne looked at Calhoun. He was sitting on the bed, pulling on his boots.

Wayne shook his head.

"I could use a smoke. You know, I think we ought to work together. Then we can try to kill each other."

Unconsciously, Calhoun touched his ear where Wayne had bitten off the lobe.

"Wouldn't trust you as far as I could kick you."

"I hear that. But I give my word. And my word's something you can count on. I won't twist it."

Wayne studied Calhoun, thought: Well, there wasn't anything to lose. He'd just watch his ass.

"All right," Wayne said. "Give me your word you'll work with me on getting us out of this mess, and when we're good and free, and you say your word has gone far enough, we can settle up."

"Deal," Calhoun said, and offered his hand.

Wayne looked at it.

"This seals it," Calhoun said.

Wayne took Calhoun's hand and they shook.

VI

Moments later the door unlocked and a smiling monk with hair the color and texture of mold fuzz came in with Brother Fred, who still had his pump shotgun. There were two dead folks with them. A man and a woman. They wore torn clothes and the mouse-ear hats. Neither looked long dead or smelled particularly bad. Actually, the monks smelled worse.

Using the barrel of the shotgun, Brother Fred poked them down the hall to a room with metal tables and medical instruments.

Brother Lazarus was on the far side of one of the tables.

He was smiling. His nose looked especially cancerous this morning. A white pustule the size of a thumb tip had taken up residence on the left side of his snout, and it looked like a pearl onion in a turd.

Nearby stood a nun. She was short with good, if skinny, legs, and she wore the same outfit as the nun on the bus. It looked more girlish on her, perhaps because she was thin and small-breasted. She had a nice face and eyes that were all pupil. Wisps of blond hair crawled out around the edges of her headgear. She looked pale and weak, as if wearied to the bone. There was a birthmark on her right cheek that looked like a distant view of a small bird in flight.

"Good morning," Brother Lazarus said. "I hope you gentlemen slept well."

"What's this about work?" Wayne said.

"Work?" Brother Lazarus said.

"I described it to them that way," Brother Fred said. "Perhaps an impulsive description."

"I'll say," Brother Lazarus said. "No work here, gentlemen. You have my word on that. We do all the work. Lie on these tables and we'll take a sampling of your blood."

"Why?" Wayne said.

"Science," Brother Lazarus said. "I intend to find a cure for this germ that makes the dead come back to life, and to do that, I need living human beings to study. Sounds kind of mad scientist, doesn't it? But I assure you, you've nothing to lose but a few drops of blood. Well, maybe more than a few drops, but nothing serious."

"Use your own goddamn blood," Calhoun said.

"We do. But we're always looking for fresh specimens. Little here, little there. And if you don't do it, we'll kill you."

Calhoun spun and hit Brother Fred on the nose. It was a solid punch and Brother Fred hit the floor on his butt, but he hung on to the shotgun and pointed it up at Calhoun. "Go on," he said, his nose streaming blood. "Try that again."

Wayne flexed to help, but hesitated. He could kick Brother Fred in the head from where he was, but that might not keep him from shooting Calhoun, and there would go the extra reward money. And besides, he'd given his word to the bastard that they'd try and help each other survive until they got out of this.

The other monk clasped his hands and swung them into the side of Calhoun's head, knocking him down. Brother Fred got up, and while Calhoun was trying to rise, he hit him with the stock of the shotgun in the back of the head, hit him so hard it drove Calhoun's forehead into the floor. Calhoun rolled over on his side and lay there, his eyes fluttering like moth wings.

"Brother Fred, you must learn to turn the other cheek," Brother Lazarus said. "Now put this sack of shit on the table."

Brother Fred checked Wayne to see if he looked like trouble. Wayne put his hands in his pockets and smiled.

Brother Fred called the two dead folks over and had them put Calhoun on the table. Brother Lazarus strapped him down.

The nun brought a tray of needles, syringes, cotton and bottles over, put it down on the table next to Calhoun's head. Brother Lazarus rolled up Calhoun's sleeve and fixed up a needle and stuck it in Calhoun's arm, drew it full of blood. He stuck the needle through the rubber top of one of the bottles and shot the blood into that.

He looked at Wayne and said, "I hope you'll be less trouble."

"Do I get some orange juice and a little cracker afterwards?" Wayne said.

"You get to walk out without a knot on your head," Brother Lazarus said.

"Guess that'll have to do."

Wayne got on the table next to Calhoun and Brother Lazarus strapped him down. The nun brought the tray over and Brother Lazarus did to him what he had done to Calhoun. The nun stood over Wayne and looked down at his face. Wayne tried to read something in her features but couldn't find a clue.

When Brother Lazarus was finished he took hold of Wayne's chin and shook it. "My, but you two boys look healthy. But you can never be sure. We'll have to run the blood through some tests. Meantime, Sister Worth will run a few additional tests on you, and," he nodded at the unconscious Calhoun, "I'll see to your friend here."

"He's no friend of mine," Wayne said.

They took Wayne off the table, and Sister Worth and Brother Fred and his shotgun, directed him down the hall into another room.

The room was lined with shelves that were lined with instruments and bottles. The lighting was poor, most of it coming through a slatted window, though there was an anemic yellow bulb overhead. Dust motes swam in the air.

In the center of the room on its rim was a great, spoked wheel. It had two straps well spaced at the top, and two more at the bottom. Beneath the bottom straps were blocks of wood. The wheel was attached in back to an upright metal bar that had switches and buttons all over it.

Brother Fred made Wayne strip and get up on the wheel with his back to the hub and his feet on the blocks. Sister Worth strapped his ankles down tight, then he was made to put his hands up, and she strapped his wrists to the upper part of the wheel.

"I hope this hurts a lot," Brother Fred said.

"Wipe the blood off your face," Wayne said. "It makes you look silly."

Brother Fred made a gesture with his middle finger that wasn't religious and left the room.

VII

Sister Worth touched a switch and the wheel began to spin, slowly at first, and the bad light came through the windows and poked through the rungs and the dust swam before his eyes and the wheel and its spokes threw twisting shadows on the wall.

As he went around, Wayne closed his eyes. It kept him from feeling so dizzy, especially on the down swings.

On a turn up, he opened his eyes and caught sight of Sister Worth standing in front of the wheel staring at him. He said, "Why?" and closed his eyes as the wheel dipped.

"Because Brother Lazarus says so," came the answer after such a long time Wayne had almost forgotten the question. Actually, he hadn't expected a response. He was surprised that such a thing had come out of his mouth, and he felt a little diminished for having asked.

He opened his eyes on another swing up, and she was moving behind the wheel, out of his line of vision. He heard a snick like a switch being flipped and lightning jumped through him and he screamed in spite of himself. A little fork of electricity licked out of his mouth like a reptile tongue tasting air.

Faster spun the wheel and the jolts came more often and he screamed less loud, and finally not at all. He was too numb. He was adrift in space wearing only his cowboy hat and boots, moving away from earth very fast. Floating all around him were wrecked cars. He looked and saw that one of them was his '57, and behind the steering wheel was Pop. Sitting beside the old man was a Mexican whore. Two more were in the backseat. They looked a little drunk.

One of the whores in back pulled up her dress and pressed her naked ass against the window, cocked it high up so he could see her pussy. It looked like a taco that needed a shave.

He smiled and tried to go for it, but the '57 was moving away, swinging wide and turning its tail to him. He could see a face at the back window. Pop's face. He had crawled back there and was waving slowly and sadly. A whore pulled Pop from view.

The wrecked cars moved away too, as if caught in the vacuum of the '57's retreat. Wayne swam with his arms, kicked with his legs, trying to pursue the '57 and the wrecks. But he dangled where he was, like a moth pinned to a board. The cars moved out of sight and left him there with his arms and legs stretched out, spinning amidst an infinity of cold, uncaring stars.

"...how the tests are run... marks everything about you... charts it... EKG, brain waves, liver... everything... it hurts because Brother Lazarus wants it to... thinks I don't know these things... that I'm slow... I'm slow, not stupid... smart really... used to be a scientist... before the accident... Brother Lazarus is not holy... he's mad... made the wheel because of the Holy Inquisition... knows a lot about the Inquisition... thinks we need it again... for the likes of men like you... the unholy, he says... But he just likes to hurt... I know."

Wayne opened his eyes. The wheel had stopped. Sister Worth was talking in her monotone, explaining the wheel. He remembered asking her "Why" about three thousand years ago.

Sister Worth was staring at him again. She went away and he expected the wheel to start up, but when she returned, she had a long, narrow mirror under her arm. She put it against the wall across from him. She got on the wheel with him, her little feet on the wooden platforms beside his. She hiked up the bottom of her habit and pulled down her black panties. She put her face close to his, as if searching for something.

"He plans to take your body... piece by piece... blood, cells, brain, your cock... all of it... He wants to live forever."

She had her panties in her hand, and she tossed them. Wayne watched them fly up and flutter to the floor like a dying bat.

She took hold of his dick and pulled on it. Her palms was cold and he didn't feel his best, but he began to get hard. She put him between her legs and rubbed his dick between her thighs. They were as cold as her hands, and dry.

"I know him now... know what he's doing... the dead germ virus... he was trying to make something that would make him live forever... it made the dead come back... didn't keep the living alive, free of old age..."

His dick was throbbing now, in spite of the coolness of her body.

"He cuts up dead folks to learn... experiments on them... but the secret of eternal life is with the living... that's why he wants you... you're an outsider... those who live here he can test... but he must keep them alive to do his bidding... not let them know how he really is... needs your insides and the other man's... he wants to be a God... flies high above us in a little plane and looks down... Likes to think he is the creator, I bet..."

"Plane?"

"Ultra-light."

She pushed his cock inside her, and it was cold and dry in there, like liver left overnight on a drainboard. Still, he found himself ready. At this point, he would have gouged a hole in a turnip.

She kissed him on the ear and alongside the neck; cold little kisses, dry as toast.

"...thinks I don't know... But I know he doesn't love Jesus... He loves himself, and power... He's sad about his nose..."

"I bet."

"Did it in a moment of religious fever... before he lost the belief... Now he wants to be what he was... A scientist. He wants to grow a new nose... knows how... saw him grow a finger in a dish once... grew it from the skin off a knuckle of one of the brothers... He can do all kinds of things."

She was moving her hips now. He could see over her shoulder into the mirror against the wall. Could see her white ass rolling, the black habit hiked up above it, threatening to drop like a curtain. He began to thrust back, slowly, firmly.

She looked over her shoulder into the mirror, watching herself fuck him. There was a look more of study than rapture on her face.

"Want to feel alive," she said. "Feel a good, hard dick... Been too long."

"I'm doing the best I can," Wayne said. "This ain't the most romantic of spots."

"Push so I can feel it."

"Nice," Wayne said. He gave it everything he had. He was beginning to lose his erection. He felt as if he were auditioning for a job and not making the best of impressions. He felt like a knothole would be dissatisfied with him.

She got off of him and climbed down.

"Don't blame you," he said.

She went behind the wheel and touched some things on the upright. She mounted him again, hooked her ankles behind his. The wheel began to turn. Short electrical shocks leaped through him. They weren't as powerful as before. They were invigorating. When he kissed her it was like touching his tongue to a battery. It felt as if electricity was racing through his veins and flying out the head of his dick; he felt as if he might fill her with lightning instead of come.

The wheel creaked to a stop; it must have had a timer on it. They were upside down and Wayne could see their reflection in the mirror; they looked like two lizards fucking on a window pane.

He couldn't tell if she had finished or not, so he went ahead and got it over with. Without the electricity he was losing his desire. It hadn't been an A-one piece of ass, but hell, as Pop always said, "Worse pussy I ever had was good."

"They'll be coming back," she said. "Soon... Don't want them to find us like this... Other test to do yet."

"Why did you do this?"

"I want out of the order... Want out of this desert... I want to live... And I want you to help me."

"I'm game, but the blood is rushing to my head and I'm getting dizzy. Maybe you ought to get off me."

After an eon she said, "I have a plan."

She untwined from him and went behind the wheel and hit a switch that turned Wayne upright. She touched another switch and he began to spin slowly, and while he spun and while lightning played inside him, she told him her plan.

VIII

"I think ole Brother Fred wants to fuck me," Calhoun said. "He keeps trying to get his finger up my asshole."

They were back in their room. Brother Fred had brought them back, making them carry their clothes, and now they were alone again, dressing.

"We're getting out of here," Wayne said. "The nun, Sister Worth, she's going to help."

"What's her angle?"

"She hates this place and wants my dick. Mostly, she hates this place."

"What's the plan?"

Wayne told him first what Brother Lazarus had planned. On the morrow he would have them brought to the room with the steel tables, and they would go on the tables, and if the tests had turned out good, they would be pronounced fit as fiddles and Brother Lazarus would strip the skin from their bodies, slowly, because according to Sister Worth he liked to do it that way, and he would drain their blood and percolate it into his formulas like coffee, cut their brains out and put them in vats and store their veins and organs in freezers.

All of this would be done in the name of God and Jesus Christ (Eees num be prased) under the guise of finding a cure for the dead folks germ. But it would all instead be for Brother Lazarus who wanted to have a new nose, fly his ultra-light above Jesus Land and live forever.

Sister Worth's plan was this:

She would be in the dissecting room. She would have guns hidden. She would make the first move, a distraction, then it was up to them.

"This time," Wayne said, "one of us has to get on top of that shotgun."

"You had your finger up your ass in there today, or we'd have had them."

"We're going to have surprise on our side this time. Real surprise. They won't be expecting Sister Worth. We can get up there on the roof and take off in that ultra-light. When it runs out of gas we can walk, maybe get back to the '57 and hope it runs."

"We'll settle our score then. Who ever wins keeps the car and the split tail. As for tomorrow, I've got a little ace."

Calhoun pulled on his boots. He twisted the heel of one of them. It swung out and a little knife dropped into his hand. "It's sharp," Calhoun said. "I cut a Chinaman from gut to gill with it. It was easy as sliding a stick through fresh shit."

"Been nice if you'd had that ready today."

"I wanted to scout things out first. And to tell the truth, I thought one pop to Brother Fred's mouth and he'd be out of the picture."

"You hit him in the nose."

"Yeah, god damn it, but I was aiming for his mouth."

IX

Dawn and the room with the metal tables looked the same. No one had brought in a vase of flowers to brighten the place.

Brother Lazarus's nose had changed however; there were two pearl onions nestled in it now.

Sister Worth, looking only a little more animated than yesterday, stood nearby. She was holding the tray with the instruments. This time the tray was full of scalpels. The light caught their edges and made them wink.

Brother Fred was standing behind Calhoun, and Brother Mold Fuzz was behind Wayne. They must have felt pretty confident today. They had dispensed with the dead folks.

Wayne looked at Sister Worth and thought maybe things were not good. Maybe she had lied to him in her slow talking way. Only wanted a little dick and wanted to keep it quiet. To do that, she might have promised anything. She might not care what Brother Lazarus did to them.

If it looked like a double cross, Wayne was going to go for it. If he had to jump right into the mouth of Brother Fred's shotgun. That was a better way to go than having the hide peeled from your body. The idea of Brother Lazarus and his ugly nose leaning over him did not appeal at all.

"It's so nice to see you," Brother Lazarus said. "I hope we'll have none of the unpleasantness of yesterday. Now, on the tables."

Wayne looked at Sister Worth. Her expression showed nothing. The only thing about her that looked alive was the bent wings of the bird birthmark on her cheek.

All right, Wayne thought, I'll go as far as the table, then I'm going to do something. Even if it's wrong.

He took a step forward, and Sister Worth flipped the contents of the tray into Brother Lazarus's face. A scalpel went into his nose and hung there. The tray and the rest of its contents hit the floor.

Before Brother Lazarus could yelp, Calhoun dropped and wheeled. He was under Brother Fred's shotgun and he used his forearm to drive the barrel upwards. The gun went off and peppered the ceiling. Plaster sprinkled down.

Calhoun had concealed the little knife in the palm of his hand and he brought it up and into Brother Fred's groin. The blade went through the robe and buried to the hilt.

The instant Calhoun made his move, Wayne brought his forearm back and around into Brother Mold Fuzz's throat, then turned and caught his head and jerked that down and kneed him a couple of times. He floored him by driving an elbow into the back of his neck.

Calhoun had the shotgun now, and Brother Fred was on the floor trying to pull the knife out of his balls. Calhoun blew Brother Fred's head off, then did the same for Brother Mold Fuzz.

Brother Lazarus, the scalpel still hanging from his nose, tried to run for it, but he stepped on the tray and that sent him flying. He landed on his stomach. Calhoun took two deep steps and kicked him in the throat. Brother Lazarus made a sound like he was gargling and tried to get up.

Wayne helped him. He grabbed Brother Lazarus by the back of his robe and pulled him up, slammed him back against a table. The scalpel still dangled from the monk's nose. Wayne grabbed it and jerked, taking away a chunk of nose as he did. Brother Lazarus screamed.

Calhoun put the shotgun in Brother Lazarus's mouth and that made him stop screaming. Calhoun pumped the shotgun. He said, "Eat it," and pulled the trigger. Brother Lazarus's brains went out the back of his head riding on a chunk of skull. The brains and skull hit the table and sailed onto the floor like a plate of scrambled eggs pushed the length of a cafe counter.

Sister Worth had not moved. Wayne figured she had used all of her concentration to hit Brother Lazarus with the tray.

"You said you'd have guns," Wayne said to her.

She turned her back to him and lifted her habit. In a belt above her panties were two .38 revolvers. Wayne pulled them out and held one in each hand. "Two-Gun Wayne," he said.

"What about the ultra-light?" Calhoun said. "We've made enough noise for a prison riot. We need to move."

Sister Worth turned to the door at the back of the room, and before she could say anything or lead, Wayne and Calhoun snapped to it and grabbed her and pushed her toward it.

There were stairs on the other side of the door and they took them two at a time. They went through a trap door and onto the roof and there, tied down with bungie straps to metal hoops, was the ultra-light. It was blue-and-white canvas and metal rods, and strapped to either side of it was a twelve-gauge pump and a bag of food and a canteen of water.

They unsnapped the roof straps and got in the two seater and used the straps to fasten Sister Worth between them. It wasn't comfortable, but it was a ride.

They sat there. After a moment, Calhoun said, "Well?"

"Shit," Wayne said. "I can't fly this thing."

They looked at Sister Worth. She was staring at the controls.

"Say something, damnmit," Wayne said.

"That's the switch," she said. "That stick... forward is up, back brings the nose down... side to side..."

"Got it."

"Well shoot this bastard over the side," Calhoun said.

Wayne cranked it, gave it the throttle. The machine rolled forward, wobbled.

"Too much weight," Wayne said.

"Throw the cunt over the side," Calhoun said.

"It's all or nothing," Wayne said.

The ultra-light continued to swing its tail left and right, but leveled off as they went over the edge.

They sailed for a hundred yards, made a mean curve Wayne couldn't fight, and fell straight away into the statue of Jesus, striking it in the head, right in the midst of the barbed wire crown. Spotlights shattered, metal groaned, the wire tangled in the nylon wings of the craft and held it. The head of Jesus nodded forward, popped off and shot out on the electric cables inside like a Jack-in-the-Box. The cables popped tight a hundred feet from the ground and worked the head and the craft like a yo-yo. Then the barbed wire crown unraveled and dropped the craft the rest of the way. It hit the ground with a crunch and a rip and a cloud of dust.

The head of Jesus bobbed above the shattered craft like a bird preparing to peck a worm.

X

Wayne crawled out of the wreckage and tried his legs. They worked.

Calhoun was on his feet cussing, unstrapping the guns and supplies.

Sister Worth lay in the midst of the wreck, the nylon and aluminum supports folded around her like butterfly wings.

Wayne started pulling the mess off of her. He saw that her leg was broken. A bone punched out of her thigh like a sharpened stick. There was no blood.

"Here comes the church social," Calhoun said.

The word was out about Brother Lazarus and the others. A horde of monks, nuns and dead folks, were rushing over the drawbridge. Some of the nuns and monks had guns. All of the dead folks had clubs. The clergy was yelling.

Wayne nodded toward the bus barn, "Let's get a bus."

Wayne picked up Sister Worth, cradled her in his arms, and made a run for it. Calhoun, carrying only the guns and the supplies, passed them. He jumped through the open doorway of a bus and dropped out of sight. Wayne knew he was jerking wires loose and trying to hotwire them a ride. Wayne hoped he was good at it, and fast.

When Wayne got to the bus, he laid Sister Worth down beside it and pulled the .38 and stood in front of her. If he was going down he wanted to go like Wild Bill Hickok. A blazing gun in either fist and a woman to protect.

Actually, he'd prefer the bus to start.

It did.

Calhoun jerked it in gear, backed it out and around in front of Wayne and Sister Worth. The monks and nuns had started firing and their rounds bounced off the side of the armored bus.

From inside Calhoun yelled, "Get the hell on."

Wayne stuck the guns in his belt, grabbed up Sister Worth and leapt inside. Calhoun jerked the bus forward and Wayne and Sister Worth went flying over a seat and into another.

"I thought you were leaving," Wayne said.

"I wanted to. But I gave my word."

Wayne stretched Sister Worth out on the seat and looked at her leg. After that tossing Calhoun had given them, the break was sticking out even more.

Calhoun closed the bus door and checked his wing-mirror. Nuns and monks and dead folks had piled into a couple of buses, and now the buses were pursuing them. One of them moved very fast, as if souped up.

"I probably got the granny of the bunch," Calhoun said.

They climbed over a ridge of sand, then they were on the narrow road that wound itself upwards. Behind them, one of the buses had fallen back, maybe some kind of mechanical trouble. The other was gaining.

The road widened and Calhoun yelled, "I think this is what the fucker's been waiting for."

Even as Calhoun spoke, their pursuer put on a burst of speed and swung left and came up beside them, tried to swerve over and push them off the road, down into the deepening valley. But Calhoun fought the curves and didn't budge.

The other bus swung its door open and a nun, the very one who had been on the bus that brought them to Jesus Land, stood there with her legs spread wide, showing the black-pantied mound of her crotch. She had one arm bent around a seat post and was holding in both hands the ever-popular clergy tool, the twelve-gauge pump.

As they made a curve, the nun fired a round into the window next to Calhoun. The window made a cracking noise and thin crooked lines spread in all directions, but the glass held.

She pumped a round into the chamber and fired again.

Bullet proof or not, this time the front sheet of glass fell away. Another well-placed round and the rest of the glass would go and Calhoun could wave his head good-bye.

Wayne put his knees in a seat and got the window down. The nun saw him, whirled and fired. The shot was low and hit the bottom part of the window and starred it and pelleted the chassis.

Wayne stuck the .38 out the window and fired as the nun was jacking another load into position. His shot hit her in the head and her right eye went big and wet, and she swung around on the pole and lost the shotgun. It went out the door. She clung there by the bend of her elbow for a moment, then her arm straightened and she fell outside. The bus ran over her and she popped red and juicy at both ends like a stomped jelly roll.

"Waste of good pussy," Calhoun said. He edged into the other bus, and it pushed back. But Calhoun pushed harder and made it hit the wall with a screech like a panther.

The bus came back and shoved Calhoun to the side of the cliff and honked twice for Jesus.

Calhoun down-shifted, let off the gas, allowed the other bus to soar past by half a length. Then he jerked the wheel so that he caught the rear of it and knocked it across the road. He speared it in the side with the nose of his bus and the other started to spin. It clipped the front of Calhoun's bus and peeled the bumper back. Calhoun braked and the other bus kept spinning. It spun off the road and down into the valley amidst a chorus of cries.

Thirty minutes later they reached the top of the canyon and were in the desert. The bus began to throw up smoke from the front and make a noise like a dog strangling on a chicken bone. Calhoun pulled over.

XII

"Goddamn bumper got twisted under there and it's shredded the tire some," Calhoun said. "I think if we can peel the bumper off, there's enough of that tire to run on."

Wayne and Calhoun got hold of the bumper and pulled but it wouldn't come off. Not completely. Part of it had been creased, and that part finally gave way and broke off from the rest of it.

"That ought to be enough to keep from rubbing the tire," Calhoun said.

Sister Worth called from inside the bus. Wayne went to check on her. "Take me off the bus," she said in her slow way. "...I want to feel free air and sun."

"There doesn't feel like there's any air out there," Wayne said. "And the sun feels just like it always does. Hot."

"Please."

He picked her up and carried her outside and found a ridge of sand and laid her down so her head was propped against it.

"I... I need batteries," she said.

"Say what?" Wayne said.

She lay looking straight into the sun. "Brother Lazarus's greatest work... a dead folk that can think... has memory of the past... Was a scientist too..." Her hand came up in stages, finally got hold of her head gear and pushed it off.

Gleaming from the center of her tangled blond hair was a silver knob.

"He... was not a good man... I am a good woman... I want to feel alive... like before... batteries going... brought others."

Her hand fumbled at a snap pocket on her habit. Wayne opened it for her and got out what was inside. Four batteries.

"Uses two... simple."

Calhoun was standing over them now. "That explains some things," he said.

"Don't look at me like that..." Sister Worth said, and Wayne realized he had never told her his name and she had never asked. "Unscrew... put the batteries in... Without them I'll be an eater... Can't wait too long."

"All right," Wayne said. He went behind her and propped her up on the sand drift and unscrewed the metal shaft from her skull. He thought about when she had fucked him on the wheel and how desperate she had been to feel something, and how she had been cold as flint and lustless. He remembered how she had looked in the mirror hoping to see something that wasn't there.

He dropped the batteries in the sand and took out one of the revolvers and put it close to the back of her head and pulled the trigger. Her body jerked slightly and fell over, her face turning toward him.

The bullet had come out where the bird had been on her cheek and had taken it completely away, leaving a bloodless hole.

"Best thing," Calhoun said. "There's enough live pussy in the world without you pulling this broken-legged dead thing around after you on a board."

"Shut up," Wayne said.

"When a man gets sentimental over women and kids, he can count himself out."

Wayne stood up.

"Well boy," Calhoun said. "I reckon it's time."

"Reckon so," Wayne said.

"How about we do this with some class? Give me one of your pistols and we'll get back-to-back and I'll count to ten, and when I get there, we'll turn and shoot."

Wayne gave Calhoun one of the pistols. Calhoun checked the chambers, said, "I've got four loads."

Wayne took two out of his pistol and tossed them on the ground. "Even Steven," he said.

They got back-to-back and held the guns by their legs.

"Guess if you kill me you'll take me in," Calhoun said. "So that means you'll put a bullet through my head if I need it. I don't want to come back as one of the dead folks. Got your word on that?"

"Yep."

"I'll do the same for you. Give my word. You know that's worth something."

"We gonna shoot or talk?"

"You know, boy, under different circumstances, I could have liked you. We might have been friends."

"Not likely."

Calhoun started counting, and they started stepping. When he got to ten, they turned.

Calhoun's pistol barked first, and Wayne felt the bullet punch him low in the right side of his chest, spinning him slightly. He lifted his revolver and took his time and shot just as Calhoun fired again.

Calhoun's second bullet whizzed by Wayne's head. Wayne's shot hit Calhoun in the stomach.

Calhoun went to his knees and had trouble drawing a breath. He tried to lift his revolver but couldn't; it was as if it had turned into an anvil.

Wayne shot him again. Hitting him in the middle of the chest this time and knocking him back so that his legs were curled beneath him.

Wayne walked over to Calhoun, dropped to one knee and took the revolver from him.

"Shit," Calhoun said. "I wouldn't have thought that for nothing. You hit?"

"Scratched."

"Shit."

Wayne put the revolver to Calhoun's forehead and Calhoun closed his eyes and Wayne pulled the trigger.

The wound wasn't a scratch. Wayne knew he should leave Sister Worth where she was and load Calhoun on the bus and haul him in for bounty. But he didn't care about the bounty anymore.

He used the ragged piece of bumper to dig them a shallow side-by-side grave. When he finished, he stuck the fender fragment up between them and used the sight of one of the revolvers to scratch into it: HERE LIES SISTER WORTH AND CALHOUN WHO KEPT HIS WORD.

You couldn't really read it good and he knew the first real wind would keel it over, but it made him feel better about something, even if he couldn't put his finger on it.

His wound had opened up and the sun was very hot now, and since he had lost his hat he could feel his brain cooking in his skull like meat boiling in a pot.

He got on the bus, started it and drove through the day and the night and it was near morning when he came to the Cadillacs and turned down between them and drove until he came to the '57.

When he stopped and tried to get off the bus, he found he could hardly move. The revolvers in his belt were stuck to his shirt and stomach because of the blood from his wound.

He pulled himself up with the steering wheel, got one of the shotguns and used it for a crutch. He got the food and water and went out to inspect the '57.

It was for shit. It had not only lost its windshield, the front end was mashed way back and one of the big sand tires was twisted at such an angle he knew the axle was shot.

He leaned against the Chevy and tried to think. The bus was okay and there was still some gas in it, and he could get the hose out of the trunk of the '57 and siphon gas out of its tanks and put it in the bus. That would give him a few miles.

Miles.

He didn't feel as if he could walk twenty feet, let alone concentrate on driving.

He let go of the shotgun, the food and water. He scooted onto the hood of the Chevy and managed himself to the roof. He lay there on his back and looked at the sky.

It was a clear night and the stars were sharp with no fuzz around them. He felt cold. In a couple of hours the stars would fade and the sun would come up and the cool would give way to heat.

He turned his head and looked at one of the Cadillacs and a skeleton face pressed to its windshield, forever looking down at the sand.

That was no way to end, looking down.

He crossed his legs and stretched out his arms and studied the sky. It didn't feel so cold now, and the pain had almost stopped. He was more numb than anything else.

He pulled one of the revolvers and cocked it and put it to his temple and continued to look at the stars. Then he closed his eyes and found that he could still see them. He was once again hanging in the void between the stars wearing only his hat and cowboy boots, and floating about him were the junk cars and the '57, undamaged.

The cars were moving toward him this time, not away. The '57 was in the lead, and as it grew closer he saw Pop behind the wheel and beside him was a Mexican puta, and in the back, two more. They were all smiling and Pop honked the horn and waved.

The '57 came alongside him and the back door opened. Sitting between the whores was Sister Worth. She had not been there a moment ago, but now she was. And he had never noticed how big the backseat of the '57 was.

Sister Worth smiled at him and the bird on her cheek lifted higher. Her hair was combed out long and straight and she looked pink-skinned and happy. On the floorboard at her feet was a chest of iced beer. Lone Star, by God.

Pop was leaning over the front seat, holding out his hand, and Sister Worth and the whores were beckoning him inside.

Wayne worked his hands and feet, found this time that he could move. He swam through the open door, touched Pop's hand, and Pop said, "It's good to see you, son," and at the moment Wayne pulled the trigger, Pop pulled him inside.

O'RETA SNAPSHOT MEMORIES

Her maiden name was O'Reta Wood. Most everyone called her Reta, or Reeter, with the exception of my dad. He called her O'Reeter, which, akin to Reeter, is one of those rural Southern peculiarities I never have figured out. It's like Cinderella becoming Cindereller. Who added the "er," and why was it added? But I loved to hear my daddy call her name, and I think she did too.

My first memory of my mother is her sitting in a chair beside me, before a long row of curtainless windows, looking out at the night.

I guess I was three or four years old. We were in the first house I remember, and below us was a honky-tonk, and beyond that, across the highway, a drive-in theater.

On the huge drive-in screen were cartoon figures (most likely Warner Brothers), and sometimes actors going through their paces, and from that distance cartoons and humans were about the size they would be on a television screen, which we didn't have.

Since we couldn't hear what the characters were saying, my mother translated their silence to words. I had no idea then she was making it up; I thought she was omniscient. What I do know is I enjoyed it. It was my introduction to storytelling.

When I think of my mother, this is most often the first memory that comes to mind. That and her reading me Uncle Remus, and, of course, the tornado.

One day, while my father was off at work, which was a lot of the time, the birds went quiet and the sky turned greenish, and my mother suddenly grew agitated. She threw open the windows and the doors, and from those same windows where we had watched the drive-in theater, we saw something else.

In the distance, beyond the drive-in, trees leaped up and swirled in a cone, and the cone danced. It was a tornado, a Texas cyclone, a twister, looking not too unlike the tornado I would see later on television (when we finally got one) while watching The Wizard of Oz.

Mom scooped me up and ran to the next-door neighbor's house. He had a storm shelter. Once inside with the neighbor's family, we found ourselves at least a foot deep in water. There were jars of canned food on shelves, and the man who owned the shelter, a person I barely remember, stood with flashlight and club. As we watched, he killed a water moccasin that had crawled in down there. Above us the storm hollered and stomped and tugged at the latched double wooden doors like a maniac with a knife. My mother stood in the water and held me in a death grip.

I don't remember being afraid of the storm, just excited. But the snake, my first, had scared me. Never have liked them since. Maybe I got that from my mother. She was scared of snakes, water, drinking alcohol, and electricity. So am I.

The storm was over almost as fast as it happened. All I remember is that when we came out into the light, our house was untouched, as were the handful of houses in the immediate area, but the drive-in screen was gone and partly in our yard, and some of the honky-tonk's roof had been taken away. It had all seemed like a dream.

Later, I remember it being said that a house some distance behind us had the tornado drop in, as if for a visit, only to leave the place in shambles. We were lucky. The damn thing had jumped over us and gone on.

Other memories of that time: Wandering bums. They call them homeless now, but they called them bums then. They were sometimes men down on their luck, more often than not lost souls who claimed to be preachers. They'd come to our door and ask for food. My mother nearly always fixed them something. Sometimes they did a little work around the house in return. Sometimes they preached, or gave us a little story of how they had come to where they now stood, or wobbled, as was the case with some.

If my mother smelled alcohol on their breath, they not only didn't get fed, she ran them off by locking the screen door and lecturing at them through it about the depravities of drink. They usually took hat in hand (as everyone seemed to wear hats then) and slunk off apologetically.

None of this sympathetic twelve-step stuff. These guys were drunks. Mom was a fanatic teetotaler and viewed 1920s prohibition exponent and saloon-smasher Carrie Nation as a kind of saint. My father viewed her as an annoying busybody who might have served more good if she had been hit by a truck.

Looking back, seeing a number of friends of mine who took to the bottle, fell in, and didn't come out, the number of social drunks I've been around, I'm glad mom scolded me at an early age. I don't see the occasional drink as quite the resident evil my mother did, but drunkenness I've never liked and I have never been drunk myself. A legacy from my mother: have no respect for the bottle, because it has none for you.

* * *

My mother was pulled into this century as if by a tornado of technology. Future shock. And she never quite adjusted to it.

My mother's Scotch-Irish mother, my grandmother, Ole, was born in the 1880s in Oklahoma Territory. It didn't become a state until a few years later. She traveled by covered wagon and actually saw Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. I remember her telling me about it: White horses. Stagecoaches being chased by wild Indians, gunfire, sharpshooters (maybe Annie Oakley), and the old man himself, white-bearded, handsome, magnificent. Wild Bill Hickok had only been dead about ten years when she was born.

She told me of seeing Indian encampments as a child. Of attempting to homestead land (most likely Oklahoma during the land rush), where snakes tried to climb in the wagon all night and were fought off by her family. But the snakes were so thick and persistent, the very next day they abandoned their homesteading adventure and departed.

She told me Irish ghost stories about birds that appeared before the death of loved ones. Family stories, like how her husband's brother, George, an older man, fought in the Civil War in place of his son, George, Jr., who had deserted. George Sr., however, was later shot and killed for stealing horses.

Ole saw a number of her children buried. She lived to be ninety-eight years old, and in pretty good health until the end. She loved the modern world and thought the good old days weren't all that damn good. I think she adjusted to the changing times better than my parents, who were born in this century.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, shortly after the death of the Wild West, my parents were born. My father in 1909, my mother in 1916. Buffalo Bill was still alive, as were Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, and Emmett Dalton, the lone survivor of the Dalton gang's last raid. Frank James died a year before my mother was born. My father was approximately six years old at the time.

My mother's family moved to Texas, where she met and grew up with the man who was to become my father. She and A. B. Lansdale were married in 1933. My father wanted to be a mechanic. Mom bought Dad a Model T with some money she had earned from berry picking. She told him to take it apart and put it back together until he could do it without thinking. He took her advice, and that was how he learned his trade.

My brother was born in 1935. Emmett Dalton was still alive and writing for the movies. Wyatt Earp had only been dead six years. Pretty Boy Floyd was about to meet his end. It was the middle of the Great Depression.

Sixteen years later, in 1951, I was born. World War II was but six years gone. It was the Eisenhower generation. The nuclear age. The baby boom. Hank Williams and Ernest Tubb were on the radio. The birth of rock and roll was on the very near horizon. Prosperity ruled the nation, if not East Texas. Some dumbass was going to invent the Hula-Hoop.

This to me is the most amazing thing about my family. That they had a foot in so many different generations. The Wild West, the Great Depression, the nuclear age. I think this was part of what made them who they were.

My mother and father were very close, and very different. They argued a lot. My father was uneducated. He had begun helping raise his family at eight years old, when his mother died. His father was a mean-spirited jackass who was quick with the whip, and my father had scars to prove it. As well as brawling scars, snakebite scars, and smallpox scars. He never so much as spanked me.

My mother had come from a family that wasn't overly educated, but had a respect for education--especially her father. Her father, my grandfather, was her hero. She adored him, told me stories of him, and praised him. He was no saint, however. Besides her four brothers and one sister, her two half-brothers from a previous marriage, there was a simultaneous marriage to a woman on the other side of the Ozarks. The result of that second union was a half-sister. When we found out about her, met her years later, there was no denying she was kin. She was the spitting image of my mother.

When I was growing up, the Depression was constantly in our house, even if it was supposedly long over. We pinched pennies. We ate what was on our plates. We saved bits of cloth, paper, damn near anything we could get our hands on. My mom ran the coffee grounds through twice, sometimes three times. We saved the grease from frying and made soap out of it with lye.

My mother never could get hold of the idea that times were better. For her the wolf was always at the door. She had a terrible fear of going hungry. She was absolutely paranoid about it. And it wasn't something my father took lightly either. I remember Dad hunting squirrels, and it wasn't just for recreation. My mother made meals from polk salad and wild dandelions, made jelly out of wild grapes and persimmons, tea from sassafras. We raised a garden, hogs, and chickens a lot of the time.

There was never a moment in my mother's life when the future was secure, and because of this, I think it was hard for her to plan too far ahead for herself. For her family, yes, but she and my father constantly denied themselves things to make sure it was there for the family.

In spite of this, my parents probably did better during the early Fifties than at any other time in their lives, and it's the only time I remember living in a close neighborhood with a house immediately next door. Then my mother was a full-time housewife, and my father worked at Wanda Petroleum, a butane company. He was a mechanic troubleshooter, on the road a lot of the time fixing broken-down trucks. Sometimes he'd work in horrible weather and be out late and far away, have to lie in puddles of water on freezing nights working on a motor. I've seen him come in the door with freezing chills and icicles in his hair. Next morning, he'd be up and gone before daylight, back to work.

My mother was a great lover of books, especially nonfiction. She was interested in comparative religion, and it's my belief she wrestled with her views on religion all her life. There were times when her views were strictly hard-shell Baptist, and times when she was somewhat agnostic. Most of the time she was what I would call a liberal Baptist. An oxymoron to many, but the truth is they did and do exist. My mother loved reading the Bible, and she hooked me on the habit. I'm not religious, but I still read the Bible. Great stories. Great lessons for life. Lots of sex, murder, and perversion.

She loved William Faulkner, more for what he accomplished than for his books, which, to my knowledge, she had never read. Faulkner, for some reason, reminded her of her father, a conclusion I presume she gleaned from reading about his life. I doubt she knew Faulkner was a notorious drunk.

My mother had a natural knack for color. She loved to paint, often did her painting with her fingers, using boards or squares of plywood for her canvases.

She would just suddenly have the urge, and she would paint. Perhaps for days on end. When she was finished, occasionally these paintings would find their way on our walls, or she would give them away, or sell them, and sometimes, she would just toss them. Usually the paintings were of flowers. My mother loved flowers. Sometimes they were just colorful, and not obviously anything but fine displays of color.

The paintings, no matter what they were of, always had a kind of, well, fuzzy weirdness about them. They were art, and they were unique, but they weren't at all traditional. Later, when I saw Van Gogh's work, I realized that it had much the same appearance. Not on the same level, but the same sort of technique. My mother had never taken an art lesson, and had never even heard of Vincent Van Gogh. Maybe part of the result was due to the weakness of her eyes, but I tend to think she painted what she saw. A world bright and beautiful, but fuzzy around the edges.

She was great at making something out of nothing. From food to throw rugs to coffee tables to flower arrangements, she could take nothing--which is mostly what she had to work with--and turn it into something.

When I was young, she was very optimistic. Always looking for a better day. She instilled that in me. Unfortunately for her, this wasn't her true nature. She was subject to tremendous ups and downs. I think now she would most likely be diagnosed as a manic-depressive. In later years, it got worse.

* * *

Growing up, my mother was always there to read to me, tell me she loved me, impress on me how intelligent and special I was, but how I should keep in mind that others didn't have all the advantages I had, and that I should respect every human being, no matter their race, color, religion, or financial station in life. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

It never occurred to me that we were poor. We thought of ourselves as broke. It wasn't until years later that I realized it.

There was no reason I should have felt poor. When I was young my mother made my shirts and even jackets, sewed them on a pedal Singer sewing machine.

