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EDITING IS ABOUT DISCOVERY.

Like explorers hacking their way through the jungle with a machete, editors cut and slash through piles of paper obstructions cluttering their journey toward a good story.

The only problem is that explorers have it better chance of finding something good at the end of their journey than an editor does.

Most of the time, all an editor finds are unending paper trails, swamps of expository prose, mountains of simplistic plots, mazes of bad similes and metaphors, and a population explosion of hapless characters,

Explorers, on the other hand, can pluck ripe fruit from overhead branches to sate their hunger. They can cool off in a river. They might stumble upon a cache of ivory, or trip over a diamond, or fall upon a vein of gold.

The only equivalent for an editor is the discovery of a good writer.

But even that is a falsehood, because editors don’t really “discover” good writers. The writers do that. All an editor does is see the obvious.

And it was obvious from her first submission to Aboriginal Science Fiction that Patricia Anthony was that rough diamond, that vein of gold—a true writer.

Unlike the stories of many wannabe writers who deluge editors with manuscripts, which never vary except by way of a change of title, Pat’s work kept improving. She wasn’t content to write another story just like the last one (because it sold).

Instead, she worked on her craft. She took risks, she learned to convey the same thing in a short story that other writers needed the length of a novel to say. And most important of all, she learned to be her own best and worst critic.

That’s important, because the most important tool a writer possesses is a red pencil (or the delete key on a computer). It’s used to cut away the jungle of extra words to find a story’s true path.

Pat’s characters are real, and alive, They are cut from the dry plains of Texas, the teeming cities of Brazil, the heartland of America.

The truth is that there is no such thing as a “new” plot. Shakespeare knew that, and stole from the best.

But it was what Shakespeare did with those old plots that made him great.

And it is what Pat does with her stories that makes her one of the great new writers in the field,

There are no simple engineering solutions to complex problems.

There are no magic fixes.

If all you like are happy endings, read no further, because you don’t want to read literature, you want cotton candy.

You won’t get a sweet tooth reading Pat’s stories, but you will be touched. You will have your heart and mind opened. You will want to read more.

Each of her stories, whether it explores a temporary mini-universe or voyages to Jupiter’s moon Io, reaches through the white noise of life to pierce the human heart.

What more can you ask of any writer?

Author’s Note: I had been trying for six years to sell a novel and for about six furious months to sell a short story. Then, suddenly (as we say in the novice writer’s game), I received a new magazine in the mail—a science fiction magazine! Immediately I sent off “Blood Brothers” with an SASE, and—guess what?—I got a reply back (sent in my SASE and with my story enclosed) but the editor (Charlie Ryan) would publish my story if I’d just answer a few questions about the science! And guess what, Charlie? I was right but I was wrong, too! And so finally I was able to change DNA (in the original) to RNA, because viruses are too small for DNA, I was later told by a virologist friend. Even with that, though, the story’s premise is pretty darned far-fetched. And I must say that I’m delighted to have been off base historically again—that once upon a time single-celled life probably did exist on Mars. Is it cheesy to say now that I kinda always figured it had?

I don’t know whether I’ll ever like rain again. When I was a kid I loved it, Even living in Washington State I loved it. And we got a lot of rain there. We had a window seat at home in a cranny on the second floor. From fifth grade until I got too sophisticated for that kind of stuff, sometime around my senior year in high school, I’d crawl into that cranny and read novels about Mars while the soft rain padded up to the window, nuzzled my shoulder and curled beside me to sleep.

Here in my room I’ve got a pictograph of a forest in the Pacific Northwest. In it the sun’s shining. On the other wall is a window that looks out over red flats splattered with lichens. To the east Olympus Mons rises from its gray shroud. I can sometimes track the blocks of ice as they make their incandescent way down the close, dark sky.

I know it was cold here to begin with, but sometimes I imagine the ice makes it colder. I imagine it carries baggage between the mass driver on Europa and here: suitcases full of chill, valises empty with solitude.

The loneliness drives you crazy after a while. That, and the never-ending torrents of rain. Out in the flats in the ATV’s with their bare half-inch of insulation, you go deaf. You start shouting at your driver and he starts shouting at you just to make yourselves heard, When you start to blame each other because the food’s cold or because your underwear’s damp or because the splintered Martian rocks are so ungodly barren, it’s time to come in.

I slogged through the compound, my boots making obscene sucking noises, an accompaniment to the timpani of the monsoon. Rain played frantic Impressionist Rock and Roll on my helmet. The door slid open as I approached and then slid shut behind me. In the deafening silence of the building I took my helmet off.

“Cap’n Henson, sir,” the guard said, bringing up a hand in a salute. His voice sounded strange. It took me a minute to realize it was because he wasn’t shouting.

I cleared my throat, “Harrison,” I answered with a disoriented smile. It always took me an hour or so to unwind from outside.

“Sir, the doctor wanted to see you as soon as you came in. Should I tell her you’re on your way?”

“I’ll see her later,” I told him as I ambled down the hall toward the cafeteria. But the doctor must have been waiting. Halfway down the corridor she stepped out of the lab and into my way.

“Greg,” she said. “You look tired.” Her brown eyes scrutinized me in a way that would have been flattering had it come a younger, less perceptive woman. “You feeling okay?”

“Sure.”

Helen’s question was standard. My answer was, too. She’d been querying me after I came in from outside ever since Marvin Torres had committed suicide. He hadn’t coped well with the solitude. Helen suspected I didn’t, either. Her childhood had prepared her for Mars in a way I could never understand.

Helen came from Arizona and still wore the mark of the desert on her face. It was hard, arid, knifed through with arroyos of worry. Nothing soft dwelled there.

I’m the opposite. My cheeks are round, all the bone hidden by flesh. A baby face at forty-seven years old. Sometimes I wonder how my men can accept my orders.

“Flu’s going around. I don’t want you to get it.”

What she said took me a heartbeat to understand. Then I think my heartbeat paused. “What?” I asked. “What did you say?”

“I said, ‘The flu’s going around . . .’”

My expression must have given some indication of the lump in my gut because her words ground to a halt.

Abruptly I was aware of the warm light in the hall, the cold drip of water from the damp hair at the back of my neck, the exact rhythm of her breathing as it lifted the lapel of her uniform. That’s funny, I thought. How she can be breathing when I’m not?

“Who has it?” I finally asked.

“Lieutenant Thomas.”

“He the only one?”

“So far, but . . .”

“Where is he?” I interrupted.

“In sickbay.”

“You got him quarantined?”

“With flu?” she asked,

I hurried past her. “It’s not the flu.”

Roger Thomas was sitting up in bed reading a Playboy and drinking a Coke. By the time I got there, I was breathing hard, as much from the thin atmosphere as from terror.

“Hi, Cap’n,” he said agreeably. He didn’t look very sick. “How was the trip?”

“Still raining out.”

He laughed.

“Howya feeling?”

Roger shrugged his broad shoulders. His mahogany face looked chagrined. “Just a little puky, sir. A touch of fever. Other than that, I’m fine.”

“You take it easy, Lieutenant,” Helen said at my right side. She’d moved so silently and so close that she startled me. Grabbing my arm, she led me away.

“How long has he been sick?” I asked when the door shut behind us.

“He came in complaining of a sore throat yesterday.”

“Isolate him.’

“You sure?”

“Damn it! Isolate him!” I shouted. My eyes were wide. Spittle flew.

Helen recoiled. “Okay. All right. So what do we tell him when the plexiglass comes down?”

“Tell him we just don’t want it going around the base. Tell him I hate having roll call in sickbay. Tell him we don’t have enough bathrooms to go around.”

Feeling silly at my overreaction, I walked into the lab and stared out at the dark, dead lava flows in the east. They were just visible through the gray gauze of the downpour.

“Could it be anything else?” I asked, knowing Helen had stopped behind me, I realized she was staring at my back. We’d known each other for three years, in the way jail inmates must know each other. I figured she was wondering if I’d finally cracked.

“Like what?”

“Like another type of virus. Other bugs have a longer incubation period, don’t they?”

“Yeah, but I’ve ruled those out. It’s ordinary, everyday stomach flu. The kind that keeps you near the toilet for three days until it finally lets go. That kind of flu.”

“That’s impossible,” I told her without turning around. “The ships are sterilized, No one’s been sick here. Not ever. And the shortest time anyone’s been here is nine months.”

“So it’s a glitch,”

“No, it’s not,” I said. “It’s the thing I’ve always been afraid of.”

“So where do you think it came from?”

“It’s a present. From Mars.”

After a few moments, I made my way out of the lab, leaving Helen probably wondering which would be worse: man-killing Martian virus or my losing my mind.

Roger’s fever climbed to one hundred and three, He couldn’t keep liquids down. I spent a lot of time down in sickbay, just waiting for Roger to die. The kid would look at me through the Plexiglass screen, his chocolate face miserable. Roger wasn’t stupid. He’d figured it out; he’d known it the moment the isolation screen had lowered.

“It’s the flu,” Helen told me. “I’m sure of it. I’ve isolated the virus and that’s what it looks like. There’s no foreign RNA in there at all.”

I shook my head and risked a glance at myself in the reflective surface of the plexiglass. The skin under my round blue eyes was bruised. I looked exhausted. I also looked scared.

“Look,” she said reasonably. “Where did it come from if it didn’t come from us? The flu virus needs a host.”

“Well, its got one now,” I told her as I focused beyond my spectral image to Roger.

“Greg, let me give you a crash course in medicine, okay? This type of virus needs a host. It doesn’t live that long outside. Probably a few hours. A day at the most. Now that’s just for a start. The host needs to be similar enough to us for the virus to take root and grow. That’s why we don’t give the flu to our cats. Or pick up distemper from them.”

“Excuse me,” I said somewhat huffily. A pet peeve of mine is doctors who make their patients feel stupid. “Aren’t you forgetting zoonosis? You’re ignoring sort of major stuff like rabies, encephalitis and anthrax.”

“Not spread by droplet,” she replied, finally deciding to treat me like a well-read adult.

I didn’t bother to reply. I could see Helen’s face beside mine in the screen. She seemed pale.

“But the RNA’s still like ours,” she said. “Nothing alien there.”

“Who knows what alien RNA would look like? Would you.”

She tried again. “All right. Granted. But viruses don’t live in rocks. Even if there were Martians who were chemical carbon copies of us . . . even if they maybe died of the infection. . . when they died, the virus would, too.”

“It’s cold out there, Helen,” I said

“Yeah. It’s cold. It’s wet and ugly as a son-of-a-bitch. So what?”

“What if the organism were cryptobiotic? What if it were just freeze-dried? We’ve raised the temperature. We’ve added water. Maybe we just woke it up.”

I could see the transparent reflection of her face go somber. “So, maybe you’re right. Maybe this flu bug is cryptobiotic and woke up from the higher temperatures and the rain. But it’s our bug, Greg. It’s a human bug. Why is it so necessary for you to believe in aliens, anyway?”

“It’s a lonely planet, Helen.” Close to my shoulder I imagined I could feel the skeletal fingers of Mars. “Sort of a lonely universe.”

“You’re an incurable romantic,” she told me. Her voice seemed both guarded and sad.

Yes, I thought. I am. I’d come to Mars, a suitor, and had been rejected by the blank red mud, the expressionless dark rocks. We’d added water. We’d added lichens. But we hadn’t given Mars our complexities. We hadn’t really given it life. Helen, a child of the desert, fretted about me.

Roger wasn’t reading anymore. He was coughing a lot. At the end of one coughing fit, he vomited. A nurse, standing on the other side of the screen, inserted her hands into the flexible gloves and cleaned him up. Roger grabbed her plastic-coated fingers and held them.

He was crying, so I looked away. It was the stereotypical masculine reaction towards emotional scenes. Roger embarrassed me. If I had the guts I would have asked if he were crying because he was hurting or because he was afraid to die—of because he was scared to die alone

Roger didn’t have to worry about loneliness. The next day three other MTF personnel came down with it. I gave the order to close the base.

In the next several hours four more people came down with it. The morning after that Roger’s fever broke, He got hungry. Nobody died. Nobody felt particularly good, either,

“Told you it was the flu,” Helen said. “You might as well take them out of isolation.

“No,” I told her. “Not until we know where it came from.”

“We may never know that.” Helen leaned back from her terminal, propping her feet on her desk. “What do the soil samples show? I know you’re gathering some.”

“Nothing.”

“Sterile dirt?”

“Sterile dirt.” I got up from the chair and eased the stiffness out of my spine.

“Where’re your Martians, Henson?” Helen asked just before I left the room.

I thought about it. “They’re out there.”

“You just want to believe in them,” she said.

I thought about that, too. “Yes,” I told her. “I do.”

* * *

When I got back to my quarters, the red light on my terminal was blinking. I logged on and brought the message up: MTV/GPE BLUE/73.15N/18.24W/13:01:49/MSG BASE CMDR CAPT GREGORY HENSON/CONFIDENTIAL **SOMETHING HERE YOU NEED TO SEE**/END MSG.

13:01. It had been sent over two hours ago. I hit the MSG key and indexed GPE BLUE. When the message header came up, I typed: TED, ORDERS WERE FOR YOU TO RETURN. SINCE YOU ARE STILL OUT IN THE FIELD, SUGGEST NOW YOU HEAD FOR NEXT AVAILABLE BASE, IF POSSIBLE. WE’RE UNDER QUARANTINE HERE WITH WHAT APPEARS TO BE THE FLU. IF YOU OR YOUR DRIVER ARE EXPERIENCING ANY, REPEAT, ANY MEDICAL PROBLEMS, ESSENTIAL YOU RETURN FOR MEDICAL EXAMINATION.