She always found money for me to buy comic books and the occasional paperback book. At Christmas I always received a book or two, because I was a fanatic for the stuff. At the time I loved DC comics especially, and some offbeat comics like Black Cat, which starred a female crime fighter who had judo tips in the back of her comics. But Batman, he was my main man.

My mother made me a Batman uniform with ears I was never quite satisfied with. They tended to droop. She solved this to some degree by placing cardboard inside the ears. She made my nephew, who is only a few years younger than me, a Robin outfit. I wish I still had mine.

My nephew and I had plans to solve crimes in Mt. Enterprise, but the place seemed short on the stuff. Nonexistent, in fact. And besides, we had to be in the house at a certain time and go to bed early enough to be up for school. My bedroom may have been the Bat Cave, but it was still in my parents' house.

But Bat Cave it was. With chemistry sets, insect and mineral collections, fingerprinting materials, and books on all these subjects.

In my Bat Cave, it was my plan to also include mementos of cases to come, but, alas, the most I ever did was run around with my cape flapping. To remedy this, I began to think of adventures to write and draw about, my own comics. Mom always took time out from whatever she was doing to hear me read my comics and show her the pictures. In time, I preferred the stories to the pictures, possibly because I was better at it.

Mom introduced me to Tarzan movies on television, perhaps to get me out of her hair. Every Saturday morning there was a jungle theater with Tarzan, Jungle Jim, Bomba the Jungle Boy, that sort of thing, and every Saturday morning I was glued to the tube. I looked forward to it all week. Later, I discovered Edgar Rice Burroughs, the author of the Tarzan books, and my life was absolutely turned around. I had always wanted to be a writer, but when I started reading Burroughs, I knew I had to be.

Again, I owe it all to Mom.

When I was young, though people find this hard to believe, I was shy. My mother sent me around the corner to a lady who taught what was then called Expression. It was taught at her home, and I learned to memorize poetry and sections from books, and to give recitations. I discovered an unusual knack. I was a pretty good public speaker, a good reader, and could memorize entire poems and pages of books rapidly. I loved it. I didn't know it at the time, and neither did my mother, at least not directly, but she was further grooming me for my future career as writer and public speaker.

When we moved back to Gladewater, we moved there with considerably less money. My father quit Wanda Petroleum and struck out on his own.

My cousin made him a wallet card that read:

HAVE TOOLS, WILL TRAVEL.

My father loved the independence, and never gave it up again, but it was hard sledding as a freelance mechanic, and it took time for him to get his own garage and build up a clientele. In the meantime, we ate a lot of pinto beans and cornbread. It wasn't until years later I realized we did that because they were cheap. I just thought we liked them.

My mother sold encyclopedias door-to-door, bought things from swap meets and refurbished them, resold them at a higher price and made money for me to join the Boy Scouts, have uniforms and equipment, and to attend Scout camps. One year she raised enough for me to go to Philmont, a prestigious Scout camp in New Mexico. I still remember my scouting days with great fondness.

Later, Mom worked odd jobs so that I was able to go to the YMCA in Tyler, Texas, and take a variety of martial arts. We had to drive thirty miles every Saturday, and eventually several times a week when I discovered the variety of martial arts offered at night.

I became a fanatic.

Mom even let me try the wristlocks and arm bars on her when my dad wasn't around. She held pillows for me to kick and helped me build punching bags and other simple training devices.

My mother and I were very close until I reached the age of sixteen. That's not unusual. Teenagers strike off on their own for a while, but this was during the turbulent Sixties, and though my mother supported much of the change that was going on--civil rights, women's rights--she disliked the long hair, the slovenly clothes, and the antiestablishment mood that the Sixties, and now I, represented.

We never became enemies, my mother and I, but we didn't see eye to eye on much. I was troublesome at school, was often expelled, my grades dropped, and I just skimmed through till graduation. I'm sure Mom must have wondered what all the lessons in Expression, Boy Scouts, and martial arts had done for me.

I married when I was eighteen and began attending Tyler Junior College, and then I was off to the University of Texas. My marriage fell apart during that second year of studies, and I came home.

It was really pretty wonderful, and for about a year or so, kind of like a second childhood. At the time I was very much interested in Thoreau. My mother loved him too. She and I read Walden a lot and talked. The closeness returned.

It wasn't until my father's death some years later that things went haywire. From the moment he died, she was lost. She didn't pull in and give up, but she seemed frantic all the time. She had never had the ability to stick to any one thing, even the things she loved, like sales, flower arranging, painting. She dipped into these like a bee at a flower, then moved on. The moment something became a bit difficult, she was out of there. She wanted to keep that high of discovery all the time, and therefore sacrificed the greater high of really becoming good and successful at something.

Finally she remarried. A nice enough fella. Shortly thereafter she was in a wreck that caused her to be thrown through the windshield. She never would wear a seatbelt, fearing being trapped, often commenting that she would rather be thrown free. And she was. Right through the windshield that banged her brain and put her in the hospital.

She was operated on, and my brother and I and our families went to see her daily. Her husband, Cecil, received only minor injuries and was soon up and around.

But for mother, it was strange. Even when she was allowed to go home, she didn't know where she was. She couldn't get out of bed. She couldn't care for herself. She didn't know who her family members were. Those same eyes that had looked at me with love, and even frustration, were now more like the eyes of a frightened animal.

Slowly, her memory came back, but though she could remember her past, and me, she had lost the ability to show emotion. It was akin to the novel The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, or the movie made from it. She looked like my mother, talked like my mother, but something--a lot--was missing.

Eventually her husband became too ill to take care of her, and my brother tried to keep her in his home, but her injuries resulted in twenty-four-hour-a-day specialized care, and it was a care that working people weren't easily available to do.

We did what we had vowed never to do. We put her in a nursing home near my brother. By this time her memories were not only back, but a lot of her personality. Her emotions returned, but she was never quite the same.

She had periods where she seemed absolutely lost. One time when I visited her she would be fine, lucid; the next, confused. She asked for paints, and I bought them for her, and so did my brother, but she never used them. She would give them away, ask for more. The old urges were still there, but not the ability. She would become so frustrated with the fact that she could no longer paint, didn't even know how, that she would rid herself of the kits.

She couldn't do what she loved most. Read. Her mind wouldn't follow the prose; she couldn't visualize the words. She couldn't watch and keep up with a simple television show. She misunderstood the news. During the Gulf War she called to tell me that Iraqis were invading a small Texas community of about two hundred, making terroristic attacks on the gas lines.

She had heard that certain publishing companies were in league with the Mafia, and it became stuck in her mind that I was working for the Mafia by writing for the publishing companies they owned. I often wondered if in her mind she put my martial arts training in league with this and saw me as some sort of freelance hit man for the publishing field.

Having come from the Great Depression, she never could understand how I made as much money as I did. Well, it was a lot by her standards. Not all that special, really, but for someone who every day had to plan her existence down to the penny, she was in awe of the money I made and thought it must come from illegal sources.

Also, the kind of fiction I wrote sometimes led her to believe that I might be crazy, or going crazy. It was all very strange and frustrating, for me as well as her.

On one of her doctor visits, the doctor told me that the x-rays revealed she had a cancer on her lung. Here was a woman that had never smoked in her life, who had had nothing but hardship, was badly injured due to a stupid automobile accident, and now she had a cancer on her lung.

Mom refused to have it operated on. She was adamant about that. She had had too many operations due to her injuries, and now in her late seventies, feeling horrible, she felt it was better just to let time take its course. Her belief was she had lived long enough, and that even without the cancer, she didn't have that much time ahead of her anyway, and if she did, who the hell wanted it?

I pursued her about having the operation for a time, but finally dropped it. Her mind was made up. About mid-May of 1993 she had a sudden and continued period of lucidness. We began to talk about old times, relive them. My Batman suit. The comics I read by the tons. My room fixed up like the Bat Cave. The martial arts. And my dad. We talked about it all, and it was wonderful.

One night, late May, I got a call from Mom asking if I would come over to see her. Since my family and I lived about a hundred miles away, I told her I would, but I would be there in the morning. She said that was all right.

Early the next morning I got a call from a nurse saying I should come over and see my mother. I told her that was my plan. The nurse didn't indicate that the situation was vital, and Mom and I often went through this. On any morning I was to come see her, she might call two times before I left, two or three times to talk to my wife, Karen, before I arrived, as well as ask the nurses to call while I was en route.

This morning I got ready as usual, and was going out the door when the phone rang.

It was the nurse. My mother was gone.

* * *

She was buried beside my father. Later I bought them a double tombstone. It was a large funeral. Friends and relatives turned out and told stories of her generosity. I knew she was kind and generous, but I was amazed to learn of the many selfless things she had done, the lives she had changed.

She was an amazing woman who played the hard hand life dealt her. Played it with courage and with a kind of crazy style.

I miss her.

PENTECOSTAL PUNK ROCK

Ira Finney never expected the girl at his apartment door to be selling religion. Begging, perhaps, or ringing the wrong doorbell, but peddling God was a surprise. She claimed to be a Pentecostal, but he had never seen a Punk Rock Pentecostal before. She had orange hair with a shaved spot on the right side of her head and her clothes were a mixed bag: oversized sweater, a plaid skirt, one white sock (the other foot was sockless) and what looked like plastic rain shoes. Over her shoulder was a plastic rain coat. There hadn't been a sign of rain in weeks.

Under her arm was something large and flat, and clutched in her fist like a club was a roll of tracts. She pushed the roll at him.

"Here," she said.

He was intrigued. He took one. Glancing at the face of it, he saw that it read: Pentecostal Punk Rock, the Wave of the Future, So Get Your Shit Together.

He looked at the girl and smiled. She was chewing gum, but she smiled back. She was oddly attractive. Like a cute mongrel mutt. And having been separated from his wife for a year now, and having spent many lonely nights without so much as a look at a woman, improved her looks, made him feel brave.

"Why don't you come in and tell me about it."

"Not much to tell," she said, coming inside, looking around while she popped her gum. "It's all in the paper there."

"Don't you want to make a convert?"

She shrugged. "Yeah, sure, but we don't work for it. I gave you the tract, that's enough. You got your chance. You don't pay attention, ain't my fault. You'll get yours when the big flood comes."

Ira smiled. The girl was obviously unaware of the Bible. The Flood was the first time God destroyed the world. Next time, according to The Bible, destruction would be by fire. He didn't say anything to that effect, however.

"Well, if you don't work to make converts, how come you came inside?"

She smiled "Wanted to see how somebody like you lived."

"And?"

"All right."

Ira used his smile again. He was going to try and put the move on this girl. She looked like the type that had been around, and might want to go around once more. She also looked like someone who wouldn't expect any ties, any real emotional involvement. And though he didn't like to think it so bluntly, what he needed at the moment was simple. Sex.

"What's that under your arm?" he asked. "A book?"

"Sounds," she said, and handed it to him for a look. It was a record album. It was called Pentecostal Punk Rock: Pogo Out. It was by some group called The Destruction.

"Perhaps we could hear it?" he said.

She smiled. "Hey, man, you trying to put the make on me?"

"I'm working at it."

The smile got bigger. "Maybe that's all right. You're kind of cute for a straight. I ain't saying it's all right, now. I'm just saying maybe, got me?"

"Yeah, I got you."

"This kind of music doesn't look like your scene, man," she said.

"Does this religion?" he said, holding up the tract.

"No, but you got to try, you know. God and his work and all that crap."

"I see. You been canvassing long?"

"What?"

"Going door to door?"

"Oh. Just since I became a true believer. About a month ago."

"Is this branch of the Pentecostal church new?"

"I'll say. Brand new. The other Pentecostals don't have a thing to do with us. They say we're crazy and don't know what's up. But they don't have a clue, man. They won't be crowing so loud when the flood comes."

"I see."

"Hey, you wanna hear those sounds, or not?"

"Sure."

He put the album on the stereo and waved her to the couch. She sat on one end and he sat on the other. He looked at her and smiled. She smiled back and glided down the couch to sit next to him. She tossed the raincoat off her shoulder onto the floor, dropped the tracts on top of it. He let his arm slip around her shoulders. She didn't seem to mind. It felt very good to have his arm around a woman. It had been a long time.

The music started, if you could call it that. It sounded like a recording of car wrecks, train derailments and plane crashes set to music.

After a minute of this, the girl, overcome, leaped to her feet and started bounding and flailing about the room. It didn't look so much like dancing, as it looked like she was struggling with an invisible opponent.

The music built.

The girl began to chant under her breath. Some of it sounded like Bible verses, most of it nonsense. Suddenly she stopped and looked at him.

"Hey, you're not digging the sounds."

"Well," he admitted, "it's not my thing."

"I can see that. Well, too bad."

She leaned over and kissed him. He kissed her back, and the kisses got hotter and hotter. His hands explored, and hers returned the favor. The music beat like a struggling heart in the background.

Pretty soon their clothes were off and they were flopping around on the couch like spawning salmon. The first time it ended quickly, in a passionate rush. The second and third time took longer and was sweeter. After that, she turned over the album, which seemed nearly endless, and they retired to the bedroom.

It had grown dark and he turned on the lamp next to his bedside. It had small wattage and provided a pleasant light for lovemaking. And strangely, it was by this dim light that he first really took note of her body. She was astride him, head tilted up in ecstasy. From that angle he could see the rapid pulse in her smooth neck and the pointed tip of her chin.

He could see the bottoms of her eyes, and they were expressionless, bulged out, as if she were being pumped up with air. From his angle they looked lidless.

Her body was sleek, lean and boyish. Her breasts little more than bee-stings. Her white flesh, especially the small bulge of her belly, reminded him of the underside of a fish. For some reason he suddenly felt nauseous with her, as if he had eaten something bad and not until this moment realized it.

He was more than happy when the music finished, and she with it. She lay beside him and fell fast asleep.

Lying there, no longer straining with passion, she looked quite different. More feminine. But her flesh felt clammy and the sweat that clung to her was in large beads and smelled heavily of salt. It was like breathing beach air. He found he could not lie beside her.

Rolling out of bed, he put on his robe and padded to the living room, turned on the light. He sat down on the couch and wished now that he had never let her in. He hoped she would depart tomorrow without trouble. He hoped, too, she wouldn't want an encore.

Idly, he reached over and picked up one of the tracts, opened it.

The contents were strange indeed. No wonder the Pentecostals didn't claim them. Who would?

Mixed with Punk lore and band reviews were excerpts from The Bible and a mass of strange letters and designs that looked akin to Egyptian hieroglyphics. There were also newspaper extracts about violent crimes, a few graphic photos of victims of maiming accidents, murders, and rapes.

Finney felt repulsed, but curiosity caused him to examine it closer. He couldn't decide from the tracts if the Punker sect was opposed to these things, for them, or just damn indifferent.

As he read, he realized that the girl's statements about the flood were not entirely out of whack. At least not with her religion. The flood of old, as well as the story of Jonah being swallowed by a great fish, were of considerable importance to the Punkers. In fact, comments about water occurred over and over again in the tract. And as for the Biblical prediction of the second destruction of the world being caused by fire, the Punkers were in total opposition. They said God had changed His mind, and Acid-Face Ronnie knew the score.

Acid-Face Ronnie was the prophet of the Punk Rock Pentecostals. It was his contention that God had spoken to him personally, and had assured him that a flood was going to be the way the world went out this time as well, and all the old bets were off. Acid-Face Ronnie claimed it was like when the Old Testament was out and the New Testament was in. Only now this was the New New Testament (referring to the tract, Finney took it), and those who did not heed its warning were going to be "drowned suckers."

God was bored with the whole human race thing and was all out of the forgiving mood. It was survival of the fittest, and it was time to heed God's new law or face the big, deep wash.

The album was mentioned in the tract. It was part of what helped you prepare for the flood. It was the sound of car wrecks, train derailments, plane crashes and the like set to music. There were also, the tract claimed, the screams of the injured and the dying on it.

A cold chill wriggled its way up Ira's back. He wondered how the Punkers could have come by such recordings. He hoped it was all hype. The idea of cold-bloodedly causing those things to happen so they could be taped made the hair on the back of his neck bristle. Surely it was all a hoax; something to go with their unconventional lifestyle.

Skipping to another page, he found something about becoming one with water, but he couldn't make sense of it. It seemed the Pentecostal Punkers thought that if you danced to their album, doing a thing called The Pogo, recited certain Bible verses, as well as verses provided in the tract by Acid-Face Ronnie, you could hope to survive.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of thunder. It was loud and reverberating, like someone slamming a baseball bat against a sheet of tin.

It was then that he noticed the walls were bleeding great drops of condensation.

Ira got up and touched the wall. It was damp and cold and smelled bad, like rotting seaweed.

Thunder rumbled again.

He went to the window, drew the curtain, looked down from his twelve story apartment in the city. It was raining briskly and the neon lights below made everything look distorted. The buildings all seemed under water, like stalagmites beneath the sea. The neon lights were like colored coral, and the lights of cars like the glowing eyes of small, scuttling fish.

He rubbed his tired eyes, and just as he brought his hands down, he thought he saw something dart by his window. It had been so fast, it was nearly subliminal, but he couldn't help but think what he'd seen was a man. A Punker with a mohawk making swimming motions against the night sky. A Punker who was part human and part...

He shook his head, as if to clear it of obstructions. He could not have seen anything. That was preposterous. He was twelve stories up. People did not swim in the air, and they certainly did not look like that-a Punker with a fin on his back, and in place of legs, a long, flickering fish tail.

Leaning on the glass, Ira tried to look around the corner of the building, but the angle prevented such nonsense. He saw nothing more out of the ordinary, and realized he had seen nothing in the first place. He had Punk Rockers on the brain.

He laughed, but it was more of a rattle than a laugh.

He found himself drawn back to the couch and the crazy tract. He flipped back to the part on how to survive, cruised again over the section dealing with the album, the chanting and the dancing. There were also warning signs listed for the end of the world. The usual stuff. Violence in the streets. Nations squabbling. Things that were difficult to be accurate about.

Then it got down to more immediate concerns.

There would be a prophet (Acid-Face Ronnie, of course). The prophet would spread the word-quickly, because there wasn't much time. Some would listen, most wouldn't. The prophet was not to sweat those who didn't. His job was to spread the word, not worry about its acceptance. God had told him to tell his friends and relatives first, then others.

Then, in the month of December.

Ira paused in his reading. My God, he thought, today is December the 12th.

It would begin to rain, suddenly, after a long dry spell. There would be the smell of the sea, and all things, animate or inanimate, would forecast their watery future to those who had heard the word, even if they had not accepted its truth. They would have visions of the future; visions of the world's doom.

Scanning more of the tract, he found greater detail on surviving. The chanting, dancing and such, supposedly allowed the true believer to "become one with the flood," whatever that meant. And those who didn't become one with the flood would drown and become food for the survivors.

He let that idea bounce around inside his head for a moment.

Good God, they were talking about cannibalism. Living off the drowned or the drowning. It was repulsive.

Continuing to read, he found that even believing did not guarantee survival. One's degree of strength and protection had to do with one's degree of belief and commitment. Levels of belief had levels of award.

Enough.

He tossed the tract aside. He was getting as crazy as the girl and this nut, Acid-Face Ronnie. He was starting to consider this stuff.

Sure, the wall bled smelly water, but that was nothing prophetic. Maybe a nest of rats had eaten away the insulation and something in it had killed them. Then it rained after a long dry spell, and with it being a cold December... Well, the weather could have caused condensation and carried the stink of the dead rodents into his apartment by route of water beads. A little farfetched, but possible. Certainly it made more sense than that garbage in the tract.

Albums of destruction set to rock music? Cannibalism? A God that saw the world as a cosmic joke and decided to mix the old rules with some new ones, then give them all to a crazed Punk Rocker and send him out to form his own religion?

It just didn't add up.

As for the vision at the window... hallucination. Couldn't have been anything else. He was overly tired and maybe the intensity of the sex act after such a long dry spell had something to do with it. Farfetched again, but still more in the ball park than Pentecostal Punk Rock.

Or maybe the girl had slipped him something? That was a strong possibility. Her type was always taking something, and the way she had looked when they made love, the oddness of her eyes...

But they hadn't drunk or eaten a thing, so how would it have been passed to him? Kissing? Were there some drugs that could be passed that way? Her kisses had tasted strange, like... like the after lurk of a bad oyster dinner.

That was crazy. Drugs passed by kissing? It made no sense.

He felt a tide of queasiness pound its surf against him and he hung his head between his knees to let it pass.

It did, but not fully.

He rose, went to the bathroom and splashed water on his face. His reflection in the mirror was very pale.

Leaning forward, he pushed the top of his head against the mirror and stared into the sink. The water was still running, and as he idly reached to turn it off, a great glob of seaweed oozed out of the faucet and plopped into the sink. This was followed by molasses-thick mud and small, shiny fish. The fish flapped their tails weakly in the muck. The smell of seaweed and fish filled his nostrils.

Ira threw up in the sink.

Lifting his head, he saw his reflection in the watery mirror. The muscles in his face jumped, as if firecrackers had exploded beneath his face. His cheeks were equipped with gills and scales. He would have screamed, but he was too shocked to find his voice.

He closed the lid on the john and sat down there, dizzy, confused.

It was true. The Punk Rockers were onto it. The end of the world was coming by flood, and he, who had been introduced to it by the girl and the tracts, was having visions of the future, and it was a depressing one.

The album. Had to play it. Had to chant and dance. If he was going to survive, he had to do that. There was that thing about levels of believing, and though he was having a hard time believing any of this, he had to be ready when the flood came.

Standing, he chanced a glance into the mirror. His face was back to normal. The only thing in the sink was vomit. He turned on the water. No fish came out. He let it run until the vomit washed down the drain.

His new-found faith backslid. Maybe it was all a hallucination.

But at that moment, lightning cracked loudly and the air was filled with the smell of ozone and rotting fish. It practically raped his nostrils.

He darted into the living room, put on the album, turned up the volume. He grabbed the tract off the floor and found the verses.

The music started and he began to dance, trying to copy the way the girl had moved. He read the tract as he danced, which wasn't easy. He stumbled over the words, having to stop dancing every few seconds to read them better, push them into memory. Then he'd resume his pogoing, reciting what he had memorized.

As he bobbed up and down, the stink of the sea and ozone increased. Rain began to rattle against the windows and roof.

The bedroom door opened, and the girl, naked, came dancing and smiling into the room. Her arms and legs gyrated wildly, like the limbs of a spider being electrocuted. Her mouth opened and the chanting rolled out. She jumped over the back of the couch, landed on the cushions, kicking them to the floor and following after them. She wheeled and leaped about the room. It was wild and graceful at the same time.

Ira, in spite of himself, found his eyes drawn to her nakedness. He saw too that she had that look about her eyes again; the bulging, lidless look.

Ira jerked off his robe, tossed it aside, danced with the girl, the both of them chanting. One moment he felt foolish, the next exhilarated.

Gradually the air became more difficult to breathe. The walls weaved in and out as if great hands were pressing from all sides. A window blew in, sprinkled glass on the carpet. Rain blasted in after it in a torrent. The curtains flapped savagely like the wriggling tongues of snakes tasting air. Ira could see nothing but great darkness outside. The neon made no reflection against the night sky.

The apartment lights went dead, and so did the album, but it was as if he could hear the music in his head. He found to his surprise that his vision had altered and he could see quite well in the dark, even well enough to read the tract. He chanted louder, danced more vigorously to his mental music.

The girl had thrown herself on the cold, wet, glass-sharded carpet and was flapping about like a fish in shallow water. She spun around on her buttocks, and finally popped to her feet, her eyes glowing in the dark, her ass dripping blood from the glass cuts.

Then it all happened at once. The walls turned to wet crepe and the floor rose up and the ceiling came down. Ira found himself swimming into a massive wave of water, plaster and sailing furniture. The tract had slipped from his hand and momentarily plastered itself against his face.

The wave went higher, and he found he could climb it, like a roach scuttling up the side of a toilet bowl. So up he went, and when the wave washed back in a wet loop and rose up again, he saw between his fast-shriveling legs the flip of his long, scaly tail. And when he reached out to grab water, to swim forward, he saw flippers, not hands, and when the wave pushed him up yet again, he saw rising from the foam the tip of a skyscraper, its copperish windows blinking briefly as an escaped ray from the moon pierced the clouds reflected against it. But that was soon gone, replaced by water. Then he was no longer swimming, but trying to claw his way up the collapsing wall of his apartment. There was the sound of that wild music in his head, as well as the sound of the waves and the storm. He had come unglued for a moment in time and space and had moved backward.

The apartment weaved in and out, and finally the white walls and furniture were replaced by dark water, debris and the screams of the cold, wet, drowning non-believers. And this time he did not shift back in time. There was only the water now, and its wet future. Debris and dead bodies boiled past him.

Torquing his slick, wet body, he looked behind him, saw the girl's face. But the face was like a mask worn by something else. She was big and long, sleek and gray. Her eyes were beginning to slip to the sides of her head, and he found that it was the same in his case. His range of vision was changing.

When he looked again, the girl's lips were projecting forward, falling open to reveal great teeth that crashed against the surf. She swam toward him with an enthusiasm that frightened him, and he immediately knew why. He had survived the flood through belief, same as her, but his was sudden belief, not long held like the girl's. Her chanting and dancing had been going on for some time and she was good at both. He was not.

He remembered what the tract said about the levels of belief and award, and he understood what that meant now. He had become one with the flood by becoming fish-like, and so had she. Only she was a bigger fish. A more powerful and deadly fish. A hungry fish.

Twisting once to view behind him, he saw that her eyes had slipped completely to the sides of her head, and the only vestiges of humanity left to her were an orange slash of hair on the left side of her skull and a fast-fading bump of a nose that lay dead center of her tooth-filled snout. A sizable dark fin like a flattened pyramid rose from her back.

He tried to scream, but he could not. No vocal cords.

The fin went under and the water went up, carrying him with it, driving him to the summit of a black, wet spire. And as he crashed down, he saw waiting for him the girl-or what she now was. The orange hair patch was now an orange stripe of skin across her bony head and the bump of a nose was gone. She rolled her head to the side to position her bulging eye for a better view of him; opened her mouth to give him a better look at those rows and rows of sharp, dagger teeth. And try as he might to avoid them, he could not. She was too quick, too purposeful.

With a whip of her big, sleek body, she burst up to take his soft head into her hard mouth, and she squeezed down violently, tasting the first of the many lesser species that the Lord had provided for one of his greatest true believers.

PERSONALITY PROBLEM

Yeah, I know, Doc. I look terrible and don't smell any better. But you would, too, if you stayed on the go like I do, had a peg sticking out of either side of your neck and this crazy scar across the forehead. You'd think they might have told me to use cocoa butter on the place, after they took the stitches out, but naw, no way. They didn't care if I had a face like a train track. No meat off their nose.

And how about this gettup? Nice, huh? Early wino or late drug addict. You ought to walk down the street wearing this mess, you really get the stares. Coat's too small, pants too short. And these boots, now they get the blue ribbon. You know, I'm only six-five, but with these on I'm nearly seven feet! That's some heels, Doc.

But listen, how can I do any better? I can't even afford to buy myself a tie at the Goodwill, let alone get myself a new suit of clothes. And have you ever tried to fit someone my size? This shoulder is higher than the other one. The arms don't quite match, and-well, you see the problem. I tell you, Doc, it's no bed of roses.

Worst part of it is how people are always running from me, and throwing things, and trying to set me on fire. Oh, that's the classic one. I mean, I've been frozen for a while, covered in mud, you name it, but the old favorite is the torch. And I hate fire...which reminds me, think you could refrain from smoking, Doc? Sort of makes me nervous.

See, I was saying about the fire. They've trapped me in windmills, castles, and labs. All sorts of places. Some guy out there in the crowd always gets the wise idea about the fire, and there we go again-Barbecue City. Let me tell you, Doc, I've been lucky. Spell that L-U-C-K-Y. We're talking a big lucky here. I mean, that's one reason I look as bad as I do. These holes in this already ragged suit... Yeah, that's right, bend over. Right there, see? This patch of hide was burned right off my head, Doc-and it didn't feel like no sunburn either. I mean it hurt.

And I've got no childhood. Just a big dumb boy all my life. No dates. No friends. Nothing. Just this personality complex, and this feeling that everybody hates me on sight.

If I ever get my hands on that Victor, or Igor, oh boy, gonna have to snap 'em, Doc. And I can do it, believe me. That's where they crapped in the mess kit, Doc. They made me strong. Real strong.

Give me a dime. Yeah, thanks.

Now watch this. Between thumb and finger...uhhhh. How about that? Flat as a pancake.

Yeah, you're right, I'm getting a little excited. I'll lay back and take it easy... Say, do you smell smoke? Doc?

Doc?

Doc, damn you, put out that fire! Not you, too? Hey, I'm not a bad guy, really. Come back here, Doc! Don't leave me in here. Don't lock that door....

PILOTS

Micky was at it again. His screams echoed up the fuselage, blended with the wind roaring past the top gunner port. The Pilot released Sparks from his radio duty long enough to send him back to take care and comfort Micky.

The day had passed slowly and they had passed it in the hanger, listening to the radios, taking turns at watch from the tower, making battle plans. Just after sundown they got into their gear and took off, waited high up in cover over the well-traveled trade lanes. Waited for prey.

Tonight they intended to go after a big convoy. Get as many kills as they could, then hit the smaller trade lanes later on, search out and destroy. With luck their craft would be covered with a horde of red kill marks before daybreak. At the thought of that, the Pilot formed the thing he used as a mouth into a smile. He was the one who painted the red slashes on the sides of their machine (war paint), and it was a joy to see them grow. It was his hope that someday they would turn the craft from black to red.

Finally the Pilot saw the convoy. He called to Sparks.

In the rear, Micky had settled down to sobs and moans, had pushed the pain in the stumps of his legs aside, tightened his will to the mission at hand.

As Sparks came forward at a stoop, he reached down and patted Ted, the turret gunner, on the flight jacket, then settled back in with the radio.

"It's going to be a good night for hunting," Sparks said to the Pilot. "I've been intercepting enemy communiques. There must be a hundred in our operational area. There are twelve in the present enemy convoy, sir. Most of the state escorts are to the north, around the scene of last night's sortie."

The Pilot nodded, painfully formed the words that came out of his fire-gutted throat. "It'll be a good night, Sparks. I can feel it."

"Death to the enemy," Sparks said. And the words were repeated as one by the crew.

So they sat high up, on the overpass, waiting for the convoy of trucks to pass below.

* * *

"This is the Tulsa Tramp. You got the Tulsa Tramp. Have I got a copy there? Come back."

"That's a big 10-4, Tramp. You got the L.A. Flash here."

"What's your 20, L.A.?"

"East-bound and pounded down on this I-20, coming up on that 450 marker. How 'bout yourself, Tramp?"

"West-bound for Dallas town with a truckload of cakes. What's the Smokey situation? Come back?"

"Got one at the Garland exit. Big ol' bear. How's it look over your shoulder?"

"Got it clear, L.A., clear back to that Hallsville town. You got a couple County Mounties up there at the Owentown exit. Where's all the super troopers?"

"Haven't you heard, Tramp?"

"Heard what, L.A.? Come back."

"Up around I-30, that Mount Pleasant town. Didn't you know about Banana Peel?"

"Don't know Banana Peel. Come back with it."

"Black Bird got him."

"Black Bird?"

"You have been out of it."

"Been up New York way for a while, just pulled down and loaded up at Birmingham, heading out to the West Coast."

"Some psycho's knocking off truckers. Banana Peel was the last one. Someone's been nailing us right and left. Banana Peel's cab was shot to pieces, just like the rest. Someone claims he saw the car that got Banana Peel. A black Thunderbird, all cut down and rigged special. Over-long looking. Truckers have got to calling it the Black Bird. There's even rumor it's a ghost. Watch out for it."

"Ghosts don't chop down and re-rig Thunderbirds. But I'll sure watch for it."

"10-4 on that. All we need is some nutcase messing with us. Business is hard enough as it is."

"A big 10-4 there. Starting to fade, catch you on the flip-flop."

"10-4."

"10-4. Puttin' the pedal to the metal and gone."

* * *

The Tramp, driving a white Freightliner equipped with shrunken head dangling from the cigarette lighter knob and a men's-magazine fold-out taped to the cab ceiling, popped a Ronnie Milsap tape into the deck, sang along with three songs and drowned Milsap out.

It was dead out there on the highway. Not a truck or car in sight. No stars above. Just a thick, black cloud cover with a moon hidden behind it.

Milsap wasn't cutting it. Tramp pulled out the tape and turned on the stereo, found a snappy little tune he could whistle along with. For some reason he felt like whistling, like making noise. He wondered if it had something to do with the business L.A. had told him about. The Black Bird.

Or perhaps it was just the night. Certainly it was unusual for the Interstate to be this desolate, this dead. It was as if his were the only vehicle left in the world. . . .

He saw something. It seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, had flicked beneath the orangish glow of the upcoming underpass lights. It looked like a car running fast without lights.

Tramp blinked. Had he imagined it? It had been so quick. Certainly only a madman would be crazy enough to drive that fast on the interstate without lights.

A feeling washed over him that was akin to pulling out of a dive, like when he was in 'Nam and he flew down close to the foliage to deliver flaming death, then at the last moment he would lift his chopper skyward and leave the earth behind in a burst of red-yellow flame. Then, cruising the Vietnamese skies, he could only feel relief that his hands had responded and he had not been peppered and salted all over 'Nam.

Tramp turned off the stereo and considered. A bead of sweat balled on his upper lip. Perhaps he had just seen the Black Bird.

". . . ought to be safe in a convoy this size." The words filtered out of Tramp's C.B. He had been so lost in thought, he had missed the first part of the transmission. He turned it up. The chatter was furious. It was a convoy and its members were exchanging thoughts, stories, and goodtime rattle like a bunch of kids swapping baseball cards.

The twangy, scratchy voices were suddenly very comfortable; forced memories of 'Nam back deep in his head, kept that black memory-bat from fluttering.

He thought again of what he might have seen. But now he had passed beneath the underpass and there was nothing. No car. No shape in the night. Nothing.

Imagination, he told himself. He drove on, listening to the C.B.

The bead of sweat rolled cold across his lips and down his chin.

* * *

Tramp wasn't the only one who had seen something in the shadows, something like a car without lights. Sloppy Joe, the convoy's back door, had glimpsed an odd shape in his sideview mirror, something coming out of the glare of the overpass lights, something as sleek and deadly looking as a hungry barracuda.

"Breaker 1-9, this is Sloppy Joe, your back door."

"Ah, come ahead, back door, this is Pistol Pete, your front door. Join the conversation."

"Think I might have something here. Not sure. Thought I saw something in the sideview, passing under those overpass lights."

Moment of silence.

"You say, think you saw? Come back."

"Not sure. If I did, it was running without lights."

"Smokey?" another trucker asked.

"Don't think so. . . . Now wait a minute. I see something now. A pair of dim, red lights."

"Uh oh, cop cherries," a new trucker's voice added.

"No. Not like that."

Another moment of silence.

Sloppy Joe again: "Looks a little like a truck using nothing but its running lights . . . but they're hung too far down for that . . . and they're shaped like eyes."

"Eyes?! This is Pistol Pete, come back."

"Infrared lights, Pistol Pete, that's what I'm seeing."

"Have . . . have we got the Black Bird here?"

Tramp, listening to the C.B., felt that pulling-out-of-a-dive sensation again. He started to reach for his mike, tell them he was their back door, but he clenched the wheel harder instead. No. He was going to stay clear of this. What could a lone car -- if in fact it was a car -- do to a convoy of big trucks anyway?

The C.B. chattered.

"This is Sloppy Joe. Those lights are moving up fast."

"The Black Bird?" asked Pistol Pete.

"Believe we got a big positive on that."

"What can he do to a convoy of trucks anyway," said another trucker.

My sentiments exactly, thought Tramp.

"Pick you off one by one," came a voice made of smoke and hot gravel.

"What, back door?"

"Not me, Pistol Pete."

"Who? Bear Britches? Slipped Disk? Merry--"

"None of them. It's me, the Black Bird."

"This is Sloppy Joe. It's the Black Bird, all right. Closing on my tail, pulling alongside--"

"Watchyerself!"

"I can see it now . . . running alongside . . . I can make out some slash marks--"

"Confirmed kills," said the Pilot. "If I were an artist, I'd paint little trucks."

"Back door, back door! This is Pistol Pete. Come in."

"Sloppy Joe here. . . . There's a man with a gun in the sunroof."

"Run him off the road, Sloppy Joe! Ram him!"

Tramp, his window down, cool breeze blowing against his face, heard three quick, flat snaps. Over the whine of the wind and the roar of the engine, they sounded not unlike the rifle fire he had heard over the wind and the rotor blades of his copter in 'Nam. And he thought he had seen the muzzle blast of at least one of those shots. Certainly he had seen something light up the night.

"I'm hit! Hit!" Sloppy Joe said.

"What's happening? Come back, Sloppy Joe. This is Pistol Pete. What's happening?"

"Hit . . . can't keep on the road."

"Shut down!"

Tramp saw an arc of flame fly high and wide from the dark T-bird -- which looked like little more than an elongated shadow racing along the highway -- and strike Sloppy Joe's truck. The fire boomed suddenly, licked the length of the truck, blossomed in the wind. A Molotov, thought Tramp.

Tramp pulled over, tried to gear down. Cold sweat popped on his face like measles, his hands shook on the wheel.

Sloppy Joe's Mack had become a quivering, red flower of flame. It whipped its tail, jackknifed and flipped, rolled like a toy truck across the concrete highway divider. When it stopped rolling, it was wrapped in fire and black smoke, had transformed from glass and metal to heat and wreckage.

The Bird moved on, slicing through the smoke, avoiding debris, blending with the night like a dark ghost.

As Tramp passed the wrecked truck he glimpsed something moving in the cab, a blackened, writhing thing that had once been human. But it moved only for an instant and was still.

Almost in a whisper came: "This is Bear Britches. I'm the back door now. Sloppy Joe's in flames. . . . Gone . . ."

* * *

Those flames, that burnt-to-a-crisp body, sent Tramp back in time, back to Davy Cluey that hot-as-hell afternoon in 'Nam. Back to when God gave Tramp his personal demon.

They had been returning from a routine support mission, staying high enough to avoid small-arms fire. Their rockets and most of their M-60 ammo were used up. The two choppers were scurrying back to base when they picked up the urgent call. The battered remains of a platoon were pinned down on a small hill off Highway One. If the stragglers didn't get a dust-off in a hurry, the Cong were going to dust them off for good.

He and Davy had turned back to aid the platoon, and soon they were twisting and turning in the air like great dragonflies performing a sky ballet. The Cong's fire buzzed around them.

Davy sat down first and the stranded Marines rushed the copter. That's when the Cong hit.

Why they hadn't waited until he too was on the ground he'd never know. Perhaps the sight of all those Marines -- far too many to cram into the already heavily manned copter -- was just too tempting for patience. The Cong sent a stream of liquid fire rolling lazily out of the jungle, and it had entered Davy's whirling rotors. When it hit the blades it suddenly transformed into a spinning parasol of flames.

That was his last sight of the copter and Davy. He had lifted upward and flown away. To this day, the image of that machine being showered by flames came back to him in vivid detail. Sometimes it seemed he was no longer driving on the highway, but flying in 'Nam, the rhythmic beat of the tires rolling over tar strips in the highway would pick up tempo until they became the twisting chopper blades, and soon, out beyond the windshield, the highway would fade and the cement would become the lush jungles of 'Nam.

Sometimes, the feeling was so intense he'd have to pull over until it passed.

A C.B. voice tossed 'Nam out of Tramp's head.

"This is Bear Britches. The Bird is moving in on me."

"Pistol Pete here. Get away, get away."

"He's alongside me now. Can't shake him. Something sticking out of a hole in the trunk -- a rifle barrel!"

A shot could be heard clearly over the open airwaves, then the communications button was released and there was silence. Ahead of him Tramp could see the convoy and he could see the eighteen-wheeler that was its back door. The truck suddenly swerved, as if to ram the Black Bird, but Tramp saw a red burst leap from the Bird's trunk, and instantly the eighteen-wheeler was swerving back, losing control. It crossed the meridian, whipping its rear end like a crocodile's tail, plowed through a barbwire fence and smacked a row of pine trees with a sound like a thunderclap. The cab smashed up flat as a pancake. Tramp knew no one could have lived through that.

And now ahead of him, Tramp saw another Molotov flipping through the air, and in an instant, another truck was out of commission, wearing flames and flipping in a frenzy along the side of the road. Tramp's last memory of the blazing truck was its tires, burning brightly, spinning wildly around and around like little inflamed Ferris wheels.

"Closing on me," came a trucker's voice. "The sonofabitch is closing on me. Help me! God, someone help me here."

Tramp remembered a similar communication from Davy that day in 'Nam: the day he had lifted up to the sky and flown his bird away and left Davy there beneath that parasol of fire.

Excited chatter sounded over the airwaves as the truckers tried to summon up the highway boys, tried to call for help.

Tramp saw a sign for a farm road exit, half a mile away. The stones settled in his gut again, his hands filmed with sweat. It was like that day in 'Nam, when he had the choice to turn back and help or run like hell.

No trucks took the exit. Perhaps their speed was up too much to attempt it. But he was well back of them and the Bird. What reason did he have to close in on the Bird? What could he do? As it was, the Bird could see his lights now and they might pop a shot at him any second.

Tramp swallowed. It was him or them.

He slowed, took the exit at fifty, which was almost too fast, and the relief that first washed over him turned sour less than a second later. He felt just like he had that day in 'Nam when he had lifted up and away, saved himself from Death at the expense of Davy.

* * *

"Report!" said the Pilot.

Through the headphones came Micky's guttural whine. "Tail gunner reporting, sir. Three of the enemy rubbed out, sir."

"Confirmed," came the voice of the turret gunner. "I have visual confirmation on tail gunner's report. Enemy formation affecting evasive maneuvers. Have sighted two more sets of enemy lights approaching on the port quarter. Request permission to break off engagement with forward enemy formation and execute strafing attack on approaching formation."

"Permission granted," said the Pilot. "Sparks! Report State Escort whereabouts."

"Catching signals of approaching State Escorts, sir. ETA three minutes."

"Number of Escorts?"

"Large squadron, sir."

"Pilot to flight crew. Change in orders. Strafe forward formation, to prepare to peel off at next exit."

The Bird swooped down on the forward truck, the turret gun slamming blast after blast into the semi's tires. The truck was suddenly riding on the rims. Steel hit concrete and sparks popped skyward like overheated fireflies.

The Bird moved around the truck just as it lost control and went through a low guardrail fence and down into a deep ditch.

Black smoke boiled up from the Black Bird's tires, mixed with the night. A moment later the sleek car was running alongside another truck. The turret gunner's weapon barked like a nervous dog, kept barking as it sped past the trucks and made its way to the lead semi. The turret gunner barked a few more shots as they whipped in front of the truck, and the tail gunner put twenty fast rounds through the windshield. Even as the driver slumped over the semi's wheel and the truck went barreling driverless down the highway, the Bird lost sight of it and took a right exit, and like a missile, was gone.

* * *

Black against black, the Bird soared, and inside the death machine the Pilot, with the internal vision of his brain, turned the concrete before him into a memory:

Once he had been whole, a tall, young man with a firm body and a head full of Technicolor dreams. The same had been true of his comrades. There had been a time when these dreams had been guiding lights. They had wanted to fly, had been like birds in the nest longing for the time when they would try their wings, thinking of that time -- living for that time -- when they would soar in silver arrows against a fine blue sky, or climb high up to the face of the moon.

Each of them had been in the Civil Air Patrol. Each of them had hours of airtime, and each of them had plans for the Air Force. And these plans had carried them through many a day and through many a hard exam and they had talked these plans until they felt they were merely reciting facts from a future they had visited.

But then there was the semi and that very dark night.

The four of them had been returning from Barksdale Air Force Base. They had made a deal with the recruiter to keep them together throughout training, and their spirits were high.

And the driver who came out of the darkness, away from the honky-tonk row known as Hell's Half Mile, had been full of spirits too.

There had been no lights, just a sudden looming darkness that turned into a white Freightliner crossing the middle of the highway, a stupid, metallic whale slapdash in the center of their path.

The night screamed with an explosion of flesh, metal, glass, and chrome. Black tire smoke boiled to the heavens and down from the heavens came a rain of sharp, hot things that engulfed the four, and he, the one now called the Pilot, awoke to whiteness. White everywhere, and it did not remind him of cleanliness, this whiteness. No. It was empty, this whiteness, empty like the ever-hungry belly of time, and people floated by him in white -- not angel-white, but wraith-white -- and the pain came to live with him and it called his body home.

When enough of the pain had passed and he was fully aware, he found a monster one morning in the mirror. A one-legged thing with a face and body like melted plastic. But the eyes. Those sharp hawk eyes, that had anticipated seeing the world from the clouds, were as fine as ever -- little green gems that gleamed from an overcooked meat rind.

And the others:

Sparks had lost his left arm and half his head was metal. He had been castrated by jagged steel. Made sad jokes about being the only man who could keep his balls in a plastic bag beside his bed.

Ted had metal clamps on his legs and a metal jaw. His scalp had been peeled back like an orange. Skin grafts hadn't worked. Too burned. From now on, across his head -- like some sort of toothless mouth -- would be a constantly open wound behind which a smooth, white skull would gleam.

Micky was the worst. Legs fried off. One eye cooked to boiled-egg consistency -- a six-minute egg. Face like an exploding sore. Throat and vocal cords nearly gone. His best sound was a high, piercing whine.

Alone they were fragments of humanity. Puzzle parts of a horrid whole.

Out of this vengeance grew.

They took an old abandoned silo on Spark's farm -- inherited years back when his father had died -- fixed it up to suit their needs. Had the work done and used Spark's money.

They also pooled their accounts, and with the proper help, they had elevators built into the old gutted silo. Had telescopes installed. Radios. And later they bought maps and guns. Lots of guns. They bought explosives and made super-Molotovs of fuel and plastic explosives. Bad business.

And the peculiar talents that had been theirs individually became a singular thing that built gadgets and got things done. So before long, the Pilot, stomping around on his metallic leg, looking like a run-through-the-wringer Ahab, became their boss. They cut Micky's T-Bird down and re-rigged it, rebuilt it as a war machine. And they began to kill. Trucks died on the highway, became skeletons, black charred frames. And the marks on the sides of the Black Bird grew and grew as they went about their stalks. . . .

Highway now. Thoughts tucked away. Cruising easily along the concrete sky. Pilot and crew.

* * *

Tramp felt safe, but he also felt low, real low. He kept wondering about 'Nam, about the trucks, about that turnoff he'd taken a few miles and long minutes back, but his considerations were cut short when fate took a hand.

To his left he saw eyes, red eyes, wheeling out of a dark connecting road, and the eyes went from dim to sudden-bright (fuck this sneaking around), and as Tramp passed that road, the eyes followed and in the next instant they were looking up his tailpipe, and Tramp knew damn good and well whose eyes they were, and he was scared.

Cursing providence, Tramp put the pedal to the metal and glanced into his sideview mirror and saw the eyes were very close. Then he looked forward and saw that the grade was climbing. He could feel the truck losing momentum. The Bird was winging around on the left side.

The hill was in front of him now, and though he had the gas pedal to the floor, things were Slow City, and the truck was chugging, and behind him, coming ass-over-tires, was the Black Bird.

Tramp trembled, thought: This is redemption. The thought hung in his head like a shoe on a peg. It was another chance for him to deal the cards and deal them right.

Time started up for Tramp again, and he glanced into the sideview mirror at the Bird, whipped his truck hard left in a wild move that nearly sent the white Freightliner side-over-side. He hit the Bird a solid bump and drove it off the road, almost into a line of trees. The Bird's tires spat dirt and grass in dark gouts. The Bird slowed, fell back.

Tramp cheered, tooted his horn like a mad man, and made that hill; two toots at the top and he dipped over the rise and gave two toots at the bottom.

The Black Bird made the road again and the Pilot gave the car full throttle. In a moment the Bird found its spot on Tramp's ass.

* * *

Tramp's moment of triumph passed. That old Boogy Man sat down on his soul again. Sweat dripped down his face and hung on his nose like a dingleberry on an ass hair, finally fell with a plop on the plastic seat cover between Tramp's legs, and in the fearful silence of the cab the sound was like a boulder dropping on hard ground.

Tramp's left-side window popped and became a close-weave net of cracks and clusters. A lead wasp jumped around the cab and died somewhere along the floorboard. It was a full five seconds before Tramp realized he'd been grazed across the neck, just under his right ear. The glass from the window began to fall out like slow, heavy rain.

Tramp glanced left and saw the Bird was on him again, and he tried to whip in that direction, tried to nail the bastard again. But the Bird wasn't having any. It moved forward and away, surged around in front of Tramp.

The Bird, now directly in front of him, farted a red burst from its trunk. The front window of the truck became a spiraling web and the collar of Tramp's shirt lifted as if plucked by an unseen hand. The bullet slammed into the seat and finally into the back wall of the truck.

The glass was impossible to see out of. Tramp bent forward and tried to look out of a small area of undamaged windshield. The Bird's gun farted again, and Tramp nearly lost control as fragments flew in on him like shattered moonlight. Something hot and sharp went to live in his right shoulder, down deep next to the bone. Tramp let out a scream and went momentarily black, nearly lost the truck.

Carving knives of wind cut through the windshield and woke him, watered his eyes and made the wound ache like a bad tooth. He thought: The next pop that comes I won't hear, because that will be the one that takes my skull apart, and they say the one that gets you is the one you don't hear.

But suddenly the two asslights of the Bird fell away and dipped out of sight.

The road fell down suddenly into a dip, and though it was not enormous, he had not expected it and his speed was up full tilt. The truck cab lifted into the air and shot forward and dragged the whipping cargo trailer behind it. As the cab came down, Tramp fully expected the trailer to keep whipping and jackknife him off the road, but instead it came down and fell in line behind the cab and Tramp kept going.

Ahead a narrow bridge appeared, its suicide rails painted phosphorescent white. The bridge appeared just wide enough to keep the guardrail post from slicing the door handles off a big truck.

Tramp's hand flew to the gearshift. He shifted and gassed and thought: This is it, the moment of truth, the big casino, die dog or eat the hatchet; my big shot to repay the big fuckup. Tramp shifted again and gave the white Freightliner all it had.

* * *

The white Freightliner was breathing up the tailpipe of the Black Bird and the Pilot was amazed at how much speed the driver was getting out of that rig; a part of him appreciated the skill involved in that. No denying, that sonofabitch could drive.

Then the Pilot caught a scream in his ruptured throat. They were coming up on the bridge, and there were no lefts or rights to take them away from that. The bridge was narrow. Tight. Room for one, and the Pilot knew what the truck driver had in mind. The truck was hauling ass, pushing to pass, trying to run alongside the Bird, planning to push it through the rails and down twenty feet into a wet finale of fast-racing creek. The senseless bastard was going to try and get the Bird if he had to go with it.

The Pilot smiled. He could understand that. He smelled death, and it had the odor of gasoline fumes, burning rubber, and flying shit.

Behind the Bird, like a leviathan of the concrete seas, came the white Freightliner. It bumped the Bird's rear and knocked the car to the right, and in that moment, the big truck, moving as easily as if it were a compact car, came around on the Bird's left.

The semi began to bear right, pushing at the Bird. The Pilot knew his machine was fated to kiss the guardrail post.

"Take the wheel!" the Pilot screamed to Sparks, and he rose up to poke his head through the sunroof, pull on through and crawl along top. He grabbed the semi's left sideview mirror and allowed the truck's momentum to pull him away from the car, keeping his good and his ruined leg high to keep from being pinched in half between the two machines.

* * *

Sparks leaped for the steering wheel, got a precious grip on it even as the Pilot was dangling on top of the car, reaching for the truck's mirror frame. But Sparks saw immediately that his grabbing the wheel meant nothing. He and the others were goners; he couldn't get the Bird ahead of the truck and there just wasn't room for two. They were scraping the guardrail post as it was, and now he felt the Bird going to the right and it hit the first post with a kaplodata sound, then the car gathered in three more posts, and just for an instant, Sparks thought he might be able to keep the Bird on the bridge, get ahead of the semi. But it was a fleeting fancy. The Bird's right wheels were out in the air with nothing to grab, and the Bird smashed two more posts, one of which went through the window then hurtled off the bridge. In dim chorus the crew of the Bird screamed all the way down to where the car struck the water and went nose first into the creek bed. Then the car's rear end came down and the car settled under the water, except for a long strip of roof.

No one swam out.

The Pilot saw the car go over out of the corner of his eye, heard the screams, but so be it. He has tasted doom before. It is his job to kill trucks.

* * *

Tramp jerked his head to the right, saw the maimed face of the Pilot, and for one brief moment, he felt as if he were looking not at a face, but into the cold, dark depths of his very own soul.

The Pilot smashed the window with the hilt of a knife he pulled from a scabbard on his metal leg and started scuttling through the window.

Tramp lifted his foot off the gas and kicked out at the door handle, and the door swung open and carried the Pilot with it. The Pilot and the door hit a guardrail post and sparks flew up from the Pilot's metal leg as it touched concrete.

The door swung back in, the Pilot still holding on, and Tramp kicked again, and out went the door, and another post hit the Pilot and carried him and the door away, down into the water below.

And in the same moment, having stretched too far to kick the door, and having pulled the wheel too far right, the white Freightliner went over the bridge and smashed half in the water and half out.

Crawling through the glassless front of the truck, Tramp rolled out onto the hood and off, landed on the wet ground next to the creek.

Rising up on his knees and elbows, Tramp looked out at the creek and saw the Pilot shoot up like a porpoise, splash back down and thrash wildly in the water, thrashing in a way that let Tramp know that the Pilot's body was little more than shattered bones and ruptured muscles held together by skin and clothes.

The Pilot looked at him, and Tramp thought he saw the Pilot nod, though he could not be sure. And just before the Pilot went under as if diving, the tip of his metal leg winking up and then falling beneath the water, Tramp lifted his hand and shot the Pilot the finger.

"Jump up on that and spin around," Tramp said.

The Pilot did not come back up.

Tramp eased onto his back and felt the throbbing of the bullet wound and thought about the night and what he had done. In the distance, but distinct, he could hear the highway whine of truck tires on the interstate.

Tramp smiled at that. Somehow it struck him as amusing. He closed his eyes, and just before he drifted into an exhausted sleep, he said aloud, "How about that, Davy? How about that?"

"Da...vy?"

SCREW-UP

As he drove, Miller could hear his wife's voice in the back of his head telling him what a screwup he was. The thought of her, the memory of her voice, were normally things he did not like to think about, but now, with her tucked nice and dead in the car trunk, thinking about her wasn't so bad.

It had been a simple thing, really. He had considered it for years, almost immediately after the wedding. Nothing he did or had done suited Caroline.

She didn't like his job and wanted better for him, she said, so he left it, and when his new job turned sour she scolded him for leaving the old job, never remembered, or admitted she remembered, that she was the one who had asked him to leave.

It was always that way. One thing after another. If he took the garbage out, he took it out the wrong. He should have double-bagged it. If he double-bagged it, she felt he was wasting bags. He was supposed to know the difference in trash that needed double-bagging and the trash that needed a single bag. Now and then Caroline suggested triple-bagging for something especially nasty.

Miller smiled.

She was tripled-bagged. Very bloody, so three bags were necessary. He was sure she would approve since the axe blows to her head had made a terrible mess, and would have made an even worse mess in her car.

Her car. He owned the Cadillac before they met, but now it was her car. As everything they owned was hers. Including him.

But not now. Not anymore.

Miller was smiling to himself when he noticed the flashing lights in the rearview mirror. His stomach turned sour immediately. He pulled over and rolled down the window and waited, watched the cop in the rearview mirror. The cop parked his car, got out, came around to the window.

"I'm sorry, officer," Miller said. "Was I speeding?"

The cop was tall, lean fellow with sunglasses on. Miller could see himself in the glasses. Somehow, those glasses made him feel as if he were looking into the cold, calculating eyes of an insect.

"License please," the officer asked.

"I must have been driving faster then I thought, " Miller said, pulling his wallet out and opening it to his license.

The cop took the wallet, looked at the license. "Nothing like that, sir." The officer gave him his wallet back. "Could you get out of the car please? And bring the keys."

Miller got out and the officer walked him around to the rear of the automobile. He pointed at the left taillight.

"When you put on the brakes, going around the curve there, I noticed your light wasn't working."

"Oh," Miller said, and he tried not to look overly relieved.

"Cars like this," the officer said, "sometimes something in the trunk falls against the wire inside, disconnects it. It's easy to connect."

"Good. I'll take care of it as soon as I get home."

"No sir," the officer said. "We'll take care of it right now. You need to have your taillight working. If it isn't a loose wire, I'll follow you to a filling station where you can have it fixed."

"I'm going straight home. I can fix it myself."

"Your license says you live on Timberridge, that's in the other direction, so you're not going straight home."

"Well, I meant after I run some errands."

"Open the trunk, sir."

Miller found the correct key on his ring and opened the trunk. The big plastic bag, like a cocoon, filled most of the space.

"You don't have a spare back here?" the cop said.

"No sir. I took it out. I had some things I wanted to donate to Goodwill. I bagged them up, and the bag was so large I had to take the tire out."

"That's certainly a nice new shoe you're donating there," the officer said. ""My wife has some just like it."

"What?"

"The shoe."

Miller looked. The bottom of the bag had broken open, and Caroline's shoe was poking through the break. You couldn't see her ankle, just the shoe, the heel of which was resting against a tire iron.

"Oh yeah," Miller said. "My wife, she's like that. Buys shoes by the dozens. Soon as she thinks something is out of style, out it goes. Good tax write off, though. Goodwill, I mean."

"Let's look at that light," the officer said. The cop leaned forward, looked inside the trunk. "Here's your problem," he said. "This bag of clothes has rolled up against the wiring here."

The cop struggled to move the bag, hesitated, turned and looked at Miller with those bug-eye glasses. Miller could see himself in their mirrored reflection. He looked red and sweaty in the glasses.

"You say that bag is full of clothes?" the officer said.

Miller nodded.

"Awful heavy," the officer said.

"Stuffed tight," Miller said.

The officer reached out and touched the bag and shifted it. Caroline's leg, which had been bent, suddenly extended through the bag, showing not only the shoe, but half a sleek leg in hose.

As the officer reached for his gun, Miller reached for the tire tool. Miller was faster. The tool came down on the cop's cowboy hat and creased it, then creased the head beneath it. The cop fell straight into Miller's arms. Miller dropped the cop and hit him three times in the head with the tire tool, making sure.

When Miller was finished, he boosted the cop into the trunk. He was about to close the lid when he heard a sound. He looked to his left, and there, across the highway, standing on a trail on the side of a wooded hill, was a young man with a pack on his back, holding a hiking stick.

The hiker turned quickly, started scuttling up the hill, back into the undergrowth.

"Darn," Miller said. He pulled the cop's gun free, closed the trunk, and ran after the hiker.

Miller was in decent shape, and the man was wearing a pack, so it wasn't long before he had him in sight. The hiker had abandoned his walking stick, and was trying to work out of his pack as he ran. He was making strange sounds, like a trapped animal. He worked out of the pack and veered off the trail into the woods.

Miller followed.

As the man scrambled up a vine-covered hill, Miller pointed the gun and pulled the trigger. The bullet slammed into the side of the hill, but missed the hiker. The hiker made it to the summit of the hill, and was just about to start down the other side when Miller fired again.

This time, Miller was on the money. The hiker took it in the back, rolled down the hill, bounced against a few thin trees, tumbled to the ground right in front of Miller.

The hiker looked up at Miller with pleading eyes.

"Nothing personal," Miller said. "Really."

He shot the hiker in the head. Twice.

Miller considered leaving the hiker, but thought it might be best to rid himself of the body, along with the cop and his wife. He had plans to sink Caroline in an old well he knew about on some abandoned property. He was sure the cop and the hiker would also fit.

Miller jammed the pistol into his pants waistband and pulled his shirt over it. He gathered up the hiker's pack and walking stick, tied the walking stick to the pack and put the pack on. He hoisted the hiker's body onto his back in a fireman's cradle, headed toward the highway and his car.

By the time Miller made the highway, he was exhausted. The man was not a big man, but carrying pack, man, stick, and doing it on rough terrain, was no easy chore.

When Miller got to the edge of the highway, he looked to see if cars were coming. None were. Finally, luck was with him. He carried the body across the highway, dropped it on the ground, hustled the car keys out of his pocket, and opened the trunk. He picked up the body and tried to shove it in with the cop and Caroline. It wouldn't fit.

He pulled the body out, and in then process, the man's hand caught on the bag containing Caroline, and tore it, all three layers.

Caroline's face was revealed. Miller dropped the dead hiker on the ground and looked at the pretty but mocking face. It seemed to say: "You're a screwup. Always a screwup."

Miller slammed the lid, dragged the hiker to the side of the Cadillac, opened the back door and hoisted the hiker's body inside. He put the pack and the stick in there with him.

Covered in sweat, Miller climbed behind the wheel.

He hadn't gone far when the car began to handle roughly, and in a moment of anger, Miller realized it was his right tire. The one Caroline told him needed air. She had bitched about it for an hour, about how he should get air in the tire, about how he should keep the car up, so on and so on, and then he got the axe and made her quiet.

But she was right. The tire needed air. He couldn't just stop at a station and get air. Someone might see the hiker's body in the back seat.

Miller pulled off the highway onto a dirt road, got out and opened the trunk. Caroline's body had rolled to the side and now her lips were pressed against the dead cop's lips.

Unfaithful even in death, though Miller. She had started messing around a month after the wedding, and now, dead, she was still doing it.

Suddenly, Miller remembered he had no spare.

"Damn," he said.

And then he heard a car pull over and stop. Two teenagers, a boy and a girl were parked behind him. They got out, smiling.

"Hey, you need some help, mister?" said the boy.

"No," Miller said, but already they were near him. He saw the girl's eyes go wide as she looked in the trunk.

"Johnny!" she said, but Johnny had also seen the bodies. Johnny took off running for his car. Miller pulled out the pistol and shot him in the back and dropped him. The girl took off running down the road in the opposite direction. Miller stepped into the road, leveled the gun, and fired. The girl went face down on the dirt road, slid, then rolled on her back.

Miller, exhausted, pushed the gun into his waistband, gathered up the girl's body, then the boy's, and placed them in the back seat with the hiker.

He checked the teenager's tires. Too small. They wouldn't work on a Caddy.

Exhausted, angry, Miller took bullets from the cop's gun belt and reloaded the pistol. He might as well be ready for anything. He closed up the trunk, drove out of there on a dying tire.

Eventually, Miller located a serve-yourself filling station, pulled in there. He feared the tire would be so worn that airing it up would be useless. But he found he was wrong. The tire swelled up to normal size.

But it wasn't all good news. There was a slow leak. He could hear it hissing. He filled the tire as best he could, then drove off, heading for the well. He hoped it was deep enough to hold everybody.

* * *

When Miller reached the well it was almost dark. The well was near the remains of an old house and the house was in the middle of a weed-grown pasture. The house had been scourged and raped and left for dead by the elements. The brick curbing around the well was mostly crumbled away, and the mouth of it was covered with an old piece of rotting plyboard.

Miller parked the Caddy near the old gate, got out and opened it, drove through and on up to the old house and well.

As he pulled up, pigeons took flight from the rotting ruins of the house, spotted the gray sky for a moment, then they were gone and the world was silent.

Miller pulled the plyboard off the well and took a look. It was too dark to see the bottom, but he could tell a lot of the well had crumbled. He used to play here as a kid, and just last year, out of nostalgia, he had stopped here to look at the old house and the old well.

When he was eleven, he and Trudy Jo Terrence had played here. He had kissed her inside the old house. The roof had been on the place then, and the walls were standing.

He wondered whatever happened to Trudy Jo. He should have married her. Marrying Caroline had been a huge mistake. She drove him crazy, and now, just to get rid of her, he had been forced to kill four innocent people.

Miller started with the occupants of the back seat. He dropped the teenage girl into the well head first. Her body gave off a sound like someone dropping tea service. Miller flinched. She had been a pretty girl.

He dropped the teenage boy next. The coward had taken off running. Hadn't even tried to help the girl. Miller dropped him down the shaft. The sound gave off a thud. Next came the hiker's pack and the walking stick and the hiker himself.

From the trunk, he dragged the cop to the well curbing and dropped him down. Miller was amazed when he dropped the cop. The man's feet stuck up and out of the well. The damned thing was full. Miller worked on pushing the cop deeper, but no go. The well was tucked tight.

Miller got the tire iron he had used on the cop out of the trunk and beat the cop's legs with it until he broke enough bones to make the legs bend. He forced them down with a crunch. Now there was room to pull the plyboard over the well. The only problem was, he still had Caroline to take care of.

She was always a problem.

Miller pulled the plyboard over the well, went back to the Caddy and drove towards town.

* * *

As Miller neared town, he began to feel the car rock. The tire was going flat again. He stopped at a station and aired it. He wasn't as tense this time, though he somewhat worried about the bloodstains on the back seat. He assumed they would wipe off easily, since the seats were vinyl. He'd clean the trunk too, from top to bottom. No tell-tale blood stains or hair samples. He'd do the best job ever done in the history of cleaning up after a murder. Well, murders. And he would do the same for the house.

There was a loud wham, and the air hose popped free of the tire with an ear splitting hiss. A car had rammed the back of the Caddy, knocking it forward a good three feet.

"Hey," Miller said.

A young man, obviously drunk, climbed out of an ancient Ford.

"Ah, man, I'm sorry. I didn't see you there."

"You didn't see a blue Cadillac parked in front of you at a service station air hose!"

"Nope."

"You idiot!"

"Hey, it's no reason to get testy, fella. I'll poke you in the nose."

"I doubt it," Miller said. Then thought: Great, I'm making a scene. I don't want to draw attention to myself. What's wrong with me?

"Forget it," Miller said, and drove away.

* * *

Miller drove around town for an hour on his leaking tire, trying to think of a good place to ditch Caroline's body. Nothing came to mind. He finally decided to air up the tire one more time, take the body home, leave it in the trunk overnight. That would give him a chance to clean up the living room. No one would even know she was missing. Tomorrow, he'd find a place to ditch her.

He found a station and put air in the tire and started home.

As he pulled into the driveway, a sense of defeat came over Miller. Maybe Caroline was right. He was a screwup. None of this was working out. He should have planned her murder instead of doing it spontaneously, and maybe he could have handled the cop better.

No, he assured himself. He had to kill her when he had the chance and the urge.

And the cop. The others. He had no choice.

As Miller closed the Caddy door, a voice said, "Hey, Miller, how about some gin rummy?"

It was Terrence, his next-door neighbor. Ever since the guy's wife had died this fellow had been trying to be his good buddy. He suspicioned it was Caroline that Terrence was after. He always had eyes for her, and Miller had half hoped they'd run off together, but Caroline never showed any interest in Terrence. She liked screwing around with the guys at her work, or at Christmas parties. She didn't want to run off with any of them. She liked it the way she had it. Screw around with the guys, come home and nag him.

Terrence was standing at the back of Miller's Cadillac, outlined by the streetlights, waving a deck of cards.

"I don't think so, Terrence," Miller said. "Not tonight. I'm tired."

"Oh, okay," Terrence said. "What about Caroline?"

"Oh no, she's simply dead, Terrence. Wouldn't be able to."

"Oh," Terrence said. "Hey, look at the back of your car."

Miller walked around slowly to the back of the Caddy. He hadn't really looked at it before. The bumper was bent and the trunk was creased.

"You know what happened?"

"Yeah. Guy ran into me at the filling station."

"Hope you got his name and insurance."

"Yeah. Sure."

"Hey look at this," Terrence said, grasping the bent edge of the trunk. "This is loose."

The trunk flew up. Caroline, the bag completely torn away from her head, was in a bizarre squatting position, that nagging look on her face, a dried blood crevasse in the top of her head.

"Oh, my goodness," said Terrence.

"Yep," said Miller, pulling the cop's revolver from under his shirt. He pushed the gun straight into Terrence's gut and pulled the trigger. There was a muffled bark, and Terrence and his cards were sprawled on the driveway.

Terrence was heavy and Miller was tired, but he got the body boosted into the trunk and pushed Caroline down on her side and closed the lid. He gathered up Terrence's cards, put them in his back pocket, went to the garage for wire to tie the trunk down. All he could find was some thin copper wire, but it would have to do.

When he finished fastening down the trunk, he decided now that he had two bodies, he better get rid of them tonight. Terrence had a nosy sister, and by tomorrow she'd be hunting for Terrence. Miller knew, as a next-door neighbor, he'd be questioned, and it wouldn't do to have Terrence in his car trunk. He also had to come up with a reason Caroline was gone. Maybe he could make it look as if she ran off with Terrence.

Now there was an idea.

Man, he thought, I got a lot to wrap up tonight. Get rid of the bodies, clean up the blood in the living room, clean up the car trunk. It was all too much to think about.

He drove across town again. The car began to list. Oh, dammit, Miller thought, I didn't change the tire! What a screwup!

But, now that no one was in the back seat, Miller decided to have the tire plugged. He pulled into a service station and drank a Coke and had some peanuts while he waited for the tire to be plugged.

The station was manned by one man, and he stayed busy running up front to take money for serve-yourself gas, then back to Miller's tire.

When he had the tire fixed and ready to go on the car, he said, "Hey, Mister, come here."

Miller and the station man, who wore a shirt with Alex written above his pocket said, "You know, you're leaking something out of the trunk here."

Miller looked. It was a dark stream of blood.

"Oil," Miller said.

"No, I don't think so," said Alex squatting down for a look, touching the wet run with his fingers. "This looks like blood."

"All right," Miller said. "I shot a dog. It was digging up my wife's flower beds. I hate myself for doing it, but it's been going on for a while, so I shot it. I was carrying it off."

"Oh," said Alex. "I like dogs myself."

"Me too," Miller said, "but not in my wife's flower beds."

Alex pulled a shop rag from his pocket, wiped the blood off his fingers.

"I'm about wrapped up here," Alex said.

"Sure," Miller said, and walked back toward the station. He stopped and turned for a look. Alex was bending down next to the trunk. He had a pair of wire cutters and was cutting the copper wire. The trunk lid sprang open. Alex looked inside and let out his breath.

When Alex turned Miller was standing behind him with a jack handle. It took three blows to drop Alex.

Miller put Alex in the back seat with his shop rag and wire cutters. He wired the trunk shut again.

All that was needed to finish up the tire job was to put the tire on the wheel and fasten the lug bolts. Miller did this himself, and let the jack down. Before he could get all of the finished, however, he took in thirty-five dollars for gas from customers, sold a can of oil and turned down a job to fix a flat.

Miller finally settled on the lake outside of town. It wasn't his first choice, but it would have to do. He took some heavy jacks from the station and piled them in the back seat on top of Alex. When he drove off, the car was weighed down considerably.

Just outside of town a highway patrolman pulled him over about his taillight. Damn that Caroline, or maybe that nosy Terrence. One of them had fallen against the wire again.

The cop didn't get to say much, however. Miller shot him right away with the first cop's gun.

Sighing, Miller pulled the policeman into the front seat beside him, sat him up neatly, pulled the officer's hat down over the bullet hole in his forehead.

"Screwup," he could hear Caroline say.

Miller sighed. "You're right, darling. You're right."

Miller drove out to the lake.

* * *

When Miller arrived, he was surprised to find the place deserted. No cops. No hikers. No drunks to run into the back of his car. No nosy neighbors. No helpful teenagers. Just the woods and the lake, wide and wet with moonlight on it.

Miller was about to tie the cop and Alex the station man to the heavy jacks when he had another idea. What he'd do was just push the car off in the water. He could say Caroline went away with the car. Went away with Terrence. That would work. He could make up a story about how he found them in bed together once. Something along that line. When he got home, he'd give it some serious thought.

Home. He'd have to walk home, and that would take some time, but it would be best to be rid of the clue-filled car. With it missing, he could strengthen the scenario he was trying to create. The poor husband whose wife ran off with the next-door neighbor in their car.

By the time anyone thought to look in the lake, he would have already figured a way to change his identity and move. Yeah, that's what he'd do. He'd start over completely. It had been done before.

The information was out there on how to accomplish it, all you had to do was research. There were even books on the subject. He could do it. Caroline was wrong. He wasn't a screwup. He was a clear thinker, that's what he was.

Miller drove the car to a perfect drop off place. He put the gear in neutral, got out and walked to the rear of the Caddy and gave it a push.

Just before it went over the side of the sloping bank, the wire on the trunk snapped. The trunk flew up, hit Miller under the chin and sent him sliding after the car.

Next thing he knew he was under water. The car was going down before him, and he was being pulled after it. He couldn't figure how, but he was being pulled down, and fast.

He finally realized the wire that had held the trunk shut was twisted in his shirt and one end was still attached to the bumper, and he was being dragged down with it. Miller snatched at the wire, ripped his shirt, freed himself.

As he bobbed to the surface, Caroline bobbed too, completely free of her plastic bags. She splashed down on top of him. Miller tried to swim away from her, but his legs wouldn't work.

Miller kicked and struggled, but his legs became more confined. He bent under the water to free them. The three plastic bags that had held Caroline were twisted around his ankles, it was impossible to tear them loose, and he was going down, down, down.

Miller fought the plastic until he was exhausted. He was sinking toward the bottom, his breath all gone, one thought left in his head.

Caroline was right. He was a screwup.

Passing him in the wet darkness, sinking down with him was Caroline, spinning around and around like a happy ballerina.

Proofed and typed quite high by Jazel v.1

SEVEN SHORT "SHORTS"

CORONATION

Lewis ate the feast before him with enthusiasm, and when he finished, they came for him. He felt excited and thrilled.

It was his coronation.

The little country of Novania was making him its King.

He couldn't understand why he deserved such an honor, and it had all happened so fast. After he killed the dragon, he couldn't believe his luck.

Well, of course, the dragon was the reason.

But the dragon had been no problem.

Guns take care of dragons easily.

And, of course, he had rescued the princess.

They took him down the long hall and through the green door and into the coronation room and led him to his throne. He sat down gently and they placed the hood over his face and the crown on his head.

He noticed he couldn't lift his arms, but thought little of it. He was quite tired.

He said, "I will be kind to my subjects."

* * *

"He thinks he's being crowned a king," said the Warden. "Been talking about it all week. He's lost his nut. It's the way he's dealing with things. Thinks the guy he killed, guy messing with his wife, was a dragon. Thinks the wife was a princess he saved, not some slut. Ain't that something? Thinks he's in some country he made up, that he's getting crowned. Turned it all into a fairy tale."

"He's smiling," said the reporter.

"Not when they throw the juice. He won't smile then."

"He'll never know, will he?"

"Not as far gone as he is. Lucky bastard."

* * *

And when they pulled the switch, Lewis felt a surge of what he thought was enthusiasm at having been crowned; in an electric fast instant he wondered when they would remove the hood, if it was part of some ancient custom.

Then his brain was fried.

The warden was wrong though.

Even after they threw the juice, he was smiling beneath the hood, but it wasn't pretty. He showed all his teeth all the way up to the burnt and smoking gums.

THE CLOSET

Seymore, looking in his closet for his shotgun, accidentally let the door slam closed behind him.

He wheeled. Panicked. Beat on the door and screamed. No one answered, because he lived alone.

Seymore hated tight places. He couldn't even stand tight clothes. A wristwatch drove him wild. And now here he was, in a small closet, in the dark. He beat on the door and yelled some more, but still nothing changed.

He sat in a corner of the closet, the clothes draping about him like a ghost.

Beneath the crack in the door he saw day change to night and back again. He grew hungry. He threw himself at the door. No good. Solid oak and thick.

He sat down and cried.

Four days went by.

He found the shotgun he had been looking for.

It was loaded. He put it under his chin and fired.

Neighbors, hearing the shot, came looking for him.

They found him in the closet.

Too bad he hadn't tried the knob.

It wasn't locked.

PRIVATE EYE

Millard laughed as he walked and said he was being followed by a private eye.

Turned out the eye was quite public and easy to see as he pulled it down the street on a string, and from time to time called it by his wife's name.

SNAKE

Passed out drunk at a frat campout, Jason awoke naked to find that he was lying by a snake in the grass.

He lay still for a while, but the snake remained. Careful not to move too fast, Jason got hold of a stone near his hand and came down hard on the little snake.

It wasn't a snake.

His frat brothers call him stumpy, so Jason prefers to pee alone.

TERRY AND THE HAT

Terry bought a hat right after a fight with a street tough, and it fit him to a tee, but when the swelling went down, the hat was too big.

He tried to find another like it that fit, but alas, it was the last of its kind. He asked his cousin if he had any idea how he could make it fit, but his cousin didn't have any suggestions.

Terry thought it over, came up with an idea. He picked fights and let himself take head licks, but it was never the same. Swelling in the wrong places.

He tried a hammer to his own head and this worked better.

After suffering severe brain damage, being forced to live in a chair in front of the TV, his cousin suggested stuffing the lining of the hat with paper.

By then, however, Terry didn't know he had a hat.

THE MUNCIES

Trapped in a car wreck for a week on the side of a snowy highway with nothing but a dull knife, Jason ate his last meal. Or next to last. But with both legs and one arm gone, he found it hard to cut off any more parts, and thought, if rescued, he might need the head and torso.

But the munchies struck late that night, and he used the knife, and when he was halfway finished eating his own liver, he died.

And, of course, a rescue truck showed up.

AFTER THE WAR

On the day after the war, only two people survived. On the second day after the war, one of the Siamese twins died.

THE SHAGGY HOUSE

The old Ford moved silently through the night, cruised down the street slowly. The driver, an elderly white-haired man, had his window down and he was paying more attention to looking out of it, studying the houses, than he was to his driving. The car bumped the curb. The old man cursed softly, whipped it back into the dark, silent street.

Beaumont Street came to a dead end. The old man turned around, drove back up. This was his third trip tonight, up and down the short street, and for the third time he was certain. The houses on Beaumont Street were dying, turning gray, growing ugly, looking dreadfully sick, and it all seemed to have happened overnight.

His own house was the sickest looking among them. The paint was peeling-he'd just had it painted last year!-the window panes looked like the bottom of a lover's leap for flies-yet there were no fly bodies-and there was a general sagginess about the place, as if it were old like himself and the spirit had gone out of its lumber bones.

The other houses on the block were not much better. A certain degree of that was to be expected. The houses were old, and the inhabitants of the houses, in many cases, were older. The entire block consisted of retired couples and singles, the youngest of which was a man in his late sixties. But still, the block had always taken pride in their houses, managed somehow to mow the lawns and get the painting done, and then one day it all goes to rot.

And it had happened the moment that creepy house had appeared in the neighborhood, had literally sprung up overnight on the vacant lot across from his house. A gothic-hideous house, as brown and dead looking as the late Fall grass.

Craziest thing, however, was the fact that no one had seen or heard it being built. Just one day the block had gone to bed and the next morning they had awakened to find the nasty old thing sitting over there, crouched like a big, hungry toad, the two upper story windows looking like cold, calculating eyes.

Who the hell ever heard of putting up a house overnight? For that matter, who ever heard of prefab, weathered gothics? And last, but not least, why had they not seen anyone come out of or go into the house? It had been there a week, and so far no one had moved in, and there were no rent ads in the paper for it. He had checked.

Of course, a certain amount of the mystery might be explained if his wife were correct.

"Why you old fool, they moved that house in there. And for that matter, Harry, they just might have moved it in while we were sitting on the front porch watching. We're so old we don't notice what goes on anymore."

Harry gnashed his false teeth together so hard he ground powder out of the bicuspids. "Well," he said to the interior of the car, "you may be old, Edith, but I'm not."

No, he wasn't so old that he hadn't noticed the change in the neighborhood, the way the houses seemed to be infected with that old ruin's disease. And he knew that old house was somehow responsible for the damage, and he intended to get to the bottom of it.

A shape loomed in the headlights. Harry slammed his foot on the brakes and screeched the tires sharply.

An elderly, balding man ambled around to Harry's side of the car and stuck his face through the open window.

"Lem!" Harry said. "You trying to commit suicide?"

"No, I was fixing to go over there and burn that damned house down."

"You too, Lem?"

"Me too. Saw you cruising around looking. Figured you'd figured what I'd figured."

Harry looked at Lem cautiously. "And what have we figured?"

"That damned old house isn't up to any good, and that something's got to be done about it before the whole neighborhood turns to ruins."

"You've noticed how the houses look?"

"Any fool with eyes in his head and a pair of glasses can see what's going on."

"But why?"

"Who gives a damn why, let's just do something. I got some matches here, and a can of lighter fluid in my coat pocket-"

"Lem, we can't just commit arson. Look, get in. I don't like sitting here in the street."

Lem turned to look at the house. They were almost even with it. "Neither do I. That thing gives me the creeps."

Lem went around and got in. Harry drove up the block, parked at the far end where the street intersected another. Lem got out his pipe and packed it, filled the Ford with the smell of cinnamon.

"You're gonna get cancer yet," Harry said.

"Being as I'm ninety, it'll have to work fast."

Harry gnashed his bicuspids again. There was a certain logic in that, and just a month ago Edith had talked him into giving up his cigars for health reasons.

After a moment Lem produced a flask from his coat pocket, unscrewed the lid and removed the pipe from his mouth. "Cheers."

Harry sniffed. "Is that whiskey?"

"Prune juice." Lem smiled slyly.

"I bet."

Lem tossed a shot down his throat. "Wheee," he said, lifting the bottle away from his face. "That'll put lead in your pencil!"

"Let me have a snort of that."

Harry drank, gave the flask back to Lem who capped it, returned it to his pocket and put his pipe back into his face.

Unconsciously, they had both turned in their seats to look out the back window of the Ford, so they could see the house. Harry thought that the high-peaked roof looked a lot like a witch's hat there in the moonlight.

"Bright night," Lem said. "Holy Christ, Harry."

"I see it, I see it."

The old house trembled, moved.

It turned its head. No other image could possibly come to mind. The house was flexible, and now its two upstairs windows were no longer facing across the street, they were looking down the street, toward Harry and Lem. Then the head turned again, looked in the other direction, like a cautious pedestrian about to step out into a traffic zone. The turning of its head sounded like the creaking of an old tree in a high wind.

"God," Harry said.

The house stood, revealed thick, peasant girl legs and feet beneath its firm, wooden skirt, and then it stepped from the lot and began crossing the street. As it went, a window on either side of the house went up, and two spindly arms appeared as if suddenly poked through short shirt sleeves. The arms and hands were not as thick as the legs and feet; the hands were nearly flat, the fingers like gnarled oak branches.