A few seconds after I hit the EXECUTE key, another message came up. MFT/GPE BLUE/73.15N/18.24W/15:36:39/ MSG BASE CMDR CAPT GREGORY HENSON/CONFIDENTIAL/**CAPTAIN, RECEIVED ORDERS, BUT I THINK YOU NEED TO SEE THIS. I THINK YOU NEED TO SEE THIS NOW. THERE IS NOTHING MORE IMPORTANT ON YOUR AGENDA**/END MSG.

MTF/BASE CMDR CAPT GREGORY HENSON/OLYMPUS BASE/15:37:20/MSG GPE BLUE/**SUGGEST YOU HAVE A GOOD REASON FOR NOT OBEYING FIRST ORDER TO RETURN. SUGGEST YOU ALSO HAVE A GOOD REASON FOR DRAGGING ME OUT IN THE FIELD**/END MSG.

MTF/GPE BLUE/73.15N/18.24W/15:38:14/**I DO.**/END MSG.

* * *

By the time my driver and I got to Group Blue they were out of the ATV, standing around in the rain. They’d put a tent up, but they hadn’t gone under cover. My driver opened my door and I waded my way towards them.

“Cap’n, sir?” Ted called. It was cold. His visor was up and the word came out in a burst of fog.

I approached close enough to talk without shouting. “So, whaddya have, Lieutenant?”

Ted daCosta’s mouth was in a thin line below the smoky glass of his visor. His driver, PFC Horace White, looked humorless, too. “In here, sir,” Ted said,

I ducked to enter the tent, but Ted caught me. He bent to whisper in my ear.

“Sir . . .” he began. He didn’t finish it. Behind the tinted visor his eyes were haunted.

“What?”

He shook his head. “Nothing.”

I thought I saw a pale flower lying in the mud under the one-man tent, but it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. When they did, I saw that the white splotch on the mud was a hand. Five long fingers were held in a graceful Grecian-statue gesture, the index finger pointing at nothing. At the wrist was caught a piece of cloth: navy blue with gray stripes. Crystals of ice glittered on the flesh between thumb and palm.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

Ted stood slowly erect in the confines of the tent. He raised his visor and looked at me. “It’s not human.”

* * *

Helen smiled sadly over the rim of her coffee cup. Through the window a watery blue sky, its single ornament a far, faint sun, canopied the Martian plains. In low spots water still stood. In high spots the mud had cracked. “It really bothers you, doesn’t it?”

I didn’t have to speak. She saw the answer in my face. I thought of the face of the creature we had found not fifty yards from where we’d found the hand. It had been beautiful.

“We’ve been out in space . . . how long?” I asked.

She shrugged. Beyond the mud flats the wintery light cast an aged crater wall in lavender. “Three years. Something like that. You’ve been here a few months longer.”

“No. I mean us. Humanity, How long have we been at it?”

Her eyes flickered. She saw what I was getting at. “Is it that they were from Earth? Is that what the problem is?”

I studied her. After seeing the creature’s face, Helen’s looked crude, and I was glad I couldn’t see my own. I gazed down at my hands. The creature’s hands had been perfect: the fingers long, the last gesture expressive. He had been pointing when some cataclysmic force had burst his ship. See there, he might have been saying. Look there.

“They got to Europa. You think they might have been trying to terraform Mars, too?”

Her voice brought me back to the present. “Maybe they got farther before the end came. Whatever the end was. Maybe they got out of the solar system. Maybe they colonized there.” God, I hope so, I thought. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they were waiting for us when we arrived on the other side? Wouldn’t it be something else to sail that dark sea to find we’d made our way back home? I pictured us meeting, two warm, fragile intelligences in the desert of space. But I didn’t believe it. I wanted to, but I couldn’t believe.

Instead I pictured him, one of the three on the ice, perhaps seeing in his telescope the deadly asteroid arc into Earth, blazing a path brighter and more lovely than the path down to Mars his frozen coffin had made. See there? Look there.

I remembered the curved metal of the ship, the intricate, spidery hieroglyphics, Only hands that were perfect could have managed that.

“I hear they’re sounding the Antarctic, That’s where they think they’ll find the evidence, if any evidence is left to be found,” Helen told me. Then she smiled and shook her head. “Have you seen the VidNews headlines? ‘Slow, Clumsy and Stupid?’ Jesus. Ignorant laymen. For all science has learned about their forerunners, you’d think the species would get better press, right?”

Slow. Clumsy. Stupid. I thought of the domed, hairless head. The wide, liquid eyes. They had been open when we found him. The ice was melting and running down the face like tears. See there? Look. Look there.

“They were so much like us,” I said.

“Yes. Surprisingly. And we finally have the proof that they were warm-blooded. But it’s still odd that we could be prey to some of the same diseases when they were evolved from the dinosaurs and we were evolved from the apes.”

“Yeah.” I put my head between my hands. That wasn’t quite what I’d meant.

“So what’s the matter?” she asked as she put her Styrofoam cup down on the Formica. “We found out. We found your aliens. So what the hell’s the matter with you?”

My throat closed. For a long time I couldn’t answer. At my side I could feel the pressure of the wide plains of Mars alight in their brief hiatus from our unnatural clouds, our artificial rain.

In three years the lichens would take over. Twenty-five years after that, more complex plants. Sometime beyond where my future reached, men would stand on red beaches, the forest behind them, the blue seas of Mars at their front. I had the feeling those men would be lonely.

I got to my feet and grabbed Helen’s luncheon dishes in a gesture of goodwill. Helen and I had stood in the stark white sickbay looking down at that strange, elegant body. As a gesture of goodwill she’d said an embarrassed prayer.

“I just wanted to be able to meet them,” I said

AUTHOR’S NOTE: Charlie Ryan taught me an important writing lesson with this story. It was the second story which he expressed an interest in buying; but he sent it back with a note that said, “I’ll buy it if you cut 1,000 words.”

I was hungry for sales at the time, and if he had said, “I’II buy it if you kiss my feet,” I’d have started puckering. Anyway, I started out by cutting some of the “the’s” and the “ands” and—guess what?—after a while of staring at the screen I suddenly (there’s one of those “suddenlys” again) saw that this sentence here was redundant and that paragraph there was overkill, Hey, I didn’t need those 1,000 words! So by asking me to line edit my own story mercilessly, he gave me an insight to editing which has served me well, Thank you again, Charlie.

Looking back over the story, I must admit that I really enjoy these two brothers and their relationship, Funny, I’d meant to write a story about restrictive religion and mythology, but ended up saying something very simple about kids and how they view the world. And that’s the way writing works, you know. You set out to say one or two things, and in the end (if you’re lucky) you say so much more.

Pa had whupped Daniel three times that day: once for fidgeting in the morning service, once for leaving his chores half done, and the last time, the worst time, for laughing and saying that the other whuppings hadn’t hurt.

Zeke followed his brother as he ran from the house. By the time he caught up to him, Daniel had stopped pretending the whupping didn’t matter and was crying for real. Snot ran from his nose, leaving a trail of slime from one nostril to his lips.

Daniel’s crying made Zeke feel funny. The welts on his brother’s legs looked like they hurt. “Hey. Wanna see a neat rock?” Zeke asked, pulling the stone from his pocket.

Daniel took the rock and held it in a slimy fist. “It’s got funny pictures all over it. Where’d you get it?”

“Place I know,” he said vaguely, Daniel’s tears had dried, and Zeke’s pity had dried up with them. “Now give it back Come on, Daniel. Give it back I’ll pound on you worse than Pa done, I’ll set you on fire and fan you.”

“Lemme go. I’ll tell Pa,” Daniel said.

Zeke released him instantly, “No!” he said so all-of-a-sudden that a sneaky look came to the younger boy’s face.

“So. Where’d you get it?”

Zeke stared longingly at the rock in Daniel’s fist. “Come on. Give it back. It ain’t so neat. There’s lots of neater things where that come from. They got arrowheads and bows. Junk like that.” He felt betrayed, but he thought that’s what he deserved for trusting his brother.

The snot on Daniel’s lip was a crisp film. He was clutching the rock as if he meant business. “I wanna go.”

“Nuh uh. It’s too dangerous. What if we get stuck out and the sun goes down, huh? What about that?”

His little brother scuffed a foot in the dirt. “You’re always afraid of the dark. Just like Pa. Just like Ma. Shuttering up the windows at night and listening for things.”

“Yeah?” Zeke asked with older-brother derision. “And just how you expect to hear them demon ghosts when they come, huh? Gotta have the fire built up and the shotgun ready.”

“There ain’t no ghosts.”

“Sure there ain’t,” Zeke sneered, “Sure. Guess it was a lion or something et Downy Phoebes and all them others.”

“I’ll tell Pa if you don’t take me,” Daniel said again. “I’ll show him the rock.”

“Shoot,” Zeke said under his breath. “All right, but we gotta hurry. And gimme the rock back, first.”

“Naw. Think I’ll keep it till you take me to that place.”

Without another word, Zeke pushed off with stiff, angry legs across the grass.

It was a loud, blue day. Red squirrels chittered in the tender leaves of a young maple. The boys walked fast, Zeke slapping at branches and rocks with a stick he’d picked up.

“I could of told Pa more things about you, you know? I could of done more than showed him that rock,” Daniel said, picking his way around the thick pines and the spindly trunks of the hardwoods.

“What things?” Zeke asked a little uneasily. There were all sorts of sins to worry about: little sins that got you a mean look and big sins that got you a whupping. Some of the sins, Zeke knew, would push your soul right over the edge, right where God couldn’t catch you anymore, and you’d fall a long way into a lake of fire.

His brother’s face had screwed itself into a grown-up frown, the expression of a deacon who’d just come across a real meaty sin. “Like talking with that space captain.”

Zeke froze. That sin was serious. A whupping-with-a-belt kind of sin, if Pa found out.

There was an ugly smile on Daniel’s face. “Pa’d have a calf if he knowed you talked to a heathern. They’d talk about you in service. Might even turn you out like they did Barney Potts so’s them demon ghosts of yours could eat you.”

“That space captain weren’t no heathern,” Zeke said calmly, even though the idea of being turned out disturbed him. Barney Potts had screamed when they’d closed and locked the door on him. Daniel had never heard a grown man cry before he’d heard the sounds that came from Barney.

To make the flippy feeling in his stomach go away, Zeke threw his arms over Daniel’s shoulders and toppled him to the soft earth. His fingers found the ticklish places at Daniel’s ribs. Daniel laughed until his face got tomato red and tears started up in his eyes. Then he started to hit back. A wild fist, no bigger than a late season apple, hit Zeke on the side of his neck.

Startled, Zeke rolled off his brother. “Why’d you hit me so hard?” he asked.

Daniel wiped the tears from his eyes and sat up, his back hunched, his gaze averted. “Made me piss myself,” Daniel said quietly. “I pissed myself all over.”

Zeke rolled over on his back and hooted into the black-green pines, A banded blue jay flew out of a branch like a bullet of gray mist, leaving the branch twitching behind it.

“I guess you won’t tell Pa about the space captain now. I could let everybody at school know about you, peeing down your leg,” he said, even though his brother wetting his pants wasn’t anything Zeke would have told to anybody except God. He’d have to declare it to God because Zeke figured that somehow, someway, he’d come close to one of those little bitty sins. The little bitty sins counted up, and if you lived long enough, they’d get you. God’d drop down out of the air like a hawk and take your soul someplace so bad you’d wish you’d never been born.

Daniel clambered to his feet as his brother watched. Zeke was, without even wanting to be, somber and sympathetic. “Ain’t like you pissed yourself bad, Daniel. It’ll an be dry by the time we get there.”

In fact, the spot of damp on the front of Daniel’s pants had dried and stiffened well before they reached even the edges of the old forest.

“Didn’t tell me we’d have to go in here,” Daniel said, hanging back from the blue vines and the dank, dark cellar smell.

“You don’t have to come, if you don’t want to.” Zeke picked a vine out of his way and walked in. The silent forest closed at his back. A few seconds later he heard the snap of a twig behind him and knew that Daniel had followed.

In the fetid air Zeke could hear the labored, snotty sound of Daniel’s breathing. “What’d you and that space captain talk about?” Daniel asked.

“Just things. Neat things. They got more stuff on other planets, you know,” his brother said sarcastically. “Like plows that go by theirselves without anyone moving them. Things like that.”

“I ain’t stupid,” Daniel retorted, his own sarcasm sounding childish. “I know. The kids talk.”

“Uh huh.”

“Bet they have chickens that don’t need to be fed and water that walks its way into the house and trash that takes itself out and bums itself up, too.”

“How did you know that?” Zeke asked. “Don’t none of the grown-ups talk about that.”

Daniel came up alongside his brother. He shrugged as they walked. “Everybody knows. Why don’t Pa get one of them plows?”

“Cause them plows is heathern. And them self-feeding chickens and walking water is, too.”

“You believe that?” Daniel asked, a little too directly to be comfortable for Zeke.

Zeke shrugged. “We come here in a space ship and stuff. Don’t know how they took to that real good. I mean, if the other stuff is heathern, why wasn’t the space ship heathern, too?”

“We did?” Daniel stopped in the middle of the trail and stared wide-eyed at his brother. “We come here in a space ship?”