"It's heading for my house," Harry said.

"Shut up!" Lem said. "You're talking too loud."

"Edith!"

"Edith's all right," Lem said. "Betcha a dog to a doughnut it's the house it wants. Watch!"

The house's rubbery front porch lips curled back and the front door opened to reveal rows of long, hollow, wood-screw teeth. With a creak it bent to nestle its mouth against the apex of Harry's roof, to latch its teeth there like a leech attaching itself to a swimmer's leg. And then came the low, soft sucking sounds, like gentle winds moaning against your roof at night; a sound you hear in your dreams and you almost wake, but from the back of your head comes a little hypnotic voice saying: "Sleep. It's only the wind crying, touching your roof, passing on," and so you sleep.

A shingle fell from Harry's house, caught a breeze and glided into the street. The front porch sagged ever so slightly. There was the soft sound of snapping wood from somewhere deep within. The windows grew darker and the glass rattled frightened in its frames.

After what seemed an eternity, but could only have been moments, the thing lifted its grotesque head and something dark and fluid dripped from its mouth, dribbled down the roof of Harry's house and splashed in the yard. Then there was a sound from the gothic beast, a sound like a rattlesnake clacking, a sort of contented laughter from deep in its chest.

The house turned on its silly feet, crept and creaked, arms swinging, back across the street, turned to face Harry's house, then like a tired man home from work, it settled sighing into its place once more. The two upper story windows grew dark, as if thick lids had closed over them. The front porch lips smacked once, then there was silence and no movement.

Harry turned to Lem, who had replaced the pipe with the whiskey flask. The whiskey gurgled loudly in the cool Fall night.

"Did you see..."

"Of course I did," Lem said, lowering the flask, wiping a sleeve across his mouth.

"Can't be."

"Somehow it is."

"But how?"

Lem shook his head. "Maybe it's like those science fiction books I read, like something out of them, an alien, or worse yet, something that has always been among us but has gone undetected for the most part.

"Say it's some kind of great space beast that landed here on Earth, a kind of chameleon that can camouflage itself by looking like a house. Perhaps it's some kind of vampire. Only it isn't blood it wants, but the energy out of houses." Lem tipped up his flask again.

"Houses haven't got energy."

Lem lowered the flask. "They've got their own special kind of energy. Listen: houses are built for the most part-least these houses were-by people who love them, people who wanted good solid homes. They were built before those soulless glass and plastic turd mounds that dot the skyline, before contractors were throwing dirt into the foundation instead of gravel, before they were pocketing the money that should have gone on good studs, two-by-fours and two-by-sixes. And these houses, the ones built with hope and love, absorbed these sensations, and what is hope and love but a kind of energy? You with me, Harry?"

"I guess, but... oh, rave on."

"So the walls of these houses took in that love and held it, and maybe that love, that energy, became the pulse, the heartbeat of the house. See what I'm getting at, Harry?

"Who appreciates and loves their homes more than folks our age, people who were alive when folks cared about what they built, people, who in their old age, find themselves more home-ridden, more dependent upon those four walls, more grateful of anything that keeps out the craziness of this newer world, keeps out the wind and the rain and the sun and those who would do us harm?

"This thing, maybe it can smell out, sense the houses that hold the most energy, and along it comes in the dead of night and it settles in and starts to draw the life out of them, like a vampire sucking out a victim's blood, and where the vampire's victims get weak and sag and grow pale, our houses do much the same. Because, you see, Harry, they have become living things. Not living in the way we normally think of it, but in a sort of silent, watchful way."

Harry blinked several times. "But why did it take the form of a gothic type house, why not a simple frame?"

"Maybe the last houses it was among looked a lot like that, and when it finished it came here. And to it these houses look basically the same as all the others. You see, Harry, it's not impersonating our houses, it's impersonating a house."

"That's wild, Lem."

"And the more I drink from this flask, the wilder I'll get. Take this for instance: it could look like anything. Consider all the ghettos in the world, the slums, the places that no amount of Federal Aid, money and repair seem to fix. Perhaps these chameleons, or whatever you want to call them, live there as well-because despair fills walls as much as love-and they become the top floors of rundown tenement houses, the shanties alongside other shanties on Louisiana rivers-"

"And they feed on this love or despair, this energy?"

"Exactly, and when it's sucked out, the houses die and the creatures move on."

"What are we going to do about it?"

Lem turned up the flask and swigged. When he lowered it, he said, "Something, that's for sure."

They left the car, cat-pawed across the street, crept through backyards toward the sleeping house. When they were almost to the lot where the house squatted, they stopped beneath a sycamore tree and wore its shadow. They passed the flask back and forth.

Way out beyond the suburbs, in the brain of the city, they could hear traffic sounds. And much closer, from the ship channel, came the forlorn hoot of a plodding tug.

"Now what?" Harry asked.

"We sneak up on it from the rear, around by the back door-"

"Back door! If the front door is its mouth, Lem, the back door must be its-"

"We're not going inside, we're going to snoop, stupid, then we're going to do something."

"Like what?"

"We'll cross that blazing tightwire when we get to it. Now move!"

They moved, came to the back door. Lem reached out to touch the doorknob. "How about this?" he whispered. "No knob, just a black spot that looks like one. From a distance-hell, up close-you couldn't tell it was a fake without touching. Come on, let's look in the windows."

"Windows?" Harry said, but Lem had already moved around the edge of the house, and when Harry caught up with him, he was stooping at one of the windows, looking in.

"This is crazy," Lem said. "There's a stairway and furniture and cobwebs even... No, wait a minute. Feel!"

Harry crept up beside him, reluctantly touched the window. It was most certainly not glass, and it was not transparent either. It was cold and hard like the scale of a fish.

"It's just an illusion, like the doorknob," Harry said.

"Only a more complicated type of illusion, something it does with its mind probably. There's no furniture, no stairs, no nothing inside there but some kind of guts, I guess, the juice of our houses."

The house shivered, sent vibrations up Harry's palm. Harry remembered those long arms that had come out of the side windows earlier. He envisioned one popping out now, plucking him up.

The house burped, loudly.

Suddenly Lem was wearing Harry for a hat.

"Get down off me," Lem said, "or you're going to wake up with a tube up your nose."

Harry climbed down. "It's too much for us, Lem. In the movies they'd bring in the army, use nukes."

Lem took the can of lighter fluid out of his coat pocket. It was the large economy size.

"Ssssshhhh," Lem said. He brought out his pocket knife and a book of matches.

"You're going to blow us up!"

Lem tore the lining out of one of his coat pockets, squirted lighter fluid on it, poked one end of the lining into the fluid can with the point of his knife. He put the rag-stuffed can on the ground, the matches beside it. Then he took his knife, stuck it quickly into the house's side, ripped down.

Something black and odorous oozed out. The house trembled.

"That's like a mosquito bite to this thing," Lem said. "Give me that can and matches."

"I don't like this," Harry said, but he handed the can and matches to Lem. Lem stuck the can halfway into the wound, let the rag dangle.

"Now run like hell," Lem said, and struck a match.

Harry started running toward the street as fast as his arthritic legs would carry him.

Lem lit the pocket lining. The fluid-soaked cloth jumped to bright life.

Lem turned to run. He hadn't gone three steps when the can blew. The heat slapped his back and the explosion thundered inside his head. He reached the street, looked back.

The house opened its front door and howled like a sixty-mile-an-hour tornado. The upstairs front window shades went up, eyes glinted savagely in the moonlight. A spear of flame spurted out of the house's side.

Harry was crossing the street, running for his house when he looked back. The creature howled again. Arms came out of its sides. All around windows went up and wings sprouted out of them.

"Jesus," Harry said, and he turned away from his house so as not to lead it to Edith. He started up the street toward his car.

Lem came up behind him laughing. "Ha! Ha! Flame on!"

Harry glanced back.

The explosion had ignited internal gases and the thing was howling flames now. Its tongue flapped out and slapped the street. Its wings fluttered and it rose up into the sky.

Doors opened all down the block. Windows went up.

Edith's head poked out of one of the windows. "Harry?"

"Be back, be back, be back," Harry said, and ran on. Behind him Lem said, "Pacemaker, don't fail me now." They reached the car wheezing.

"There... she... goes," Lem panted. "After it!" A bright orange-red mass darted shrieking across the night sky, moved toward the ship channel, losing altitude.

The Ford coughed to life, hit the street. They went left, driving fast. Lem hung out of the window, pointing up, saying, "There it goes! Turn left. No, now over there. Turn right!"

"The ship channel!" Harry yelled. "It's almost to the ship channel."

"Falling, falling," Lem said.

It was.

They drove up the ship channel bridge. The house-thing blazed above them, moaned loud enough to shake the windows in the Ford. The sky was full of smoke.

Harry pulled over to the bridge railing, parked, jumped out with Lem. Other cars had pulled over. Women, men and children burst out of them, ran to the railing, looked and pointed up.

The great flaming beast howled once more, loudly, then fell, hit the water with a thunderous splash.

"Ah, ha!" Harry yelled. "Dammit, Lem, we've done it, the block is free. Tomorrow we break out the paint, buy new windows, get some shingles..."

The last of the thing slipped under the waves with a hiss. A black cloud hung over the water for a moment, thinned to gray. There was a brief glow beneath the expanding ripples, then darkness.

Lem lifted his flask in toast. "Ha! Ha! Flame out!"

VEIL'S VISIT

1

Leonard eyed Veil for a long hard moment, said, "If you're a lawyer, then I can shit a perfectly round turd through a hoop at twenty paces. Blindfolded."

"I am a lawyer," Veil said. "But I'll let your accomplishments speak for themselves."

Veil was average height, dark hair touched with grey, one good eye. The other one roamed a little. He had a beard that could have been used as a Brillo pad, and he was dressed in an expensive suit and shiny shoes, a fancy wristwatch and ring. He was the only guy I'd ever seen with the kind of presence Leonard has. Scary.

"You still don't look like any kind of lawyer to me," Leonard said.

"He means that as a compliment," I said to Veil. "Leonard doesn't think real highly of your brethren at the bar."

"Oh, you're a bigot?" Veil asked pleasantly, looking directly at Leonard with his one good eye. A very icy eye indeed--I remembered it well.

"The fuck you talking about? Lawyers are all right. They got their purpose. You never know when you might want one of them to weigh down a rock at the bottom of a lake." Leonard's tone had shifted from mildly inquisitive to that of a man who might like to perform a live dissection.

"You think all lawyers are alike, right? But if I said all blacks are alike, you'd think you know something about me, right?"

"I knew you were coming to that," Leonard said.

"Well," I said. "I think this is really going well. What about you boys?"

Veil and Leonard may not have bonded as well as I had hoped, but they certainly had some things in common. In a way, they were both assholes. I, of course, exist on a higher plane.

"You wearing an Armani suit, must have set you back a thousand dollars--" Leonard said.

"You know a joint where I can get suits like this for a lousy one grand, I'll stop there on my way back and pick up a couple dozen," Veil said.

"Yeah, fine," Leonard said. "Gold Rolex, diamond ring... How much all that set you back?"

"It was a gift," Veil said.

"Sure," Leonard said. "You know what you look like?"

"What's that?"

"You look like Central Casting for a mob movie."

"And you look like a candidate for a chain gang. Which is kind of why I'm here."

"You gonna defend me? How you gonna do that? I may not know exactly what you are, but I can bet the farm on this--you ain't no Texas lawyer. Hell, you ain't no Texan, period."

"No problem. I can just go pro hac vice."

"I hope that isn't some kind of sexual act," Leonard said. "Especially if it involves me and you."

"It just means I get admitted to the bar for one case. For the specific litigation. I'll need local counsel to handle the pleadings, of course...."

"Do I look like a goddamned pleader to you? And you best not say yes."

"'Pleadings' just means the papers," Veil said, his voice a model of patience. "Motions, applications... stuff like that. You wanted to cop a plea to this, Hap wouldn't need me. I don't do that kind of thing. And by the way, I'm doing this for Hap, not you."

"What is it makes you so special to Hap?" Leonard asked, studying Veil's face carefully. "What is it that you do do?"

"Fight," Veil said.

"Yeah," I said. "He can do that."

"Yeah, so can you and me, but that and a rubber will get us a jack off without mess." Leonard sighed. He said to Veil, "You know what my problem is?"

"Besides attitude, sure. Says so right on the indictment. You burned down a crackhouse. For at least the... what was it, fourth? time. That's first degree arson, malicious destruction of property, attempted murder--"

"I didn't--"

"What? Know anyone was home when you firebombed the dump? Doesn't matter--the charge is still valid."

"Yeah, well they can valid this," Leonard said, making a gesture appropriate to his speech.

"You're looking at a flat dime down in Huntsville," Veil told him. "That a good enough summary of your 'problem'?"

"No, it ain't close," Leonard said. "Here's my problem. You come in here wearing a few thousand bucks of fancy stuff, tell me you're a fighter, but your face looks like you lost a lot more fights than you won. You don't know jack about Texas law, but you're gonna work a local jury. And that's still not my big problem. You know what my big problem is?"

"I figure you're going to tell me sometime before visiting hours are over," Veil said.

"My problem is this. Why the hell should I trust you?"

"I trust him," I said.

"I know, brother. And I trust you. What I don't trust, on the other hand, is your judgment. The two ain't necessarily the same thing."

"Try this, then," Veil told him. "Homicide. A murder. And nobody's said a word about it. For almost twenty years."

"You telling me you and Hap--?"

"I'm telling you there was a homicide. No statute of limitations on that, right? It's still unsolved. And nobody's talking."

"I don't know. Me and Hap been tight a long time. He'd tell me something like that. I mean, he dropped the rock on someone, I'd know." Leonard turned to me. "Wouldn't I?"

I didn't say anything. Veil was doing the talking.

Veil leaned in close, dropping his voice. "It wasn't Hap who did it. But Hap knows all about it. And if you keep your mouth shut long enough, you will too. Then you can decide who to trust. Deal?"

Leonard gave Veil a long, deep look. "Deal," he finally said, leaning back, waiting to hear the story.

Veil turned and looked at me, and I knew that was my cue to tell it.

2

"It was back in my semi-hippie days," I said to Leonard. "Remember when I was all about peace and love?"

"The only 'piece' I ever knew you to be about was a piece of ass," Leonard said kindly. "I always thought you had that long hair so's it could help you get into fights."

"Just tell him the fucking story," Veil said. "Okay? I've got work to do, and I can't do it without Leonard. You two keep screwing around and the guard's going to roll on back here and--"

"It was in this house on the coast," I said. "In Oregon. I was living with some folks."

"Some of those folks being women, of course."

"Yeah. I was experimenting with different ways of life. I told you about it. Anyway, I hadn't been there long. This house, it wasn't like it was a commune or nothing, but people just... came and went, understand? So, one day, this guy comes strolling up. Nice looking guy. Photographer, he said he was. All loaded down with equipment in his van. He was a traveling man, just working his way around the country. Taking pictures for this book he was doing. He fit in pretty good. You know, he looked the part. Long hair, but a little neater than the rest of us. Suave manner. Took pictures a lot. Nobody really cared. He did his share of the work, kicked in a few bucks for grub. No big deal. I was a little suspicious at first. We always got photographers wanting to 'document' us, you know? Mostly wanted pictures of the girls. Especially Sunflower--she had this thing about clothes being 'inhibiting' and all. In other words she was quick to shuck drawers and throw the hair triangle around. But this guy was real peaceful, real calm. I remember one of the guys there said this one had a calm presence. Like the eye of a hurricane."

"This is motherfucking fascinating and all," Leonard said, "but considering my particular situation, I wonder if you couldn't, you know, get to the point?"

Seeing as how Leonard never read that part of the Good Book that talked about patience being a virtue, I sped it up a bit. "I was out in the backyard one night," I said.

"Meditating."

"Masturbating, you mean," Leonard said.

"I was just getting to that stage with the martial arts and I didn't want any of the damn marijuana smoke getting in my eyes. I guess I was more conservative about that sort of thing than I realized. It made me nervous just being around it. So I needed some privacy. I wasn't doing the classic meditation thing. Just being alone with my thoughts, trying to find my center."

"Which you never have," Leonard said.

"I'm sitting there, thinking about whatever it was I was thinking about--"

"Pussy," Leonard said.

"And I open my eyes and there he is. Veil."

"That'd be some scary shit," Leonard said.

"Looked about the same he does now."

"Yeah? Was he wearing that Armani suit?"

"Matter a fact, he wasn't," I said. "He looked like everyone else did around there then. Only difference was the pistol."

"I can see how that got your attention," Leonard said.

"It was dark. And I'm no modern firearms expert. But it wasn't the stuff I grew up with, hunting rifles, shotguns and revolvers. This was a seriously big-ass gun, I can tell you that. I couldn't tell if he was pointing it at me or not. Finally I decided he was just kind of... holding it. I asked him, politely, I might add, if there was anything I could do for him, short of volunteering to be shot, and he said, yeah, matter of fact, there was. What he wanted was some information about this photographer guy.

"Now hippie types weren't all that different from cons back then, at least when it came to giving out information to the cops. Cops had a way of thinking you had long hair you had to be something from Mars out to destroy Mom, apple pie and the American way."

"Does that mean Texas too?" Leonard asked.

"I believe it did, yes."

"Well, I can see their point. And the apple pie part."

"I could tell this guy was no cop. And he wasn't asking me for evidence-type stuff anyway. Just when the guy had showed up, stuff like that."

Leonard yawned. Sometimes he can be a very crude individual. Veil looked like he always does. Calm.

"Anyway, I started to say I didn't know the guy, then... I don't know. There was something about his manner that made me trust him."

"Thank you," Veil said. I wasn't sure if he was being sarcastic or not.

I nodded. "I told him the truth. It wasn't any big deal. Like I said, he wasn't asking anything weird, but I was a little worried. I mean, you know, the gun and all. Then I got stupid and--"

"Oh, that's when it happened?" Leonard asked. "That's like the moment it set in?"

I maintained patience--which is what Leonard is always complaining he has to do with me--and went on like he hadn't said a word: "--asked him how come he wanted to know all about this guy, and maybe I ought not to be saying anything, and how he ought to take his pistol and go on. I didn't want any trouble, and no one at the place did either.

"So Veil asks the big question. Where is the guy right now? I told him he was out somewhere. Or maybe gone, for all I knew. That's the way things were then. People came and went like cats and you didn't tend to get uptight about it. It was the times."

"Groovy," Leonard said.

"We talk for a while, but, truth was, I didn't know anything about the guy, so I really got nothing to say of importance. But, you know, I'm thinking it isn't everyday you see a guy looks like Veil walking around with a gun almost the size of my dick."

"Jesus," Leonard said. "Can't ever get away from your dick."

"No, it tends to stay with me."

"How about staying with the story," Veil said, still calm but with an edge to his voice now.

"So I ask Veil, it's okay with him, I'm going back in the house and get some sleep, and like maybe could he put the gun up 'cause it's making me nervous. I know I mentioned that gun several times. I'm trying to kind of glide out of there because I figure a guy with a gun has more on his mind than just small talk. I thought he might even be a druggie, though he didn't look like one. Veil here, he says no problem. But I see he's not going anywhere so I don't move. Somehow, the idea of getting my back to that gun doesn't appeal to me, and we're kind of close, and I'm thinking he gets a little closer I got a small chance of taking the gun away from him. Anyway, we both stick. Studying each other, I think. Neither of us going anywhere."

"Neither the fuck am I," Leonard said. "Matter of fact, I think moss is starting to grow on the north side of my ass."

"All right, partner," I told him, "here's the finale. I decide to not go in the house, just sit out there with Veil. We talk a bit about this and that, anything but guns, and we're quiet a bit. Gets to be real late, I don't know, maybe four in the morning, and we both hear a motor. Something pulling into the driveway. Then we hear a car door close. Another minute or so, the front door to the house closes too. Veil, without a word to me, gets up and walks around to the drive. I follow him. Even then I think I'm some kind of mediator. That whatever's going on, maybe I can fix it. I was hell for fixing people's problems then."

"You're still hell for that," Leonard said.

"Sure enough, there's the guy's van. I'm starting to finally snap that Veil hasn't just showed up for an assassination. He's investigating, and, well, I don't know how, but I'm just sort of falling in with him. In spite of his sweet personality, there's something about me and him that clicked."

"I adore a love story," Leonard said.

"So anyway, I wasn't exactly shocked when Veil put the pistol away, stuck a little flashlight in his teeth, worked the locks on the guy's van like he had a key. We both climbed in, being real quiet. In the back, under a pile of equipment, we found the... pictures."

"Guy was a blackmailer?" Leonard asked, a little interested now.

"They were pictures of kids," I told him. Quiet, so's he'd know what kind of pictures I meant.

Leonard's face changed. I knew then he was thinking about what kind of pictures they were and not liking having to think about it.

"I'd never seen anything like that before, and didn't know that sort of thing existed. Oh, I guess, in theory, but not in reality. And the times then, lot of folks were thinking free love and sex was okay for anyone, grownups, kids. People who didn't really know anything about life and what this sort of thing was all about, but one look at those pictures and I was educated, and it was an education I didn't want. I've never got over it.

"So he," I said, nodding my head over at Veil, "asks me, where does the guy with the van sleep? Where inside the house, I mean. I tried to explain to him what a crash pad was. I couldn't be sure where he was, or even who he might be with, you understand? Anyway, Veil just looks at me, says it would be a real mess if they found this guy in the house. A mess for us, you know? So he asks me, how about if I go inside, tell the guy it looks like someone tried to break into his van?

"I won't kid you. I hesitated. Not because I felt any sympathy for that sonofabitch, but because it's not my nature to walk someone off a plank. I was trying to sort of think my way out of it when Veil here told me to take a look at the pictures again. A good look."

"The guy's toast," Leonard said. "Fucker like that, he's toast. I know you, Hap. He's toast."

I nodded at Leonard. "Yeah," I said. "I went inside. Brought the guy out with me. He opens the door to the van, climbs in the front seat. And there's Veil, in the passenger seat. Veil and that pistol. I went back in the house, watched from the window. I heard the van start up, saw it pull out. I never saw the photographer again. And to tell you the truth, I've never lost a minute's sleep over it. I don't know what that says about me, but I haven't felt a moment of regret."

"It says you have good character," Veil said.

"What I want to know," Leonard said looking at Veil, "is what did you do with the body?"

Veil didn't say anything.

Leonard tried again. "You was a hit man? Is that what Hap here's trying to tell me?"

"It was a long time ago," Veil told him. "It doesn't matter, does it? What matters is: You want to talk to me now?"

3

The judge looked like nothing so much as a turkey buzzard: tiny head on a long, wrinkled neck and cold little eyes. Everybody stood up when he entered the courtroom. Lester Rommerly--the local lawyer I went and hired like Veil told me--he told the judge that Veil would be representing Leonard. The judge looked down at Veil.

"Where are you admitted to practice, sir?"

"In New York State, your honor. And in the Federal District Courts of New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Michigan, California, and Massachusetts."

"Get around a bit, do you?"

"On occasion," Veil replied.

"Well sir, you can represent this defendant here. Nothing against the law about that, as you apparently know. I can't help wondering, I must say, how you managed to find yourself way down here."

Veil didn't say anything. And it was obvious after a minute that he wasn't going to. He and the judge just kind of watched each other.

Then the trial started.

The first few witnesses were all government. The fire department guy testified about "the presence of an accelerant" being the tip-off that this was arson, not some accidental fire. Veil got up slowly, started to walk over to the witness box, then stopped. His voice was low, but it carried right through the courtroom.

"Officer, you have any experience with alcoholics?"

"Objection!" the DA shouted.

"Sustained," the judge said, not even looking at Veil.

"Officer," Veil went on like nothing had happened, "you have any experience with dope fiends?"

"Objection!" the DA was on his feet, red-faced.

"Counsel, you are to desist from this line of questioning," the judge said. "The witness is a fireman, not a psychologist."

"Oh, excuse me, your honor," Veil said sweetly. "I misphrased my inquiry. Let me try again: Officer," he said, turning his attention back to the witness, "by 'accelerant,' you mean something like gasoline or kerosene, isn't that correct?"

"Yes," the witness said, cautious in spite of Veil's mild tone.

"Hmmm," Veil said. "Be pretty stupid to keep a can of gasoline right in the house, wouldn't it?"

"Your honor..." the DA pleaded.

"Well, I believe he can answer that one," the judge said.

"Yeah, it would," the fire marshal said. "But some folks keep kerosene inside. You know, for heating and all."

"Thank you, officer," Veil said, like the witness had just given him this great gift. "And it'd be even stupider to smoke cigarettes in the same house where you kept gasoline... or kerosene, wouldn't it?"

"Well, sure. I mean, if--"

"Objection!" the DA yelled. "There is no evidence to show that anyone was smoking cigarettes in the house!"

"Ah, my apologies," Veil said, bowing slightly. "Please consider the question withdrawn. Officer: Be pretty stupid to smoke crack in a house with gasoline or kerosene in it, right?"

"Your honor!" the DA cut in. "This is nothing but trickery. This man is trying to tell the jury there was gasoline in the house. And this officer has clearly testified that--"

"--That there was either gasoline or kerosene in the house at the time the fire started," Veil interrupted.

"Not in a damn can," the DA said again.

"Your honor," Veil said, his voice the soul of reasonableness, "the witness testified that he found a charred can of gasoline in the house. Now it was his expert opinion that someone had poured gasoline all over the floor and the walls and then dropped a match. I am merely inquiring if there couldn't be some other way the fire had started."

The judge, obviously irritated, said, "Then why don't you just ask him that?"

"Well, judge, I kind of was doing that. I mean, if one of the crackheads living there had maybe fallen asleep after he got high, you know, nodded out the way they do... and the crack pipe fell to the ground, and there was a can of kerosene lying around and--"

"That is enough!" the judge cut in. "You are well aware, sir, that when the fire trucks arrived, the house was empty."

"But the trucks weren't there when the fire started, judge. Maybe the dope fiend felt the flames and ran for his life. I don't know. I wasn't there. And I thought the jury--"

"The jury will disregard your entire line of questioning, sir. And unless you have another line of questioning for this witness, he is excused."

Veil bowed.

4

At the lunch break, I asked him, "What the hell are you doing? Leonard already told the police it was him who burned down the crackhouse."

"Sure. You just said the magic word: crackhouse. I want to make sure the jury hears that enough times, that's all."

"You think they're gonna let him off just because--?"

"We're just getting started," Veil told me.

5

"Now officer, prior to placing the defendant under arrest, did you issue the appropriate Miranda warnings?" the DA asked the sheriff's deputy.

"Yes sir, I did."

"And did the defendant agree to speak with you?"

"Well... he didn't exactly 'agree.' I mean, this ain't the first time for old Leonard there. We knowed it was him, living right across the road and all. So when we went over there to arrest him, he was just sitting on the porch."

"But he did tell you that he was responsible for the arson, isn't that correct, Officer?"

"Oh yeah. Leonard said he burned it down. Said he'd do it again if those--well, I don't want to use the language he used here--he'd just burn it down again."

"No further questions," the DA said, turning away in triumph.

"Did the defendant resist arrest?" Veil asked on cross examination.

"Not at all," the deputy said. "Matter of fact, you could see he was waiting on us."

"But if he wanted to resist arrest, he could have, couldn't he?"

"I don't get your meaning," the deputy said.

"The man means I could kick your ass without breaking a sweat," Leonard volunteered from the defendant's table.

The judge pounded his gavel a few times. Leonard shrugged, like he'd just been trying to be helpful.

"Deputy, were you familiar with the location of the fire? You had been there before? In your professional capacity, I mean." Veil asked him.

"Sure enough," the deputy answered.

"Fair to say the place was a crackhouse?" Veil asked.

"No question about that. We probably made a couple of dozen arrests there during the past year alone."

"You made any since the house burned down?"

"You mean... at that same address? Of course not."

"Thank you, officer," Veil said.

6

"Doctor, you were on duty on the night of the thirteenth, is that correct?"

"That is correct," the doctor said, eyeing Veil like a man waiting for the doctor to grease up and begin his proctology exam.

"And your specialty is Emergency Medicine, is that also correct?"

"It is."

"And when you say 'on duty,' you mean you're in the ER, right?"

"Yes sir."

"In fact, you're in charge of the ER, aren't you?"

"I am the physician in charge, if that is what you're asking me, sir. I have nothing to do with administration, so..."

"I understand," Veil said in a voice sweet as a preacher explaining scripture. "Now, doctor, have you ever treated patients with burns?"

"Of course," the doctor snapped at him.

"And those range, don't they? I mean, from first degree to third degree burns. Which are the worst?"

"Third degree."

"Hmmm... I wonder if that's where they got the term, 'Give him the third degree'... ?"

"Your Honor...." the DA protested again.

"Mr. Veil, where are you going with this?" the judge asked.

"To the heart of the truth, your honor. And if you'll permit me...."

The judge waved a disgusted hand in Veil's direction. Veil kind of waved back. The big diamond glinted on his hand, catching the sun's rays through the high courthouse windows. "Doctor, you treat anybody with third degree burns the night of the thirteenth?"

"I did not."

"Second degree burns?"

"No."

"Even first degree burns?"

"You know quite well I did not, sir. This isn't the first time you have asked me these questions."

"Sure, I know the answers. But you're telling the jury, doctor, not me. Now you've seen the photographs of the house that was burnt to the ground. Could anyone have been inside that house and not been burned?"

"I don't see how," the doctor snapped. "But that doesn't mean--"

"Let's let the jury decide what it means," Veil cut him off. "Am I right, judge?"

The judge knew when he was being jerked off, but, having told Veil those exact same words a couple of dozen times during the trial already, he was smart enough to keep his lipless mouth shut.

"All right, Doctor. Now we're coming to the heart of your testimony. See, the reason we have expert testimony is that experts, well, they know stuff the average person doesn't. And they get to explain it to us so we can understand things that happen."

"Your honor, he's making a speech!" the DA complained, for maybe the two hundredth time.

But Veil rolled on like he hadn't heard a word. "Doctor, can you explain what causes the plague?"

One of the elderly ladies on the jury gasped when Veil said "the plague," but the doctor went right on: "Well, actually, it is caused by fleas which are the primary carriers."

"Fleas? And here all along I thought it was carried by rats," Veil replied, turning to the jury as if embracing them all in his viewpoint.

"Yes, fleas," the doctor said. "They are, in fact, fleas especially common to rodents, but wild rodents--prairie dogs, chipmunks, and the like."

"Not squirrels?"

"Only ground squirrels," the doctor answered.

"So, in other words, you mean varmints, right, Doctor?"

"I do."

"The kind of varmints folks go shooting just for sport?"

"Well, some do. But mostly it's farmers who kill them. And that's not for sport--that's to protect their crops," the doctor said, self-righteously, looking to the jury for support.

"Uh, isn't it true, doctor, that if you kill enough varmints, the fleas just jump over to rats."

"Well, that's true...."

"That's what happened a long time ago, wasn't it, Doctor? The Black Death in Europe--that was bubonic plague, right? Caused by rats with these fleas you talked about? And it killed, what? Twenty-five million people?"

"Yes. That's true. But today, we have certain antibiotics that can--"

"Sure. But plague is still a danger, isn't it? I mean, if it got loose, it could still kill a whole bunch of innocent folks, right?"

"Yes, that is true."

"Doctor, just a couple of more questions and we'll be done. Before there was these special antibiotics, how did folks deal with rat infestation? You know, to protect themselves against plague? What would they do if there was a bunch of these rats in a house?"

"Burn it down," the doctor said. "Fire is the only--"

"Objection! Relevancy!" the DA shouted.

"Approach the bench," the judge roared.

Veil didn't move. "Judge, is he saying that crack isn't a plague? Because it's my belief--and I know others share it--that the Lord is testing us with this new plague. It's killing our children, your honor. And it's sweeping across the--"

"That is enough!" the judge shrieked at Veil. "One more word from you, sir, and you will be joining your client in jail tonight."

"You want me to defend Leonard using sign language?" Veil asked.

A number of folks laughed.

The judge cracked his gavel a few times and, when he was done, they took Veil out in handcuffs.

7

When I went to visit that night, I was able to talk to both of them. Someone had brought a chess board and pieces in and they were playing. "You're crazy," I told Veil.

"Like a fuckin' fox," Leonard said. "My man here is right on the money. I mean, he gets it. Check."

"You moved a piece off the board," Veil said.

"Did not."

"Yeah, you did."

"Damn," Leonard said pulling the piece out from between his legs and returning it to the board. "For a man with one eye you see a lot. Still check though."

I shook my head. "Sure. Veil gets it. You, you're gonna get life by the time he's done," I said.

"Everything'll be fine," Veil said, studying the chessboard. "We can always go to Plan B."

"And what's Plan B?" I asked him.

He and Leonard exchanged looks.

8

"The defense of what?" the judge yelled at Veil the next morning.

"The defense of necessity, your honor. It's right here, in Texas law. In fact, the case of Texas v. Whitehouse is directly on point. A man was charged with stealing water from his neighbor by constructing a siphon-system. And he did it, all right. But it was during a drought, and if he hadn't done it, his cattle would've starved. So he had to pay for the water he took, and that was fair, but he didn't have to go to prison."

"And it is your position that your client had to burn down the crack... I mean, the occupied dwelling across the street from his house to prevent the spread of disease?"

"Exactly, your honor. Like the bubonic plague."

"Well, you're not going to argue that nonsense in my court. Go ahead and take your appeal. By the time the court even hears it, your client'll have been locked down for a good seven-eight years. That'll hold him."

9

Veil faced the jury, his face grim and set. He walked back and forth in front of them for a few minutes, as if getting the feel of the ground. Then he spun around and looked them in the eyes, one by one.

"You think the police can protect you from the plague? From the invasion? No, I'm not talking about aliens, or UFOs, or AIDS, now--I'm talking crack. And it's here, folks. Right here. You think it can't happen in your town? You think it's only Dallas and Houston where they grow those sort of folks? Take a look around. Even in this little town, you all lock your doors at night now, don't you? And you've had shootings right at the high school, haven't you? You see the churches as full as they used to be? No you don't. Because things are changing, people. The plague is coming, just like the Good Book says. Only it's not locusts, it's that crack cocaine. It's a plague, all right. And it's carried by rats, just like always. And, like we learned, there isn't but one way to turn that tide. Fire!

"Now I'm not saying my client set that fire. In fact, I'm asking you to find that he did not set that fire. I'm asking you to turn this good citizen, this man who cared about his community, loose. So he can be with you. That's where he belongs. He stood with you... now it's time for you to stand with him."

Veil sat down, exhausted like he'd just gone ten rounds with a rough opponent. But, the way they do trials, it's always the prosecutor who gets to throw the last punch.

And that chubby little bastard of a DA gave it his best shot, going on and on about how two wrongs don't make a right. But you could see him slip a few times. He'd make this snide reference to Leonard being black, or being gay, or just being... Leonard, I guess, and of course that part is kind of understandable. But, exactly like Veil predicted, every time he did it, there was at least one member of the jury who didn't like it. Sure, it's easy to play on people's prejudices--and we got no shortage of those down this way, I know--but if there wasn't more good folks than bad, well, the Klan would've been running the state a long time ago.

The judge told the jury what the law was, and told them to go out there and come back when they were done. Everybody got up to go to lunch, but Veil didn't move. He motioned me over.

"This is going to be over with real quick, Hap," he said. "One way or the other."

"What if it's the other?"

"Plan B," he said, his face flat as a piece of slate.

10

The jury was out about an hour. The foreman stood up and said "Not Guilty" about two dozen times--once for every crime they had charged Leonard with.

I was hugging Leonard when Veil tapped me on the shoulder. "Leonard," he said, "you need to go over there and thank those jury people. One at a time. Sincere, you understand?"

"What for?" Leonard asked.

"Because this is going to happen again," Veil said. "And maybe next time, one of the rats'll get burned."

Knowing Leonard, I couldn't argue with that. He walked over to the jury and I turned around to say something to Veil. But he was gone.

WALKS

My son worries me. He only leaves his room for long walks and he treats me like the hired help. I ought to throw him out, but I cannot. He is my son and I love him and I share his pain, though I am uncertain what that pain is.

Even as a little boy he was strange. Always strange. After his mama died he only got stranger. He was eighteen then, and of course it was a bad thing for him, but I thought he would have coped better at that age. It was not as if he were ten.

He certainly misses his mama.

He goes into the attic and digs through the trunk that holds her keepsakes. Perhaps I should have destroyed the trunk long ago, but it never occurred to me. I am one of those people who hangs onto everything.

These days he sits in his room at his desk and cuts things out of the newspaper. He does not think I've seen him, but I have. I walk quietly. I learned that when I was a boy. You did not walk quietly, my old man would fly off the handle. He hated a heavy walk. Me and my sisters got a lot of beltings because of the way we walked. My old man taught me to walk softly. When he was not drinking he would take me hunting and he would teach me how to walk like an Indian. When he was drinking, that was the way he wanted us to walk around the house. He never taught my sisters how to walk, he just expected it. He used to say girls ought to walk like girls, not water buffalo. My old man was a horrible, cruel drunk, and I am thankful that I managed to be a better father to my son.

But now the boy has pushed me out, will not let me in. I wish he respected me. I never did to him what my father did to me. I never made him walk quietly. I even let him come back home and take his old room when he lost his job.

When he was a child we used to talk about everything. Even the weird things he was interested in like horror movies and comic books and pyramid power. I did not like any of it, but I talked to him just the same, tried to understand his interests.

After his mother's death, he became quieter, more withdrawn. He will not accept she stepped out in front of a car and was killed and will not be back. I think he keeps expecting to look up and see her walk through the door.

I am sorry for him, even if his mother and I never got along. It happens that way sometime.

And these clippings of his, they worry me. Why is he cutting them out and saving them? That makes me very nervous. He thinks I do not know about them. Thinks I have not seen him cutting them out and pondering them, gluing them in his scrapbook, putting them in the bottom desk drawer under the family photo album.

And these long walks. Where does he go and what does he do? I wonder all the time, then feel guilty for wondering. He's a grown man and can take walks if he wants to. He probably walks and worries about not having a job, though he has not yet pushed hard enough to find one if you ask me. But I am sure it worries him. The walks probably help him get his mind off things. Then he comes back here and collects his clippings as a sort of hobby.

I hope that's it. Hope that explains his fascination with the clippings. I hate it when I think there is more to it than that.

One time, when he went on one of his walks, I snuck in and opened the desk drawer and got his scrapbook and looked to see what he was cutting out.

It was articles about the Choker murders snipped from a dozen newspapers. Local papers, out-of-state papers. Just about everything the newsstand sells in the way of papers. He cut out the pictures of the whores who had been strangled and glued them all in a row and underlined their names in red.

That worries me. And he has a scrapbook full of articles about the Choker from a half dozen different papers.

And the way he acts around me. Strange. Nervous. Sullen.

Today I asked him if he wanted some soup and he glared at me and would not answer. He turned his back and stared at the window and watched the rain gather on the glass, then he got up and got his raincoat and umbrella and went for a walk.

It was like when he was a little boy and he got mad about something and started being obstinate for no real reason, or sometimes because you disappointed him.

That is always the worst thing, disappointing your son. Him knowing you are not the man you want him to be.

After he was gone, I went to the window to see which way he was going, then I went to the desk drawer and took out the scrapbook and looked at them.

He had a lot more clippings. He had his mother's picture in the scrapbook. The photo used to have me in it too, but he had cut me out.

Guilt or not. Grown man or not. I had to know where he went on those walks.

I put on my raincoat and pulled up the hood and went in the direction he took. I am getting old, but I am not getting slow or weak. In fact, I am probably in better condition than my boy. I do exercises. I can still walk fast and I can still walk quietly. My old man's legacy, walking quietly.

After a short time I saw him way ahead of me, walking over toward The District, where the poorer people live. It is a very bad place.

It was very dark because of the rain and it was getting darker because it was closer to nightfall.

He went into a bar and I crossed the street and stood under an old hotel awning and looked across the street at the bar and watched him through the glass. He ordered a drink and sat and took his time with it. I started to feel cold.

I waited, though, and after a bit he had yet another drink, then another.

Now I know where the money I give him goes.

I was about to give up waiting when out he came and started up the street, not wobbling or anything. He can hold his liquor, I guess, though where he got a taste for drink I'll never know. I do not allow it around the house.

I followed him and he walked deeper into the bad part of town, where the Choker murders take place.

It grew dark and the sun went down and the neon came out and so did the hookers. They called to me from the protection of doorways, but I ignored them.

I thought of my son. They had to be calling to him too, and up ahead I saw him stop and go to a doorway, and though I could not see the girl, I knew she was there and that he was talking to her.

I felt very nervous suddenly. It hurt to know that my son was frequenting the bad parts of town, the way his mother had. Perhaps he knew about her. Perhaps he was trying to understand what she saw in places like this. And perhaps he was very much like her. God forbid.

I stopped and leaned against a building and waited, pulled the hood tight around my face to keep out the rain.

Then I saw my son go into the doorway and out of sight.

So now I knew where he went when he took his walks. He liked this part of town like his mother liked this part of town. Maybe, if he had a job, less to worry about, he would not need it anymore. I hoped that was it. Whores and whisky were a sad way for a man to live.