“Not you, stupid. But our Ma and Pa done. They come here from Earth when they was young.”

There was a look on Daniel’s face like had been on it the time Zeke had told him there wasn’t really a Santa Claus, “Thought this was the Earth,” Daniel said.

“No, dummy. We’re a colony,” he said, drawing out the syllables the way the space captain had done. “There’s lots of colonies.” He looked up at the place where the blue sky should have been. Triangular red leaves looked down. “All up there,” Zeke gestured. “The captain told me. Said as how there were hundreds and hundreds of them things, all up in the stars.”

“We there yet?” Daniel wanted to know.

“Almost,” Zeke answered, disappointed and a little irritated that Daniel didn’t think what the captain told him was the most wonderful thing he’d ever heard.

Without warning they stepped out of the overgrowth. Sunlight hit them like a blow. Between charcoal stumps of trees the stench of old smoke lay like a fog.

Picking his way across the ashes, Zeke headed for a pile of soot and dug his arm in to the elbow. When he drew it out there was a bit of gray bone clutched in his fist.

“Oh, man,” Zeke said in disgust, flinging it away from him. The jagged cylinder of bone, its soft heart now empty, sailed across the burned scar of the forest, tumbling as it went. It landed several yards away with a rustling crash.

“I never seen this fire. We could see it from the house, right? How come I ain’t seen this fire?”

Zeke avoided his brother’s gaze. “Cause it burned before you was born, that’s why.” He pried his arm out of the refuse. His hand was empty,

“Why ain’t it grown back?”

“Dunno,” Zeke said as he pulled a claw-like branch off a ruined tree to his side. He dug into the pile of trash with hard, short strokes. An avalanche of damp soot fell on his legs, dirtying his pants.

“Don’t make sense that it wouldn’t grow back.”

“It’s a nasty place. And them trees is nasty trees, like they found when they first came here. Ain’t like pines nor oaks. No telling what they’d do,” He pried into the pile, lifting an edge of it. Small pieces of black rained down.

“That space captain tell you this?”

Zeke turned to his brother, his face white around the smudges of gray. “No, and don’t you never tell you been here, understand?”

“Pa’Il whup us, I reckon.”

“More than that,” Zeke said darkly. “Be a lot worse than that. What they done . . .” His voice failed because his throat felt funny. Picking up the stick, he applied it to the pile again.

“What who done?”

“Everybody.” The word came out flat. A dead word from a mouthful of ashes.

“But what was it they done?”

Zeke looked at his brother and then quickly away, “They killed all the demons, that’s what.”

Daniel shrugged, “Don’t sound like no big deal.”

“Shows how rot-gut stupid you are. That space captain find out, he’d take us all away to jail. And don’t never tell nobody I brung you here. It’s a real big, grown-up secret.” Suddenly Zeke whooped with glee. “Lookit. Found another one of them stones.” Stooping, he picked up the piece of sedimentary rock in his hand and gave it to his brother.

“Neat pictures.”

“Them’s demon pictures. Can’t show nobody, okay?”

Carefully Daniel slipped the stone into his pocket. “Okay.”

Both boys bent and searched through the rubble for more. Zeke found a clay jar with demon pictures on it and Daniel found two double-pronged arrowheads.

Zeke was startled when he looked up from his search to see that the shadows of the trees had gone long and blue. “Daniel,” he said softly when his mouth had enough spit in it to talk. “Think we need to go on home.”

Daniel darted among the black tree stumps, bang-bang-banging away with an imaginary pistol. His voice echoed in the clearing.

“Come on, Daniel. It’s Iate,” Zeke said.

The smaller boy laughed as he peered over the top of a fallen tree. “Bang,” he said, shooting an index finger at his brother, “Another dead demon.”

“I’m gonna go, okay? I’m gonna leave you here and let them ghosts get you.”

But Daniel had disappeared behind one of the piles and now was no place to be seen. His absence caused a hollow place to grown inside Zeke’s chest.

“Daniel?” he called again.

A deep-throat growl from the northwest made the short hairs on Zeke’s neck stand. He stood and sniffed into the breeze. The bass snarl repeated itself.

“Daniel!” Zeke screamed. The scream tore at his throat, making him cough. “Daniel!” He started to cry. “Where are you? Come on! It’s gonna rain.”

Abruptly Daniel was there, looking up with astonishment at the tears on his big brother’s face.

They set across the field of ash at a stumbling run, Zeke clutching Daniel’s arm. The breeze teased once before it turned fresh and fierce, lifting the hair on their foreheads and tugging at their shirts.

At the edge of the forest Daniel fell to his knees. Zeke paused to help him up, and then they ran on, their lungs sucking in the humid air. Odd orange-encrusted twigs caught at their clothes and whipped into their faces.

“I’m tired,” Daniel whined as he tried to pull out of Zeke’s grasp.

“Not now. We gotta get home. We gotta get home quick.”

Daniel dropped to the ground, nearly pulling Zeke off his feet. “Let go of me. I’m tired. My legs hurt. Got blisters on my feet.”

Zeke turned. Lifting his arms, he beat his brother about the head and shoulders with his open palms. “Get up! Get up, damn it! Get up right now!”

Daniel let Zeke’s stinging blows fall on his back. “Pa’ll whup you for saying ‘damn.’”

“I don’t give a shit about a whupping,” Zeke said. Abruptly he stopped hitting his brother and fell down next to him on the around. His arms wrapped themselves around his shoulders. “Danny. Danny. We gotta get home.” Zeke was crying so hard now he looked like Daniel when he cried. His nose ran.

“Don’t know why you’re afraid of the rain. Rains ever night,” his brother said with a pout. He rubbed his shoulder where his brother had hit him.

“Dark comes with the rain, Danny,” Zeke whispered. “Dark comes.”

The thing to the northwest gave a growl that shook the trunk behind their backs. “We ain’t never gonna make it home now,” Zeke said in a thin, cry-baby voice that embarrassed him. “Oh, God. Shouldn’t of ever come. We ain’t never gonna make it home before dark.”

As soon as he said it, it was, like it had already happened. Everything fell into place. Daniel and Zeke had sinned and now God was going to get them. Without interest he watched as his little brother shook dirt out of his shoe.

“I’m ready,” Daniel said, his bright face turned up. “Said I’m ready. You deaf, or what?”

Blindly Zeke got to his feet and stumbled his way through the strange-smelling trees.

They were still in the old forest when the last bit of light began to die. Red leaves became gray. Purple-brown trunks turned to black. The orange moss on the branches began to glow with an unearthly light. A ghostly kind of light.

“Oh, God forgive me,” Zeke said half to himself. “I shouldn’t never of showed you that rock.”

“Pa’s gonna whup us sure,” Daniel said, missing the point.

A fat, cold drop fell on the back of Zeke’s hand, and he remembered that they were going to die. Dying didn’t seem real, but the ghosts did. He could imagine them coming out, rank after rank of them, glowing in the night like that orange moss, wanting to know where their stone pictures were. Wanting their arrowheads back. Asking why he threw that bone.

“It’s raining,” Daniel said in a complaining voice.

“I know.”

Coming out from the old forest was like coming out of a grave. The wind bent the tops of the pines. Across the west lightning flashed, leaving a pink afterimage on Zeke’s retina.

The rain was nearly too loud to talk over. Zeke found his way around the soft rises of land where the trees grew thick. Dragging his brother along by the hand, he sought the clear, open spaces, the lower spots, where water splashed ankle high.

“You sure we ain’t lost?” Daniel asked in a strained shout.

“Guess it don’t matter if we’re lost or if we ain’t.”

“What do you mean?” Daniel asked, his voice barely louder than the rushing of the water.

Instead of answering, Zeke pulled Daniel up with him into the nearest thicket. They sat together at the foot of a pine, huddled against the rain.

“What do you mean?” Daniel asked again. “What do you mean it don’t matter?” The sound of the rain under the branches was a steady drip, drip, drip instead of the wild howl it had been in the open.

“We ain’t going home, Danny.”

“Sure we are. We’re going home.” Daniel’s voice was shrill.

“No, we ain’t. We ain’t never gonna make it. We’re gonna die just like all them others.”

He wondered what the ghosts would look like when they came. He’d only seen their bones. They had had long arms and clawed feet. Would their eyes bulge with dark glee when they saw them? Zeke wondered. And would Downy Phoebes and Horace Watson and Barney Potts be with them? Next to his right side Daniel cuddled, a line of warmth down his ribs.

Zeke disentangled himself from his brother and stood up. “You stay here a minute. I’m going up more in the trees, see if I can see our house lights from here.”

“Okay,” Daniel said doubtfully.

“I mean it. You stay here. Right where I can find you. Don’t you move, understand?”

“I ain’t deaf.”

Zeke pushed his way through the prickly needles until he found a steady tree to climb. Easing himself into the lower branches, he saw a faint light to the south. The wind blew and the glow vanished, leaving him wondering if he had seen it at all.

Clambering down the tree, he walked to the right, keeping his eyes on the spot where he thought the glimmer might have been. Three yards later he lost his footing and fell into a blackberry bush. His legs were caught in something thicker than water, less thick than mud.

Pulling on the bush, he eased his body forward. The muck gave his legs back with a disappointed pop. When he tried to push himself up, the ground swallowed his arm to his shoulder.

“Jesus,” he whimpered.

He jerked on the bush so hard that he stripped leaves away. Earth crept into his open mouth; embraced his chest and clambered up his back. Rain fell into his eyes, but he had no free hand to wipe it away. It was then he learned a great, adult truth about death, that sometimes it’s less painful than simply inconvenient.

Something moved in the bushes to his right. His breath stopped in his throat.

“Zeke?’ something said. It sounded like his brother.

Zeke didn’t answer. He pictured the bug-eyed thing not five yards away. Its wide toe-claws would have dug into the dirt. The long hands would be at its side, waiting.

“Zeke?? Daniel asked. “You okay?”

The terrified little voice could only have come from Daniel. Ghosts didn’t have anything to be scared of. Now that he was pretty sure he wasn’t going to drown, Zeke felt sort of stupid.

“I’m here,” he said quietly. “Don’t come no closer. There’s real bad sticky mud. You’ll get caught.”

There were thrashing noises as Daniel oriented himself.

“Okay. Now, what I need for you to do is lay down in this blackberry bush and grab me.”

Daniel’s voice was pouty. “But them thorns’Il eat me alive.”

“Damn it, Daniel!” Zeke snapped. “Lay down in that bush and grab my hand! Hear me? You hear me? If you don’t help, I’m gonna drown!” There was no reply. There was no movement of the bush, either. He could picture Daniel on the other side, thinking it out. “Daniel!”

“Yeah?”

“You lay down in that bush right now, and you grab my hand, hear? This is real serious. This ain’t no game or nothing.”

There was the crunch of vegetation and then, “Ow,” and another, “Ow.” Daniel’s small fingers found Zeke’s.

The suction gave Zeke’s body back to him in Iittle parts: an arm, a leg, a foot. When it was over, he lay on his back on the blackberry bush, hardly noticing the thorns.

“You said we was gonna die,” Daniel said.

“Yeah. So?”

“Well, we gonna die, or what?” Daniel sounded confused rather than frightened.

“I reckon,” Zeke said as he got up on his and knees. His body didn’t want to hold him.

“I’m hungry,” Daniel said.

Zeke crawled his way to the solid ground under the pines.

He curled up under the canopy.

“I’m cold,” his brother said,

Zeke’s eyes were closing in spite of the ghosts.

“Pa’s gonna come for us, ain’t he?”

“No, Daniel. Pa ain’t gonna come for us. Nobody will.” Nobody living, he remembered.

He wondered if he’d fight to protect Daniel. He should. That’s what brothers were for. But he didn’t know if love could be stronger than fear, even though Reverend Sorenson said it cast fear out. It’d be easier if the ghosts took them both together. He prayed for that, and in the middle of prayer fell into a sweet, forgetful sleep.

* * *

The next time Zeke opened his eyes it was daylight. Over his head a line of ants craw led in fire-drill order down the resinous bark of a pine.

Zeke sat up and touched himself all over before checking Daniel. His little brother was sleeping, chest tucked to legs like a cat. His pink mouth was open, “Daniel,” Zeke whispered, shaking him by one shoulder.

A blue eye wavered open.

“Daniel I think we’re alive.”

A thin sound, something between a snore and a complaint, came from the open mouth. Daniel turned over. He made a snicking sound with his throat.

Zeke dug in his shirt pocket and found the small jar, still intact. Stick figures marched themselves around the sides, their stick hands piled with things. Food, maybe, Maybe flowers. It didn’t show it, but he imagined the figures had once been happy.

“Daniel,” Zeke called after a while.

This time Daniel sat up, rubbing his eyes. “I’m hungry,” he said.

“I know. Let’s check and see if the ground’s solid, and then we’ll go on home.”

Daniel ran before Zeke could catch him. His small legs pumped; his hands windmilled. With a whoop he darted down the side of the slope to where Zeke had nearly drowned. His feet made shallow impressions in the mud

After steeling himself, Zeke followed, The spot would have looked innocent in the sunlight except that the blackberry bush was stripped of its leaves.

Daniel stopped running to limp. His feet must have still been bothering him. “Are we the only ones who ever made it back?”

“So far as I know,” Zeke said. Somehow that bothered rather than cheered him.

Daniel, though, was beside himself. “We’re gonna be famous. We’re gonna be spoke about in service, and they’re all gonna thank God that we come back.”

“Uh huh,” Zeke said doubtfully. “But you know what?”

Daniel had never liked the you-know-what game. Instead of replying, he kicked the smooth floor of the hollow,

Zeke suddenly realized why there were no pebbles on the path. “I had the feeling like that gunk could of buried me right there, with no sign of me left behind.”

“I don’t get it,” Daniel said. He was grinning ear-to-ear, too happy about their being special to think about anything else.

“What if there ain’t no ghosts, Daniel? What if that night mud was what caught up Downy Phoebes and Horace Watson and all them others?”

Daniel was skipping in spite of his bad feet.

“Daniel?” Zeke asked worriedly. “What if there ain’t no ghosts?”

The idea horrified Zeke. He’d lived with the ghosts all his life. They’d been a fixture, just like Ma and Pa had been a fixture. Thinking that the ghosts might not be real left him with a sense of vertigo that might have been relief or loss.

“We’ll just tell them, that’s what,” Daniel said after a moment’s thought. “Then we’ll be more famous than ever.”

Zeke chewed his lip as he followed his brother. By the time they reached the house, his mouth was raw.

The house was too quiet. The stock hadn’t been put out of the barn. The chickens were still in the coop. He drew his brother back toward the nearest stand of trees and waited.

“I’m hungry,” Daniel said. “I want to see Ma.”

“I know. Shut up.”

A little while later Pa opened the door and set off across the yard. Zeke stood up. Daniel stood with him.

Pa glanced toward them and stopped in his tracks, his face white against the red plaid of his shirt. Then he stepped back a few paces and whipped his hand through the air three times, shooing them away.

Daniel stopped trying to squirm out of his brother’s grasp. He halted, confused. “Pa?” he asked.

The callused hand moved like a hatchet across the air. Whip, whip.

“Pa!” Zeke called, his voice reasonable. “Pa, we made it through. Them ghosts didn’t come for us We’re all right.”

Pa’s narrow brown eyes found his. Whip, whip, went the big hand through the air, Whip, whip.

Pa let the cattle and horses out of the barn. He released the chickens. Ma came out on the porch for a while and, looking toward the place where Daniel and Zeke stood, put her hands over her face and cried. Her hair was down. She still had her nightdress on. Pa gathered her up and led her back inside.

“They don’t know we’re here,” Daniel said. “They ain’t seen us.”

“They seen us, all right, but maybe we look different or something.”

Daniel studied his brother. “You look ugly as ever.”

Zeke didn’t feel like laughing,

“Pa’s mad, ain’t he?” Daniel asked.

“Yeah.”

“When he decides to, he’s gonna whup us blind.”

Zeke looked down at the silent house and didn’t say a thing. The sun rose higher. Three red chickens pecked in the dirt of the yard. Pa came out with Ma. Ma was dressed in black. Pa set the bay gelding into the traces of the wagon and they rode off to service.

“I’m going on down to get me something to eat.” Daniel clambered to his feet and looked down at Zeke expectantly.

Zeke had his arms wrapped around his knees and was staring straight ahead. ”You just go ahead, then. I ain’t gonna bother stopping you. I’m tired and my hands is all cut up from them bushes. But I’m telling you there’s something not right here. There’s something real bad wrong.”

“With Pa?”

Zeke put his head down on his arms and didn’t answer. Daniel stayed on his feet a minute, just to show his big brother he wasn’t chicken. When he did sit, he acted casual about it.

After service, Pa and Ma drove up, old Reverend Sorenson, Pete Jones and Hady Miller behind them. They all looked towards the place where Zeke and Daniel waited. Pa seemed startled to see them still there. He sent Ma into the house and shooed them away.

They didn’t go.

“Pa!” Zeke called. “I don’t think there are no ghosts. I don’t think there’s no ghosts noplace.”

Old Reverend Sorenson said something about Satan. His voice didn’t carry.

Pete and Hady got out the deer rifles from their saddles.

“They’re going hunting with Pa again,” Daniel said.

With a little groan of horror, Zeke grabbed up his brother quick and tried to lead him away. Daniel wriggled out from under his arm and ran across to the grown-ups.

“Danny!” Zeke wailed as he saw the flash of Daniel’s feet and the glint of Hady Miller’s gun as he set it on his shoulder. To the side Pa put his hands up to his face, a gesture more like Ma would have -made.

Daniel’s head burst open in a spray of pink. It looked like Hady had shot into a melon. Momentum carried him two steps more before he fell in the dust of the yard. Ma banged out the door and Pa caught her. She was shrieking as loud as Zeke was.

Pete Jones put a gouge in a pine tree two feet from where Zeke stood. Peter never had been much of a shot. Zeke ducked under a pine bough, fled a few yards into the forest and stopped, bewildered. There was no other place he could go. Turned out like he was, there were no other people who would take him in.

Pete and Hady were out on the porch. Pa, Ma and Reverend Sorenson had gone inside. Daniel lay spraddled in the yard, his legs twisted as if he were still running.

The space captain would help him, if only Zeke could wait the six months till he came back. Zeke guessed he probably couldn’t make it. He thought about living out in the wild without Daniel. He thought about hunger. He thought about cold.

Daniel had died in ignorance, but Zeke decided he wouldn’t. He didn’t want to die by chance, either. Chance might be a whole lot worse. He and Daniel had done something they shouldn’t have, and, one way or another, they were going to pay. Zeke was old enough to understand the relationship between God and man; between man and boy.

He stepped out from behind the tree and started down in a steady walk towards the yard. Hady—thank God it was Hady—raised his rifle and sighted slow.

Author’s Note:This was another challenging POV: a retarded person who also had the instincts of a bee. About this time in looking over the proofs I began thinking, why the heck do I always do tear jerkers? Well, my only excuse is that I loathe chirpy TV announcers and overly happy endings; The Sound of Music was the only movie I ever walked out of.

Still. Hanky alert. “Sweet Tooth” may be my tear jerkiest story of all.

The bang scared him, scared him so much his hands flew into the air and he made an “uh” sound with his throat. Home spun in his head and made him dizzy. In the curved triglas around him, where he had first seen the bright light that came with the bang, all there was was orange-black-orange-black. The emergency horn over his head went WA-A-AANK, WA-A-A-ANK so loud it hurt his ears.

His stomach felt the way it had felt when Jean had taken him on the roller coaster in the park. The cars would go slow up to the top and then they would nearly stop for a second before they started running down the hill as fast as they could go.

It was the down side he had liked. Jean had held his hand. The steel bar had been hard against his thighs so he couldn’t fall out.

The soft, plastic emergency bar of the chair that had flipped down during the bang was hitting his lap in almost the same place. His chest thumped against the shoulder harness. He was afraid but at the same time he was happy because he remembered the roller coaster. He remembered Jean’s hand in his.

Orange-black-orange-black. It was like someone was throwing flip cards real fast over the triglas. He knew the orange was the big color of Jupiter; and the black was the big hole that was space. REACTOR RUPTURE, the computer was saying in its deep, machiny voice. He could barely hear the computer over the blat of the horn.

“Reactor rupture,” he said because he liked to repeat things.

Then he laughed. He closed his eyes. Home went round and round in his head like a searchlight. His body bumped against the seat. He put his hands way up in the air like Jean had told him to when they went down the hills in the cars.

“Sweetie? Sweet Tooth?”

He opened his eyes when he heard Jean’s voice behind him. He knew she had opened the lock to the ship, but he didn’t bother to turn. The orange blips caught his eyes and held them.

“You all right?”

“Fun, Jean,” he told her, squealing a little. “Put your hands up, it’s funner.”

“Yes,” she said. “It’s fun. But now I want you to get up and come here, okay, Sweetie? Real quick now. Quick like a bunny.”

He had trouble unfastening the plastic bar at his waist.

“Hurry up, honey,” Jean said.

“Uh huh,” he told her. His body couldn’t move good. When he got up he fell against the wall, then back against the other wall. Jean gave him her hand. She pulled him through and held on to him because the ship was doing roller coaster things.

“Shut the goddamned door,” Martingale said. He was sitting in his chair. The bar had come down over his legs, too.

“I’m trying, I’m trying,” Jean told him. She sounded mad. Her fingers didn’t close right on the wheel, so Sweet Tooth helped her. The ship pushed them against the wall over and over again.

Sweet Tooth liked it when Jean moved. Her hands danced. Her arms made pretty cut-outs of the blue wall behind her. He liked watching her from across the room, but he liked it best right beside her where their bodies swam in the air so close that he could feel the breeze from her movements against him.

“Get it closed!” Martingale shouted in a voice that made Sweet Tooth afraid and angry at the same time.

Jean slammed the door bang like the sound the ship had made. Sweet Tooth, because he was stronger, turned the wheel to LOCK.

The ship wasn’t turning as fast now. Even though there wasn’t a window, Sweet Tooth knew it. Home went swish for a few more turns and then stopped somewhere to the left of him. When it stopped, Sweet Tooth felt something that made him pull hard at his lip.

“Don’t,” Jean said, slapping his hand.

He put his arm down at his side, His fingers played with the loose material of his pants.

“What’s the matter?” she asked him.

He was afraid to tell her, afraid that he had done something wrong.

“What is it? You can tell me.” Jean smiled at him. She had a nice smile, but this wasn’t her nicest. Her nicest was when she opened her mouth and showed her teeth. This smile was just straight across her lips. The look in Jean’s eyes made his throat want to move a little.

“What the hell’s the matter with him?” Martingale asked.

“He’s scared, Bill,” she said, “We’re all scared.”

“We’re all scared,” Sweet Tooth repeated. “We’re all scared,” he said in a little bitty voice.

Jean leaned down to him so close he could smell her perfume. “What is it, Sweetie? What’s bothering you?” Her voice was warm. It sounded as good as his stuffed rabbit felt when he hugged it.

It sounded so good that he told her. “Home,” he said and pointed to the place that was getting smaller and smaller every minute.

“He’s still in touch with the base,” Jean told Martingale.

“Home,” Sweet Tooth said and wailed.

“Yeah. Yeah. Play navigator for a little longer, kid,” Martingale said. “Your holograph’s out.”

“Home,” Sweet Tooth said, stretching out his arms to the place where home was disappearing. His fingers wriggled on the ends of his hands.

“Bill will get the ship moving soon, Sweetie. And you can point to where home is and we’ll go there, okay? We’ll be there in a little while.” Jean took his hands down. She held them. It felt good, but not good enough.

“Home’s going away,” Sweet Tooth said.

Jean and Martingale looked at each other. Martingale’s mouth went open with a plop. Then Martingale stared at Sweet Tooth. His eyes were cold and dead the way the stars looked out of the triglas. “Oh, Jesus Christ,” Martingale said.

Jean took Sweet Tooth by the hand and led him back from the bridge to the passenger cabin.

It smelled in the cabin, and it was all red, too. When Sweet Tooth saw where the red had come from he started to scream. Jean had to hold him again. She made him sit down and then she threw a blanket over Dunaway. On the other side of the cabin Larry was making noises and his leg was twisted up under him. She gave Larry a shot.

“Dunaway,” Larry said. Larry’s voice wasn’t soft and nice like it usually was. It was little and sounded squeezed the way toothpaste goes out of the tube. Sweet Tooth thought maybe the shot had hurt. “Oh, shit. Poor Dunaway.”

Jean was holding his hand just like she did when Sweet Tooth had to have a shot.

“Jesus Christ! My leg.” He was crying. Sweet Tooth stared at him hard. He had never seen a man cry before. It made him feel odd in his tummy the way the tumbling of the ship had done.

“Pain’ll be gone in a minute.”

Dunaway was still leaking a little, The blanket was red. The floor was wet around him.

“What happened?”

“Martingale got us too close to Io’s field.”

Larry had stopped crying. He looked over at Sweet Tooth.

“No,” Jean said. “It wasn’t Sweet Tooth’s fault.”

“Martingale. That stupid, egotistical bastard,” he said.

“Don’t say that,” Sweet Tooth told him, putting his hands over his ears.

“Sorry, Hummer.” Larry tried to smile. Sweet Tooth smiled back. He hoped his smile looked better than Larry’s.

But Sweet Tooth couldn’t keep his eyes away from the blanket Dunaway was wrapped in. “Sick,” he said to Jean. “Dunaway’s sick.”

“Real sick, Sweetie,” Jean told him without looking his way.

“Sick,” Sweet Tooth said out of a throat that seemed too dry.

Jean didn’t pay any attention. “We need to get you strapped in the chair, Larry. Can you get up?”

Larry acted drunk the way Martingale had once when he had gotten in real bad trouble. Sweet Tooth was scared that the shot Jean had given Larry was whiskey. He didn’t want the bosses to talk to Larry the way they’d talked to Martingale.

“Help me, Sweet Tooth,” Jean said.

He came over to her. His fingers pulled at the legs of his trousers.

“Get him up, okay? And put him in one of the chairs.”

“Larry’s sick, too,” Sweet Tooth said.

“Yeah. Larry’s real sick, honey. Pick him up under the arms and don’t let his legs drag the floor.”

The room was messy, all red and stinking. Larry and Dunaway had made it that way, To Sweet Tooth it felt nasty, like when his hands were dirty and he needed to wash them. He grabbed Larry under the arms and carried him to the wall.

“Sweetie? Here. Right here.”

Sweet Tooth walked past Jean to the door. His right hand pulled at the lever that said EMERGENCY EXIT.

“No!” Jean shouted. She pulled at Sweet Tooth’s jacket.