A girl called to me from across the way. Something about "old man do you want to feel younger." It bothered me she could tell I was old from that far away. I had a raincoat and hood on for Christ sake.

Guess it is the way I hold myself, even though I try to keep my back straight and try to walk like a younger man.

But I guess there is no hiding it. Even though I am strong and healthy, I have always looked old, even when I was young. My wife used to say I was born fifty years old. She used to tell me in bed that I acted eighty.

I do not miss her at all. If she were alive, I wonder what she would think if she knew her son was seeing whores. Would she feel proud he liked this part of town the way she had? Or would she feel ashamed?

No, I doubt she would feel ashamed. She loved the boy, but she was a bad influence. When I thought of her I always thought of her coming home with whisky on her breath, her skin smelling of some man's cologne.

I crossed the street and the girl smiled at me and talked about what she could do for me. She reminded me of my wife standing there. They all do.

I smiled at her. I thought of my son and what he was doing and I felt so sad. I thought of his mother again, and how she had been, and I was glad I had done what I did. A woman like her did not deserve to live. Just a little push at a dark intersection at the right moment and it was all over. It was not as good as getting my hands on her throat, which is what I would have liked to do, but it was easier to explain. More efficient. The police believed it was an accident.

And now, when I am with the others, I pretend each of them is her and that it is her throat I am squeezing.

But my boy, does he know what I do? Is that why he collects my press? Maybe he takes his walks not only for the whisky and the whores, but because he suspects me and does not want to be around me, thinks what I do is wrong.

I hope that is not it.

God, I hope he does not get a disease from that slut. Can he not find a nice girl?

I smiled at the whore again, got under the doorway with her, peeked out and looked both ways.

No one was coming.

I grabbed her and it only took a moment before I let her fall. I am old, but I am strong.

God, I hope my son does not get a disease.

As I went away, walking my quick but quiet walk, I told myself I would talk to him when he came in. Try to decide what he knows without giving myself away. Maybe he does not know it is me. He might collect the articles because he likes what he reads. Sympathizes with the Choker.

If so, if he would talk to me and try to understand, I think we could have the relationship I have always wanted. One like we had when he was little and we talked about the weird things that interested him, anything and everything under the sun.

I certainly hope it can be that way.

I do not want to have to choke him too.

WHERE THE BIG ONE FELL

Some might hear sounds and think of tumble weeds, while others, desiccated hearts and old dried heads, the empty carcasses where worms gather, and wind blows through open mouths, and whistle through dew-moist nose holes and empty eye-sockets.

Such is the wind.

The imagination.

The dead.

Out there in the wasteland where the big one fell.

Some might wish for the old days, but the old days are gone.

Some might wish for better days, but there are none ahead.

Some might hope things change, and they will, but not for the better.

The mind wants different and life eternal.

However, only time marches on, forever young, gloating over our bones.

So hold your nose and drive real fast.

You'll pass them by.

But others wait.

On down the line, all the bones just your size.

Jerzy Fitzgerald.

* * *

Hug up the hunter.

He's killed something sweet to eat.

Cook it up.

Eat it up.

Throw out the bassinet.

It's no longer needed.

Jerzy Fitzgerald.

THE WINDSTROM PASSES

The winter I come to believe in signs and omens was the baddest old winter we'd ever seen. The winter I turned fifteen.

It had come a rare snow that year, and even rarer for East Texas, it had actually stuck to the ground and got thick. Along came the wind, colder than ever, and it turned the snow to ice. It was beautiful, like sugar and egg-white icing on a cake, but it wasn't nothing to enjoy after the excitement of first seeing it come down. I had to get out in it and do chores, and that made me wish for a lot of sunshine and a time to go fishing.

Third day after it snowed and things had gotten real icy, I was out cutting some firewood from the woodlot and I found a madman in a ditch.

I'd already chopped down a tree and was trimming the limbs off of it, waiting for Papa who was coming across the way with a cross cut so we could saw it up into firewood sizes. While I was trimming I heard a voice.

"I got a message. Get out of this ditch, I got a message."

Clutching the axe tight, I went over and looked in the ditch, and there was a man. His face was as blue as my Mama's eyes; Papa says they're so blue the sky looks white beside them, even on the sky's best day. His long, oily hair had stuck to the ground and frozen there so that the clumped strands looked like snakes or fat worms trying to find holes to crawl into. There were icicles hanging off his eyelids and he was barefoot.

I screamed for Papa. He tossed down the saw and came running as fast as he could go on that ice. We got down in the ditch, hauled the feller up, pulling out some of his frozen hair in the doing. He was wearing a baggy old pair of faded black suit pants with the rear busted out, and his butt was hanging free and bare. It was darker than his face, looked a bit like a split, overripe watermelon gone dark in the sun. His feet and hands were somewhere between the blue of his face and the blue-black of his butt. The shirt he had on was three sizes too big, and when Papa and I had him standing, the wind came a-whistling along and flapped the feller's shirt around him till he looked like a scarecrow we was trying to poke in the ground.

We got him up to the house, laid him out on the kitchen table. He looked like he'd had it. Didn't move, just laid there, eyes closed, breathing slow. Then, all of a sudden, his eyes snapped open and he shot out a bony hand and grabbed Papa by the coat collar. He pulled himself to a sitting position until his face was right even with Papa's and said, "I got a message from the Lord. You are doomed, brother, doomed to the wind 'cause it's going to blow you away." Then he closed his eyes, laid back down and let go of Papa's coat.

"Easy there," Papa said. But about that time the feller gave a shake, like he was going to have a rigor, then he went still as a turnip. Papa felt for a pulse and put his ear to the feller's chest looking for a heartbeat. From the expression on Papa's face, I could tell he hadn't found neither.

"He dead, Papa?"

"Couldn't get no deader, son," Papa said, lifting his head from the feller's chest.

Mama, who'd sort of been standing off to the side watching, came over now. "You know him, Harold?" she asked.

"Think this is Hazel Onin's boy," Papa said.

"The crazy boy?"

"I just seen him the once, but I think it's him. They had him on a leash out in the yard one summer, had this colored feller leading him around, and the boy was running on all fours, howling and trying to lift his leg to pee on things. His pants were all wet."

"How pitiful," Mama said.

I knew of Hazel Onin's crazy boy, but if he had a name I'd never heard it. He'd always been crazy, but not so crazy at first that they couldn't let him run free. He was just considered peculiar. When he was eighteen he got religion real bad, took to preaching. Then right after he turned twenty he tried to rape this little high yeller gal he was teaching some Bible verses to, and that's when the Onins throwed him in the attic room, locked and barred the windows. If he'd been out of that room since that time, I'd never heard of it till now.

I'm ashamed of it now, but when I was twelve or thirteen, me and some of the other boys used to have to walk by there on our way to and from school, and the madman would holler out from his barred windows at us, "Repent, 'cause you're all going to have a bad fall," then he'd go to singing some old gospel song, and it gave me the jitters 'cause there was an echo up there in that attic, and it made it seem there was someone else inside singing along with him. Someone with a voice as deep and trembly as Old Man Death ought to have.

Johnny Clarence used to pull his pants down, bend over and show his naked butt to the madman, and we'd follow his lead on account of we didn't want to be considered no chickens. Then we'd all take off out of there running, hoopin' and a hollerin', pulling our pants and suspenders up as we ran.

But we'd quit going there long time back, as had almost everyone in town. They moved Main Street when the railroad came through on the other side, and from then on the town built up over there. They even tore down and rebuilt the school house on that side, and there wasn't no need for us to come that way no more. We could cut shorter by going another way. And after that, I mostly forgot about the madman prophet.

"It's such a shame," Mama said. "Poor boy."

"It's a blessing, is what it is," Papa said. "He don't look like he's been eating so good to me, and I bet that's because the Onins ain't feeding him like they ought to. They figure him a shame and a curse from God, and they've treated him like it was his fault his head ain't no good ever since he was born."

"He was dangerous, Harold," Mama said. "Remember that little high yeller girl?"

"Ain't saying he ought to have been invited to a church social. But they didn't have to treat him like an animal."

"Guess it's not ours to judge," Mama said.

"Damn sure don't matter now," Papa said.

"What do you think he meant about that thing he said, Papa?" I asked. "About the wind and all?"

"Didn't mean nothing, son. Just crazy talk. Go on out and hitch up the wagon and I'll get him wound up in a sheet. We'll take him back to the Onins. Maybe they'll want to stuff him and put him in the attic window so folks can see him as they walk or ride by. Or they could charge two bits for folks to come inside and look at him. Kind of pull his arm with a string so it looks like he's waving at them."

"That's quite enough, Harold," Mama said. "Don't talk like that in front of the boy."

Papa grumbled something, went out of the room for a sheet, and I went out to the barn and hitched the mules up. I drove the wagon up to the front door, went in to help Papa carry the body out. Not that it really took both of us. He was as light as a big, empty corn husk. But somehow, the two of us carrying him seemed a lot more respectable than just tossing him over a shoulder and slamming him down in the wagon bed.

We took the body over to the Onins, and if they was broke up about it, I missed the signs. They looked like they'd just finally gotten some stomach tonic to work, and had made that long put off and desired trip to the outhouse.

Papa didn't say nothing stern to them, though I expected him to, since he wasn't short on honest words. But I figure he didn't see no need in it now.

Mrs. Onin stood in the doorway all the time, didn't come out to the wagon bed while the body was there. After Mr. Onin unwound the sheet and took a look at the madman's face, said what a sad day it was and all, he asked us if we'd mind putting the body in the toolshed.

We did, and when we got back to the wagon Mrs. Onin was waiting by it. Mr. Onin offered us a dollar for bringing the body home, but of course, Papa wouldn't take it.

Before we climbed up on the wagon, Mrs. Onin said, "He'd been yelling all morning from upstairs, saying how an angel from God wearing a suit coat and a top hat, had brought him a message he was supposed to pass on. Kept sayin' an angel was giving him a test, see if he deserved heaven after what he done to that little girl."

Papa went ahead and climbed on the wagon, took hold of the lines. With his head, he motioned me up.

"Then we didn't hear nothing no more," Mr. Onin said. "I went up there to check on him and he'd pulled the bars out of one of the windows and got out. I don't reckon how he did that, as he'd never been able to do it before, and them bars was as sturdy as the day I put them in, no rotten wood around the sills or nothing."

Papa had taken out his pocket knife and tobacco bar, and he was cutting him a chew off it. "Reckon you went right then to the sheriff to tell him your boy run off," Papa said, and there was that edge to his voice, like when he finds me peeing out back too close to the house.

"Naw," Mr. Onin said looking at the ground. "I didn't. Figured cold as he was, he'd come on back."

"Don't matter none now, does it?" Papa said.

"No," Mr. Onin said. "He's out of his misery now."

"Thems as true a words as you've spoke," Papa said.

"I'll be getting your sheet back to you," Mr. Onin said.

"Don't want it," Papa said. He clucked up the mules and we started off.

When we were out of earshot of the house, I said, "Papa, you really think they thought that crazy feller would go back because it was cold?"

"Why in hell would he want to go back to that attic? I don't reckon it was all that warm. I figure they thought he'd freeze and they'd be rid of him."

We didn't say anything else until we got home, then wasn't none of the talking about the madman or the Onins. Mama didn't even mention it after she saw Papa's face.

Just before supper, Papa went out on the porch to smoke his pipe, and I went out to the barn to toss the mules and milk cow some hay. I was out there tossing and smelling that animal smell, thinking how it reminded me of my whole life, that smell. Reminded me of Mama and Papa, warm nights with very little breeze, cold nights with the fire stoked up big and warm, late suppers, tall tales in front of the fireplace, standing on the porch or looking out the windows at the morning, noon or night, spring, summer, winter or fall. And that smell, always there, like a friend who had on some peculiar, if not bad smelling, toilet water. It was in the floorboards of the house, in the yard, thick in the barn. A smell that even now moves me backwards and forwards in time.

So there I was, throwing hay, thinking this fine life would go on forever, and all of a sudden I felt it before it happened.

I quit tossing hay, turned to look out the barn door. It was like I was looking at a painting, things had gone so still. The sky had turned yellow. The late birds quit singing and the mules and the milk cow turned their heads to look out of doors too.

Way off I heard it, a sound like a locomotive making the grade, burning that timber. Only there wasn't a track within ten miles of us. Outside the sky went from yellow to black, from still to windy. Pine straw, dust, and all manner of things began whipping by. I knew what was happening: twister.

I dropped the pitchfork, dove for the inside of an old shovel scoop mule sled, and no sooner had I hit face down and put my hands over my head, then it hit.

I caught a glimpse of a cow flying by, legs splayed like she thought she could stop the tug of the wind easy as she could stop the tug of a rope. Then the cow was gone and the sled started to move.

After that, everything started happening so quickly I'm not certain what I saw. Lots of things flying by, and I could hardly breathe. The sled might have gone as high as thirty feet, 'cause when I came down it was hard. Hadn't been for the ice, I'd probably have been driven into the ground like a cork in a bottle. But the sled hit the ice and started sliding, throwing up dirty, hard snow on either side of me. Ice pieces hit me in the face, then the sled fetched up against something solid, a stump probably, and I went flying out of it, hit the ice, whirled around and around, came to rest in that ditch where I'd found the madman.

I passed out for a while, and I dreamed. Dreamed I was in the sled again, flying through the air, and there was our house, lifting up from the ground, floor and all. It flew right past me, rising fast. In the brief instant it moved in front of me, I saw Mama. She was standing at the window. All the glass was blown out, and she was clinging to the sill with both hands. Her eyes were as big and blue as her china saucers, and her red hair had come undone and was blowing and whipping around her like a brush fire.

The house shot on up, and when I looked up to see, there wasn't nothing but whirling blackness with little chunks of wood and junk disappearing into it.

"Mama," I said, and I must have said it a lot of times, 'cause that's what woke me up. The sound of my voice calling Mama.

I tried to stand, but my ankle wasn't having it. It hurt like hell, and when I looked down, I saw my boot and sock had been ripped off by the blow, and the ankle was as big as a coiled cottonmouth snake.

I put a hand on the edge of the ditch, dug my fingers through the ice and pulled myself up, taking some of the skin off my naked foot as I did. It was so cold the flesh had frozen to the ground and it had peeled off when I moved, like sweetgum bark.

Once I was out of the ditch, I started crawling across the ice, dragging my useless foot behind me. Little chunks of skin came off my palms, so I had to get down and pull myself forward on my coat-sleeved forearms.

I hadn't gone far before I found Papa. He was sitting in his rocking chair, and in one hand he held his pipe and it was still smoking. The porch the chair had been sitting on was gone, but Papa was rocking gently in what remained of the wind. And the pitchfork I'd tossed before diving into the sled was sticking out of his chest like it had growed there. I didn't see a drop of blood. His eyes were open and staring, and every time that chair rocked forward, he seemed to look and nod at me.

Behind Papa, where the house ought to have been, wasn't nothing. It was like it hadn't never been built. I quit crawling and started crying. Did that till there wasn't nothing in me to cry, and the cold started making me so numb I just wanted to lay there and freeze at Papa's feet like an old dog. I felt like if I wasn't his killer, I was at least a helper, having tossed down the very pitchfork that had murdered him.

It started to rain little ice pellets, and somehow the pain of those things pounding on me, gave me the will to crawl toward a heap of hay that had been tossed there by the wind. By the time I got to the pile and looked back, Papa wasn't rocking no more. Those runners had froze to the ground and his black hair had turned white from the ice that had stuck to him.

I worked my way into the hay and tried to pull as much of it over me as I could. Doing that wore me out, and I fell asleep wondering about Mama, wondering what had happened to her, hoping she was alive.

The wind picked up again, took most of my hay away, but by then I didn't care. I awoke remembering that I'd had that dream about Mama and the house again. Even though I didn't have much hay on me, it didn't seem so cold anymore. I figured it was either warming up, or I was getting used to it. Course, wasn't neither of them things. I was freezing to death, and would have too, if not for Mr. Parks and his boys.

Mr. Parks was our nearest neighbor, about three miles east. It turned out he had been chopping wood when the sky turned yellow. Later he told me about it. and he said it was as strange as a blue-eyed hound dog, and unlike any twister he'd ever seen. Said the yellow sky went black, then this dark cloud grew a tail and came a-wagging out of the sky like a happy pup, the tail getting thicker as it dipped. When it touched down he figured the place it hit was right close to our farm, so he hitched up a wagon and came on out.

It was slow going for him and his two boys, on account of the ice and them having to stop now and then to clear the road of blown-over trees. But they made it to our place about dark, and Mr. Parks said first thing he saw was Papa in that rocker. He said it was like the stem of Papa's pipe was pointing to where I lay, half in, half out of some hay.

They figured me for dead at first, I looked so bad. But when they saw I was alive, they loaded me in the wagon, covered me in some old feed sacks and a couple half-wet blankets and started out of there.

Turned out that foot of mine was broke bad. The doctor came out to the Parks place, set it, and didn't charge me a cent. He said he owed Papa from last fall for a bushel of taters, but I knew that was just a friendly lie. Doc Ryan hadn't never owed nobody nothing.

Mr. and Mrs. Parks offered me a place to stay after the funeral, but I told them I'd go back to our place and try to make a go of it there.

Johnny Parks, who used to whip the hell out of me twice a week on them weeks when we both managed to go a full week to school, made me a pair of solid crutches out of hickory, and I went to Papa's funeral on them. Mama, as if there was something to my dream, wasn't never found, and for that matter, they couldn't hardly find no pieces of the house. There was plenty of barn siding around, but of the house there was only a few floorboards, some wood shingles and some broken glass. Maybe it's silly, but I like to thgink that old storm just come and got her and hauled her off to a better place, like that little old gal in that book The Wizard of Oz.

Mr. Parks made Papa a tombstone out of a piece of river slate, chiseled some nice words on it:

HERE LIES HAROLD FOGG,

KILT BY A TORNADER,

AND HERE LIES THE MEMRY OF GLENDA FOGO

WHO WAS CARRIED OFF BY

THE SAME TORNADER

AND WASN'T NEVER FOUND.

NOT EVEN THE PIECES.

Beneath that was some dates on when they was born and died, and a line about them being survived by one son, Buster Fogg, meaning me, of course.

Over the protest of Mr. and Mrs. Parks, I had them take me out to the place and I set me up a tent there. They left me a lot of food and some hand-me-down clothes from their boys, then they went off saying they'd be back to check on me right regular. Mr. Parks even offered me some money and the loan of his mule, but I said I had to think on it.

This tent Mr. Parks had given me was a good one, and I managed to get around well enough on my crutches to gather barn siding and use what tools I could find to build a floor in it. I could have got Mr. Parks and his boys to do that for me, but I couldn't bring myself to ask them to, not after all they'd done. And besides, I had my pride. Matter of fact, that was about all I had right then. That and the place.

Well, it took me a couple of days what should have taken a few hours, but I got the tent fixed up real good and cozy finally. But it wasn't no replacement for the house and Mama and Papa. I'd have even liked to have heard them fussing over how much firewood Papa should have laid in, which was one of them things he was always a little lazy on, and was finally glad to pass most of the job along to me. I could just imagine Mama telling him as she looked at the last few sticks of stove wood, "I told you so."

On the morning after I'd spent my first night on my finished floor, I got out to take a real good look at things, and see what I could manage on crutches.

There were dead chickens lying all about, like feather dusters, pieces of wood and one mule lying on his back, legs sticking up in the air like a table blowed over.

Well, wasn't none of this something I hadn't already seen, but now with the flooring in, and my immediate comfort attended to, I found I just couldn't face picking up dead chickens and burning a mule carcass.

I went back inside the tent and felt sorry for myself, as that's all there was to do in there, besides eat, and I'd done that till I was about to pop. I didn't even have a book to reread, as all them had got blowed away with the house.

About a week went by, and I'd maybe got half the chickens picked up and tossed off in the ditch by the woodlot, and gotten the mule burned to nothing besides bones, when this slick-looking feller in a buckboard showed up.

"Howdy, young feller," he said, climbing down from his rig. "You must be Buster Fogg."

I admitted I was, and up close I saw that snazzy black suit and narrow brim hat he had on were even snappier than they'd looked from a distance. The hat and suit were as black as fresh charcoal and the pants had creases in them sharp enough to cut your throat. And the feller was all smiles. He looked to have more teeth than Main Street had bricks.

"Glad I caught you home," he said, and he took off his hat and held it over his chest as if contemplating a prayer.

"Whats it I can do for you?" I asked. "Maybe you'd like to come in the tent, get out of this cold."

"No, no. What I have to say won't take but a moment. My name is Purdue. Jack Purdue. I'm the banker from town."

Well, right off I knew what it was and I didn't want to hear it, but I knew I was going to anyway.

"Your father's bill has come due, son, and I hate it something awful, and I know it's a bad time and all, but I'm going to need that money by about...," he stopped for a moment to look generous, "... say noon tomorrow. Least half."

"I ain't got a penny, Mr. Purdue," I said. "Papa had the money, but everything got blowed away in the storm. If you could just give some time-"

He put his hat on and looked real sad about things, almost like it was his farm he was losing.

"I'm afraid not, son. It's an awful duty I got, but it's my duty."

I told him again about the money blowing away, how Papa had saved it up from selling stuff during the farm season, doing odd jobs around and all, and that I could do the same, providing he gave my leg time to heal so I could get a job. Just to work on his sympathy some, I then went on to tell him the whole horrible truth about how Papa was killed and Mama blowed away like so much outhouse paper, and when I got through I figured I'd told it real good, 'cause his eyes looked a little moist.

"That," he said, not hardly able to speak, "is without a doubt, the saddest story I've ever heard. And of course I knew all about it, son, but somehow, hearing it from you, the last survivor of the Fogg family, makes it all the more dreadful."

He kind of choked up there on the end of his words, and I figured I had him pretty good, so I throwed in how us Foggs had pride and all, and that I'd never let a due bill go unpaid, if he'd just give me the time to raise the money.

Well, he told me he was tore all to hell up about it, but business was business, sad story or not. And as he wiped some of the water out of his eyes with the back of his hand, he told me he would give me until tomorrow evening instead of noon, because he reckoned someone who'd been through what I had deserved a little more time.

"But that ain't enough," I said.

"I'm sorry, son, that's the best I can do, and that goes against the judgement of the bank. I'm sticking my neck out to do that."

"You are the bank, Purdue," I said. "Who you fooling? It ain't me. We all know you're the bank."

"I understand your grief, your torment," he said, just like one of the characters from some of them Dime Novels Papa bought from time to time, "but business is business."

"You said that."

"Yes I did." With that, Mr. Purdue turned and walked back to his buckboard. He called out to me as I stood there leaning defeated on my crutches. "I tell you, son, that is the saddest story I've ever heard, and I've heard some. Tragic. This will hang over my head from here on out, right over my head," he showed me exactly where it would be hanging with his hand, "until my dying day."

He stood there with one foot up on the buckboard step a moment, looking as downcast as a young rooster without any hens, then he climbed up and cracked the whip gently over the heads of his horses. There must have been some pretty heavy tears in his eyes as he left, 'cause when he turned the buckboard around, the left wheels rolled right over Papa's grave.

My farming days were over before they even got started. And I'll tell you, right then and there, I decided I wasn't going to pick up another dead chicken to make the place look nicer. In fact, I went over to the ditch, got the ones I throwed down there out and chunked them around sorts like they had been. Then I went back to my tent and wished I hadn't burned that old dead mule up.

The smartest thing to do would have been to go on over to Mr. and Mrs. Parks, even if it did take me all damned day on them crutches, but I just couldn't. Us Foggs have our pride. I decided to set out for town, get me a job there, make my own way. Surely there was something I could do till my leg healed up and I got me a solid job.

I figured if I started early, like tomorrow morning, I could maybe make town by nightfall, crutches or not. I'd probably fall down and bust it a few times, but that didn't matter none.

Well, as I said, us Foggs are proud, and maybe just a little bit stupid, so next morning I set out as planned, leaving the tent behind, carrying with me some hard bread, jerked meat, and dried fruit in a sack.

I must have fell down a half a dozen times before I got to the road, but then I could crutch along better, 'cause there was a lot less ice there.

By noon my underarms were so sore from the rubbing of them crutches that they were bleeding and making blisters that kept popping as I went.

Stopping about then, I sat down on a rock and my coattails, ate me some bread and jerky, and fretted things over. While I was fretting, I heard this sound and looked up.

It was bells on a harness I had heard, and the harness was attached to eight big mules pulling a bright red wagon driven by a big black man wearing a long, dark coat and a top hat. When the sun hit his teeth they flashed like a pearl-handled revolver.

As the wagon made a little curve in the road, I got a glimpse at the side, and I could see there was a cage fixed there, balancing out the barrels of water and supplies on the other side.

At first I thought what was in the cage was a deformed colored feller, but when it got closer, I seen it was some kind of animal covered in hair. It was about the ugliest, scariest damned thing I'd ever seen.

Right then I was feeling a might less proud than I had been that morning, so I got them crutches under me and hobbled out into the road and waved one hand at the man on the wagon.

The wagon slowed and pulled alongside of me. The driver yelled, "Whoa, you old ugly mules," and the harness bells ceased to shake.

I could see the animal in the cage real good now, but I still couldn't figure on what it was. There was some yellow words painted above the cage that said THE MAGIC WAGON, and to the right of the cage was a little sign with some fancy writing on it that read:

Magic Tricks, Trick Shooting, Fortune Telling, Wrestling Ape, Side Amusements, Medicine For What Ails You, And All At Reasonable Prices.

Sounded pretty good to me.

"You look like you could use a ride, white boy," the big colored man said.

"Yes sir, I could at that," I said.

"You don't say yes sir to a nigger." I turned to see who had said that, and there was this feller standing in faded, red long johns and moccasins with blond hair down to his shoulders and a skimpy little blond mustache over his lip. He had his arms crossed, holding his elbows against the cold. He'd obviously come out of the back of the wagon, but he'd walked out so quiet I hadn't even known he was there till he spoke.

When I didn't say nothing, he added, "This here's my wagon. He just works for me. I say who rides and who don't, and I say you don't."

"I got some jerky, canned taters and beans I can trade for a ride, and I'll sit up there on the seat."

"If you was riding, you sure would," the blond man said. "But you ain't riding." He turned back to the wagon and I noticed the flap on his long Johns was down. I snickered just a little, and he turned around to stare at me. He had eyes like a couple of gun barrels, cold and ugly grey. "I don't need no beans or sweet taters," he said suddenly, then he started back to the wagon.

"He can ride up here with me if he's got a mind to," said the colored man.

The white feller spun around and came stomping back. "What did you say?"

"I said he could ride up here with me if he's got a mind to," the colored man said, moving his lips real slow like, as if he was talking to an idiot. "It's too cold for a boy to be out here, especially one on crutches."

"You're getting mighty uppity for a nigger," the white feller said. "Mighty uppity for a nigger who works for me."

"Maybe I is," the colored feller said. "And it worries me something awful, Mister Billy Bob. I get so worried abouts it I can't get me no good sleep at night. I wake up wondering if Mister Billy Bob is put out with me, and if I truly is getting uppity."

Mister Billy Bob pointed his finger at the colored feller and shook it. "Keep it up, nigger. Just keep it up and you're going to wake up with a crowd of buzzards around you. Hear?"

"I hear," the colored feller said. It was almost a yawn. Billy Bob started back for the wagon again, gave me a glimpse of his exposed butt, turned and came back. He shook his finger at the colored feller again. "Albert," he said, "you and me, we going to have to have us a serious Come To Jesus meeting, get some things straight. Like who's the nigger and who ain't."

"I do need some pointers on that, Mister Billy Bob. I get a trifle confused sometime."

Billy Bob stood there for a moment like he was going to stare Albert down off the wagon seat, but he finally gave it up. "All right, you," he said to me. "You can ride, but it's going to cost you them beans and taters, hear?"

I nodded.

This time Billy Bob turned and went into the wagon, the moon of his butt my last sight of him, the slamming of the door my last sound.

I turned and looked up at Albert. He was leaning down with a big hand extended. Just before I took it, I got me another look at the critter in the cage, and when he looked at me he peeled back his lips to show his teeth, like maybe he was smiling.

When I was on the seat beside Albert, he said, "That Mister Billy Bob's going to need to get them buttons fixed on the seat of his drawers, ain't he?"

We laughed at that.

After we got moving good, Albert said, "You keep them beans and taters, boy. Taters upset my stomach, and beans they make Mister Billy Bob fart something awful. Just ain't no being around him."

"That's good of you to let me keep them," I said, 'cause I ain't got no beans or taters. All I got is some hard bread and some jerked meat."'

Albert let out a roar, like that was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. I could tell right then and there he didn't have no real respect for Billy Bob.

"That critter in the cage?" I asked, taking a long shot. "Is that some kind of bear what caught on fire or something?"

Albert laughed again. "Naw, it ain't no bear. That there is a jungle ape, comes from the same place as all us colored. They calls him a chimpanzee. Name's Rot Toe on account of he got him some kind of disease once and one of the toes on his right foot rotted off. Least that's what the feller who sold him to Billy Bob said."

I remembered the sign I'd read on the side of the wagon. "Wrestling Ape," I said.

"There you got it;" Albert said.

I found a place for the crutches and the food bag, then I leaned back with my hands in my lap.

"You look a might bushed, little peckerwood. You wants to lay your head against my shoulder to rest, you go right ahead."

"No thanks," I said. But we hadn't gone too far down the road when I just couldn't keep my eyes open no more and I realized just how tired I really was. I lolled my head on Albert's big shoulder. I could smell the clean wool of his coat. And wasn't no time until I was asleep.

TRASH THEATER

(Parts 1 thru 3)

A NOTE ABOUT "TRASH THEATER"

The column had a following.

We received letters, and I was told by many readers Trash Theater was the main reason they bought the magazine. If they lied I don't want to know. David and I have been reviewing movies for one another for years. Since the late-seventies. In fact, during the late-seventies, early-eighties, there was a flood of low budget movies. Most of them, as always, were quite bad, but still there were a number of good ones. After that, the ranks got thinner, or my taste changed. I don't know. But it seemed to me they were far and in between then. Still, David and I liked to get together now and then for what we called Trash Theater. We'd invite friends, have popcorn, watch movies. Not always of the era aforementioned. All kinds of movies, Dolomite to Viva Las Vegas, and we'd have a hell of a time. As time went on this event dissolved. Raising kids. Working. A variety of things kept us from making it a regular event. But on occasion David and I still got together to talk about movies, and these talks led to us asking if we might do a column for Cemetery Dance. Rich Chizmar, the editor, agreed, and so we did.

We decided to make up the personas of these two rednecks Joe and David and have them review the movies. I know, Joe Bob Briggs is famous for this, but David and I have been using that sort of approach for years, with friends, with each other, long before there was a Joe Bob Briggs. And besides, Joe Bob is his own thing and we were our own thing. And considerably less successful. We tried to pick movies we had actually enjoyed, or that we thought were just plain dumb. Things like Plan Nine, and other Ed Wood "classics," we chose not to review, because frankly, we don't get as big a kick out of them. Viva Las Vegas, now that's a bad movie. Plan Nine is bad, but it had every reason to be. Viva Las Vegas, considering the money, the people in it, could have actually been a real movie. But, instead, it was stupid. If you haven't seen it, trust me. It was stupid. And funny. As we will show in one of our reviews. Other movies, like Basket Case, though low budget, are still good. And still creepy. Anyway, we had a good time writing this, but eventually our enthusiasm petered out. Too much going on in our lives. Became too difficult to get together and do the work. Way we worked it was tedious. We'd get together and talk about a couple of movies in the fashion of the column, make a few notes. David would go home and I'd write a draft, give it to him, and he'd rewrite it. Then I'd type it up and make some changes and he'd come over for a visit and we'd go over it line by line and do a rewrite together. Doing it this way, it took quite a while to finish a column. Eventually, too long. But that is neither here nor there. Trash Theater is no more. Except in these columns. I only regret David and I didn't start doing this back in the seventies when we first reviewed movies for one another. We would have had a book four hundred pages thick. I've chosen to reprint six of our reviews, in three sets of two. That should give readers a taste of what we were doing for Cemetery Dance: A combination movie review, bullshit session, and in some cases, running short story. Some day, Dave and I hope to collect all our columns, add a few more, and do a book. We think that would be fun. But a steady movie column again? I don't think so. But here's a taste of what we were doing.

Since the reviews speak for themselves, this intro will also serve to introduce the next two sets. So, get in that drive-in frame of mind, or if you're too young to have experienced the drive-ins, find my article in By Bizarre Hands, "Hell Through A Windshield," and read about them, or get a fictional taste of them from my novels The Drive-In and The Drive-In 2, or read my column "A Hard on for Horror" in my collection Writer of the Purple Rage and get insight into low budget movies and why I (we) like them. Or just forget all that and kick back and enjoy Joe and Dave's Dog and Pony show, ala East Texas, the drive-in and the VCR.

Joe R. Lansdale

TRASH THEATER

Part One

The Human Tornado

Length: (Uncertain, as our copy contains trailers for the movie and we were laughing so hard at them and the movie, we couldn't keep up with the time. In one sense, this baby is much too short, and in another, phenomenally too long.)

This motherfucker stars: Rudy Ray Moore as "Dolomite" Lady Reed as "Queen Bee" Jimmy Lunch as "Mr. Motion" And Introducing, and most likely, Exiting: "Java" Screenplay: Jerry Jones, from the character, Dolomite, created by Rudy Ray Moore

Directed: Cliff Roquemore Winner of the Webb-Lansdale Prize for Excessive Cussing and Overuse of the Word Motherfucker.

We're also very proud of our copy of the movie, as it has Spanish subtitles. It's kind of uptown to have this version, don't you think?

One particular episode cheers us. In this one, Rudy Ray Moore, decked out in cliche pimp attire, sitting in the backseat of a car being pursued by redneck crackers, yells to his driver a rare sentence not containing the word motherfucker, and it goes like this: "Drive, nigger! Drive!" while below, in Spanish subtitles is written in calm diction: "Acelera, Negro." This translates close to: "Go fast, black person." Kind of takes away a little, don't you think?

Listen up, motherfuckers.

The Human Tornado, its own-self, is generally reviewed by others as an intentional parody of black exploitation films. But we here at the throbbing nerve center of Trash Theater ain't so sure that's what this really is. The word "intentional" may be rationalization. For us, it sends mixed signals. We get the feeling, though a sense of humor is involved here, that this is actually nothing more than a black exploitation movie made by true believers. Kind of movie where the ignorant white is satisfied that blacks fit all their cliches, and certain blacks are satisfied they fit all the cliches - big dicks, sexual and physical prowess, a constant one-upmanship on whitey - and White Liberals faint while Progressive Blacks contemplate suicide, feeling stuff like this sets the black race back fifty years per viewing, and we at Trash Theater figure it's just another one of those cultural time capsules that assures us mankind, (peoplekind, for the politically correct) black, white, orange or polka dot, is basically pretty stupid. In other words, this ain't a movie that'll play at the next Ku Klux Klan smoker, but neither can we imagine it being ran on late night TV during Black Pride Week, say sandwiched between commercials for the Negro College Fund. This baby came on, we knew we were in trouble the minute we saw the credits. They were obviously designed by the same guy who paints those runny grocery store sale notices and banners on butcher paper. You know, you see them in the windows when you go to shop. Stuff like: GROUND BEEF, 2.59 a pound. You see these signs and banners in everything from a Mom and Pop store to Krogers, and it's got to be the same guy goes around and paints these. They all look alike. Have the same lettering and the same tempera paint.

Moments after the Title Credits, the star of stars, Rudy Ray Moore, "Dolomite," motherfuckers, appears on screen wearing a cape that is a grocery store banner, complete with wind holes. He turns his back to the audience, and painted across the banner is the announcement that he's none other than Rudy Ray Moore, his ownself, starring as Dolomite.

That's right, motherfuckers, Dolomite, quintessential Bon Vivant, socialite sophisticate, Boss Stud, Sex Machine, Peckerwood Slammer, White Trash Masher, Super Cracker Killer, Disco Detective, Ace of Spades and Head Nigger. Before you hoist your politically correct bullshit banner, start writing in to Cemetery Dance to talk about those awful reviewers Lansdale and Webb using the dreaded N-word, see the movie, motherfuckers. The word nigger flows freely in this one, from the mouths of black characters as a kind of lefthanded endearment, and from the mouths of white trash villains as something less than endearing. (What we really love about the White Trash Villains is the blacks get their deserved licks in by making the whites ivory versions of Steppin' Fetchit and Amos and Andy, only a little less bright.) Rudy Ray Moore is a comedian. Or claims to be. He used to make racy party records like Red Foxx, back in the early sixties. He never runs out of breath or finds a sentence in which motherfucker can't be worked into the context, and he ain't the kind of fella wastes film.

The first of the movie hasn't got a damn thing to do with the story. It's Rudy Ray Moore's comedy nightclub act, interspliced, inexplicably, with a near naked Mexican-style dancer grinding her hips, vibrating her ass like a paint shaker, and lying on her back and humping her loins across the stage to bongo music. We must admit up front, we don't get this concept entirely, but it's interesting. We think it might be just the thing to spruce up George Bush's next address to the nation or that flagging political campaign. It might even be more interesting if Barbara Bush were willing to dress in this revealing costume and crab walk across the floor, humping at the ceiling, spraying her paste pearls to and fro. Naw. Maybe we better leave that little plan alone.

Anyway, Rudy goes through his nightclub act. Calls the patrons motherfuckers, niggers, and makes fun of their being overweight and tells one black guy he's so ugly if he stuck his head out a car window while driving, his lips would beat him to death. The audience, including the fat, ugly motherfuckers, love this. They clap and laugh, delighted in the fact that they see themselves as fat and ugly and a bunch of niggers. Now the story starts, and we go with Dolomite to a party at his house that is a combination community upper crust hobknobbing and cocktails and charity benefit and upstairs sex shack. Seems a local white lady has heard about Dolomite, and knows he's - as he explains in the film's trailers - "Got a dong big as King Kong," and she's got to have some of that, and will pay him for thirty minutes of drilling. This bothers Dolomite. He's got business downstairs, but he tells her to loosen up the meat, so to speak, and he'll be back to plant the tree after he gets through downstairs, and sigh, a stud's work is never done, but he's up to it, because Dolomite, motherfuckers, can do it all.

Later, after Dolomite graciously gives away his lovely Alabama home to a local boys charity, he goes upstairs to honor his paid thirty minutes, (We tell you, the man's a saint!) and no sooner is he dropping anchor in the hot mama's ocean, than low and behold and tighten your asshole sphincters, her husband shows up with friends, and the husband is an Alabama cliche cracker sheriff, and his friends are a bunch of deputies and nigger haters. Ouch! Soon as the sheriff breaks into the room and sees his snowy white wife making a flesh sandwich with a "man of color," he flips his wig and screams for Charlie - one of the sheriff's dorks -to kill them both. Dolomite leaps clear, thank goodness, and the hot white Mama, screaming "He made me do it," collects a double barrel's worth of buckshot, and the action kicks into high gear. Dolomite, butt naked, clothes in his hands, dick flapping like a smoked sausage in a high wind, leaps out of the house and down a startling steep embankment - so steep in fact, the film backs up and Dolomite voices over something to the effect - "You don't believe that shit, do you," and the shot is ran again, Dolomite going down the side of the embankment, burning his naked ass on the grass.

A car is waiting below, and Dolomite is rescued by his friends, and they burn rubber. They are pursued by the crackers, and Dolomite, after screaming "Drive, nigger! Drive!," finally decides an ambush is in order. Dolomite has his driver pull over, takes out a shotgun, and lying in ambush says: "He thinks he's bad and ain't got no class. I'm gonna jam this shotgun up this motherfucker's ass." And no sooner can you conjugate "to motherfuck," than, goddamn it, the sheriff's killed (sort of) and Dolomite and his friends are really on the lamb.

They decide to hitchhike (say what!), and end up hijacking a car driven by an exaggerated gay guy who is willing to be kidnapped and made to travel to California. After a little on the road hijinks, Dolomite calls a lady friend in California, Queen Bee, a nightclub owner, and tells her he and his friends are on their way. "I had to off a motherfucker, and me and the boys are on the run. Can you dig it?"

Well now, that's the call we're waiting for here at Trash Theater Central. "Hello, Trash Theater." "Yeah, man, this is Dolomite, man. I had to off a motherfucker and me and the boys are on the run. I'm on my way over. Can you dig it?" No, we can't dig it. Time he and the boys got here, wouldn't be nothing but the wind and a few movie posters blowing through Trash Theater Central.

Queen Bee, however, is a real friend. She don't give a rat's ass how many motherfuckers Dolomite's offed. In fact, she sees an advantage to all this, says there couldn't be a better time, the joint is jumping, and she can use a cat like Dolomite. And not only is the joint jumping, the manager states: "I ain't seen so many niggers in here since Dolomite was here last." The joint is also full of the trashiest polyester and knit '70s disco outfits and shitty show garb you've ever seen this side of Hell's version of Las Vegas. This is the stuff the devil makes you put on in front of a four-way mirror, just so he can make fun of you, but everyone at Queen Bee's club thinks they're in the 9s, you know.

This seems the right time to mention in passing that this is where we're first treated to one of Queen Bee's wigs, obviously made from the hair of the rare polyester parade float, and if this isn't enough for you, keep watching this gal's threads and hairdos. If the movie doesn't keep you interested, her garb, or for that matter, everyone's garb, will hold you. Actually, this shit will kind of stun you, unless you're one of those '70s disco fucks who thought a pimp hat the circumference of a patio umbrella, striped bell bottoms, a plaid Nehru jacket and a Peace medallion only a little larger than a Mag wheel were the height of fashion. (Well, okay, we're pushing the truth a little, but this is some dazzling stuff.)

But Dolomite is plagued by trouble. It follows him like a dog no matter where he goes. He doesn't want it. He doesn't ask for it. But goddamn it, motherfuckers, the man can't get no rest. Trouble just keeps showing up. It won't leave our man alone. A rival club, owned by one Cavaletti, an evil white guy, sends some of his torpedoes over to make trouble for Queen Bee's place. It's such bad trouble, Queen Bee has to close up. And all this happens before Dolomite arrives. Dolomite, finding the joint locked up tight as a nun's genitals, sets out to find Hurricane Annie.

This process subjects us to Dolomite's seriously bad night club act again, and some of his clever maneuvering through the social night club maze in his street smart ways, until he finds Hurricane Annie and gets the fact he needs. That fact being: Queen Bee has got her motherfucking ass in a motherfucking crack. Hurricane Annie drives Dolomite and his boys to Cavaletti's, explaining to Dolomite that "Cavaletti gets rich off niggers and dumb honkeys and I bet Queenie and her girls are in there." At this point, we kind of forget who was where. Somehow we have another bad night club act, and we discover Queen Bee intact, bad hat and bad wig complete, and that her main girl, "Java," who we suppose is like her major whore or something - it's nebulous - has been kidnapped, motherfuckers, and put in a death trap while wearing only her underwear.

The plot becomes complex at this point, actually down right confusing, so let's simplify matters. Okay, Dolomite goes to Cavaletti's house and flashes a velvet painting of a couple fucking. Mrs. Cavaletti, aroused to a fever pitch - in other words she is on the verge of leaking honey dew down her leg - just has to have a piece of Dolomite's flesh pickle. It's a tough job, but someone has to do it.

So, Dolomite is forced to use his patent method of interrogation. He fucks her. He fucks her so hard the house literally falls down around them, as if in an earthquake, and Mrs. Cavaletti, having had the earth move for her, as well as a few other celestial bodies, shrieks in great orgasmic release the location of Queen Bee and her girls.

Now, check out Queen Bee's new hat. Back to action. Off clump Queen Bee and her hive of whores to Cavaletti's to attack. Of course, everyone knows karate, and of course, the grand master of the grand masters is Dolomite, who shreds everyone without losing the jaunty angle of his pimp hat, and...

Ah, fuck it.

Everybody gets their ass whipped that isn't with Dolomite and Cavaletti gets his balls gobbled off by rats. And that's The Human Tornado, motherfuckers. Parody, or just dumb, or both? You be the judge. Can you dig it? We were going to do Dolomite, the sequel to Human Tornado, but we've run out of space, so maybe next time. We also promised a comment or two on the lady who shoves sweet taters up her ass, but that has to wait, too.

So next, time, motherfuckers. Can you dig it?

Dolemite*

"Dolemite is my name, an' fuckin' up motherfuckers is my game!" (Rudy Ray Moore, as that cool, suave, motherfucker his ownself, Dolemite.)

Directed: That Bad D'urville Martin Screenplay: Jerry Jones From an adaptation by R. R. Moore

Starring: Rudy Ray Moore as Dolerziite That Bad D'urville Martin as Willie Green Lady Reed as Queen Bee Jerry Jones as Blakely

Yes sir, one Dolemite movie wasn't enough. They had to make several. Actually, four, if you count Disco Godfather and Avenging Disco God father**, but the actual character of Dolemite really didn't jell until Dolemite and The Human Tornado.

In fact, we don't remember if he was called Dolemite in those pictures or not, but we don't think so. Only thing notable about the Disco Godfather is a sequence where a negro on drugs has a nightmare involving being possessed by a demon in a B-ball game he can't control.

He can't shoot.

He can't dribble.

But the less said about that, the better. On to Dolemite.

No, now, wait a minute. A pause. We suppose, before we go any farther, we'll have to take one of our noted asides, and much as we hate to admit it, say in our ever gracious and modest manner - we fucked up.

As Dolemite would say, "Can you dig it?" You see, Human Tornado isn't the first Dolemite movie, as we stated in our previous column. If you don't count the Disco Godfather movies, which are really a different thing, you got to consider Dolemite as the first, and The Human Tornado as the second. This was brought to our attention by our ever vigilant readers, Greg Nichol and David Schow, who, like us, have nothing else better to do. We want to offer our thanks for their correction, and add that we really don't give a shit which came first.

You can't tell by watching them. They're both wonderful shit, but they're shit, nonetheless, and the order of the appearance is unnecessary, and we really don't appreciate being embarrassed like this, so thanks, and we welcome all mail, all your personal opinions, but if you catch us in a mistake, keep it to yourself, okay?

Can you dig it?

Moving right along. Okay, Dolemite. You got a lot of the same stuff here as The Human Tornado, which we slightly prefer. Frankly, why try and decide over a couple of classics. This one, like Human Tornado, has plenty of motherfucking cussin' and shootin' and rappin' and signifying. Our copy, since we're in with the elite and have special privileges and an enormous staff... Whoa! We're gonna do it again.

Another aside. But we thought we ought to stop right here in mid-thought, and try and tell you a little about our headquarters and staff. We wish you were here, wish you could hear the typewriters clattering in the background, the spin of video cassette reels, the popping of popcorn on our popcorn machine from a now defunct drive-in theater, the teaming in and out of our often nude staff, toting in cassettes and snacks, our special crew, pouring Coke syrup, melted candy bars, and pissing on the floor of our office bathroom beneath the pasty, yellow glow of a 60-Watt bug light, so, like all drive-in theater restrooms, it'll suck at your shoes like a bad jailhouse blow job. We wish you were here, it would bring tears to your eyes, the way these people work.

Can you dig it?

Now, where were we? Oh, our special edition of Dolemite. Ours has the movie trailers for Dolemite and Human Tornado, and one of our favorite things on the trailer is where, as not to offend sensitive ears, strategically placed beeps have been added to censor out certain words in the English language. It goes something like this: "gonna jam this beep motherfucking shotgun up his beep motherfucking beep ass!" Now, we ask you, what was the offensive word obliterated from the trailer? Also on the trailer is this, a voiceover narration by our hero, Dolemite: "I'm the man that killed Monday, whupped Tuesday, put Wednesday in the hospital, called Thursday to tell Friday not to bury Saturday on Sunday. I'm the one that had the elephants roosting in trees and all the ants wearing BVDs. From the first to the last I give 'em a blast so fast that they're life is past, before their ass has even hit the grass. See me uptown, crowned and renowned! Delayed, relayed, mislaid and parlayed. Hatched, matched, snatched and scratched. Whacked, jacked, smacked and cracked. Bootblacked, blackjacked, race tracked and flapjacked.

And still coming back! If you crave satisfaction, this is the place to find that action. Coming to a theater as its next attraction, it's a picture that will put you in traction." Hey, we got to say it. Fuck Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, and Carl Sandburg. Give us Dolemite. Along with a translator.

As for the movie, well, this one just proves that behind every successful man, there's a woman. Certainly, Queen Bee has been there for Dolemite. This one begins in prison with Dolemite walking into the warden's office, since he's been in a spot of trouble and is serving time.

Now, hold on. Dolemite was set up, folks. He didn't actually do the rap he's in for: narcotics and possession of stolen goods. No sir, he was set up by some cracker cop motherfuckers, as you might expect.

Anyway, Dolemite swaggers into the office, and there sits Queen Bee with the warden. She's been trying feverishly to convince the warden that Dolemite was framed, and now they believe her, because the plot has to get underway. Fact is, not only do they believe her, they want to make Dolemite a special agent so they can catch those bad cracker cops. Only four people other than Dolemite know about this plan. The warden, Mama Queen Bee (just Queen Bee to her friends), the Governor of California (Ronald Reagan, maybe?

Shit, if he was working with Dolemite, our estimation of him goes up a notch. Maybe two.), and an unidentified FBI agent. Dolemite is sent out into the world to do his deed as a special agent, and is met at the prison gates by a Cadillac limo full of whores. And the man isn't going to be out there brushing elbows with regular folks dressed like a field hand neither.

They've brought him his signature pimp suit and hat. But let us tell you, because, brethren and sistren, we're here to do just that, the evil doers of the world keep an eye out for folks like Roy Rogers and Dolemite. Because they know when heroes like that are on the prowl, evil doers are going to have to take a holiday. Either that, or heaven forbid, someone is going to have to whack Dolemite.

Hey, we ask you. You want that job? You want to fuck with Dolemite? Yeah, that's what we thought. But not everyone is as bright as our readers.

Soon as the Cadillac starts to roll, it's followed by some ne're do wells. Henchmen of Dolemite's arch enemy, Bad Willie Green. Dolemite isn't having this shit. He sets up an ambush Dan Quayle would have seen coming, and whacks about four people. The last of which is a white boy. Dolemite makes a show of the white boy's dancing skills by shooting at his feet. "This motherfucker's got rhythm," says Dolemite. Then he drills the bastard in the belly.

Good for him. You see enough bad dancing on the Grand Ole Opry. The white boy's final cry for help is answered by a whore's straight razor across his throat. What a way to start your first day out of prison. And then it gets worse. Dolemite discovers his arch enemy, Bad Willie Green, has taken over his night club, The Total Experience, which had been left to Queen Bee to take care of. Dolemite asks: "Who's taking care of the club now?" Queen Bee: "We don't have the club no more." Dolemite: "That club was my pride and joy and you give it up!" Queen Bee (cocking her wig at a self righteous angle): "I didn't give away shit! We lost it. Me and these girls had to sell pussy on the goddamn corner, trying to save your black ass. We almost lost the house." And what a nice house it is, too. Dolemite has purpose now. He wants that shitty, fake fur, strobe lit night club back, and he wants it now. He tilts his pimp hat into a Get To Humping position, sets out to trash Bad Willie Green, get his club back and find out who shot his nephew in a drive-by. Yeah, there's a dead nephew, too. Queen Bee has had all the whores trained to be karate experts.

So they actually are a "Fuckin' commando team."

They use their skills to protect business as Queen Bee describes how a trick tried to walk without paying his hundred dollar pussy fee. Thick: "I am Joe Blow The Lover Man! You should be paying me, bitch! Here's two dollars. Git some douche powder and keep it clean for me next time." Queen Bee explains to Dolemite what happened next: "He's in the hospital yet with his ass in a sling."

It's pithy dialogue like this that just keeps a viewer coming back for more. On the other hand, pithy dialogue aside, one has to wonder three things. These whores are so bad, why ain't they still running the club? Or why ain't they getting it back? And lastly, why is Dolemite a special agent? Was he assigned this position so he could reclaim his disco club and give free entertainment to the law enforcement community? Dolemite hits the streets looking for "The Creeper" - not the one played by Rhondo Hatton - also known as "The Hamburger Pimp." Queen Bee thinks The Hamburger Pimp might know who popped a cap on Dolemite's nephew, but ole Hamburger, once found, is so strung out on heroin and wine, he doesn't know his dick from a walking stick. Dolemite plies

The Hamburger Pimp with an offer of money for heroin, and just when the Hamburger Pimp is about to spill the beans, Bad Willie Green's people blow him away. Queen Bee's wigs still look good. Probably having been dragged beneath a car to reach that apex of styling that's her trademark. Dolemite has changed suits at least six times, as well as matching sombreros. They all look sharp.

Now, since this isn't your usual talking heads picture, or just another dumb action flick, the plot requires some real consideration. (And if you figure it out, please drop us a line. Once again, that's in care of Trash Theater at Cemetery Dance Magazine. Our non-human companion, Gort, will stop by there once a month to pick up our mail, provided his driver's license hasn't been revoked again.)

We return you now, to Dolemite. So, since there's more film time needed than there is script, Dolemite gets framed again. He goes to jail. His bail is paid by a beautiful woman. She picks him up in front of the pokey in a red 'Vette and drives him right to her bedroom where she receives her reward weenie. Okay, drop the lovely lady in the 'Vette out of the picture. She's served her purpose.

A grease ball, white politician shows up in the plot, because more time is needed, and he's on Willie Green's payroll, and . . . Well, in our classic tradition of summing up, as with The Human Tornado, let us make a similar attempt here. The shit hits the fan and everybody gets a little on them. Dolemite gets his disco club back and the movie wraps at the Grand Re-Opening of The Total Experience. Queen Bee is doing the announcing, and Dolemite has on yet another suit from Hell's Formal Rental, and we CUT*** to the fat-assed, grease ball, white politician.

We get a glimpse of him running around in his house, naked, except for his thick and thin socks (God, we hate those type of socks), and by this time the plot is as mixed up as pig slop, and characters pop in and out like turds bobbing in a septic tank. And you know what happens next? Well, the bad cops, who you've probably forgotten, get nailed by the FBI agent (forgot him, too, didn't you?) and there's a nasty fight and Bad Willie Green gets it, because Dolemite is mad as hell and he ain't gonna take it no more. He rips out Willie Green's heart with his bare hands! There you have it. The hog's on ice, and this picture show is all through. Let's close out with a quote from that Ace Motherfucker himself, Dolemite. Not because it has anything to do with anything, but because it's in the Dolemite tradition. Misplaced and a little confused.

"You rat-soup eatin', honkey motherfucker." Can you dig it? Suggested snacks while viewing Dolemite. Fatty, barbecued pork ribs and a box dinner from Church's Fried Chicken containing two wings, a drum stick and a jalapeno pepper. Well, we've run out of space again, and still no comments about the lady who sticks canned yams up her ass.

We're beginning to think we really don't care. And once we make our comments, it'll only be a few sentences anyway. But hey, we've whetted your appetite, so some comment is forthcoming, even if Gort has to make it. Speaking of Gort. He's left his position at the video screen, and has just taken a rather large crap in the coffee maker, which is our signal to break for lunch.

So, until next time we open up the vaults of Trash Theater and figure out what the hell we're going to review, we'll be talkin' to you.

FOOTNOTES

Last column, Dolemite was misspelled. This was Lansdale's fault. He can't spell.

Actually, we've never seen Avenging Disco Godfather, but we're lumping it in because it sounds completist. Anyone out there has a copy they don't want back, send it to us care of Trash Theater Cemetery Dance Magazine, and we'll review it. This goes for other movies as well, if we find enough items to gamer our interest, or if money is attached.

This is a movie term. It means like when you're doing this scene thing with actors, that you decide to go somewhere else for a while, and you CUT to that place, meaning you show what's going on there, and then, later, you can, if you want to - well, you can't, but the director can - CUT back to the original scene, or somewhere else. Okay? Shit, now we need to explain director and scene. Hey, trust us. It's just movie talk. Can you dig?

Part Two

Parents

81 minutes.

A Bob Balaban Film

Written by: Christopher Hawthorne

Directed by: Bob Balaban (Psssst. Here's why they call it a Bob Balaban Film. You see, no one had anything else to do with it, really. A director, see, he's like, well, you know, magic.) Produced by: Bonnie Palef Starring: Randy Quaid, Marybeth Hunt, Bryan Madorsky, Sandy Dennis, Kathryn Brody, and several pounds of raw meat and entrails.

Food is the subject of our column this time. And child abuse. You might not think the two go together, but we're going to show you differently, through the sweet metaphor of white collar cannibalism.

You see, we, the USofA are a meat lovin' people. Ain't nothing better than throwing a slab of decaying cow meat on the pit or brewing up a big batch of Tex-Mex Chili, which, by the way, we are doing here at Trash Theater even as we dictate this to our secretary, Bambi. We should pause for a moment of introduction. Bambi just went to work for us this week. Her prison record and facial tattoos* do not concern us. Her inability to type more than fifteen words per half-hour is unimportant.

You see, what she can do, is cook. And she's not very smart, so she works cheap, almost as cheap as Gort, our non-human companion, whose idea of payment is a bag of pork skins.** So, say hello to Bambi. She'll be handling our correspondence from here on out, and if you send anything we consider distasteful, then Bambi will bring her entire three-hundred and forty pounds and her taped axe handle over to your house and will shove said axe handle up that nasty little slot between your ass cheeks about as far as she can get it, and if her prison record is to be believed, she can shove that dude pretty goddamn far. Bless her ole Momma's heart. And ass. Parents.

This one takes place in the fifties, and it's the nightmare version of Beaver Cleaver's neighborhood. In fact, let's make that Beaver Meat Cleaver's neighborhood. It's the Yankee version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, minus bad teeth and Drayton Sawyer's Rolling Grill and dropped "g" letters on the ends of words that Yankees waste their time giving "g" letters to. Make a film about the South or Texas, you immediately got to have some retards with chainsaws and enough slobber to fill a mayonnaise jar and a whole bucket of missing "g"s on words, but you go up to Yankee land, well, you got to be careful, 'cause the nuts don't always look like nuts, and in the case of Parents, they're pretty straight lace looking. Story is about a fine family of three. Mom and Dad and little Mike. They're the kind of family would fit anywhere in any town.

The boy is about twelve, subject to chronic nightmares, some triggered by mere adjustments made in his PJs, which goes to prove, you got to put your goddamn jammies on right. He has a bad dream, and his Mom explains it away with he hasn't got his jammie shirt on. Wear your jammie shirt, those dreams will clear right up. Only they don't. But he's got his Dad to help him deal with the nightmares. He gets scared, Dad knows what to say. The Gestapo and the North Koreans ain't got nothin' on Dad. Mike, he's scared of the dark, so Dad, very comforting, says, "Mike, the cellar is dark. Your room is dark. Everything is dark at night. Pretty soon we'll turn off all the lights and it will be dark everywhere."

Then good ole Dad points to his own head and sums it up. "You know, there's one dark place you have to be very careful in. You know where that is? The human mind." And Dad leaves Mike in the dark, where he dreams of floods of blood and grisly horrors. The family has just moved from one Yankee place to another, following Dad's job as a chemist to a local plant doing some bang up work on developing powerful defoliants. Dad, he don't give a shit where he works. Fact is, he don't give a shit about anything but prime cuts of meat and the resulting leftovers.

At home, Dad, Mr. Laemie, is the king of his supremely honky castle. His wife, Mrs. Laemie, she knows how to please him. She's a disconnected Betty Crocker, ever the perky homemaker, nose to the cook book. She stands behind her man, no matter how bad he fucks up their son. She's willing to say, "Honey, don't," to Dad when he messes with Mikey's head, but that's about the end of it. First day in a new school, Mikey's teacher, Miss Baxter, asks the kids to share some new facts with the class. Mikey, he's got a fact. He says: "Take a black cat and boil it in an oven. And you peel off the skin until the bones are cleaned off. And you chew on the bones and you'll be invisible." Miss Baxter switches the subject, asks Mike if he has a cat or a puppy. Nope. No puppy or kitty at Mike's house. Later on, Miss Baxter has the kids do portraits of their family. Mikey draws strange and savage pictures of three monsters completely covered in scribbily red lines. The teacher, she's worried.

Not only is this bad artwork, there's something symbolic in all this. She's been to school, see, and knows some things. Draw some red lines through monsters, there's some bad shit brewing somewhere. Mikey gets sent to the social worker, Millie Dew, and they become friends. She's certain Mikey's home life is on the odd side. He has weird views on things. She speculates and Mikey goes home. Later on, Mikey's dreams get worse, and one night he wakes up thirsty, goes into the kitchen for a drink of water, and finds his parents rolling and fucking on the floor. And we're talking kinky loving too. Nothing so sissy as whipped cream and chocolate, rubber pants, dill pickles, and big rubber dicks with knobs on them. They're rutting around in about twenty-five pounds of human guts. Dad is pissed. He was getting some pussy. Mom, she tries to gloss things over, tucks a dazed, little Mikey back in bed, Mikey having seen something he cannot explain on any level to anyone. Mikey's nightmares become more intense, and boy are they visual. Like visions created by Dali while painting with an electric potato peeler up his ass.

Mikey follows his Dad to work one day. He creeps around inside the building, discovers a whole batch of bodies. The ones used for tissue experiments. In comes his Dad. Mikey hides under a lab table while his Dad takes out the carving tools and carves some kidneys and loin roast off one of the stiffs. This fits in with Mike's gut reactions that things are weird with Pop. He knows now why he always shunned the meat at the dinner table, why his instincts were against it, and why Dad was so agitated with him, called him the vegetarian in the family, way you'd say "the Ku Kluxer" or the "public masturbater."

To Dad, this meat was sacred. A pot roast was like the Sacrament. Millie Dew, bless her stupid little heart, decides she wants to help Mikey, and she goes over to the Laemie house to snoop around. This is like a serious fuck up. She finds a body in the basement, and Mr. Laemie finds her. Millie, she gets cut, several times. That night, Millie, she's swimming with the carrots and taters, and Miss Laemie announces proudly at the dinner table to her family, "I trimmed off all the fat." Things escalate. The boy is a disappointment to his father, who sees him as nothing better than a goddamn carrot gobbler. Dad has finally had enough, and in a rage grabs the kid and threatens him. Mom protests. After all, she kinda likes the boy. Dad, he's not impressed with the protest. He's logical. "It's okay, Lilly, we'll make another, and raise him right!" We don't want to tell you much more.

Some interesting silverware techniques follow, the Laemie house gets warmed up good, there's a film ending connection with the old and good movie, The Bad Seed, and the Beave's neighborhood is once again safe for democracy and legitimate pot roast. Some notes: Great food preparations scenes. Fab looking human meat loaf. (Yea!, pass the ketchup!) And, a real message.

That's right, we're gonna say it. This isn't just your regular cannibalism movie. It's a valid metaphor for child abuse. The abused and confused child, tortured not so much physically, or sexually, but emotionally. Good ole Dad always making it unpleasant for him, talking about the dark, wanting him to eat human meat. Mom, turning her back, ignoring what's going on to keep the husband happy, thinking that's the ticket, chirping right along like she really is June Cleaver (thank goodness no one is). Parents has its funny moments, but ultimately, it's a disturbing film. Not because it's about cannibalism and has Sandy Dennis in it, but because it touches on real childhood fears. Such as Mom and Dad may not be just exactly right.

We highly recommend this. But not to be watched with the kids, or staunch vegetarians. Dogs and cats may not like it either. Let's wrap with appropriate snacks. Well, almost any meat product would fit right in with this. But, a three weenie sandwich on a white bread bun with mayonnaise and a side of macaroni and cheese seems like the ticket. Oh, and don't forget the big ole tumbler of purple or red Kool-Aid.

Okay, it has to happen. You begged. You pleaded. You insisted. So, here it is. We're finally going to do it. We're going to talk about, that's right-- The woman. The sweet potatoes. The asshole. You see, there's this woman named Karen Finley, she's like a performance artist or something. She's relevant. She's a feminist, and we got to tell you, we at Trash Theater have been moved by her. You see, to speak out against the horrible abuse against women, our stupid passion for consumerism, Karen Finley goes bravely where no woman has gone before. She gets up there on the stage and drops her trousers, and most everything else, and then, right there in front of God and everybody, she shoves canned yams (we prefer to call them sweet taters) up her asshole. We are not making this up.

If ever a blow has been struck for art, feminism, and anti-consumerism, then Karen has struck it. Or shoved it. Or something. We were a little confused as to if she does this with the taters still in the can, or if she takes them out of the can before shoving, so we here at Trash Theater, following in the bold steps of Karen Finley her ownself, experimented. We found you shove those taters up your asshole while in the can, it hurts.

We finally had to hammer the can to a point on one end, get some forty weight lube oil on the cans, and with one of us holding the salad spoons, the other bending over and Gort or Bambie shoving, we were able to get the whole goddamn can up there. The getting it out was some work, and required a couple sets of salad spoons and a rubber glove and a determined attitude. We found just taking them out of the can and shoving them up our assholes was a hell of a lot easier, though there is the waste involved. You leave them in the can before you shove them up there, make your statement, you can then wipe the can off, open it up and fix those taters in a casserole with baked marshmallows on top.

Anyway, we now understand what Karen was trying to say, and we suggest you do not try this at home. We are, by the way, professionals. What we think is a crime is the fact that Karen Finley was turned down, get this, turned down, for a National Endowment of the Arts. The goddamn, scum-sucking pigs, the male chauvinist consumerist assholes. To think they wouldn't want to give this lady money for her art, money to finance her lifestyle so she can go up on stage and stick yams, or even a goddamn watermelon, up her ass.

What has happened to our love for the arts? Have we become so enraptured with AIDS research and help for the homeless that we don't know a good artistic deal when we see it? We here at Trash Theater are fucking outraged. Come on National Endowment. Come around. Give her the grant. Let's get Karen on down to the Piggly-Wiggly so she can get her a couple cans of canned yams and a striped rattlesnake watermelon. Remember, America is about life and liberty and the arts, and the freedom to publicly shove stuff up your asshole and get paid for it.

In honor of Karen Finley, we here at Trash Theater are instituting the Trash Theater Canned Yam Award. This award will be given whenever we feel like it to those who deserve it. The envelope please. The Rue Morgue. All right. The Rue Morgue recently invited Andrew Vachss as a guest to their bookstore to do a signing, and right before his arrival, printed in their newsletter that they thought his novels pandered to child molesters. When numerous letters and phone calls poured in protesting these comments about Mr. Vachss, the Rue Morgue, in their ever fair and vigilant manner, printed excerpts of the letters in their newsletter and then went on to indicate that they had all been engineered by Mr. Vachss, despite the fact the letters came not only from friends and fans, but from colleagues and people Vachss had never heard of. The Rue Morgue just couldn't accept the truth.

They fucked up. They made stupid comments. They were rude to invite someone to a signing and then try and plant a note like that in their newsletter. People like that, they got to deserve a can of yams up the ass. So, we salute you with our first honorary Trash Theater Canned Yam Award, and no lube oil. So, Rue Morgue, our best wishes, and up your ass.

FOOTNOTES

*One, written in Latin, reads: Suck Blood From the Balls of Satan, You Ass Wipe.

**We actually say pig skins, but we like to be polite in mixed company.

***It should be noted that Lansdale, like Dan Quayle, our erstwhile Vice President, wanted to spell potato with an "e" on the end here. He actually got in an argument with Bambi about it, and Bambi's supposed to be stupid. Even Gort sided with Bambi and Webb on this one. Lansdale and Quayle, they can't spell potato.

On a personal note. Need it be said that our opinions do not necessarily reflect those of Mr. Chizmar, whose hand feeds us, and whose hand we bite in turn. Next time: Trash Theater Anniversary Office Party! Live! Blow by blow account! (Brought to you by those bastions of good taste, JoeR. Lansdale and David E. Webb, their ownselves.) Okay, we can't get back into our offices yet, due to all those damn snakes, which seemed to have bred under one of the couches and produced a whole flock of baby copperheads, and our exterminator is currently in the hospital.

Seems Billy Sue Constantine of We Pest The Pests, in spite of experience, misjudged the speed of a striking copperhead, and is now in the hospital with a vagina^1 the size of Richard Nixon's ego. We're talking big, so big the vagina sleeps in a chair beside the bed. I mean, you look over at Billie Sue, lying on her side, her vagina in that chair beside her, it looks like someone has put a box of heart-shaped Valentine candy there, rested the box on its side. That's exactly how it looks, except this box has a pulse.

While we're on such matters, we'd like to tell you this. Billie Sue, in that special spirit that's made her the life of many a smoker and bachelor party, told us a story about how her ex-husband, Floyd, who played second accordion in a polka band, while helping her eliminate rattlesnakes from an outhouse, decided to take a leak, only to discover that a rattlesnake had somehow curled up under the rim of one of the two-holers--actually, she said shit had caked up under there hard enough to form a ledge and the snake had gone to sleep on it--and something about the look of Floyd's vienna sausage doing the boogaloo above its head, spitting wee-wee, perhaps resembling some reptilian mating ritual, or more likely a snaky challenge, excited the rattler, and in defiance, it rose out of there and struck Floyd four square on the penis^2. Floyd stumbled from the outhouse, fell out on the ground, the snake dangling from his joint^3 with the tenacity of a Jehovah Witness with his foot in the door. Billie Sue said the irony of it was, way it swelled up, it was the first time Floyd had a hard-on in a year, and damn if he couldn't use it. He died too. Billie Sue wouldn't suck the poison out. She said she'd promised her boyfriend her lips would touch no other bulbous, throbbing member but his. ('Course, this was before she accidentally backed over her boyfriend while he was sleeping in the driveway next to his water dish.)

Billie Sue's story is for those who think Dave and Joe are a little too raunchy. We offer it to you, the easily offended, and we offer our thanks to Billie Sue. And furthermore, for those among you who wrote letters to say stuff like, "Gee, your column is too raunchy, I'm fifty years old," well, we're getting there ourselves, fifty we mean, and we can't seem to clean up a bit, least not in this column. It brings the fucking worst out in us. In that spirit, let us pause to comment on all the negative mail we've received in the last month. To those letter writers we offer a heartfelt Fuck You.

And, for the more overwhelming positive mail we've received, we'd like to offer our goddamnest thanks and gratitude, though if you want to put a dollar in your envelopes to help support culture here at Trash Theater, do so, as this will be our contribution to trickle-down economics, the benefactors being us, of course. But, we're here for a movie column, aren't we? Our situation is we got no Trash Theater to go to, and of course, that causes a loss of column ambience. We've really had trouble getting our spirits up. But tonight we may have the medicine for that, we have something special for you.

This column is being written by penlight, alternately between Dave and Joe, at The Backroads Drive-In just off 1-20 near Bolivar, and folks, we're talking sad, momentous occasion here. This is the last night at The Backroads. Next week the dozer comes in and levels the place for construction of a new Wal-Mart. That's the bad news. The good news is tonight this last night, it's Dusk to Dawn for one dollar.

And the features are: The Bible, Viva Las Vegas, and something that sounds pretty salty and may involve Billie Sue Constantine in one of her earlier careers as an accomplice to producing on film the exalted two-second "money shot". Need we say more?

The title is, Clam Bake.

This is one of those old-fashioned drive-ins with the playground up front. You'll remember, if you've gone to any drive-ins built before the mid-sixties. This was where the parents could send you after you'd knocked over your soft drink for the third time and put your buttery popcorn fingers on the car's upholstery so much mosquitoes were starting to stick to it. And speaking of mosquitoes, we've got us a Skeeter Coil here, the original White Trash incense, rating right up there with used Kotex stuck to the bottom of the bathroom trash can and the runny, open-sore smell of a busted sewage pipe out back of a trailer park.

This Skeeter Coil stuff is serious, as well it ought to be. You see, every car is a temple and the humans inside are just sacrament, the body and the blood for one of God's favorite creatures, the skeeter--remember, it was his idea to put two of these motherfuckers on the ark. Yes sir, the skeeter, just a little angel carrying a small prayer to heaven. And when you light your Skeeter Coil, it's actually in reverence, all that incense, 'cause it ain't like that shit actually kills or runs off skeeters. No sir, it attracts them.

About the only way a skeeter will die from a Skeeter Coil, is if he's so drunk on your blood he lights on the goddamn coil and catches on fire. Anyway, this is the last night at the drive-in here, and everyone has come to enjoy whatever fate has in store for them tonight. We're all optimistic. There hasn't been a killing here in a couple of months, and maybe some people have been storing up for this close-out night. The management has invited everyone to bring their BBQ pits and fixin's, so things are dangerous already, what with dozens of BBQ pits shooting flames ten feet into the air and idiots squeezing charcoal lighter fluid into the fires as casual as pissing on an ant nest.

So intense is the flaming response, it's peeling the paint off the cars next to the cookers. I guess the management is allowing this 'cause they know they won't be selling too many of their hot dogs cooked on the weenie rotator, the one that passes the weenies by a sixty-watt bulb every few seconds. Way you know the weenies are done is they break into a sweat. Dave here. It's not even good dark yet, and already Joe is down at the front under the screen swinging wildly on the rickety swing set and making it dangerous for those passing by within swing-chain reach. He's already knocked the cowboy hat off one fella and a fight ensued, but Joe is unhurt because the guy fell down when first struck, and Joe, in a moment of good sportsmanship, kicked him in the head while he was there, and the man's children, ranging in age from five to twelve, have had to tote him back to his car, and come back for his wheel chain. Well, I'm going to join Joe down at the swings. Looks like he's having a little trouble with a kid over there. The little bully has pushed Joe off the swing set and is making him eat dirt up by the screen. And who knows, that wheel chair motherfucker might come back. Mutually written movie report to follow.

The Bible (Actually they just do Genesis)

102 long goddamn minutes

Starring: John Huston, Michael Parks, Richard Harris, George C. Scott, Ava Gardner, Peter O'Toole, and a special guest appearance by God.

Directed by: John Huston and narrated by J. Huston

Well, up here under the screen gives us a serious view, though the original screen has been replaced by a sheet of corrugated tin coated with Sherman Williams flat white paint. This makes the movie look as if it's being shown on a large, Ruffles potato chip. (It was all Joe could do to resist putting an "e" on the end of potato. Him and Dan Quayle. D.W.) We thought since we'd been missing a flock of Bible study classes, God would let a spectacle such as this make up for it. We see this, we ought to be good for a lot of lessons missed. We might even have some credit coming. We figure since we've spent so much church-offering money on worldly goods (movies, Big Red, sody waters, Weekly World News, fire balls and peanut patties), that a few bucks given to the drive-in management will suffice as an offering. Hell, they're showing The Bible ain't they? They got to be good people.

Little ways into it, we got cricks in our necks straining to see Eve's bush, which was continually, and artfully, concealed by shadow, a twist of the hip, and a lot of rear angle. Meaning a lot of ass was exposed, but shit, you can see that in an ad in a magazine. There was also this thing with her titties. They were covered by her hair, and when the wind blew, or she moved, the hair stuck to the titties. This is frustrating.

We wondered what kind of glue was used to keep the hair on the titties. Then there's this Michael Parks playing Adam. He hasn't got a hammer. No matter what he does, no matter from what angle he's shown, no hammer is visible, no plums swinging from side to side. Lot of gals are gonna be as disappointed as we are about Eve's bush and titties, and those of mixed persuasions ain't gonna get no thrill either. In fact, the bi-folks are gonna be double mad.

Sometimes, art can be annoying. 'Course, considering the way some of the cars out in the drive-in are rocking, it seems to have been enough to stimulate some of the less intelligent out here. 'Course, there's only one person in some of those cars, so God only knows what the hell they're doing. But back to the movie. What's the deal with the serpent? He has Eve eat fruit from this forbidden tree, which God set up there to tease these two people, then Eve has Adam eat some of the fruit. Then Adam and Eve know suddenly they're without trousers, and that this stuff they been doing, this sticky business where they get dirt and leaves in their ass cracks and explore each other's nether parts, well, it's actually some nasty stuff. And up until then, they just thought they were having fun.

Now Adam knows he has a pecker and it gives him no joy. And Eve, she's an asshole. She's the one fucked it up for the rest of us. Or what about the serpent? He pointed the fruit out, and lost his legs over it. Now he's been split into a zillion different species of serpent, and some of them are still pissed about this and will bite you on account of it. Poor Adam and Eve. God, who up until now hasn't given one flying damn that his creations have been playing hide the salami, is suddenly pissed off, and he throws them out of the Garden of Eden. We don't get it. There's only two people in the world, they want to fuck in their garden and eat fruit off trees, what's the problem? It's not like they're gonna get bodily fluid stains on someone's upholstery or something. Anyway, the movie is quite a Bible lesson, but by the Salty Dog of Abraham, it raised a few questions, some more confusing than the serpent, fruit, and fuck business discussed above. Let's take this Noah guy.

Wow, what a job the Big Man gave him. "Round up all the animals two by two, Noah, and put them on the ark you got to build, because in my intimate mercy, I'm gonna drown every sonofabitch outside of your family That way, you can all interbreed later." "Wow," says Noah. "No shit?" "No shit. Now, I want two elephants, two giraffes, two skeeters, two flies, two worms, two of every motherfuckin' species. I want...." "God, excuse me," Noah might say. "But what about the other animals? The other giraffes, etc? They're not wicked. They'll be drowned with the evil folks." "Fuck em. I want two hippos. Two of every ass-licking animal on the earth. Don't forget snakes, birds, flat worms, and heart worms...." "Excuse me, Mr. God. Captain, sir. Don't you think, since you're like, you know, gonna drown the shit out of the world, we could lose the vermin. It's like a big chance." "What? And decrease suffering? You think those little bastards are some mean shit, those flies and skeeters and worms, that ain't mean, wait until I invent AIDS." "AIDS, Captain God, sir?" "Ahead of your time. Look, I'm a busy deity here. Places to make, people to destroy, things to fuck up. Just do what I tell you." "Yes, sir." Okay, dear readers, you add all those animals up and put 'em on a boat.

You got to wonder how big's this boat? The Bible tells you, but still, it doesn't come out a boat that big. You couldn't get a family and the Lufkin, Texas petting zoo on a boat that size. You'd have serious trouble getting on a couple elephants. And say you got all the animals on the boat, and the rain starts, the weather changes, the barometric pressure shifts dramatically, man, we're talking some waste products here.

For animals, something like that happens, it's like that first, hot cup of coffee in the morning. Some wee-wee is gonna fly. Then you got number two. And when you're talking big animals, you're talking some serious dumps. This is okay for the flies. They got to have this stuff to eat and live in, drop their babies, those cuddly little maggots, but say you're Shem, one of Noah's sons, and the barometric pressure shifts and you can't open a window fast enough, and then Noah, Dad, he comes to you with a shovel and a wheel barrow. You're gonna be busy, that's what we're trying to tell you. Get that finished, it's about time for the regular dumps these animals got to do. And say Noah's got to house the tape worms and all. Who gets to be designated host? "Shem, come here would you?" says Dad. "I got a little something I want you to swallow. Two of all these worms, and by the Great Asshole of God Almighty, don't you dare let your rotting teeth scrape, or in any way harm, one of these worms. God's own special little creatures." And once the ark comes into port, and all the animals get off the magic boat, how long was it before the lions remembered who they were and scarfed a few bunnies? Or rather, why didn't they scarf a few bunnies? No telling how many species ceased to exist right there. You know, stuff like the galblip. Don't hear about it much these days, do you? That's because Tony Tiger ate both those sonofabitches while they were, in their own animalistic way, praising the glory of God. Or say one of a species got eaten. Well, in a few years there goes a whole race of animals. Maybe, in their haste to get off the boat, an elephant steps on some rare form of worm Shem has just regurgitated, killing out a whole future that would have been filled with some unique disease fueled by worms in shit. It could have been heartbreaking. And now that we think about it, what were those animals eating on board? Some of the plant species brought along? Can lions and tigers and bears be vegetarians for forty days and forty nights? Did Noah bring a few extra bunnies to feed the carnivores? Plus, what about genetic diversity? What were these animals and Noah's family drinking? Wee-wee? You got to have a lot of water for big critters and humans for forty days and forty nights. Was the water they were floating on fresh water? Maybe that's the answer. But if it was, how come the oceans didn't run into it and salt it up? There's some serious Biblical questions here that won't be answered in The Old Testament index. Then we get the story of The Tower of Babel, where we meet Nimrod, whose kind of the top dog and looks like Alice Cooper without a snake.

Did you know everyone on earth once spoke the same language? Least until Nimrod in his arrogance tried to build a tower so high and beautiful it would rival God. God got so mad at Nimrod, he not only punished him, but all the innocents being forced to build the tower. Did it by causing them to speak different languages. This fact cleans up a lot of linguistic problems. God made different languages in one stroke, as punishment. But knowing this, you got to ask some things. How long did it take everyone to teach someone else their language so at least two people could hang out together? And for there to be new races, once again, we're back to the serious fucking problem.

One guy, he's speaking French, and this lady he meets, she speaks some Danish dialect, so they got to teach each other their language, decide what language they like best, which race they want to be, then some serious fucking and child raising is in order, and of course, to make this work, in God's fashion, lot of incest has to go on, 'cause teaching everyone a new language is a pain in the ass, takes up time.

Another point.

About everyone in this movie is white. Where are the Brothers, and the Chinese? The Texans? We could go on about other events in the movie, like the story of Lot, and how he was willing to offer his daughters to the bad people of Sodom to fuck in place of giving over a couple of angels he was protecting, who didn't need protection. Or we could talk about the part where later he fucked his daughters, and if this was in the Bible, why was it left out of the movie? It should have been there. In the Bible, God seldom missed an opportunity for some relative to fuck another relative. It was kind of a standard plot device, along with someone getting hurt or brutalized in some terrible fashion. God knew how to keep things from getting boring. We could probably spend a little time on Abraham, and how God tells him to kill his son as a test, just because God likes to know where he stands in the hearts of his chosen people. But we did all that, we'd be here till about the time the new Wal-Mart was opening its doors. But, before we move on to Viva Las Vegas, let us leave you with a movie snack suggestion for The Bible. Unleavened bread. We brought with us some of Dave's hot water cornbread.

We also brought a big container of black-eyed peas with sausage meat in them, but we guess that isn't Biblical. But the cornbread's close. There's no yeast in it, and you can sail it like a miniature frisbee if you get bored. All right, all right. The Cemetery Dance Police are cutting us off, and we've still got the rest of the night to go, but we'll report on the other two movies next time.