Larry twisted in Sweet Tooth’s arms trying to get away, but he wasn’t strong enough. Not when he was drunk. “Don’t open the door, okay, Hummer?” Larry said, “Hummer, please! Jean! For God’s sake do something!”

It was hard opening the door when Jean got in the way like that and Larry fought him. Sweet Tooth tried to flip the lock without hurting her, but his fingers slipped and he dug gouges in the back of her hand. She didn’t take her hand away.

“Sit down, Sweet Tooth! Sweet Tooth!” Jean screamed. “Look at me! Look at me, damn it!”

He looked at her then. She shouldn’t use words like that. It made the room feel dirty some more.

“You’ll hurt me if you open the door, Sweet Tooth,” she told him. Her face was very close. Larry stopped struggling a minute and just lay like a pile of heavy rags in Sweet Tooth’s arms. “You’ll hurt me real bad if you do that.”

His hand slipped off the lock.

“Set him down now. In the chair.”

“He’s sick. He needs out,” Sweet Tooth said with a frown in his voice. Jean didn’t look like she wanted to understand. He put Larry down in the chair the way Jean had said.

“Don’t get mad at him,” Larry told her. His lips got in the way of his words. “It’s just instinct Get the dead and sick out of the hive. He can’t help what he is.”

“It’s not fair that they’re all like that, and they still create them. It’s not fair to us or to them,” Jean said. She looked at Sweet Tooth before she looked away. Sweet Tooth twisted the ends of his jacket in his hands because he knew he had just done something bad, and he didn’t know what that thing was.

“Come here,” Larry said, holding his hand out to him. Sweet Tooth came over and sat in the chair next to his friend. “Don’t cry,” Larry told him. He put his hand on Sweet Tooth’s head. “Don’t cry, Hummer. Everything’s all right now.”

“Sick,” Sweet Tooth said.

“I know. But don’t open the door. Okay?”

“Okay,’” Sweet Tooth said. He thought Larry and Dunaway should be outside the ship, but if Larry and Jean didn’t want it, he’d just ignore that flippy feeling in the pit of his stomach. That was simple. It was so simple it made him happy again.

Larry turned to Jean. “How bad is it?”

“Reactor rupture in the navigation cabin . . .”

Blink. Larry’s eyes were on Sweet Tooth again.

“He’s okay,” Jean said. “We got him out before the steam started to escape. Probably a sauna in there now.”

“Rads?”

“Building,”

“Building,” Sweet Tooth said. He hated it when he wasn’t part of the talking. He liked the talking. Sometimes when they talked, he’d hum Iittle tunes Jean had taught him: Farmer in the Dell” and “Jingle Bells.” That’s why Larry called him “Hummer.”

“So what about the holograph?” Larry asked. “Without Sweet Tooth in there, we can’t use the holograph. How do we know where we are?”

“Sweet Tooth knows,” Jean said.

That made Sweet Tooth feel proud. Larry’s hand came down on his cheek, but it wasn’t working real good, so the hand slipped off, down past his chin, dragging his lip open for a minute.

“Good kid,” Larry said. “Good kid.”

“Good kid,” Sweet Tooth told him. Then he said, “Home’s going away now.”

“Yeah?” Larry said, wrapping his arm around Sweet Tooth’s shoulders. It stayed put this time.

“Martingale got the ship stabilized, but we still have a lot of lateral motion.” Jean was looking at Larry, but Larry was eyeing Sweet Tooth. He had a silly smile on his mouth.

“Martingale’s stupid, isn’t he, kid?” Larry asked.

“Martingale calls me stupid,” Sweet Tooth told him. Larry’s arm was a little heavy on his shoulder. The heavy arm pulled Sweet Tooth’s face real close to Larry’s so that Larry spoke into his ear.

“Right in here,” Larry said, rubbing the knuckles of his other hand into Sweet Tooth’s forehead, “is everything a bee knows. So you can’t ever be stupid, Sweet Tooth. You’re a genius of a bee who just looks like a human. That’s all. A bee genius.”

“A genius,” Sweet Tooth said. He didn’t know what it meant, but it sounded nice.

The ship went “clang” and rocked a little, but Larry had his shoulder harness on, so it was all right. Jean, who didn’t have anyone’s arm around her, fell off her knees a little way to the floor. She didn’t hurt herself. It wasn’t that big a bump.

“I’d better get back,” Jean said.

Larry eyes were closing. “Right.” Then he gave Sweet Tooth one big squeeze. “You take it, kid. You get us home, okay?”

“Get you home,” Sweet Tooth told him. He got up. Jean got up with him. Larry looked real small in his seat. And real sleepy.

“I know you will,” Larry said.

They left Larry sitting there and went back to the bridge. Martingale looked upset. “Get Dunaway in here.”

“Dunaway’s dead,” Jean told him.

“Real sick,” Sweet Tooth said.

“And Goldblum?” Martingale ignored Sweet Tooth. He always did.

“His leg’s broken. I gave him some painkillers. He’s resting now.”

“You mean I’m left to pilot this ship with a planetologist and an idiot savant?” Martingale’s voice got bigger and bigger until he shouted out the last part of what he said.

“Idiot,” Sweet Tooth whispered. He wasn’t feeling happy anymore,

“Shut up, Martingale, Don’t call him that.” Jean reached out to touch Sweet Tooth on the shoulder, but it didn’t take the pain away.

“What should I call him, huh?”

“A recombinant. That’s what he’s called. A recombinant. Or you can call him by his name.”

“He doesn’t have a name. He has a number,”

“You know what I mean.”

Martingale looked at his console a long time. “Okay,” he said after a while, “Sweet Tooth, Where’s home now?”

Sweet Tooth shuffled his feet for a minute. Martingale made him feel like he wanted to run away.

“Come on, goddamn it! This is what you’re here, for! Where’s home?” Martingale’s eyes came up from the console and met Sweet Tooth’s. There was a sort of burning thing in them, like the burning thing that whipped between Jupiter and Io.

Sweet Tooth pointed. Home wasn’t going away any more, but it was real small. Smaller than he’d ever felt it.

Martingale moved a lever. The ship did a thing like Sweet Tooth’s body did when it was cold. It started to move, but it wasn’t moving right. Home was under the floor now.

“No, no, Bill,” Sweet Tooth said. He jumped up and down a little. The ship moving made him excited, but moving the way it was moving made him nervous.

Martingale stopped the ship again. He put his hands over his face.

“Home’s far, Jean,” Sweet Tooth told her, feeling real bad about everything, about Larry, about Dunaway, about how Martingale and Jean were looking upset.

“How far?” Martingale asked.

Sweet Tooth spread his arms apart wide, so wide he felt the stretch in his chest “Far,” he told him.

“Okay,” Martingale’s eyes went right through his head to the back of his brain. “Point to home now.”

He pointed. Martingale moved the ship, but he moved it wrong, Home came up off the floor: but it was way to the left again.

Martingale moved the ship a lot of times, bur he never could keep it right. Sweet Tooth got tired of pointing and sat down and tried to sleep. Jean woke him up.

“Keep pointing, Sweet Tooth. You have to keep pointing out home to Martingale. You want to get home, don’t you?” Jean’s voice sounded like she was mad at him, so Sweet Tooth sat up and pointed again. Home was just at the edge of the floor to the front, and Martingale was going to it, but over it, too.

“I’m losing power. We’ll never make it back this way,” Martingale said.

“How long before meltdown?” Jean had walked over to where Martingale sat, leaving Sweet Tooth alone. She leaned over Martingale. Her body was like a dance.

Martingale scrubbed his face up and down. “Five hours before we go critical. Get him in the navigation bowl.”

Jean stood up quick. Her back was straight. Her face was white.

“You do it. You tell him. You’re his idol. Queen of the hive, He’d do any goddamned thing for you. If he’s got any metal on him, get it off. In fact, get his clothes off, too. Tell him to fix our position. Override the computer. The steam’s playing hell with it.”

“No,” Jean said. Sweet Tooth had to sit up to hear her, her voice was so soft.

“You’ll lose all of us, then,” Martingale said. “Larry and you and me, and him, too. You’ll lose him, anyway.” He took his hands away from the console and set them in his lap, the way Sweet Tooth did when he didn’t want to do something. Only Martingale looked sad.

“It’s your fault,” Jean said.

Sweet Tooth thought she might be talking to him and it made him feel hurt. Then Martingale said, “I know.”

“Everything’s your fault.”

“I know. Does that-make it better?”

“I’m going to report you for this, Martingale. You’ll get your license taken away.”

“Big deal, Jean. Big goddamned deal.”

“You should get in there. You should get in there and set the controls. It was your fault. No one else should have to die for you.” Jean was sniffling the way Sweet Tooth did when he had a cold.

“I can’t,” Martingale said, and he still didn’t look at Jean. He looked at the console as if it were telling him something he didn’t want to hear. “I don’t know where home is.”

After a while Jean came over and told Sweet Tooth to take his clothes off. “It’ll be hot in there,” she said. She let him keep his shorts. “You get in there and you set the controls as quick as you can, okay? Quick like a bunny.” Her eyes looked away from him. “Then you get out. Understand?”

He nodded his head up and down. He didn’t smile because Jean was real serious.

Before she opened the door, she said to him again, “Quick like a bunny, Sweet Tooth. Don’t stay in there long.”

He felt funny standing there with his feet bare on the floor and his shirt and pants off. He put his hands over his chest so that Jean couldn’t see him. His body was ugly, all fat and pink; not like Martingale who had big muscles.

She opened the door. He ran inside. Sweet Tooth turned around in time to hear the sound the door made when it locked him in the hot room.

“Sweet Tooth?” Martingale said through the intercom.

The floor wasn’t bright, but it was burning, He could feel it. He was running in place real fast, faster than he had ever gone. “Hot, hot, hot,” he said, touching the intercom button.

“I know,” Martingale told him. “”Set the controls and get out.”

“Door locked!” Sweet Tooth wailed. “Jean locked the door!”

“I know . . .”

There was a sound and then Jean was speaking to him. “Sweetie? Sweetie? Sit down in the chair and set the controls for home. Put the console on MANUAL.”

Sweet Tooth didn’t want to hear what Jean was saying. The triglas was all covered over with fog. The floor hurt him so bad he thought that maybe he could fly to get away from it. He pumped his hands fast and then faster, but it didn’t work. His feet shouted with the burning, so he sat down. The seat stuck to his legs. “Hot! Hot! Hot!” he screamed. He went to the door and banged on it until his palms got red and blistered.

“Sweetie?”

Sweet Tooth could tell Jean was crying. She was crying a lot. She was crying so hard he could hardly understand her.

“Sweetie, please. We have to get home.”

“Hot! Hot!” Sweet Tooth said.

“Do you love me, Sweetie?”

“YES!” But his voice didn’t sound like he loved her.

“Do you love Larry?”

“YES!” He coughed. The air was wet the way it was at the ocean.

“If you love us, sweetheart, then set the controls. We can let you out then, understand?”

He ran quick, quick, quick, to the console. He could feel home a little nearer, but still far away.

“Hurry.” Jean said.

He hurried. Like a bunny. Touching the MANUAL button was like touching the end of a cigarette. “Hurt, hurt,” he said. His voice was miserable.

“Please, Sweet Tooth,” Jean said. “Don’t you know I love you?”

He knew. He knew because Jean had taken him to the roller coaster out on the beach. From up at the top he could see for miles and the sea had been blue and gray and green. The roller coaster went up real slow and came down fast; but while it was up on the hill, just before it started to go down, it would always stop for just a minute so that you could think about what was coming. You had time for your heart to go up into your throat and you had time for your hands to sweat on the bar. Then the car would start down like thunder.

Sweet Tooth put his hand on the lever and held it until he felt home like a bright knife right in the center of his forehead. He held it there so long he heard the computer say MANUAL OVERRIDE MANUAL OVERRIDE.

When he took His hand off, some of his skin stayed behind.

“Get out!” Jean said,

Sweet Tooth ran. Jean opened the door for him and pulled him inside. Martingale closed the door with a bang behind him. The floor was cool, so Sweet Tooth lay down on it. He held his wrist tight as if he could keep the burning from moving up.

“Look at his feet,” Jean said in a tight rubber-band voice. “Oh, God, Look at his feet.”

“Let’s get him in the showers,” Martingale said.

Martingale had to pick him up because Sweet Tooth didn’t want to get up ever again. He carried Sweet Tooth to the bathroom, threw him in the stall and turned the cold water on. “Stay down for a minute, damn it,” Martingale said.

“Jean!” he shouted. “Get the medkit, will ya? Jesus, he’s burned all over!”

Sweet Tooth started shivering. Martingale told him to turn over. He did, even though it hurt on that side, too. He was afraid not to. There was something real serious about Martingale’s face.

Jean came in and Sweet Tooth tried to hide himself because his shorts were all wet and he could see himself through them. He curled up in a ball near the side of the shower.

Jean bent down towards him, She was saying, “Oh God. Oh God” so much that it seemed more like singing than prayer.

Martingale shut off the water. Jean sprayed some stuff on his hands and legs, Sweet Tooth was shaking so much that his body went bump against the floor.

Tile spray made the hurt go away so Jean wrapped him in a blanket. He walked funny out to the bridge because he couldn’t feel his body. They had him sit in a chair. Jean gave him butterscotch pudding and he ate it with his left hand.

She ran her fingers through his hair. It was still wet. “You’re a hero. Do you know what that is?”

He shook his head. He couldn’t answer because his cheeks were full of butterscotch pudding.

“It means you were very, very brave.”

That made him feel good. When he was finished with the butterscotch, she gave him a chocolate. That made him feel even better, but it made him feel funny, too, Jean always said sweets weren’t good for him. He ate the pudding, keeping one eye on Jean, expecting she would tell him not to eat so much. She didn’t. Chocolate was his favorite pudding, except for butterscotch. When he was finished with that, she gave him a lemon pudding. He ate about three bites before falling asleep.

When he woke up his stomach felt funny. Larry was sleeping in a chair on the bridge.

“Sick,” Sweet Tooth said, putting his hand on his belly.

When Jean looked at him he threw up all over the blanket and the chair. He thought she would yell at him for eating so much, but she didn’t. She brought him another blanket. His shorts were dry, but his body was wet. He was shaking a little,

A few minutes later he got sick at the other end, and his shorts weren’t dry any more. Martingale took him to the bathroom and put him in the shower again.

“Sick,” Sweet Tooth told him in a tiny voice. He wanted to make himself real small because he was ashamed he had gotten sick in his shorts.

Martingale didn’t say anything to him. He didn’t say anything not even when Sweet Tooth got sick In the shower, this time with both ends at once.

Sweet Tooth’s belly squeezed together and hurt him bad. When he was sick again, the sick part was red.

After a while Martingale turned off the shower and wrapped him in another blanket. He put his arm under Sweet Tooth’s arm and helped him. Sweet Tooth couldn’t walk very well because his body was dancing by itself the way it did when he had the flu.

“Sick,” he said when they sat him down. Larry was awake and was looking at him funny. Jean was looking at the wall. They should put him outside, but nobody looked like they would. He should put himself outside, but he didn’t think his legs would move that far. Jean shouldn’t have let him eat all that pudding.

Jean took a deep breath, a long one, and sat up. Her body was beautiful the way it moved in the air. “I hope you’re satisfied,” she told Martingale. Her voice sounded sad the way wind does through empty bottles.

Martingale didn’t answer. Larry didn’t say anything, either. After a while Sweet Tooth slept. Home was a big, loud searchlight in his face.

Author’s Note: I had begun the process to apply for Brazilian citizenship when my ex-husband took a ninety-degree turn in his career, returning to the U.S. for a degree in psychology. Well, he obtained his dream, but dreams are expensive. Writing, for example, cost me the last of my youth and a host of friends. His Ph.D. cost him Brazil.

When we returned, I grieved as I would have for a loved one who had died. I cried for three days straight; could barely eat for two weeks. Years later, given the opportunity to revisit the country, I found that emotionally I could not. I think the old adage is true: You can’t go back.

All things are subject to change, but to this day Brazil remains pristine and unspoiled in my mind, the way it was in July of 1974. The power and purity of that memory is why the alien in this story was content not to return home.

By the way, this idea was born from a single visual image: An elderly man was standing Tiptoe in a house, cutting down from the ceiling a large cocoon. I knew the image carried with it a great deal of sadness. The story emerged by asking myself the simple question, “Why?”

I don’t care what anybody says, he was a good neighbor. He moved in next door the summer that Acme Feed and Grain burnt down. He moved in kinda quiet-like with just a van coming up to his place. None of his people helped him.

Maxie made him a cake like he was just any of the new neighbors we’ve had in the last forty years. I got real irritated at that, partly because I wasn’t sure I wanted anything to do with him.

“A cake?” I asked her like I had never seen one in my life, “You’re making him a cake? Don’t you know who he is?”

“Reckon I seen him once or twice in the papers. Might have seen him on TV talking before the UN.” When Maxie decided to let something I said roll off her, she could be varnished rock.

“Well, how do you know he can eat chocolate cake?” I asked her, real sarcastic.

“How do you know he cain’t?”

And that was that. She had stuck them toothpicks all up to the top of that cake and wrapped wax paper around it like she always done to keep the midgies out of the icing. She picked up the plate, and with me trotting behind her like a spring lamb, we walked the half mile or so of pasture over to his place.

When I think of him, I remember him sitting on that damned ratty lawn chair of his, a drink teetering beside him on the grass, with that look on his face he’d sometimes get like he could see real far, past where I could look. Recollecting about it now, I’m always in that picture, too, sitting in that idiot overstuffed chair he’d got in some flea market, a beer in my hand. I was used to him by then.

But that first time I seen him, I remember thinking that he was taller and bluer than I’d expected. I knew they were blue, but I always pictured them blue like a blue tick hound, where they’re kind of grey with a blue cast to them. Or blue like a blue roan horse. He wasn’t blue like that. He was the color of a plover’s egg or a real clear spring sky. That’s how he was blue. Let me tell you, you don’t get no idea over television. None at all.

He was so blue and so tall and skinny that I didn’t see how touched he must have been. It was a lot later before I thought of that. He stood there in the door and sort of looked down at that damned cake for a long time and didn’t say nothing. He just looked. And then them skinny hands of his came out and grabbed the edges of the plate, careful not to put his hands against Maxie’s, not ’cause he was fearful of touching her, but because, he told me later, he didn’t want to scare her away. His face lit up like a Christmas tree with a smile a mile wide and he said, “Chocolate,” in that oboe voice of his. He was a pure demon for chocolate.

He liked all of Maxie’s cakes. My favorite was the applesauce with the sour-cream icing, and he liked that one, too. But from then on whenever she made the chocolate, I knowed it was half for him.

He’d come over every once in a while, and you’d have to watch for him real good, cause he wouldn’t hallo the house like another neighbor might have done. He’d just stand in the yard in the rain or the sun till we noticed him. Sometimes I’d come in from the bam and there he’d be, and I’d get to wondering how long he’d been waiting. Much as we told him to come to the door and knock, he never done it. I figured he might have been too shy, and he thought sometimes we might not want him there. Once I told him it bothered me. I pictured us over to town and him standing in the yard for hours. It didn’t make me feel any better when he told me he looked for our car.

“Car might be in the shop,” I told him.

He looked at me with that odd, settled expression and said, “Then I will not wait. I will go home.”

“But you might want for something, and I’m here. Should come up and knock so you know for sure.”

“I can’t do that, no matter how much you wish it. For us it is a sin, bothering people. It’s greater than the sin of stealing.”

“You got any religious pamphlets I can give them magazine salesmen when they come by?” I asked.

“No,” he said real serious before he realized I was joshing. Then he laughed right along with me.

It was only when he said stuff like that that I remembered how different we were. Things would go on just fine, and I’d be thinking of him just as human as anybody else, then he’d say something like that and I’d remember. Like I said, when I got used to that blue, I didn’t see it no more.

Had a thing for vodka and Dr. Pepper, only he’d always add sugar and one of them bottled red cherries just for the pretty. Had a sweet tooth, that one. Kept Oreo cookies in a glass jar in his kitchen. Kept some pretzels in a glass jar and beer in the fridge, too, but that was for me, case I’d come calling.

We’d go out to his yard or on his porch if it was raining, and he’d bring out the Oreo jar and set it by him and the pretzel jar and set it by me. He’d make one of them vodka drinks for himself and reach in his refrigerator and bring me out a beer. He was real thoughtful that way.

Everyone’s house always smells a little strange, mostly from what’s cooked there. His smelled stranger than most, but it didn’t smell particularly bad, There was a hint of oregano in it, and something sugary, too. Once, when he was real drunk, he told me my house smelled of fresh baked bread and cookies. Said he just liked standing in my kitchen watching Maxie at the stove. Said it made him feel good, not like he was home, but good all the same.

I asked him why he didn’t go back, since he was retired and all. What I didn’t get into was why in the world he put up with the little sidelong stares he got in town. Couldn’t go to the hardware store without causing some kind of quiet commotion. People seen him coming and they just stopped in their tracks.

He said I wouldn’t understand, but he couldn’t go back because he loved home so bad.

“I want to remember the way it was in here,” he told me, tapping one of them long bony fingers against his skull. “To me, my trip only lasted three years, but more went by on my planet. What I miss is a home that existed over one hundred years ago, not the planet that is there now. When I knew I had to go,” he said as he stretched his legs against the tom plastic mesh of the lawn chair, “I started to memorize things I knew I would miss. When I got here, I mourned for a long time. I would remember those mind photographs I had taken of things and sometimes I would become lost in them. Then, in about five years, I adapted. I love home, still; but I love it as I would someone who is now dead. Home is dead for me, Billy. I’ve buried it.”

He might have killed it in his mind, but his heart never forgot. That long stare at night was to one particular light in the sky.

“Why didn’t you retire up there to New York where all your other people are staying?” I asked. I was expecting to hear that he didn’t like the city; that it was too smelly and crowded for him, but he didn’t say none of that.

“I am retired,” he said instead. “I would not be welcome in their community. It was expected that I would return home. I embarrass them.”

It was spring when some of his people came to visit. Maxie and me seen them drive up the road. Two humans, important ones by the looks of them three-piece suits, stayed around the car. The two others went on inside. They stayed a long time and I almost expected to see him leave with them, but he didn’t. He stayed put.

“Friends come to see you,” I said as I took a long pull of my can of Schlitz.

“Yes,” he said, He wasn’t real conversational that evening. We sat there for a while, him looking down into that drink of his instead of up to the sky. Moths tapped against the porch light.

I slapped at my arm. “Wet spring.”

“Yes.”

“Lots of skeeters.”

He didn’t say nothing.

“Skeeters don’t bother you, do they?”

“They don’t want me to stay here,” he said all of a sudden, and I knowed he wasn’t talking about skeeters.

It was my turn to look at him. I could see a lot of reason in what he’d said, but I still didn’t like it much.

“You staying anyways?” I asked.

“Yes, Billy. I’m staying anyway, but not for the reason you think.”

I recall it was a real dark night and real clear. Off to the east, down by the creek, I could hear the Harrlesons’ coon dog baying, A little breeze kicked up and rattled the leaves in the pecan trees near the porch.

“I’m dying,” he said.

I was looking at him when he said that. About then I couldn’t look at him no more.

“Not that I’m sick,” he explained, “but because I won’t change any more, I’m tired of changing. Of course being tired has very little to do with it. I’ve had a lot of lives. A great many lives. The people who came to see me?”

He expected some answer, so I said, “Yeah?”

“They don’t understand because they’re so much younger. They believe I’m being dramatic.” He chuckled a little at that. “But they pointed out that, if I do die, my soul would become stuck here, so far from home. They say I would spend eternity among strangers. What do you think?”

The question shocked me, but I answered anyway, “I always figured your God’s same as ours. Never thought about it much, but I don’t see that it’s any problem, dying here or dying there, Dead’s dead.”

“Yes, Billy, I think so, too. Dead’s dead. Tell me, if they’re right, if I don’t die, but change instead, will I frighten you?”

That question sort of raised the hair on the back of my neck. I should have said more, but I just told him no, I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I couldn’t imagine him scaring me. I couldn’t imagine that.

“You’re a good man, Billy,” he said.

Of the three of us, it was Maxie who went first. I recollect I come out of the barn one winter afternoon and seen her. There was about an inch of snow on the ground, and I wondered what the hell she was doing and if she wasn’t blamed cold lying there. When I come running up to her side, I seen she was cold. Cold as ice. I just sat back on my haunches and looked at her. It took me a while to realize she was dead.

Now it’s a funny thing, but I always figured I’d go first. So I guess in the little parcel of time I stood in the door of the barn and the while I sat on my haunches feeling the snow steal the heat out of my legs, I couldn’t believe she was dead just cause I didn’t have no reference point for it.

He made me mad cause he didn’t go by the funeral home. Didn’t go to the service, neither. And when everybody in town come by the house for pound cake and potato salad, I expected to see him there, but he never showed.

I buried Maxie in the family plot on our land right next to Mama and Daddy. From the back door you can see down to the wrought-iron fencing under the oak. It was better. Made me feel less lonely, ’cause I could still see her grave from the kitchen. The kitchen was the one place she belonged.

Damned if the day after the funeral I didn’t look down there and see him kneeling by her marble angel in the sleet. I was feeling pretty punky about then, so I didn’t go down there to talk to him. Didn’t feel like talking to nobody. Come back in the kitchen about two hours later to make me some coffee and seen he was gone.

I visited her the next day. Damn if he hadn’t made her a chocolate cake Sleet’d gotten to it, and a few of the braver ants were having a field day. I left it. A week or so later it was pretty well gone.

I took the plate back to him.

“Washed it for you,” I said when he opened the door.

He looked down at me with them silvery eyes of his and took the plate without word one,

“Appreciate it,” I told him,

“It’s nothing,” he said, Then he added, “It is a custom of ours to leave with the dead the one thing that symbolized them.”

I sort of looked at the plate where he was holding it in them blue hands. “Thank you,” I said. Then I said, “I think you caught her. I think you caught her good. Seemed like she loved to bake cause she knowed people liked it. She wasn’t nothing grand. I know that. But she was a good, solid woman. Somebody you could count on.”

“Someone to count on,” he said thoughtfully, I’m not sure, but that may well be a grand thing. Are you going to be all right?”

Instead of answering like I should have, I sort of started to cry.

He didn’t touch me or nothing, not like a human might have. Didn’t say nothing, neither, least not for a while. Didn’t say as how the Lord works in mysterious ways or how it was a blessing she was took so quick. Or how she was in some better place. He just stood there. But, you know, it was kind of funny how comfortable he made me feel. Maybe his just standing there made me know death was a natural thing and not nothing to go excusing away.