Anyway, before we leave you, we got to admit we're in kind of a tizzy right now. The drive-in is surrounded by a tin and a three strand barb wire fence, and people stand in the woods nearby with their lawn chairs waiting for it to get dark, then they come out and hop over the fence and set up front near the screen. One fella, with a lawn chair, has snagged his balls on the top wire and is yodeling like a Country and Western singer. People have all turned on their headlights illuminating the work for the ambulance drivers who've just arrived. Some fool produced a pair of wire cutters, and before we could get to him, he cut the wire. You should have seen that wire spring twelve feet into the air, snapping into a tight coil, flinging the ole boy's nut sack into a thirty-foot, moonlit arc, terminating in a hole-in-one in some gravitationally impaired lady's Dr. Pepper cup, which fortunately, turned out to be well iced. One of the E.M.T.s wrestled her to the ground, strained off the Dr. Pepper between his fingers, and is now screaming to keep them nuts on ice until they ship him off to Houston to get them hooked back up. The ambulance has just whipped out of here, hot with lights and siren, smashing two ice-chests, a lawn chair, and something that had been moving under a blanket, but is now being ignored as the car lights and horns have ceased, and the projector is rolling, and here comes, Viva Las Vegas!

NOTES

(This means some little notes that explain confusing things in the text.)

For our not so cultured readers, vagina is not a Southern state that fought for the Confederacy.

It's a pussy. A poontang. A cunt. A gash. A slit. The honey hole. A happy, sucking wound. A weenie-squeezer. Snatch. The ole sausage grinder. The Venus Mound. Her womanhood, etc. Do we make ourselves clear?

This is not, as David has suggested, a French word for several ballpoint pens. We're talking hammer here. Tool. Rod. The ole hanging meat. The piston. The bobbin' dog. The battering ram. The dick. The cock. The flesh pistol. The meat cutter. His manhood. Clear?See above

In porno films, when the meat pipe blows the mayonnaise, this is called "the money shot" because it's the one the viewers (mostly male) want to see.

Part Three

Viva Las Vegas & Clam Bake

Last time, due to a nasty accident in which a would-be drive-in sneak-in lost his testicles to a snapping barb wire, we were forced to go overtime in describing the necessary emergency techniques used to, hopefully, have this guy's nuts sewn back on, and therefore lost valuable movie reviewing time.

We're going to return now and pick right up where we started.

The rest of the movies are:

Viva Las Vegas, 1964

86 min.

Starring: Elvis Presley, Ann Margret, Jack Carter (Remember him from . . . something. Hey, was this the Maverick guy or the shitty comedian with the same name?) William Demarest (Remember him from My Three Sons?)

Directed by: George Sidney

The Brain That Wouldn't Die, 1963

81 min.

Starring: Herb Evers, Virginia Leith, Adele Lamont, Leslie Daniel, Paula Maurice.

Directed by: Joseph Green

Clambake,1967

97 min.

Starring: Big N, his own goddamn self Shelly Fabares, Will Hutchins (Remember him in Sugarfoot?) Bill Bixby (Remember him in The Hulk?)

Directed by: Arthur Nadel

It should be noted that we are writing this now in the cheery glow of a car fire, flaming two rows away. We thought at first a barbecue grill had gotten out of hand, perhaps too much gasoline tossed or an overly greasy pork chop that flamed up, but turns out an eye witness we talked to named Cletus, explained it like this.

"Well now, I was over'n that pickup right there. The one with the gun rack in the back and the hippie's skull on the hood ornament-got that back in 1968. One shot. Right through the liver. Well, I was sittin' there and whenever the movie got born', I'd take me a peek over there, cause the way my truck is all jacked up, I could see what they was a doin', and it wasn't Baptist business, I can tell you that..."

To make his long, meandering story short, seems Cletus was watching this gal with a bouffant hairdo, and she had her head bobbin' in the lap of this fella wearin' a Hawaiian shirt and polyester knits, and she was doing a sword swallowing act, and damn if she and this fella didn't get so worked up, he kicked a foot up and hit the lit skeeter coil on the dash and knocked it into her hairdo, which was ripe with Aqua Net hair spray. That dude went up like a dry wasp's nest, flames jumped to that ole boy's shirt, caught them polyester slacks on fire, speedily spread to them goddamn vinyl seat covers, and that was all she wrote. Damn car blazed like a rocket engine.

Anyway, that was the lead up, and by then, we were over there, and the car was a blazin', and hands and heads were pokin' out of the car-there were only two people in there-but they were poppin' from one side to the next so fast, trying' to get out, you'd have thought there were a dozen. It was just horrible.

Someone yelled, "Kick some dirt on the fire," but there wasn't any available dirt. Just asphalt, so that didn't work. Some cold drinks were tossed, but that was like trying to put out the sun by pissin' on it. We were all frantic, then a fella yelled from the crowd. "Whoa! This here car's got Yankee license plates. It's from Michigan."

A silence descended on the crowd, and they began to move back. A woman with a baby gently instructed everyone: "Back off. Let 'er burn."

Dave and Joe didn't share these sentiments. We think Yankees are okay. Well, they're kinda okay. We don't mind some of them. Some of our best friends are Yankees. They're all right you don't associate with them, too much. Don't be seen with them. Well, they're all right in their place.

Anyway, them damn Yankees burned right up. They weren't watchin' the movies anyway.

Little later, on our way to the concession stand, we saw a sign spelled out in popcorn on the asphalt next to the charred hull of the automobile containing the burnt skeletons of the amorous Yankees. In bold popcorn letters someone had written a touching sentiment: WELCOME TO TEXAS, GODDAMNIT.

Anyway, this little distraction is soon forgotten when Elvis starts blatting "Viva Las Vegas" from 165 drive-in pole speakers.

In the background, back there in them cars and pickups, you can actually hear them blue haired cracker ladies sucking them stretch pants up their cunts, they're so excited 'cause Elvis is on the screen. Lot of old fat peckerwood fellas ain't had a round of snatch since Elvis's Hawaiian special, are now getting their poles greased, and it's a sure thing the bulk of them peckerwoods will be purchasing Elvis's collected works on video and CD tomorrow at K-Mart, maybe combing what's left of their hair back and coloring it black, and splashing on that Elvis brand cologne.

So Elvis is on. His name in fourteen-foot, 1964-style gold glitter letters. The sucking of cunt flaps ceases in the background as we breathlessly await the moment when Elvis's voice hits right on target with that quintessential hon-key attitude: "Gotta whole lot of money to burn, so get those stakes up higher! If I wind up broke, I'll know I had a swinging time."

You see, Elvis, Big E, is a fiercely independent racecar driver. He's on his way to L.A. to pick up an engine for his racecar, but he gets sidetracked by a girl. He sees her. He's hot for her. He doesn't know who she is, and she takes off not telling him, his sausage hanging in defeat in his trousers.

'Course, we all know who that gal is. She's Ann Margret.

E goes to Las Vegas, and he wants this chick, as they like to refer to them in these movies. A term that designates something stupid and mindless, cute and fuzzy, which, in the case of this movie, is right on.

So Elvis, convinced this "groovy chick" is a showgirl, goes from one Las Vegas club to the next in search of her. It's a search designed to treat the males in the audience to a bevy of big-butted showgirl babes dressed in ostrich feathers and tank suits.

This part reminds us of the 1963 movie, The Brain That Wouldn't Die. (Well, it does remind us of it. Otherwise, do you think we would have bothered to mention it?) Part where this doctor's good-looking girlfriend gets her head pinched off in a car wreck, and he wraps her head in a rag, and runs like a scalded-ass ape to his lab, and wires that sucker up to some tubes and wires and an Eveready.

This keeps the head fresh. (Try this with a deceased pet, and let us know how it comes out, will you?) And while it's kept that way, Doc goes out in search of a new body for his Eveready Bunny's head. He goes from club to club (see the connection now?) eyeing female butts, babes in tank suits, looking for just the right one to fit his sugar doodle back at the lab.

This, of course, causes some problems. People really don't want their heads cut off, no matter how much Doc loves his babycums. Tragedy ensues. The head is unhappy. The Doc's plans to acquire bodies turns into a mess, so it ends up the Doc's sex life is ruined, and all he can get from now on is, you guessed it, a little head.

But that's enough. What's most important about The Brain That Wouldn't Die is you shouldn't confuse it with The Brain That Couldn't Die or The Brain That Shouldn't Die (wait a minute, did we make that up?) or even, They Saved Hitler's Brain, which has got to be one of the worst movies made since film was invented, next to a couple of episodes of Barney the Fucking Purple Dinosaur.

And, there's The Brain from Planet Arous, and there are brains with spinal cords that strangle people in Fiend Without A Face and turn to shitty oatmeal when they get a .45 slug through the grey matter. There's also Donovan's Brain, The Man With Two Brains, and one we here at Trash Theater are financing called, That Brain Ain't Gonna Fuckin' Die.

And that just touches the surface on Brain movies, something we hope to do a column on eventually.

Right now we're working on an Insect Fear column, written around a trip to The Philbert, Texas Fire Ant festival, but that's going to be in a chapbook, and you ain't gonna see it unless you buy it from Crossroads Press come Spring of '94, cause it ain't gonna be here in Cemetery Dance, brothers and sisters. It will come with drawings too, but we don't know who the artist is. We've got enough to worry about just putting our notes together on the Fire Ant Festival and trying to heal our ant bite wounds, which have lingered.

But, we don't believe in advertising our stuff, especially in our column, so, the less said about the chapbook, the better.

Crossroads Press address is: P.O. Box 10433, Holyoke, Ma. 01041-1833.

We sincerely doubt anything would happen to you should you not purchase this forty to fifty page chapbook, but we just want to say now, and up front, we don't want to be responsible if something does. I mean, these things happen.

Remember, that's Crossroad's Press: A Nest of Fear or, Trash Theater Goes to the Fire Ant Festival. Anyway, this really isn't the time or place for that, and since that is not our way, to advertise shamelessly, we'll move on.

(Remember: Crossroads Press. A Nest of Fear)

But anyway, this Elvis movie, it's like these Vegas gals could have been the same show girls. Maybe we could re-edit this, you know, splice in the Elvis movie with The Brain That Wouldn't Die.

I mean, if that Doc had found Ann Margret, he just might have turned off the electricity to sugar doodle's head back at the lab, and kept Ann Margret, head and all.

But say we put Elvis in the Doe's part. You know, a race car driver, and he wrecks, and he's got Ann Margret in the car with him, and she gets her head cut off, and Elvis, being the kinda guy he is, just throws the head away. Keeps the body. Maybe he doesn't even want a head on it. Just cauterizes the neck. Hotwires the decapitated corpse to a car battery with jumper cables, least when they have sex he does this, and then we got us a serious movie, something with a little existential angst. Like, does it really matter if your mate has a head or not, that kind of thing. Something about what men with IQs of 3 really want. Call it, Viva, The Vegas Honey Hole That Wouldn't Die.

It could be a hit.

But as for the movie of record, Viva Las Vegas, Elvis, he's searching for Ann Margret. He goes from place to place, even to a room full of-and we find this hard to believe-obnoxious Texas tourists. Elvis takes care of this. Like a pied piper, he sings "The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You," and the Texans, mesmerized, follow him out to a flatbed truck, and he has them hauled to the dump.

Finally, he finds Ann Margret. She's not just your normal bimbo here. She's a swim instructor-singer-dancer, and she steals the show when she struts her stuff wearing some yeller knit hot pants that are so tight, when she walks, her clam looks like its chewing bubble gum, maybe shelling a walnut.

Course, it was even more interesting where we were sitting, up under the big tin corrugated screen. That way, at times, when she walked just right, her clam stood out above us in bold 3-D relief, causing Joe to faint and horns to blow and random gunfire to go off from an assortment of pistols and deer rifles brought in by the crowd.

At this point, the plot, which stands on spindly toothpick legs to begin with, starts to evaporate. Having stunned the male audience with her protruding, mutant, fleshy article, which is the whole point of Ann Margret's presence in this movie, and if this sounds Male Chauvinist, well, fuck you, because this is an exploitation film, and we know it, and we know stupid when we see it, even if you don't. And if you do, we like you lots. And we're also males and don't mind looking at pussy. There. We've said it up front.

So, the male audience is stunned by Ann, and the female audience have Elvis to look at, and he's got tight pants too, not that we care, and we're assaulted by some musical numbers with all the depth and artistic beauty of a colored light wheel flashing on a foil Christmas tree.

(In fact, there's an album of this stuff, the worst of Elvis, mostly from the movies, maybe all of it from the movies, called Elvis's Greatest Shit. No shit.)

Anyway, everyone wanders around for a while. There's a car race, and guess what, Elvis loses!!!!

Just kidding.

He wins, of course.

Be sure and notice the force field he has over his car which keeps the wind from mussing his hair. Either that, or he's got the goldangest brand of gel and hair spray this side of Essence of Tar Pit.

"Clambake. Clambake. We're gonna have a Clambake!"

We got to admit the title threw us. We thought this was an In-And-Out movie, but it ain't. It's an Elvis flick.

After a few seconds of pouting, however, we got into it.

"Clambake. Clambake. We're gonna have a Clambake!"

We just can't stop hummin' this little number. I mean, it kicks poodle ass with shitty and twangy studio guitar solos, and it's backed up by perky whitebread trumpets that sound a little like a one-lunged smoker blowing through a cardboard toilet paper roller.

Elvis also performs several songs where he glorifies mollusks and crustaceans. Long before The Little Mermaid, and the singing crab, Sebastian, Elvis was doing his tribute to the denizens of the sea.

There's "Song of the Shrimp," 1962, a real toe tapper.

"Do the Clam," 1965, something that'll really get you off your ass.

And, of course, "Clam Bake," 1967.

According to what we've read, this was quite a stretch for Elvis, who (if Brenda Arlene Butler, the author of Are You Hungry Tonight: Elvis's Favorite Recipes, can be accepted as gospel concerning his culinary delights) didn't even like sea food.

About the only thing close to seafood Elvis might have enjoyed, or desired to enjoy, was the tuna he dove in on, wrapped in white cotton pull-ups.

By the way, Are You Hungry Tonight, from Gramercy Books, shows us why Elvis had a weight problem later in life, and checked out early. Drugs didn't help him any, but considering this boy thought a meal wasn't complete unless it could be wrung out to deliver enough grease to comb and plaster down an unruly head of hair, it's amazing he lived as long as he did.

If it wasn't fried or full of sugar, he didn't much care for it. Well, not entirely true. The fact that he did eat vegetables is also revealed in the book. Under a special heading: Vegetables-Yes, The King Ate Vegetables.

When it has to be pointed out like that, you got to have your doubts about how many of them good healthy vegetables he ate. Considering these vegetables include such fine but fattening foods as Heavenly Mashed Potatoes, Mustard Greens and Potatoes, Southern Style, and Butter-Baked Sweet Potatoes, maybe he'd been doing about as good having a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich. Which, of course, he often had, referring to it as a peanut butter and 'nanner sandwich. You eat a couple of these babies back to back, your blood pressure's gonna go up so high your balls will swell up. If you're a lady, we're not sure what swells, but something will.

They sound pretty good, though.

Clambake opens with Elvis tooling down the road-he's always tooling-in a fabulous custom 'Vette. He's got that force field around him again. His hair don't move, no matter how fast the scenery on the back screen whizzes by. He wears a cowboy hat sometimes, and it won't blow off neither. That sonofabitch is welded to his head, even when he tops out at 90 miles an hour.

In this one, Elvis plays a guy named Duster Heyward. Seems this poor Duster feller has too much of his Dad's money, and he is just fed up with it. This money is pissing him off. People don't take him serious. His hair doesn't blow. His cowboy hat stays on. And he's a chemical engineer with plans.

No sir, he's a walking, talking bank account. Nothing more. He's so pissed off about it, that in a kind of play on The Prince and Pauper (Elvis's literary nod to Mark Twain), he trades places with a "regular guy"-played as a goofy asshole water ski instructor by Will Hutchins-and sets out for a zany reality check.

The Regular Guy Asshole heads for Miami in Duster's ride, and Duster goes off on Regular Guy Asshole's Harley, complete with saddle bags. He hits the same hotel where Regular Guy Asshole is supposed to show up, and takes over his life as the new water ski instructor.

Now a new plot angle, as elusive as swamp gas, wavers into sight. Shelly Fabares is a gold digger on holiday. She wants to meet someone and marry them for money. But she meets Duster, and goddamn, if she doesn't fall for the big no-money lug.

Spot the irony here?

Silly Shelly tries to just stay pals with Elvis. One time, while they're taking a cruise on the Regular Guy Asshole's Harley, riding along the beach, Shelly confides to Duster that she has a desire to marry a sugar daddy, and Duster says he'll help her bag one. (We don't remember much about this part of the plot. Seems like she meets someone with money, or something. Frankly, we don't care and we're not watching it again.)

Needless to say, they have a perfectly safe afternoon where Elvis, in another moment of poignant, crushing irony, sings Shelly a song about a sad girl who marries for money not love.

There's a race in this movie too. A boat race. Seems Duster, that clever shit, has developed a super hard varnish in his dad's lab, and needs to prove that it works. He comes up with this only 24 hours before the big race. (You following this?)

Anyway, he whips up a batch, and a bunch of babes show up to have a twist-and-varnish-the-boat party. It's fun and games. Only thing, if the varnish isn't perfect, the boat will self-destruct.

And it's never been tested. Tension crackles in the air like an ignorant lineman straddling a 4,000 volt power line.

Personally, we had invented this, and were worrying about it self-destructing, we'd skip that race, or maybe talk Neal Barrett into driving the boat. Tell him it's okay, or something.

What we might try is putting the varnish on our dicks (Why doesn't that surprise you?) or have the bimbos do it.* The varnish worked, made things hard, think of all the money you could make with it as a marital aid. Talk about a woody.

Meanwhile, we get to attend a cool clam bake party, and it's complete with bongos, twistin' hip huggers with hips in them, and of course, the sacred Baking of the Clam.

Time for the big race, and the suspense builds like a stack of boiled rice kernels. But not to worry, Duster's boat stays in one piece-which is a disappointment-and he wins the race. Meanwhile, Shelly, that silly girl, has come around and decided she'd rather fall for Duster, the water ski instructor.

Imagine her goddamn surprise when he says he is Duster Heyward, and has lots of Dad's money. She just passes smooth out from shock and happiness.

And so do we.

Numbing.

What's the snack on this one? A greasy cheeseburger with lots of cheese. No ketchup, as that would make it a Yankee burger, and the King, he didn't eat no Yankee burgers. Make it with lettuce and pickle, sliced 'maters, sliced red onions, mustard and mayonnaise or salad dressing.

Maybe that fried peanut butter and 'nanner sandwich would be even more appropriate. That was Elvis's signature meal.

This is our end-of-the-year column, coming to you at the first of the New Year, so, a belated Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

The ballots are in. The decision for placing the Canned Yam is about to be made.

And, the envelope please.

And, the winner is, Rush Limbaugh, the Honkey Guru, the conservative Jerry Rubin of the '90s, whose cracker minions follow mindlessly in his wake, and it's a big wake, as he seems to have Elvis's former chef.

Recently, Rush criticized Nacogdoches on his radio show as being populated by nothing other than a bunch of stupid, uneducated crackers. We know this, but we don't like to hear it from him.

Actually Nacogdoches is just like any other place in the world. It's mostly stupid, but it ain't all stupid, and where the hell does Rush "Fat Ass" Limbaugh get off calling Nacogdoches stupid merely because someone from here disagreed with him.

We'd also hope Rush would share his award with his followers here who make us want to fucking throw up. Maybe he could drive it up his ass for a day or so, then he could pass it around, then he could get it back up his ass later.

So Rush, from Trash Theater, the Canned Yam Award, and up your ass!

NOTES

* Well, it's our column, and if we say bimbos would varnish our dicks, then they'd varnish our dicks.

We are celebrities, after all.

UNCHAINED

(Parts 1 thru 6)

A NOTE

The following is a series of six articles written by Joe R. Lansdale in a column he called, "Lansdale Unchained".

As he explains in Part 1, "...I intend to write about pop culture: writing and art and comics and movies and anything related. Sometimes the relations may be tenuous, but I'll do the best I can."

If you are reading my ePub, then you are probably very familiar with Lansdale's writing style, "personality" and his unique variety of stories and ideas.

I have presented all six parts of "Lansdale Unchained", one entry in this epub.

Please rest assured, I have not edited the text in any way.

The only alteration made was to ensure a proper format for your eReader device.

Enjoy ...

Flyboy707

September, 2011

PART ONE

JUST DO IT

(Or Enjoying the Written Word Without Being Owned By It)

(but always have a savings account and a piggy bank, or in my case, I have a bear and a dinosaur and a Batman bank, and a few mutual funds.)

This is the first article of a column I'm calling "Lansdale Unchained". I intend to write about pop culture: writing and art and comics and movies and anything related. Sometimes the relations may be tenuous, but I'll do the best I can.

Let me tell you a secret. Everyone enjoys recognition, a little fame. Let me tell you another secret. If you like it too much it'll eat your guts out. In creative endeavors, like writing, it's the curse, baby.

You start out writing because you enjoy reading and then you write to please a certain in-crowd, usually other authors, or for some, critics and reviewers, and then pretty soon you find an audience, and that my friends is both good and deadly.

We all like to have an audience. You don't have someone reading you, then you don't get to sell your nifty writing, and if you don't sell it, it doesn't matter if you've written a lot or not at all, because a creative endeavor for most people is sharing. No sharing. No writing. When it's in your desk drawer, it might give you a hard on when you go over it, or make your nipples stiff (depending on gender), but it's not satisfying if there are no readers. Reading aloud to the dog doesn't count.

There's something inside the creative mind that thinks it has something someone would want to read, see, or hear. It takes some ego to believe that. Even the quietest, most withdrawn of authors, like to believe they have some worth, if only in that one area. Writing.

But if you find an audience, you began to give your audience what you think they want. Some people can do this very well. They can become rich and famous. They can have so much money that when they fart they blow out spare change, but good as this may be, it can ring a bit hollow if your creativity is within one constant artery, because eventually, that artery gets filled up with plaque of the non-artistic kind, and you're just pumping it out, but it's not a clean pump, because all that plaque you know, it'll make you grab your chest from time to time, and eventually, it just might kill you, creatively anyway. Now, just knocking it out, find that audience and giving them exactly what they want at the expense of all else is not a bad thing if your job is as a prostitute where a certain rhythm of movement, or at least a willingness to take a fucking will get you by, but as an author, well, brethren and sisteren, (yeah, I made that one up) 'tain't so good.

Sometimes the publishers can be a problem. They may want to restrain you. Sometimes that can't be helped. If your publisher doesn't want you to say pussy or fuck or shit or prick or have pronouncements against the powers that be, if you think religion sucks the big ole donkey dick but they fear their readers like sucking the donkey dick, and they want your work to be about kitties and puppies and to be non-offensive, and you aren't that kind of writer, well, you can be, to put it mildly, disappointed.

Doesn't mean you can't modify if you have to, but it does mean there's a difference in modification or adjustment, and bending over and greasing up.

You write to please everyone else but yourself, you might as well get a job at the grocery store sacking groceries. Because you do everything but what you want to do, you aren't happy. You aren't writing for love. You will find yourself reading less, because you no longer know how to enjoy it. Or because you have developed your own formula for success, and it's frustrating to read others who don't share your formula. Perhaps because it sounds different and you think it should be only one way. You are a Baptist of a writer, and they are a Methodist of a writer. You're both working for the same deity, but you have different angles of attack, and of course, like all pious Christians, you think your sect knows the truth and theirs doesn't. The mind narrows, and so does your taste and your ability to absorb new things.

Face it. We're all a little that way. But if we recognize that we are, we don't have to let that aspect of ourselves overwhelm us like some sort of outer space parasite.

Bottom line is if you think you know how it's done and there's only one way to do it, you are on your way to creative destruction and will soon live in a creative world that lacks greenery and is nothing but dry, white sands. It's uncomfortable there. It sucks your soul empty and shits it down a dark gopher hole.

I know. I've seen it. I have friends who have done quite well financially through chasing what they thought was popular, only to be like the dog chasing the car. When they catch it, it wasn't exactly what they expected or wanted.

Now I'm not knocking money and I won't say I haven't written some things for a few bucks in my time, but it's never been my driving force. I have written the things I've wanted to write with as much passion as I could bring to them, and for as large an advance as I could manage. I'm no idiot or blind idealist. But I believe you have to do your work, not the work you think you should do to satisfy some unknown audience. You can't write for others, because, who are the others? You can't please everyone, so don't try. You can only write for yourself, and you can only be yourself. So if your ideas are sharp and clean, put them down. If your ideas are a bit messy, unzipped pants and exposed genitals, then you got to go that direction. Next time out, you might find your muse is all dressed up with a coat and tie, sophisticated. Time after that, the fickle witch may be wearing Bermuda shorts and a sports bra, drinking cheap beer from the bottle and scratching her ass. Time beyond that, nothing but a smile, her pubic hair shaved in the shape of a heart. (Remember, muses are traditionally female, so I've gone with that image. You want a boy muse, hell, you're the creator, go for it. Let him flap his pecker at you if you like.)

You have to follow that muse where it takes you. The bright places, the dark places, the distant planets, the center of the earth, or just over to the 7-11 where you think you saw the story of your dreams behind the doughnut counter.

So you go at your work because it is your work, and it grows out of your subconscious, not some overly conscious design to please. To put it together in such a tedious way that it hits all of the tenets of "good storytelling" will end up knocking you ass over heels, throwing you face down in a puddle.

Here's a secret. Listen up. Everyone wants the secret, and I'm going to be pretentious and offer it to you. Good storytelling is just good stories well told with conviction. You should want to know how grammar works, but you don't want it to work you. You should have some idea of structure, but you shouldn't be afraid to branch off the standard scaffolding. Hell, if you want, tear it down. Understand how it works, then mess with it.

Okay. A confession: I don't want to sound too high and mighty after giving you this valuable secret (later I'll reveal where you can buy all your ideas), but I want you to know, I've written for money. I like getting paid. I always want to know how much something pays and can I get more than that. That's just common sense, money jobs can be jobs for love, I still think like that. I want to get paid for doing what I can do that not everyone can do. Being paid for being in love, that's pretty high cotton.

On the occasions I took the work for money, because there was really no choice. I had to make a car payment, or stick something back so I could write one I was dying to write but knew had about as much chance to make big money as a crippled monkey selling pencils on the one street corner in a dirt road town called Podunk, but I always put as much of myself in them as I could. Sometimes there was less of me available, but I gave it what I had. In a few cases, because I still went at it like I loved it, I came to love it. And the results were a pleasant surprise. But there's a difference in working to eat, and just making more money. At some point, how much money do you really need?

There were other times when money wasn't a question at all.

I was just in the mood to write and I let it go. I wasn't thinking: Wonder where I can sell this? I was just writing. Nothing profound, but something moved in the back of my head and I sat down at the machine and wrote. Whatever came out I let come out. I wanted to be surprised. Sometimes the surprise wasn't all that good and had to go back in the box, so to speak, never to raise its ugly head again. Sometimes it wasn't amazing, but it was curious and I felt the world might like to see it, so I released it into the wild.

Often, I was right to release it. Now and again, maybe not so much.

These writings were not always brilliant, or my best work, but they were me and they came out of me in rush of excitement, or at least mild curiosity. I learned I was happier than the guy or gal who sat up late at night trying to figure how to repeat what they had done before so that they might repeat the success of before, and the one before that.

Again, I like success. Who doesn't? The Bestseller list is cool. You make big money when you hit it. That kind of success is good, but I don't want to be, and refuse to be its bitch. I get there, I want to get there on my own terms.

And let me tell you the most wonderful surprise of all. Sometimes these whims, these urges, turned into the best of my work, and they sold really well. That was a neat surprise. There's an old adage, and in my case it's been true. Do what you love, and the money will come.

Of course, when you the money comes, don't be stupid. Save some of it. We all like to eat. And the old adage, well, shit, it isn't always right. But mostly. So be smart with your money and never be so prideful as to not do a project for money, but again, don't base your career on that. The difference in a hack and a professional is attitude. Remember, I never said don't write for money. I said don't let money be the reason you write.

Oh, and that secret about where you can get all your ideas. I've changed my mind. I'm not telling.

PART TWO

Robert E. Howard and The World of Almuric

When I was a kid I read Edgar Rice Burroughs for the first time, and his stories blew the top of my head off and sent it into orbit. I'm pretty sure that shrapnel from that explosion is still circling the planet, if it didn't knock it all the way to the moon, or beyond. Perhaps it's way out there some place spinning in the black between the stars.

Before I read Burroughs, I already knew I wanted to be a writer, but after his assault of pulp sense of wonder, flashing swords and bold heroics, the die was cast. I had to be a writer. It had chosen me instead of me choosing it. I was wrestled to the floor, pinned, the demon whispering sweet nothings in my ear.

As the pulps might have put it, the shiny and wonderful doom was mine.

This reading, one of the Martian novels, led to a passion for all things Burroughs, and next, all things similar to Burroughs. I read as many stories in this vein as I could. Somewhere around 1970 or so I came across Almuric by Robert E. Howard.

Man. What a killer. There was a taste of Burroughs here, and a big ole dollop of Jack London, and some other influences as well, but there was a whole lot of a guy named Robert E. Howard. Already the things that made him unique were slipping through. Sure, the prose was often rushed and purple, some of these faults having to do with the style of the time, and some because Howard wrote for magazines that paid by the word and times were tough and he needed money.

His work was raw and savage and original and he was a lover of the primitive, or at least the primitive as he viewed it. But Howard was not a primitive talent. He was well read. This is proved by his correspondence with others, and by the discussions Ms. Novalyne Price, perhaps his one true love, reported in her book about Howard, One Who Walks Alone.

Howard was not just hammering at it. Sure, the storytelling was natural, but there was intent behind his work, even if it wasn't of a great literary ambition, and his main concern was that of entertaining the reader. No easy thing to do, I might add.

Take for instance this section from Almuric, as his hero Esau Cairn considers the life he has fallen into on his new world.

"I was living the life of the most primitive savage; I had neither companionship, books, clothing, or any of the things that go to make up civilization. According to the cultured viewpoint, I should have been most miserable. I was not. I reveled in my existence. My being grew and expanded. I tell you, the natural life of mankind is a grim battle for existence against the forces of nature, and any other form of life is artificial and without meaning.

"My life was not empty; it was crowded with adventures calling on every ounce of intelligence and physical power."

There is something of the little boy's yearning for adventure in all of this. The view that the primitive life is a good one, the whole noble savage bit. Spend a week in the woods in your skivvies trying to survive on ants and grubs, drinking creek water and hunting your food with a pointed stick, crapping behind trees with leaves as your toilet paper, and the primitive experience would most likely cause the bulk of us to long for our bathrooms and hot showers and bedrooms and soft beds, our books and our TV remote. But the idea of being free, of being eternally youthful and capable, is just the sort of thing to grab boys and young men by the throat and engage them on some level that has little to do with truth or literary criticism. Howard, like Burroughs, is reaching into that part of us that is forever Huck Finn; the wild boy free of all restraints and inhibitions, out for a ride on the world, spurs dug in, riding the bucks and the jumps like a rodeo rider.

And Howard is studied enough, purposeful enough, to do just that, give us that bucking, wild ride. In these kinds of fantasies, when well done, and Almuric is well done, you can project yourself into the main character, and fill him up, give him bits of yourself that are not in the narrative, become Esau Cairn, constantly capable, youthful, smart, and in the end, guess what?

Yep. You get the girl.

And we're not talking the local poke or the library spinster.

You usually end up with a hot little virgin who can't live without you. And even Howard backs off a bit, gives Altha the "gentler instincts of an Earthwoman". He couldn't quite go the whole hog. Womanhood in most of his stories was still that of the 1930's Texas woman who could cook your dinner, tend you in bed, and cut your throat with a razor if you done her wrong. There is something in the ending of Almuric that makes one consider that soon, Esau Cairn may not be quite so wild, since now there is peace between warring cities, and shortly he could be carrying out the trash, walking the Almuric equivalent of old Rover, wondering why he can't just put his feet up.

But thank goodness Howard doesn't go that far. He leaves us in our bubble, in this false but seemingly perfect world, or at least perfect to that aforementioned eleven-year-old boy, or the eleven-year-old boy inside of most men.

* * *

Again, Howard was very much aware of what he was doing. Even the name of his hero, Esau Cairn, brings up certain images. In the bible, Esau was the hairy one, not thought capable of carrying on the civilization he was, as the elder son, supposed to inherit and push forward. He was the outcast, the rough one, the savage. Howard saw this not as a loss, but as a positive, so it strikes me that the name is a purposeful connection. And Esau Cairn is not only savage, he is dangerous. Doesn't the name Cairn strike close to Cain, the man who killed his brother, Abel? When God asked him where his brother was, Cain replied: "Am I my brother's keeper?"

One gets the impression that Howard wanted to be free of all responsibilities, even the keeping of one's brother, or in his case, his ailing mother. It was all a double-edged sword for Howard. Sure, he loved his mother and was attached to her, but on some level he just wanted to be free. And in 1936, shortly after he knew she would never regain consciousness, had fallen into a death watch coma, he, not so much out of depression, but out of sense of no more responsibility, a lust for dark freedom, lit a blue steel candle that threw him out of this world and unchained him. Perhaps that snap of gunfire tossed him across the black void of space to one of his created worlds like Almuric.

My guess is he hoped so, or wished to be reincarnated in some other time, more savage, more in need of a man of brawn and quick wit.

And if you throw out this idea of his character's name being a connection to the biblical Cain, the name of the ultimate outcast, just leave the last name as it is, Cairn, and you still have an interesting and dark connection. A cairn is a pile of stones erected by someone to mark something of significance, often to mark a burial site or to stand as a memorial to the dead. Death was never far from Howard's mind, and it is interesting that his hero's name bears both the mark of the outcast, Esau, and a tribute to the dead, and if you want to carry the idea of Cain into it, which I admit might be stretching it a bit, but I believe it, you also have yet another reference to the outsider, an outcast, someone who has shirked the responsibilities and the actions of polite society and is living from moment to moment.

I bring this up, and perhaps belabor the point, to show that Howard was fully aware of what he was doing, had literary technique, even if it is with a small "l", and that he was tapping into our knowledge of words and images and archetypes. He was not a primitive creator of tales, a savage genius, but was a clever man of letters with a little boy's heart.

* * *

Burroughs was perhaps more able to suspend my belief quickly, but only slightly, for Howard was just gaining his chops with this one. A few pages in, and I was as hooked as a bass on a handmade fly, right through the gills. Soon I was with Esau Cairn, and in an even shorter time, I was him; a civilized man that didn't fit in and who all his life had held back his energies and physical powers for fear of hurting someone; I was him, loose now on a world that was designed for me, a world where mortal combat was the order of the day, a world where strange monsters slipped, slid, walked, and flew over the landscape; a land where I was forever vigilant, forever in top physical shape and something for the ladies, who I might add, were also primitives, always good looking and secretly lustful minus the pesky problems of real primitives, ticks, fleas and body odor; beautiful maidens who have saved themselves for me to ravish, with, of course, the aforementioned "gentler instincts of the Earthwoman", therefore not carrying the male reader too far from mama.

* * *

Howard, like Burroughs, had that ability to make you believe anything, even when the writing went off a little. I think Almuric has some of Howard's most convincing and natural writing, but there are moments when he strays, when the night oil has burned too long and the fingers have flexed too much on the typewriter keys; little moments any commercial writer will have, but they were blips, nothing more, and sometimes they were interesting blips. But the true measure of Howard was when he strayed we could forgive, because his internal storytelling compass constantly pointed true north.

This also has to do with the method he used to tell this specific tale. It was not a method Howard used as much as Burroughs, but I must admit up front that for me the first person method of telling a story is the best, the truest and the purest, and in the end the most convincing. It is in one way the easiest way to tell a story, and the hardest to do well.

Like Burroughs with his tales of John Carter of Mars, as well as others, Howard uses a foreword to set up the story, and by the time Esau Cairn starts talking, the narrative becomes smooth and swift, and because of the first person narration, believable, at least for the time it takes you to read the book. That's an achievement, friends.

But, it's not all about storytelling, or first person narrative, it's also about the prose, and Howard could turn a phrase, or several of them. He could engage you, excite you, and still stay on target with his theme-shallow perhaps, but constant.

Take this example:

"On his rude throne above us, old Khossuth lifted a spear and cast it earthward. Our eyes followed its flight, and as it sheathed its shining blade in the turf outside the ring, we hurled ourselves at each other, iron masses of bone and thew, vibrant with life and the lust to destroy."

This scene is the theme of the novel, and Howard never loses this thematic intent in his adventure. It is front and foremost, the idea that being close to nature and our basic impulses is the way men and women are meant to live, though there's no doubt that Howard's world is mostly a masculine one, a manly wet dream where one can constantly prove himself through combat.

When I was a kid, I ate that up. It allowed me, the youthful reader, to feel powerful. More powerful than I really felt, and that is the secret to this kind of fiction's success. Again, I belabor, but I am caught up in the spirit, so back off brothers and sisters, stand down and listen to me testify.

Howard gave me happiness.

He gave me adventure that went beyond my own part time Huck Finn experiences.

He gave me lust; what could be better than those savage dolls he portrayed in his fiction. Women who could be feminine one moment, and run with the wolves the next.

Yes, brothers and sisters, I say it once again unto you: Howard speaks to youth, speaks to the youth inside all of us, the frisky part of us that is tired of electric bills and water bills and phones that ring and children that need braces.

It takes a storyteller to truly take us away, to lose us inside the pages of his tale, and what makes a great storyteller is the ability to tell you a bald faced lie and make you believe it, make you part of it, make you the character.

Sure, his characters weren't Ahab or Nick Adams or Augie March, but they were in some ways better, for they were archetypes, and Howard could make us become them. When you get right down to it, some of our finest writers fail to do that. What Howard had was something that is often overlooked. He had the ability to make the narrative the character; it was the totality of the book that was the character, all else was there to serve the story, and to finally create this wonderful, bumpy faced novel with blood in its teeth.

Ray Bradbury, a more literary writer for sure, is still a writer of this ilk. His characters are not to me true characters, no more than his dialogue is real dialogue. What he does is sculpt out a story where a little of this, a little of that, bits of business we don't understand in pieces, but only as a whole, come together to create the story as character.

Burroughs did that. And Howard did that.

This, as well as the ability to convince, is more of an inborn talent than a skill, and it serves a writer well if he or she has it, not to mention it's helpful to politicians as well. Because it is not only necessary to lie convincingly to make your stories work, but on some deeper level, the good storyteller, or politician, must somehow believe his or her own lies to the extent that they become, well, characters of a sort, a thing you can embrace that somehow goes beyond mere words.

When Howard was writing Almuric, or the bulk of his tales, I don't doubt that he entered into a kind of trance that put him right where he was writing about. Made those worlds so real to him that they became real to us.

Maybe Almuric fails to be quite as convincing as John Carter's journey, but there was a similarity in approach, in conviction, and had Howard continued to write in this vein, which is just slightly to the left of his Sword and Sorcery, he would have been very successful. In fact, a series of short books continuing in this style might actually have solidified his career better, at least earlier on. But Howard was all over the map. Sword and Sorcery, Westerns, crime stories, horror stories, you name it, he wrote it. Unlike his peer, H. P. Lovecraft, he thought being a writer meant you wrote, meant you could write when you needed to, not just when you wanted to. He was all about making a living, being able to look any sonofabitch in the eye and tell them to go to hell, because he didn't need them. It was, in a strange way, as close as Howard, the good ole boy writer from Texas, could come to the freedom of the savage.

PART THREE

Little Boys Unite

Recently in this column I wrote an article on Robert E. Howard and his novel Almuric. It got a lot of response, directly and indirectly. I was pleased that so many liked it and were made aware of his work, and I was pleased that it stirred up discussion by those who were less pleased with my comments.

I suggested the idea that Howard was writing for the little boy inside of himself. This premise bent one reader at least a little bit. A very smart and well spoken reader, I might add. But I stand by that comment and add this: So what? That's not a negative criticism. He appeals primarily to boys and men who still remember what it's like to be a boy. Those of us who love the idea of being muscular and powerful, swinging a sword and knocking down the villains, living in the wild with nothing more than our wits to guide us, are more numerous than lying politicians.

Truth be known, we got out there in the wild, we would all most likely be eaten by lions and ants within about an hour and a half, even if we spent the first hour or so hiding in the top of a tree.

It is a fantasy, and a beautiful one, and that always appeals to the adolescent in us, no matter how sophisticated the fantasy might be. That's my opinion, and I hasten to add it's an opinion, and as I've said before, the old saying about opinions is they are like assholes, everyone has one, so take it for what it is: an opinion, not word from On High. I like to think I have enough background to write a reasonable opinion, but I don't expect everyone to agree with me. As the detractor pointed out (and I'm sure he is in good company), there is violence and death in the Howard stories, and therefore it's dealing with real life, but my take on that is how does that make it any less adolescent. In fact, in my view, that's what seals the deal. Where I grew up, hunting, for example, was part of everyday life. Some could say they hunted for food, and back then, many of us did. But mostly people hunt these days because of the joy of killing something. And if that isn't so, then switch to hunting with a camera. See if that works for you. These mighty Nimrods like to feel they are close to the "old" days when it was just them in the wilderness. Of course, in the old days, they didn't have the kind of weapons we have now, telescopic sights, that sort of thing, and they had to hunt or die. But still, it's a little boy's impulse to get out there and bring in the game. And instead of wearing the antlers on their heads these days, they mount them on the wall, which strikes me as even stranger, and certainly savage. I mean, shit, if you're going to take the antlers, at least fasten them to a helmet and wear them on your head, stretch the skins out and tan them and wear them for shoes. Show up for work in that gear. I want to see it.