After a while he asked if I wanted to stay for dinner, and I said no. He asked if I had other plans, and I said no. Then he said as how if I didn’t have no other plans, it didn’t make sense to go back to the house cause I probably wouldn’t eat. I said I wasn’t hungry. He said I probably was, I just didn’t know it yet.

So I come on in. He got out two frozen Mexican-food dinners and popped them into the microwave. By the time they were ready I was hungry. Ate all of mine and half of his, too. He built a fire in the fireplace and I stayed so late and got so drunk: that about three o’clock in the morning he threw a blanket over me and told me to spend the night. I stayed at his house for two days.

All that winter, seemed like we was joined at the hip. I’d go over to his place, but most times he’d be over at mine. Started knocking on my door, too. If I didn’t answer right away, he’d barge right on in. I figured he’d got over thinking bothering people was a sin; but he hadn’t. Wasn’t till six months later he got up the gumption to tell me he’d been afraid I’d kill myself.

Got to telling me a lot about their way of death, too. Blamed if I didn’t start understanding. He started borrowing Maxie’s cookbooks and making stuff from scratch, and we’d sit all warm in his kitchen, the smell of fresh baked bread and cookies around us and talk and eat until the thin hours of the morning.

Spring planting come, and I was busy. Helped him get in a garden; he helped me get in mine. When we seen each other, he let me go on and on about Maxie. Never told me to shut up. Never seemed like he was bored. Knowed it must have been tiresome for him, but he hung on every word and never once interrupted. I’ve had some good neighbors in my time. I’ve had- some good friends. But of all of them, God, wasn’t he the best.

* * *

In November some four years later he told me to go home and not come back for two weeks. I knowed right then what it was about.

“God damn you to hell,” I told him, “I won’t do that.”

“Billy, you have to,” he said.

“You got that wrong. I don’t have to do nothing I don’t want to.”

“No. You really don’t. I’m sorry, but I had to ask. You’re the only one I have.”

That made me mad. “Should have more’ n me, after all this time. You been here some fifteen years working for your people and working for ours. Should have more’n me. It just ain’t fair.”

“I’m not going to debate the unfairness of it with you.” He had an elegant way of talking like that, so that sometimes you didn’t know if he was mad nor joking till he said something else. “Unfairness has nothing to-do with it. Besides, it’s unimportant. You’re all that I need.”

That sort of got to me. “You tell me what to do,” I said then. “You let me know if you need anything.”

“Just don’t forget to check on me. Please don’t forget.”

I kind of looked at him. I was a little put-out. “You think for one goddamned minute I will?”

“No,” he said real soft. “Forgive me. I shouldn’t have said that, but I’m frightened.”

Him frightened. That took me back. Didn’t know he could be upset nor angry nor scared. “Then I ain’t gonna leave you. I’ll just stay right here. Ain’t gonna let nothing happen to you. You’ll see.”

“You can’t stay,” he told me. “It’s a private thing with us. I have to have time. Give me two weeks.”

“Two weeks,” I told him. “Not a minute more.”

Two weeks later, I was the one who found him. I was the one who cut him down. When I picked him up in my arms there wasn’t much left of him, and what was left didn’t have no more weight than paper. The cocoon was so dry and fragile that I broke part of it accidental-like against my chest. I could see some of him inside. Just a glimpse ’cause I didn’t want to look too close. But what I seen made me know he hadn’t been able to change. Death. It looks the same. No matter what creature it takes, death looks the same.

I done what he expected of me. Took him out and laid him on the grass, real careful so he didn’t break. The ground was wet, but I dug a hole, anyways. I laid him down inside and set fire to him like he wanted me to. He’d told me enough of what to expect if he’d made it and what to look for if he hadn’t. If he’d made it, I would have lost him the same. If he’d made it, he wouldn’t have remembered nothing.

He burned fast. There was something pretty about it, too. The edges of the brown cocoon caught first and spread, sort of curling like dry leaves do. The wind caught at him and lifted bits of him up in the blue dusk. I could see the ashes as they spread along the pasture, with embers falling to the ground, like he was part of the air and the earth at the same time.

Then I called up to their embassy. He’d taught me something to say in his own language, and I said that. Never told me what it meant, but the ambassador on the other end of that phone was quiet for a long time before he put the receiver down. He put it down so soft I didn’t never hear the click, only that hum of the empty line.

I went through his house and mine trying to find something that suited him, but I couldn’t. I thought of the Oreo jar, and that wasn’t him. The vodka and Dr. Pepper wasn’t really him, neither. He was a complicated man, and not so easy to sum up as Maxie.

So I wrote this. Talked to Harry Jacobs and his folks over at the paper and they promised to print it. He’d think it didn’t matter; but I want people around here, the people who always stared at him, to understand.

Tomorrow morning when that paper’s thrown, I’m going to go over to the hole where I burned him. I’m going to sit by that hole for five hours like he done for her. I’ll probably read this out loud. He’d tell me that was silly, that he’d been made part and parcel of all that is, but you cain’t never tell.

Anyways, if he’s still here and feeling lonely with all them human souls around him, I want him to remember the human who cared. He was a hell of a good neighbor.

Author’s Note: This is one of the few stories of mine which has anything to do with Brazil, why didn’t I use Brazil as a setting more often? My novel Cradle of Splendor took place there, but that novel is dark and concerns ugly truths, things I really don’t associate with that bright and happy country. Lord knows Brazil had a powerful impact on me; and given the right story, I intend to write about it again.

Looking back over this particular work, I found that I was delighted to see that it is now so dated. Being a child of the ’50s, I remember “Duck and Cover” and the terrors of nuclear war. After all, San Antonio, Texas with Fort Sam Houston and its three large Air Force bases was considered a prime Russian target. I see now how that early fear bled into my subconscious. It’s a relief to be able to read this now and see it as quaint.

They were playing catch, not with a flashby, but with a beach ball that had an afterthoughtish look. I decided it had probably been borrowed from Pediatrics. Rarely do such parents come prepared. When parents come empty-handed, as I imagined these had, they are frightened by the empty silences that fester between them and their children. That’s when they look for props.

The ball was a cheap, plastic thing with longitudes of primary colors and poles of red. A small, happy planet for small, simple people.

The father was doing fast sprints, feinting to his right and then to his left. Sometimes he tossed the ball overhead, sometimes underarm; but always athletically, His smile was fixed and determined, a glued-on smile.

Four yards from the father the son stood, a fat post, catching the ball only if it came directly into his hands. Otherwise he would let it go past him and then amble, not jog, after. The boy’s face was utterly somber, more an expression for school-work than for games.

The mother sat in her long, white dress as if she were attending a social day at the races. It was a family painting by Hieronymus Bosch. Only the boy seemed sane.

The father’s smile failed, becoming the grin of a man who was weary of pumping gladness into a leaking container. He tossed the ball to the boy’s right, just far enough so that his son would have to jump to catch it. The boy didn’t. He stood, his sorrowful eyes following the ball’s bright path. After it had stopped, he trudged towards it, picked it up, walked back to his prescribed place and took up the game again.

The father’s frown came on with the menace of a spring squall. With a snap he flung the ball hard into his son’s moon face.

The boy never put up his hands to ward it away. He never ducked. The ball hit with a smack that I imagined I could hear even through the double-paned windows.

And time paused.

The three became statues of themselves. Rage and hot blood drained from the father’s face. The mother hesitated, her iced tea glass halfway to her perfect lips. His hand to his nose, the boy stood, stunned. In gay bounces, the ball dribbled away across the jade green lawn.

Then time resumed. The boy turned to follow the rolling ball. Reaching it, he picked it up carefully. He walked back to his spot, crooked his awkward elbows and tossed the ball in a gentle, high rounded arc back into his father’s hands as if nothing of importance had happened.

* * *

“Did you enjoy the visit?” I asked the boy.

He glanced up, his neck craning. Tall and stooped, I towered over the boy like a recombinant vulture.

The boy’s eyes fell, “Sure.”

“We need to talk about it. How do you feel about your father? How do you feel about your mother? It’s important if you ever want to get well.”

“I don’t know them well enough to feel anything,” he said.

There is a residual effect from the Thanapeline, an odd one that makes the boy seem like an adult. When he died the last time, he’d been fifty-three years old.

“Can we have some ice cream now?” he asked.

And then, sometimes, he acts like ten.

* * *

“That’s him?” Carleton asked as he looked through the one way glass.

I nodded. Bobby was intent on a game of War. His thumbs pressed manically and with an exacting rhythm on the pads. The speaker was open, and I could hear the BEEP-BEEP as he scored. Average juvenile hand-eye coordination. In a moment, the game won, he put the unit down. Average juvenile attention span. He looked over at us and I imagined he could see me. I wondered what he was thinking. Not much, apparently. He began to pick his nose.

Carleton glanced away. “As far as I’m concerned, the eating disorder’s caused by the parents. The father is disappointed in his son, his son sees it, the son overeats.”

“It’s not just overeating,” I told him. “He ravishes his food. Sometimes he puts so much into his mouth that he can’t chew. When he eats we have to station someone in the room with him that knows the Heimlich maneuver. In the two months he’s been in the hospital, he’s choked twelve times.”

Carleton shrugged. “Food’s always been symbolic of love. Ask any fat man.”

I put my palms to the glass. It was cold and hard and insensitive. Bobby was listlessly picking through his toys. High normals usually had a problem with boredom.

“The eating disorder dates from infancy. Check with the pediatrician if you don’t believe me,” I said.

After a moment Carleton sat down in one of the institutional mauve chairs. His fingers tapped the folder absently. “People say you’re in love with PLT, Harry. They say it must come from your culture.”

I glared at my reflection. A thin gargoyle stared back. “I’m third generation. My mother and father were Lutherans.”

“I know.”

“Do you imagine I practice Past Life Therapy because of something Hindu in my DNA?”

“Don’t get stuffy with me. PLT’s fine, but it’s not the only therapy we have. Granted, we have an interesting situation here, but I’m not certain your data are valid, In the meantime, you have a patient who needs you, Treat the past life, but don’t forget the present.”

Bobby was kicking one heel of his sneaker into the linoleum, an expression of other-worldly sorrow on his face. He broke my heart. “I never forget the present, Dr, Carleton.”

I studied the faces of the two QM physicists as they watched the films of Bobbie at dinner. Harold Moss, from MIT, winced and looked away from the screen as if we had shown him pornography. In fact, that’s what it was. Bobby ate with all the decadence of an aging lecher.

Burton Stengler, professor of applied mediumship from the Kardeckian Institute in Atlanta, watched doggedly, his eyes narrowing in disgust.

Carleton turned the film off just after the denouement when Bobby vomited out the contents of his engorged stomach, paused for a moment, and then calmly began to eat again.

“Just so you see what the problem is,” I told them. “Some background.”

The ascetic Stengler nervously ran a finger along his upper lip. The rotund Moss seemed more than simply nervous, and I wondered if the film had given him the impetus to begin a diet.

Then Carleton slipped the July 21 tape into the VCR. The monitor lit up.

I was looking at myself: a graying Indian with hollow, dark eyes and rumpled lab coat, Bobby sat across from me, pumped full of Thanapeline, his head lolling on his neck:.

“Quero um cigarro,” he muttered.

Reaching into my pocket, I got him one, lit it and passed it across. He took it, pressing the filter between two fingers. After breathing in a deep drag of smoke, he plucked at his tongue. Gilberto Soares would be a poor man, and he would be used to rolling his own.

Bobby regarded me, his eyes slitted and tired from the drug. “Brigado.”

Moss turned from the screen to me, “Do you speak Portuguese?” he asked hopefully.

“Direct Translation Feed,” Carleton answered. “Notice the pink button on Dr, Patel’s right ear.”

On the monitor the dot of pink erupted from my brown skin like an infection. The Translation Receivers, like bandaids, were advertised as being “flesh colored.” The pink would have clashed with no one else in the room but me and the artificially tanned Dr. Stengler.

Looking disappointed, Dr, Moss turned away.

“Where do you live, Gilberto?” my image asked. Because of Bobby, Soares understood English. He could speak English, too, when he wanted. But Soares would be a difficult, a stubborn, man. After knowing the easily intimidated boy, that cheered me. I loved Bobby for his gentleness, but gentleness is a hard thing to bear. Its burden was heavy on Bobby, and it weighed down the people around him. Sometimes they hated him for that.

“Aqui.”

“And where is that?”

Bobby, his face drawn up into an expression of amusement that looked out of place on a child, said, “Aqui, pô: Manaus.” Then he asked me in that crude Portuguese of his if I didn’t know where I was.

“Quero uma cerveja.”

“I don’t have a beer. Would you like a Coke?”

“Não.” At this point he stubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray and crossed his arms. His movements were clumsy.

It was coming. I knew it was coming. I’d seen the tape dozens of times. My hands dug into the armrests of my chair. On the monitor a placid, innocent me went on, a smile of encouragement on my face.

“Okay, Gilberto. I’m going to take you forward five years. Five years. Tell me what you see.”

Why hadn’t I noticed the look on Bobby’s face? On the monitor I could see it so clearly: The way the eyes narrowed, not from sleepiness but from pain; the way the mouth grimaced as if he had tasted something spoiled.

“Frio,” he said.

“What’s cold?”

“Estou com frio.” Bobby’s oversized body was trembling in its oversized knit shirt. Ashamed of his belly, he hated clothes that fit him. An active ten year old, he hated long sleeves.