Nothing like going to bed at night knowing you've protected the world against deadly attacks from squirrels, deer, and assorted birds.

Hey, they're good to eat, and I've eaten them. I eat cows and chickens and pigs, etc. Every time I buy meat, I've killed something. But frankly, chicken is cheaper than all those bullets and beer and the outfits and the gas and I don't have to be embarrassed about playing Nimrod anymore. Being out there with nature is part of it, certainly, but there's something hypocritical in the idea that you're being one with the universe when you're blasting the shit out of birds and animals. You can at least say you're keeping the deer population down. There's a truth to that. You can say you like venison and they don't sell it much in the store. And that's true. I like it too. I like elk as well. But, hey, let's be honest. It's killing something that drives the beast. You know it, and I know it. Otherwise, once again, you'd carry a camera, not a gun.

I even know one guy who, when his son killed his first deer, had the boy wipe the deer's blood on his face. You know, that's kind of creepy. If it had been a bear and he'd killed it with a spear or a knife, you could maybe understand that. Big balls there, but otherwise...not so much.

Somewhere, Bambi sleeps without a father. Or mother. Or brother or sister. But at least when Bambi lays down he can be assured that somewhere a drunk has sobered up and taken the body of his loved one to be processed, and much of it will, when mixed with pork or beef, make good sausage.

Okay, I'm sidetracked and I'm not through.

I even saw in our newspaper a full page article on a boy who had prayed to god to kill his first deer, and god gave it to him. Had a picture of this religious kid and his dead deer. A big motherfucker with enough antlers to loan a couple of lesser deer. And I thought, shit, this kid should have prayed for peace in Iraq, something along those lines, 'cause god is getting distracted giving kids dead aim and dead deer when he could do something important, like ending wars, healing sickness, giving me six more inches on my dick and making me twenty-five-years-old again, but given the knowledge I have now. I also wouldn't mind being a couple inches taller.

All that stuff god is supposed to be able to do, and the kid prays for a dead deer.

This, among other obvious things, assures me that if there is a god he/she/it hasn't any sympathy for us in any manner shape or form. We're an ant farm and our owner has gone off to play. More likely, there just isn't anybody up there. Or he likes seeing deer get shot. Or he likes to make sure good football teams with good looking cheerleaders who show the most ass when they jump get his graces. I mean, think about it. Football players pray not to be hurt before a game, and that's valid, but they also pray to win. This is true of both teams. They don't want to get hurt and they don't want to lose. Some still get hurt, and someone loses. Are they losing because they're not as good a people as the other team? Does god not like them? If they get hurt, is god saying, "Showed that little cocksucker?" Or is it all...let me see what's the word I'm looking for...Oh yeah, bullshit? That's the word.

Yes, is it all bullshit.

And so, Lansdale, as is often the case, strays....

.....

Almuric is a favorite of mine because it reminds me of an author I like even more, Edgar Rice Burroughs. I say this without feeling that I'm out to duel one author against the other. I like them both. Howard was maybe even more grown up about his material (so I give the detractors that), but at heart they both were small boys writing fantasy to keep themselves entertained and to pick up a check. They were both grown men playing with swords, if only in their heads.

Burroughs lived longer, and perhaps being more of this world, with a family and a mortgage, lost some of his love for the work, and therefore some of his appeal. He was successful enough to live pretty well, so he didn't need as much of the fantasy. The books became repetitive and about as inspired as summer camp ashtrays.

But... He wrote some doozies. A Princess of Mars is my sentimental favorite novel of all time, while my favorite in other ways is To Kill a Mockingbird.

You couldn't find two books further apart. Yet they are both about childhood in a way. Burroughs was writing from the inner child, and Harper Lee was writing directly about a child and how a child sees things and becomes an adult. Loss of innocence is a theme I've always loved, and have explored in a number of my own fictions, but I believe on some level, though we may lose innocence, we never lose our yearning to have it back.

Sometimes, springtime in East Texas I'll come out of the house, on the way down to my study, which is the bottom floor, and unconnected to the rest of the house, and smell on the wind some springtime scent, and I will time travel to when I was a young boy in East Texas sitting out under a shade tree reading Edgar Rice Burroughs, or I'll remember another time when I was lying in bed in front of what we called a window fan, which was cleverly called that because it was pushed up tight in a window, and had straw in the back of it, and there was a hook up to the water hose that was supposed to feed the straw with water and make the stirred air cool. The little hook up never seemed to work, but we would take the water hose and wet down the straw at the back of the fan, and that would last for hours, and it made our tall ceiling house cool and wonderful and I would read, and I would be John Carter.

Later, as a young man, divorced, visiting a friend in Berkley, CA, trying to find a job, finally doing day labor with winos and drug addicts, odds and ends type of work, I would end the day by going by a bookstore on Telegraph, if memory serves me. And there, with a few spare coins, I would buy used copies of Conan books. I had read Howard before this, while living in Tyler, Texas, going to the University, newly married (that marriage already dissolving and me not wanting to believe it), trying to go to the university (never finished), and so I knew Howard and I knew his ways. In Berkley, divorce papers served, living on pot pies and a desire to write, I read every one of these Howard books I could get my hands on. When I left to go back to Texas, I was ready to toss out clothes just to get those books back home. And I did, though over the years a few of them got kidnapped by someone here and there.

But I loved them. I loved Howard. I still do.

Still, he was the little boy writing about his idea of a grown man. He may have been a grown man, but the stories came from the child about the idealized man. Hell, Howard even dressed up in cowboy outfits when he was full grown and swung swords against weeds.

I worked hard physical jobs when I was young, and for a long time. I know what it's like to keep your brain alive by visiting places that don't exist. By using that little boy impulse to set your mind free.

On one level, I've never grown up. Even though I write about some pretty realistic things from time to time, the impulse is no different than when I write wild and fantastic things that come from a more obviously adolescent place. Writing is dreaming on paper, and trying to figure out a way to not have to work for anyone and still pay the bills.

Howard never grew up.

Writers never grow up.

Readers wouldn't want them to.

Be it Hemingway telling us about Nick Adams, or Twain telling us about Huck and Jim in Huckleberry Finn, it is always about the inner-child, and note, when I say inner-child, I'm not talking about that pop psychology shit about the inner-child. This is simply that impulse we have to connect with our imagination when it was fresh and buck wild and it allowed us to sail away to some place other than math class. Since I mentioned Huckleberry Finn, and am, as you have seen, not afraid to digress, I'll add that Huckleberry Finn, though about a child, is not a children's book as some think. It is a dark and sometimes disturbing book, and though about childhood, it is also about real things, which Howard seldom was. There are no social issues in Howard's work, and if there are, they are minimal. I add that not as a slight, but as something that seems obvious to me. Howard was even more about childhood dreams than the rest of us. This is an obvious reason for his success. He can do what a lot of writers cannot. He can give us our dreams back. And I should also note, childhood dreams are not all sweetness and light, and in fact many of them are dark as the pit and deep as Pellucidar. Shadows crawl there. Urges collide.

Howard was a fine writer of exciting tales. He was a kind of Texas Jack London. He was a force of nature. Not all he wrote was wonderful. His Elkins stories are overrated, from my point of view. Vultures of Whapeton is so bad it makes my back teeth ache.

But man, when he was on with Conan and Bran Mak Morn and Solomon Kane and Kull and his horror stories, his other creations, including the flawed but highly enjoyable Almuric, he could make the heart flutter.

(Must pause here to add a side note: Many believe Almuric was finished by someone else. Maybe so, but I haven't seen any solid evidence of this, and until I do I consider the book Howard's. Otis Kline is one of the suspects, and it's certainly his type of story, very Burroughsian, but...again, until the evidence surfaces.)

....

Poor Howard, if his chemistry had been different, he might have lived on for many decades. He killed himself because of events on the ground, but these events were those many others would have weathered. He couldn't. He was always the little boy and the little boy needed Zoloft, yet to be invented, or some drug of the type, and without it, the real world, the adult world, fell down on him like boulders. Even his broad shoulders couldn't carry the weight.

Poor Howard. He had to have been like something nailed down and squirming in pain, as the old line goes. Living in a place and time that didn't understand him. Having ambition that was far beyond anything even he could understand. He wanted to be like the other tough guys around him, the Texans who worked in the oil fields and boxed and did hard labor and had a clear and simple view of right and wrong. At least on the surface he wanted to be that way.

But he was different.

He was an intellectual in work khakis, and maybe on some level a little ashamed of it, or at least constantly aware of it.

Bless him. For he gave us much to read.

Curse him, because he killed himself.

Bless him, because it's doubtful that he could have done much else. The chemistry boiled inside of him and exploded and at the same time life threw him one too many curveballs to catch.

In the end, he wasn't Conan.

He was Robert E. Howard.

Writer.

PART FOUR

Typewriter Mystique, the Bull of it

There's a myth I hear every now and then, and it's right up there with All is Right and God is in his heaven. It's also stupid and dated, but it's still going around. It's the myth that the typewriter is the true method of writing. Or to be more precise, any instrument beyond the development of the typewriter is evil. And that to be a good writer you should stay away from the word processor, because it gives you bad habits and makes you sloppy and makes you less inventive and less careful.

This is a curious position. Especially since it's way outdated and the war between typewriters and word processors is over. Word processors won. But, alas, I still hear this curious stupidity from time to time. Writers saying they have to stick to the typewriter because it is the only honest tool of creation for the writer. These folks must be possessed, which is another way of saying they are full of shit.

Most of these writers at one time or another changed typewriters, and usually because it had electricity or you could correct with something other than white out, or it had a few computer elements, like seeing the line you're writing displayed on a narrow screen about the width of a couple of number two pencils. Of course, some are still pounding manual typewriters, and to that, all I can say is you go man or woman, you go. And bless your heart. But the typewriter being the actual tool of the Writing Gods...Well...maybe not.

Some of the people I've heard spread this myth surprise me. Some of them are, or were, the movers and shakers in their fields of writing. Most of the writers I'm talking about are successful writers. Some of them more so in the past than now. No criticism there. That is the way of things. The point is they are from a generation that began on typewriters. I'm from that generation. I know. There is something magical about the idea of a typewriter, and recently when I saw once again, All the President's Men, and saw the reporters using typewriters, and I could hear the clatter in the newsroom, I felt a pang of nostalgia. I have had similar feelings for the hula hoop, the slinky, and Lincoln logs, but it passes.

As one grows older nostalgia sets in. You like what went before better than you like what's coming down the pipe. That is a scary place to be. I'm not saying nostalgia is all bad. It isn't. It has fueled many a story and book I've written, but I'm also aware that I'm living in the here and now and the past was probably only marginally better than the future if it was better at all. When you're young, your heart is lighter due to lack of responsibility (exceptions, of course), the discovery of your sex organs, and only a generally awareness of your mortality. That last one. It's a biggie.

As one ages, and in this case, as the writer ages, he discovers the need to express his deathless ideas. My generation more often than not, chose the typewriter. Some, of course, never discovered it. Some of us (not me) wrote, or still write, longhand and hire someone else to type it up. I've heard those who write longhand begrudge the typewriter because those who use it don't take as much time with the work. Doing it long hand makes them ponder, consider; they have to mark out and work harder to reread it. They like to say the typewriter is just another barrier between themselves and the page.

The typewriter people say the same thing about the word processor.

Many years ago, when I was still using the typewriter, and had no plans to change, a number of writers I knew were beginning to use the word processor. It was becoming popular. Damn new-fangled stuff.

I was at a World Fantasy Convention, sitting at a table in a hotel with a bunch of other writers, me at the time not a brand new kid on the block, but someone who was relatively new, and down at the end of our table was one of the gray beards. Actually, I don't think gray had settled into his beard yet. It was still black, but the symbolism is the same. Here was a guy who was doing it, someone who was receiving a lot of recognition for his work, and he was telling us all how the hoss ate the apple, which may be an expression as old as the use of the typewriter. Especially if you're from East Texas.

I'm going to be one of the first to say if you're a new writer, and an older, experienced writer has something to say, you ought to shut the hell up and listen. You can learn a lot that way. I know I did. I was able to avoid a lot of pitfalls just from the business angle, let alone from the writing angle itself. I read what experienced writers had to say. I listened when they spoke. I knew there was much to be learned about the craft and the business. In some cases I wish I had listened more closely.

But I was talking about this gray beard who was a black beard, who was sitting down at the end of the table, and someone mentioned word processors, and this guy, acquiring an air of superiority, lifted his nose so high I though he was pointing at something on the ceiling with it. He said the typewriter was the best way to work, because the word processor was just one more barrier between the writer and the page.

Keep in mind I had heard this from a number of writers who wrote longhand, and now I was hearing it about the typewriter. I'm sure that after the invention of writing, which may have been lines drawn in the dirt with a stick, someone got all pissy when a young turk started scribbling his musings, pictographs if you will, on cave walls with charcoal and paints made from plants and animals, or whatever they made it from. And then as that guy aged, the one who wrote on the wall, I bet he became indignant when someone chiseled something in rock, or wrote in wax, or on papyrus...Well, you get the idea.

So when this gray beard who was a black beard said that about typewriters, I let out with a whoop. I couldn't contain myself. I said something unintentionally disrespectful, like, "That's the dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard."

I can turn rowdy.

The gray beard who was a black beard just looked at me.

I said something along these lines. "A page is a page, if it's a piece of paper with handwriting on it or a piece of paper pulled from a typewriter, or a screen that represents a page. It's a page. You either have the ability to create, or you don't. How you go about it is irrelevant."

The gray beard who was a black beard looked at me as if I had gone to the Vatican, got a front row seat to see the Pope, then cut a big, wet fart and yelled out, "Catch that in your big ole hat, Pope."

Others at the table turned to look at me. A couple of them, of course, thought who is this young upstart criticizing the voice of God? I was in my thirties then, and I suppose this guy was closer to fifty, so maybe it came across as disrespectful. But hell, I was always older than my age except when it came to fart and dick jokes.

Anyway, the air was as thick as lies at the White House for a moment, and then a couple of folks at the table snickered. Probably owners of word processors.

The gray beard who was a black beard smiled like he had inadvertently shit his pants, got up and left the table. He had been called on his bullshit, and he knew it.

Might I add again, at the time of this event I was a user of the typewriter-having graduated from the pad and pen in the early seventies-and had no intention of changing my method of writing. It wasn't this asshole's use of the typewriter that irked me, it was his arrogance and narrow-minded stupidity.

What I knew from what this guy said-and now we pause for a little shade tree psychiatry-was that he preferred to work that way and thought of himself as so important that for anyone to consider working in a different way was heresy, the equal of asking the Pope to catch that fart in his hat.

He was also saying something else. I'm a dinosaur and I know it and I don't want to change because I can't change, and the mysteries of the word processor scare me. My world is changing. Once I was the cutting edge, and now, maybe I'm as dull as a plastic butter knife and my work is growing stale and I might as well be sticking my finger up my ass and writing my stories in shit, which is what they are becoming because I can't embrace the future.

Hell, we all think that from time to time. But this writer wasn't being honest with himself, and he was trying to punish technology for his shortcomings-perhaps it could use some punishment, but the thing is, change itself is inevitable. It sucks sometimes. I know. I've wrestled manfully in my time with TV channel changers, microwaves, digital watches, cell phones, video players, DVD players, cassette tape players, and CD players, and that fucked up Fox News with not only its techno-graphics but bullshit much worse than the myth of the typewriter. And just to show I'm still behind the curve, that goddamn crawl line at the bottom of all the news channels makes me want to scream; reading it and watching the news too is a little too multi-task for me. So note, you're not getting this diatribe from a techno nut.

* * *

All right. Jump forward a few years and I'm still using the typewriter, but the word processor is more common, and a lot of writers I know say it's the way to go. Some of them former anti-technocrats, who have now seen the light and have done gone on to testify to their brothers and sisters with an enthusiasm that borders on the embarrassing, are pushing me to switch.

They're saying: "It's easier, Lansdale."

"You're behind the curve."

"You can write dick jokes faster with easier correction."

Now I'm listening. Considering.

I finally broke down. I bought a computer. It stayed in the box for about a year as I continued to write on an IBM SELECTRIC. Part of the reason for this was the fact that I had a novel in motion, and had to finish it on the typewriter. Part of it was I had other contracts set and I didn't want to pause to learn how to use the machine, because that was valuable writing time lost. But the big reason was that big ole box with the magical machine in it scared me to death.

The thought of a machine that had a kind of brain was, well, creepy. I had grown up on science fiction after all, and computers could turn on you. I'd seen it in the movies, read it in books. And here was one in my home; its brain was great though its size was small. My brain was small and not so great, and on top of that, I was nervous.

Finally, with the help of my wife and a friend of ours, I got it put together and learned the program. I promptly erased everything I had written, and I did this more than once. I cursed. I screamed. I threatened to go back to the typewriter. I threatened to inhabit a cave, live off locusts and honey, shit behind a bush and wipe my ass on leaves. I had had enough of the modern world.

But then I remembered the gray beard who was a black beard. I thought, well, I'm not one who is telling folks that word processors are evil, but I sure like that typewriter, and maybe that's what I should be doing. On the other hand, the world is moving on and I could save a lot of paper and not have to take out the trash so often and I really didn't like that know-it-all-son-of-a-bitch, so, let's reconsider.

I hung in. I was beginning to like the idea of not using white out or white out strips, or replacing ribbons or knocking keys off the typewriter from hitting them too hard, or wearing out the balls of type on the IBM from machine gun typing. I was beginning to like being able to spell correctly words quickly and easily (which is not to say I don't still screw up, but nowhere as often, and I've actually become a better speller by constantly being made aware of my shortcomings), and I loved being able to rewrite swiftly without having to recopy the entire page.

I found that instead of making my work better by constant recopying on the typewriter, I had in fact been going into a zone that was less observant and less spontaneous. I was trying so desperately not to make a typo, or other mistakes I would have to correct by recopying the entire page, I was in fact restricting my creativity and spontaneity because my mind wasn't as free. And leaving the typewriter behind meant there was no more of that damn carbon paper or getting that carbon shit all over my fingers when I pulled the carbon free from the typewriter roller.

I missed hitting the lever that pulled the carriage back, or hitting the button on the IBM that made it jump back, but on the whole, not a whole lot to miss, really.

Fact is, more I think about it, there's so much about the typewriter not worth missing I could probably make a list a foot long, and print it out on my speed printer faster than a jackrabbit fucks.

* * *

So, I'm saying the word processor may not be for everyone. The typewriter, if you can still find them, might be your tool. And all the old farts who come from my generation or generations before, can certainly continue to work on their outdated machines if they want. It's a choice.

But as for another barrier between the writer and the page, kiss my highly attractive, rosy red ass.

* * *

Not long ago I went on a trip with my family to a Caribbean island, and though I dislike working when I travel, I decided since I'm not that fond of islands and sand and sea after more than a couple of days, it would be a great time just to relax and read, and I had a novel to do, so maybe I could get that started.

I didn't own a laptop, just a desk model word processor. I decided I would purchase a typewriter with some computer functions and take it with me. When I cranked the machine out, I had a feeling of nostalgia. It wasn't a pure typewriter, but it was close to it and it had the same kind of keys, and those kind of keys, I discovered as I sat down to write, were hard to push into position because the keyboard required a heavier touch.

You had to really press those mothers, and the machine seemed to move like a sloth on anti-depressants. Within five minutes I was nervous, and within fifteen I was hysterical.

I put the machine away, and except for the half a page I wrote, which became the beginning of Rumble Tumble, I was through with the typewriter. Forever. That damn trip back in time had nearly caused me a nervous breakdown.

I still feel warm and nostalgic about typewriters. I like seeing them; it's like seeing some old book you loved. But like some of those books you read as a kid, when you re-read them you wish you hadn't. They were best left to the memory.

For me, that's the case with the typewriter. The world has moved on, and it won't be passing that way again.

For writing, the most important thing is passion. A love for what you do. A desire to create something with all of your enthusiasm and as much attention to your craft as you can muster.

The method of execution be damned. The secret is the human mind, not the device that allows the story to be recorded.

Besides, another twenty years, and all those users of typewriters will be dead, and they won't be making any more of them, the typewriters or the users. And you know what? There will come a time when the word processor will be dated, and there will be new old farts saying how that new-fangled mind reading printing device is just one more barrier between you and the page.

PART FIVE

Kuttner Sharpens His Literary Sword

The following article appeared as an introduction to Kuttner's Sword and Sorcery book, Elak from Atlantis from Planet Stories.

I'm reprinting it here because I love Henry Kuttner's works, and though these are not his best work, they are fun, and anything that can stimulate interest in his work is a good thing.

I hope you enjoy it, keeping in mind it was designed for a specific book, but the information stands alone.

......

Henry Kuttner is something of an unsung hero of science fiction and fantasy, and to some extent, horror fiction, if for no other reason than he wrote a classic little booger tale called "The Graveyard Rats".

He was a witty, fast writing kind of guy who could come up with a story at the drop of a hat, and maybe have it finished before the hat hit the floor. Perhaps had he lived longer, and not been knocked dead by a heart attack in his forties, he would be better known, and perhaps if his novels, written by himself and in collaboration, had elicited the same impact his short stories received, he might also have a greater reputation with the mainstream. Within the field of the fantastic, and the science fictional, he is better known, and among certain aficionados of his work, he is considered to be as important a writer as almost anyone who ever wrote in the field (s).

Another reason he is not as well known as he ought to be is because he was so versatile. Unlike one of his proteges, Ray Bradbury, he never developed a singular voice by which he could be identified immediately. This is not to say he wasn't stylistic. He was, and the echoes of his style can be seen in the works of Ray Bradbury, but unlike Bradbury who worked to codify his approach to story, Kuttner did not.

To make matters even more confusing, he wrote under a number of different pen names, and if that isn't enough, when he married C.L. Moore, another wonderful writer, the two of them worked together on almost all stories thereafter. It might even be said that if Henry Kuttner is unknown, so is C.L. Moore, because in a way, they became the same person, a writer(s) who wrote stories and used a lot of names to hide behind. They had to. They were producing a lot of stories for a lot of different markets and needed different names and different voices. They were like spies, moving from one country to another with falsified passports.

They worked together on stories so closely, that if one got up to go to the bathroom, the other could sit down and take their place and pick up where they left off, seamlessly producing prose until replaced once again by the other.

It was said C.L. Moore provided the romanticism to some of their best stories, and you can see this touch in her solo work. It was also said that Kuttner provided the wit and the ideas, and there is evidence of that.

Still, I've always found this to be an easy answer, and a little too pat. The true answer, especially since they were so interchangeable, is that they were both extraordinarily talented writers who found one another and together fell into a wonderful creative groove; it must have been one hell of a bonding; my guess is they could both be witty and romantic and exploding with ideas. The fact that writing was their profession and they needed to eat and pay bills didn't hurt either. That's a real incentive. But that need is not enough to explain the incredible ingenuity with which they worked, the sparkling style they created, and the lasting impact these stories have had on so many readers.

Perhaps, had they written alone, they might have produced better work individually than together, but it is hard to imagine better stories than those accredited to their pen names; these stories are some of the classic stories in the field of science fiction and science fantasy. To confuse this even more, some of their more famous pen names-Lewis Padgett and Lawrence O'Donnell come to mind-were sometimes the solo work of one or the other. Trying to decipher it all makes the head hurt.

Kuttner's work, or the work attributed to him more than C.L. Moore, has been the source for a few films, the earliest I believe was "The Twonky", which was done for television. One of his (and her?) best stories, "Vintage Season" was filmed interestingly, and most recently, "Mimsy Were The Borogroves" was filmed as The Last Mimzy. This is probably Kuttner's most famous story. The results were mixed. It was a movie that couldn't quite decide if it was serious science fiction film or something for the young adult viewer alone. But the premise and the general story line were all Kuttner, (or at least all Lewis Padgett) and that's what the viewer takes away with them when they leave the theater; that haunting idea so marvelously expressed in the original short story, and so proven in everyday life by anyone old enough to have trouble with the DVD player or the cell phone only to have their eight year old kid show them how it works. I won't say more. I hope your curiosity will invite you to read the original story, and afterward, to watch the film.

The bottom line is this. Kuttner was one talented dude and his stories move through the stories of a lot of writers writing today (I am one), and they will move through writers of the future as well; as long as there is the written word and there are heralds to proclaim his excellence, his stories will have their impact.

Okay. I lied. I don't trust that at all. That's the way it should be. It's not the way it is.

But, this introduction and this book are a kind of herald. We want to alert you to his genius. This is just a taste. This is just one side of Kuttner. His work is being discovered and rediscovered a lot lately; there have been encouraging signs of this in the films and new editions of his short stories. An example of the latter being Two Handed Engine, and this fine collection of early sword and sorcery stories. But neither of these volumes touch the bulk of Kuttner's output. I hope these films and collections lead to a thunderous awareness for all things Kuttner, but I'm not holding my breath.

Readers and writers these days find it hard to invest time into reading anything older than a year or two, but let me tell you, (and I pause to wag my finger and say shame on you) Kuttner still reads well and his stories are unique, and many ideas that are just now being explored by writers of science fiction and fantasy...well, sorry, Kuttner has already been there and he most likely did it better.

For many writers who are just drawing their swords, and are interested in what went before and how certain writers developed, or for that matter, how certain genres developed, look here, for you can see how Kuttner began sharpening his literary sword, and what better way to symbolize this sharpening, than with tales of swords...and, of course, sorcery.

But more to the stories at hand.

......

Early in his career, before meeting Catherine (better known in the pages of magazines as C.L.) Moore, he wrote for Weird Tales. Not only did he write the classic horror story, "The Graveyard Rats", also filmed, badly, for the TV film Trilogy of Terror 2, he soon wrote a series of sword sorcery stories, influenced by Howard's marvelous Conan tales, but quite different because they came from the mind of another highly original writer.

Kuttner's creation, Elak, was his own thing, and not Howard's Conan, but they certainly were characters who might have crossed paths and gone on a three day drunk and whoring expedition together. In the end, that ramble might have led to a savage duel due to the fact that they were both in their own way what today would be described as alpha males. There was also the fact that Elak had a fat, drunken, friend, Lycon, who always traveled with him, and whose smart mouth and attitude, might have stirred the pot and led to a savage decision made in blood.

It would have been Elak's skillful swordsmanship against Conan's brawn and fearless assault. It might have made for an interesting fight.

Kuttner's stories, unlike the tales written by Howard, have a sense of humor. This is not to say there wasn't a note of humor in Howard's work, but it certainly wasn't an identifying trait, and sometimes those notes were played quietly and without great success. Outside of Sword and Sorcery, Howard did write a series of Western Tall Tales that had a bit of the Pecos Bill humor about them, but they were never, at least for me, that successful. The humor seemed heavy and contrived, and though many scholars point to these stories as a sign of Howard's maturity as a writer, I always felt they were stories of the moment, of their time, and that the humor was as heavy as a rain cloud and twice as wet.

Kuttner understood humor, both the subtle sort and the more blatant, and unlike Howard, he was really good at it. Also unlike Howard, and more akin to Leiber, there's a playfulness about the prose and the descriptions; everything isn't so deadly dark and serious, though Kuttner could certainly summon up the shadows when he chose, and he could write some of the bloodiest and most exciting adventure scenes ever conjured by a writer's mind, as you will see when you read these stories.

I even think it's telling that Elak uses a rapier, and not a big heavy sword. The rapier suits his personality, which is, at least by comparison to say Conan, somewhat dapper. Still, Elak has a kind of confidence and force of will that would have made John Wayne move back a step.

.....

When it comes to Kuttner's other character, Prince Raynor, who made two appearances in Strange Tales, the prose presenting his adventures is in my estimation more little more formal and stiff, which may have more to do with distinguishing the two characters, Elak and Raynor, than anything else.

Most likely it was due to the fact that Kuttner was constantly exploring style, character, and story methods and didn't like to repeat himself. Of the two, I like Elak best, though there is certainly no lack of entertainment value in the other, though there seems less inventiveness and liveliness of style and the Raynor stories fill a little bit familiar. Fans of the Raynor stories may argue the point as a matter of personal taste, however, and I would be unwilling to battle them on the matter. They're still good tales.

I mention this business about style because I think the writing style of Kuttner was always interesting. He was always experimenting. He was one of those rare kinds of writers who was a combination story teller, stylist, and thinker, though when he wore science fiction clothes, he was more of an extrapolator of ideas and concepts, then he was an master of science. He was the forerunner of the Galaxy magazine writer who brought more characterization and social issues to the work than nifty scientific gadgetation, a word I think I just now made up.

Kuttner's work, for me, threw off sparks and set little mental fires that made me think. He was willing to toss ideas and concepts off like spaghetti, fling it against the wall to see if it sticks. And there was an echo beyond the reading. His ideas were so original and came from so far out of left field you had to have an aerial view of the grounds so you could see them racing at you from beyond the bleachers.

In these sword and sorcery stories his style, or more accurately, his styles, were developing. These tales are not the echo tales of the more mature Kuttner, not the stories chock full of ideas and sparks and little fires that burn in the brain and make you think. They are pure joy. They are the pudding after the steak and the sides. But they are wonderful pudding, fine entertainment.

Kuttner wrote everything he wrote with heart and conviction and a dedication to craft. His intent was not always the same, and he got better and more interesting as he went along, but these tales of Elak and Raynor are a rare treat indeed. They are first of all hard to find, and give us a glance at what Kuttner was to become; we can watch his garden grow in these stories. This collection is a great service to all of us Kuttner fans, and to those it will introduce to his work. These stories may be pudding, but they aren't tapioca. There's something special here, a real frothy treat made from exotic ingredients containing lost cities and flashing swords and beautiful women and Druids and ghosts, a few pulpy wood knots and splinters of early prose, a flash of style and insight, and in the end, a flourish of tossed gory glitter in the hair.

He had a kind of magic all writers wish they possessed. Some of us can fake it a little, but Kuttner, he wasn't faking. He was the real deal. He was a writer of endless possibilities, and it saddens me to think his life, that wonderful magpie mind, constantly collecting thoughts and ideas for stories, was knocked silent by a premature heart attack.

Oh, the places he would have gone.

I hate what we as readers missed due to his early demise, but I am so happy he wrote what he wrote, which is quite a bit, and that he wrote so many different kinds of tales, presented us with so many literary meals to devour, from the steaks to the sides, to the gourmet treats, to the fine and frothy, sweet, desserts of Elak and Raynor.

Prove my fears unfounded. Let the heralds speak of Kuttner, and let their voices ring down through the ages, past my time and past yours, and over into the awareness of future readers, and let their words stick: "Kuttner is magic."

Enjoy.

PART SIX

Leslie Whitten: Neglected Master

In conversations with interviewers, when they ask me about favorite writers or books, there is one writer I admire that I always fail to mention. Leslie (Les) Whitten. Whitten has written a number of novels, and one of them, the Progeny of the Adder, is undoubtedly the influence for Jeff Rice's novel, The Night Stalker, the source for the television series of the same name, and two television movies, and a later not so good television series of the same name. Darin McGavin was the original Karl Kolchak, and for me, he defined the role of the intrepid reporter out to get a story at all cost. The stories always had to do with vampires and werewolves, and critters of their ilk.

The script for the original The Night Stalker television movie was written by the great Richard Matheson. At the time, it was one of the highest rated movies on television. So popular, it spawned another Jeff Rice book and another made for television movie titled The Night Strangler. This in turn gave birth to the television series, The Night Stalker. But the first film, the story of a vampire in modern times, is the best of all the movies and series episodes, and it owes much to its original influence, Progeny of the Adder.

Whitten's approach to the vampire is in considerable contrast to the popular version seen today in most vampire films. That of the stately, romantic, attractive and cursed young man that really only wants to love some beautiful woman eternally while sucking a bit of blood on the side. These vampire books, and films, tend to appeal primarily to women, and are romance novels with fangs. Nothing wrong with that, but I've had enough of it. I suppose Interview with the Vampire, a very good book, is to blame for this trend, along with certain vampire films, but it seems by now this approach would be as old as death itself. But, alas, not at all.

Whitten's version is not like this. His version is about a dark, loathsome creature whose breath smells like a rotting corpse, who has a lot of broken teeth, sagging skin, and blood red eyes, tremendous strength and endurance, and who is really hungry. He has some of the common vampire abilities, but he can't turn into a bat, or smoke, and in many ways he's more like a deranged human. He is anything but attractive or romantic, and is in fact, scary as hell.

And if it wasn't enough that Whitten wrote Progeny of the Adder, which defined a certain type of vampire story, sadly lost to the more recent romantic versions, he also wrote what I believe to be the definitive werewolf novel, Moon of the Wolf. Of course, it's a small field. Only a handful of werewolf novels stand out from, if you'll excuse me, the pack. Short stories seem to be where this creature is best defined.

Moon was not only a good werewolf novel with a unique approach to the subject, it was made into a creepy television film starring David Jansen. The film has lost some of its, ahem, bite in the following years due to the advancement in special effects, (the same could be said for The Night Stalker, the television movies and series) and the simple fact that more can be shown on TV now than in the past. But when this show first appeared (and it could stand a remake) I remember where I was when I saw it. A friend's house, and we came upon it by accident-there were only three channels in those days, and I was changing channels, and we did this chore by turning the dial on the set by hand, no clicker-and I came upon the program just as it was beginning. We got hooked. Our plans to go out and ride around looking for girls evaporated. We got lost in the story. Especially me. This was my meat. My writing career was still a few years away from starting, and almost twelve or thirteen away from me becoming a full-time writer, but this kind of story, especially then, was just the sort of thing that made my blood boil and my creative passions jiggle with the excitement of a big breasted stripper working it out to a conga beat.

In fact, I saw the film first, read the book later, then found Progeny of the Adder. This led to Whitten's The Alchemist, and later to some non horror novels, suspense books as I recall, (I believe he also wrote a historical) but they didn't stay with me. Not like the first three, Progeny of the Adder, Moon of the Wolf, and The Alchemist, the latter being pretty damn erotic and graphic for its time. But I'm only going to say it's about a modern man caught up in ancient secrets, with lots of sex peppering the story. It's a good and interesting read. But it isn't in the same league as Progeny and Moon of the Wolf. I mention it here because it fits as a kind of trio to his early work.

Leslie Whitten was not a fancy stylist, and could be pretty meat and potatoes in that arena, but he was a good and engaging storyteller and the prose never got in the way of the tale he wanted to tell. In fact, for me, there was something hypnotic about his prose. Just recently this was proved to me again when my friend David Schow gave me a book with two of Whitten's novels in it: Fangs of the Morning, and the aforementioned Alchemist.

I had never heard of Fangs of the Morning, and think the title is just awful. Since it had a nineties copyright, some many years after the novels I've mentioned, I thought it might have been an earlier unpublished novel that had finally found a home. Secretly, I feared it might be a late attempt for Whitten to cash in on his original vampire novel, Progeny. What I mean by this, is often when a writer seems to disappear, and you find a recent novel by them, it's not always a positive sign. Sometimes the reason that writer has disappeared is because their work played out, or they played out, and when they come back...Well...They've been away too long. You can stay away from writing and lose your edge, the way a boxer can. Unlike a boxer, a writer can last a lot longer, but only if they stay in the game. I was worried.

I need not have been. Whatever it's time frame of having been written, Fangs of the Morning is terrific. I felt the old zing of being captured by a simple story well told. Not the pure guts and gush of many modern horror novels, but that creeping sort of happy discomfort that reminded me of being younger, discovering this kind of fiction, lying in bed with one small light on, the fan blowing, the covers pulled up to my chin. It was a deliciously engaging horror novel and my recommendation is read it late at night when you don't have to be anywhere the next morning.

Laying it right out there, Whitten tells a cracker jack of a story with characters you care about. He does this all swiftly and without a lot of hullabaloo. Fangs of the Morning doesn't quite match Progeny of the Adder and Moon of the Wolf, but it's good. Progeny and Moon are in their own way as classic as I am Legend and 'Salem's Lot, yet the books, and Whitten, are mostly forgotten. That shouldn't be the case. Whitten and Matheson are of the same school. Simple ideas well told swiftly, but with an almost hidden chewy texture.

So go out and find these books. They are worth the search. They are true treats. I just wish some enterprising small press would find him, see if he has something new, and if there is nothing new, pay him to write one, or at least reprint these horror classics in the special volumes they deserve so that they can be placed on the shelf with Matheson and Bloch and Stephen King, whose nasty vampire in 'Salem's Lot might owe a little itself to Progeny. The influence of these books is broad, though general knowledge of them is slim. Maybe someone can remedy that with new editions.

Leslie Whitten. Remember the name.

About the Author

Where does Mojo storytelling come from? How does a fella learn to spin over-the-top yarns of any sort: horror, suspense, humor, science fiction, Western, what have you? First you got to see the world, like Champion Mojo Storyteller Joe R. Lansdale, who has lived everywhere from Gladewater, Texas to Mount Enterprise, Texas to Nacogdoches, Texas!

"Texas is so wrapped up in myth and legend, it's hard to know what the state and its people are really about," says Lansdale. "Real Texans, raised on these myths and legends, sometimes become legends themselves. The bottom line is, Texas and its people are pretty much what most people mean when they use the broader term 'America.' No state better represents the independent spirit, the can-do attitude of America, better than Texas."

The second ingredient to good Mojo storytelling is learning how to take a punch. Or a kick. Or a poke in the eye. And then learning how to avoid them. Lansdale is a student of the martial arts for more than thirty years. He's a two-time inductee into the International Martial Arts Hall of Fame, one such honor bestowed upon him for his founding of Shen Chuan, Martial Science. He holds belts in Daito Ryu Aikijujutsu, Combat Hapkido, American Combat Kempo, and Aikido, amongst others; in fact, his standard day is six hours at the typewriter, three hours at Lansdale's Self Defense Systems, the martial-arts studio which he owns and at which he teaches.

With more than thirty books to his credit, Lansdale is the Champion Mojo Storyteller. He's been called "an immense talent" by Booklist; "a born storyteller" by Robert Bloch; and The New York Times Book Review declares he has "a folklorist's eye for telling detail and a front-porch raconteur's sense of pace." He's won umpty-ump awards, including sixteen Bram Stoker Awards, the Grand Master Award from the World Horror Convention, a British Fantasy Award, the American Mystery Award, the Horror Critics Award, the Grinzane Cavour Prize for Literature, the "Shot in the Dark" International Crime Writer's Award, the Golden Lion Award, the Booklist Editor's Award, the Critic's Choice Award, and a New York Times Notable Book Award. He's got the most decorated mantle in all of Nacogdoches!

Lansdale lives in Nacogdoches, Texas, with his wife, Karen, writer and editor.

SOURCE MATERIAL

In creating this eBook, I used the following sources:

A Little Green Book of Monster Stories

A Fistful of Stories

Bestsellers Guaranteed

By Bizarre Hands

Bumper Crop

High Cotton

Private Eye Action As You Like It

Revelations

Sanctified & Chicken Fried

The Good, the Bad, and the Indifferent

The Shadows, Kith & Kin

Thirteen Horrors

Writer of the Purple Rage

The author's official website

Table of Contents

FOREWORD. 6

THE JOB. 9

THE PIT. 12

BY BIZARRE HANDS. 22

TIGHT LITTLE STICHES IN A DEADMAN’S BACK. 31

HELL THROUGH A WINDSHIELD. 42

THE DRIVE-IN OATH. 43

SIX-FINGER JACK. 51

BILLIE SUE. 63

NAKED ANGEL. 67

NOT FROM DETROIT. 77

BOOTY AND THE BEAST. 84

STEPPIN' OUT, SUMMER, '68. 94

INCIDENT ON AND OFF A MOUNTAIN ROAD. 107

MY DEAD DOG, BOBBY. 120

TRAINS NOT TAKEN.. 121

DOG, CAT, AND BABY. 129

MISTER WEED-EATER. 131

THE FAT MAN AND THE ELEPHANT. 147

THE PHONE WOMAN.. 155

LETTER FROM THE SOUTH, TWO MOONS WEST OF NACOGDOCHES. 164

BY THE HAIR OF THE HEAD. 167

GODZILLA'S TWELVE STEP PROGRAM.. 175

DRIVE-IN DATE. 181

BOB THE DINOSAUR GOES TO DISNEYLAND. 189

THE STEEL VALENTINE. 191

NIGHT THEY MISSED THE HORROR SHOW.. 201

DIRT DEVILS. 211

WHITE MULE, SPOTTED PIG. 222

THE BIG BLOW.. 249

BUBBA HO-TEP. 284

A CHANGE OF LIFESTYLE. 307

DEADMAN’S ROAD. 309

ALONE. 327

COAT. 338

BESTSELLERS GUARANTEED. 343

SURVEILLANCE. 354

HANG IN THERE. 356

CHOMPERS. 361

BEYOND THE LIGHT. 363

I TELL YOU IT’S LOVE. 373

THE JUNKYARD. 376

THE PASTURE. 381

BAR TALK. 387

BIG MAN: A FABLE. 389

THE COMPANION.. 393

DRAGON CHILLI 399

THE FULL COUNT. 402

HIDE AND HORNS. 421

THE HONEYMOON.. 435