“‘Would you like for me to turn the air conditioning down?”

A cry came from him, wrenched from his beefy chest. “Ai. Jesus! Jesus! O ceu esta quebrada!”

On the monitor my face showed alarm. I leaned forward, grasping his hand. He pulled away with such force that my arm recoiled like a spring. “What do you mean, ‘The ski is broken?’ Gilberto? What is it?”

“O ceu. O ceu . . .”

The sky.

His voice went high, shattering like glass on the peak of his terror. “O ceu esta preto!”

“The sky is black? Is it a storm, Gilberto? A bad storm?”

Bobby’s eyes turned inward to the bleak landscape only he could see. “O ceu esta preto e neve cai no mato.”

“What?” I asked with disbelief. “What did you say?”

“O neve.” His eyes seemed blind. “O neve cai no mato.”

The tape ended.

Carleton switched on the ceiling lights. Blinking, Moss and Stengler turned towards me, “What was it?” Stengler asked.

I relaxed my grip on the aims of my chair. “Snow,” I said. My hands had cramped into claws. “Snow fell in the jungle.”

* * *

Bobby watched as I shaved his ankle. “I don’t want to,” he said.

Taking up the Thanapeline pump, I attached it to his leg. “It’s something that they have to do, Bobby,” I explained without looking up. I knew his face too well. I knew what fear looked like in it.

“Why do you always put it there?”

I began to tape the pump to his leg before answering. “So you won’t snatch it out. The ankle is harder to get to. Sometimes things get pretty hectic, you know.”

He knew.

“It scares me to go back.”

“I’m sorry.” Therapy, for Bobby, appeared to have backfired. He was eating more and eating faster, driven by urgency. At age fifty-three, Soares would die of starvation and be buried in the jungle’s white, cold tomb,

“What you see when you go back is very important, Bobby, It’s something we don’t understand. Maybe if we understand it, we can prevent it from happening.”

“But I’ll die, anyway,” he said.

I looked at him then. He was somber as an adult. The Thanapeline’s residual effect confused sexes sometimes. Sometimes confused ages. I’d always considered that a side effect I could live with. Now I wasn’t so sure. “We all die,” I told him. “Past Life Therapy helps you deal with that.”

“But I’m not remembering a past life, am I?”

I busied myself with the tape. Over, under. Over, under. I ran my hand across the bulge of the pump to see that it was secure. “No. We don’t think you’re remembering a past life.”

“I don’t like those men.”

“I’ll be in there with you,” I said as I helped him up. “Just in case you need me.”

He clung to me, a hot, fleshy bulk that was part child, part dying man. He was too heavy to carry. Taking my hand he walked down the long hall.

* * *

“Hello, Bobby,” Moss said. The researcher looked as if he wasn’t sure whether or not to shake hands. In the end he didn’t. Most adults have difficulties relating to children. Stengler was worse than Moss; and Moss at best was awkward. At last he motioned the boy to a chair, deftly wrapped a bit of rubber tubing on Bobby’s upper arm and tapped his forefinger on a likely vein.

Bobby looked up at me, panicked.

“I see no reason for you to stay, Dr. Patel,” Stengler said.

He was calibrating a hand-held voice stress analyzer.

“Bobby’s asked me to.”

Stengler glanced at Moss. “Might mess up the data,” Stengler said. “Eye contact. Maybe some sort of gesture code.”

Moss studied Bobby’s pallid face. “He could sit behind him. I don’t see any problem with that.”

I drew a chair up behind Bobby’s back, He tried to turn around to watch me, but Moss caught his attention.

“You’ll have to prevent yourself from turning around and watching Dr, Patel, Bobby. Otherwise we’re going to have to ask him to leave the room, okay? We’re going to take some blood now.” Moss glanced past Bobby to me. “No tranquilizers?”

“No.”

Some of the psychics I work with say they see auras. I’ve never seen, one; but, my shoulder to his back, I imagined I could feel the throbbing terror of Bobby’s.

Moss was skilled with the needle. A moment later he tagged the specimen and picked up some leads. “You’ve seen these, haven’t you?” Moss asked Bobby.

Bobby nodded wordlessly.

“Well, we’re going to attach these to your head. They don’t hurt, But they’ll show us what your brain is doing. Okay?” Without waiting for permission, Moss attached the wires. Pity for Bobby welled in my throat and I swallowed it down. Pity, I have discovered, has the flavor of stale coffee and shame.

When Moss was finished, he stood back.

“Your name, please?” Stengler asked, looking at the voice stress analyser rather than at Bobby’s face. I wondered if the researcher was as aloof as he seemed or if Bobby frightened him. Bobby frightened a lot of people.

“Your name?” Stengler repeated tersely when Bobby didn’t reply.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “He didn’t know you were addressing him. You’ve hardly spoken to him, you know. He’s frightened.”

“Dr. Patel, we’d appreciate it if you didn’t speak. Your role here is that of observer only. Bobby. We’re going to ask you some questions, all right? And you’ll answer as completely and as honestly as possible. Your name is?”

“Robert Stanley Harding,” Bobby whispered.

Stengler said, “Right. A positive. And Bobby. Have you ever heard or read about nuclear winter?”

“What?” Bobby asked. Even without the analyzer I could hear the thin desperation in the child’s voice.

Moss broke in. “Did Dr. Patel mention nuclear winter, Bobby?”

“Nuh uh. I don’t even know what that is.”

“A simple yes or no, please,” Stengler told him.

“No, sir.”

The interrogation went on for thirty minutes. Stengler finally sat back in his chair, putting the stress analyzer down. “We’ve found the parents,” he told me.

I looked at him.

“Gilberto Soares gives the names of his parents as Edson Flavio Soares and Tonya Justina Boas. We found them in Manaus. They’re married, and Mrs. Soares is pregnant. If this is a hoax, it’s an elaborate one.”

I could feel my chest tighten. “Not in front of the boy,” I said.

“What?” Stengler’s embryonic smile died. He looked confused.

Moss caught on. Chastened, he tapped Stengler on the shoulder. “Save it, Burton. Later. Dr. Patel, perhaps you could induce trance now.”

I nodded, touched Bobby on the shoulder and spoke the inducer, “Touchdown.” The boy’s head dropped to his chest. He was into a partial trance, and I was relieved. In trance, I felt, no one could hurt him. No one but me. And I only hurt him to help him. I hurt him in style.

Moss checked the monitor. “Alpha. Some beta spikes.” He picked up his translation receiver and screwed it into his ear.

Taking the pump control from my pocket. I thumbed the button. In his partial trance, Bobby snicked.

“Deep alpha,” Moss said. “A few theta dips. God, that was quick. The Thanapeline?”

I nodded. When I spoke now, it would be only to Bobby.

“Take him to age fifty-three.”

Talking into his ear, softly enough not to alarm him, but loudly enough to be caught on Moss’s tape, I took him back. I saw when it happened. He groaned. Tears started up in his eyes.

“There’s another person here, Gilberto,” I told him. “He wants to talk with you. His name is Dr. Moss. Do you understand?”

The tears overbalanced and spilled down his cheeks as he nodded. I motioned to Moss to begin the questions. “Where are you?” Moss asked.

Bobby squirmed in his chair, sending the brain wave monitor into spasms.

“Are you in Manaus?’” Moss went on when Bobby didn’t reply.

‘Ah . . .” Bobby spoke from a slack mouth.

“What’s happening in Manaus, Gilberto? Can you tell us?”

Bobby’s back stiffened as he became more agitated. I checked the pump control uselessly, wondering if I should stop the questioning. “Ah . . .”

“Tell us, please.”

“Ah . . .” Bobby said. “Ah-mericano?”

“Yes,” Moss said. “I’m an American.”

The move was so sudden it caught Stengler and Moss off-guard. Bobby leaped across the table at them, hands out, snarling. The voice stress analyzer dropped from Stengler’s hand and shattered with a Ioud finality on the floor.

“Assassinos!’ Bobby screamed. He caught the front of Moss’s lab coat in his hands and clawed at the researcher’ s face. “Filho da puta! Assassinos!”

“Jesus!” Moss cried. “Get him off me!” His face was scored in a dozen places and blood welled angrily from the wounds. His hands were in front of him, shoving at, not beating, the boy. His defense was that of a civilized man to an uncivilized small animal.

I punched the control button so hard I drove it permanently into its housing.

Grabbing Bobby around his thick waist, I pulled him from Moss. Bobby was sobbing, “Mataran a gente,” he said as he pushed his face into a hiding place at my shoulder. The Thanapeline was wearing off, and I wasn’t certain whether it was Gilberto who was crying or Bobby. “Os Americanos. Mataran a gente,” he said.

Moss was shaken. He wiped blood from his face. But it was Stengler, oddly enough, who was angry. “It wouldn’t be the Americans. It’d be the Russians. He doesn’t know.”

I cradled the boy, my hand moving across the back of his head, plucking away the wire leads angrily. “He knows. He lived through it.”

“Bullshit,” Stengler spat. “He was a peasant living on the edge of the Amazon jungle. He couldn’t know anything.”

I pried the tape from the pump and tugged it out. A drop of blood came with it. “Sorry,” I whispered to Bobby. “I’m sorry.” I was sorry for everything, for the bead of red on the shaved ankle, for the way the day had gone, for the extinction we faced.

When he was quiet, when he was Bobby again, I took him down the hall to his room and gave him a Snickers and a Valium, two single-strand safety lines for a small falling boy.

* * *

In the room was the vibration of a prior argument. Stengler was fitting the black plastic shards of his voice stress analyzer together as if it were a jigsaw puzzle of doom. Moss, stained handkerchief in hand, was dabbing aimlessly at his cheeks. They both looked up at me when I entered.

“I should get you some antiseptic for that,” I told Moss.

“We don’t have time,” Stengler said.

I glanced at Moss. Moss had an odd grin. Apparently he knew Stengler well enough to find his rudeness amusing. “I’m all right,” he told me softly. “It’s nothing, really. How is the boy?”

There is a moment in relationships when love or hate comes in a flash of emotional knowledge. Such feelings are common to me. But not so common that their fury doesn’t leave me shaken. I had twin shocks then, one after the other: liking for Moss; hatred for Stengler.

Because I felt that sudden kinship with Moss, I lied. “He’s fine.”

“Finding his parents complicates things,” Stengler said as he fit a piece of plastic that looked like ant onto a piece that looked like a bird.

“Tonya’s pregnant. What happens when Gilberto’s born?” Even though I knew the inevitable, I asked anyway, wanting to get the truth out. The question had the same pain-pleasure syndrome as a Ianced boil.

“Maybe nothing,” Stengler said. “It’s my theory that this soul comes from an alternate universe. After all, if no life was left on Earth, where would those souls go who needed further incarnations? That problem would have to be addressed, and nothing in Kardeckian Theory allows for it.”

Moss was regarding Stengler thoughtfully. “I’m not a Kardeckian. I’m just a physicist who got in this through the quantum theory back door. Things don’t fit as neatly for me as they do for Burton. I’m not sure what reality is.” His voice lowered and he looked at me. “And, considering the dichotomy inherent in clairvoyance, I’m not sure how time works, either.”

“So.” I paused, bathed in the fearful uncertainty of Moss’s gaze. “He might really be remembering a future life. A life where, in fifty-three years, the sky darkens and it snows in the jungle.”

“Right,” Moss told me.

“It’s highly doubtful,” Stengler said. He relaxed his grip on the voice stress analyzer. The pieces fell away in his hands and he looked down at them in surprise.

* * *

Mrs. Harding had had her irises dyed an iridescent shade of blue. A flat, cobalt facial gem was nestled professionally into the skin at the edge of her cheek. The effect was less sensual than disturbing.

“I’m sorry you feel this way,” I said lamely, turning from that electric blue stare to the unaltered hazel one of Mr. Harding.

Harding crushed the tabloid in his oversized hand. It splintered, oozing liquid crystal fluid on the table. “A freak. They call him a freak.”

“Not a freak,” I told him. I had read the article myself. “Simply a boy who can see the future.”

Mr. Harding got up from the white wrought-iron ice cream table and paced the sunlit patio. The furniture, baroque in its pleasant fussiness, was a jarring note to the conversation. I felt I was having an argument in a nursery. “A freak,” he said.

“That is your word, Mr. Harding,” I said.

He turned on me, an athletic Doberman guarding his own sense of propriety. “Who leaked this!” he shouted.

“I don’t know.” Turning from the angry father, I tried to enlist the mother’s help. Her eerie eyes were disturbing. “We need to take Bobby away,” she said.

I flung my pleading hands across the glass-topped table. “You can’t do that. Bobby’s at a very dangerous stage in his treatment. He needs to be watched every hour of every day. He eats too much, and he eats too fast. Someone has to be with him.”

“You made him this way,” Mr. Harding said. “You filled his mind up with all this dying shit.”

“He remembers a life as Gilberto Soares. I can’t help that he does.” My voice shook. I couldn’t help that either.

“Reincarnation’s a crock,” he told me.

“How do you refute the Holbeck case? All the controls that were met? How do you refute that?”

He lifted one comer of his mouth in a sneer. With his bland, jogger’s face it looked inappropriate. “I don’t have to refute it. I just don’t believe it.”

There is, I’ve discovered, no argument against ignorance. “Please, Mrs. Harding,” I said as I turned back to her. “Please keep him here. Taking him will be so dangerous.”

Those neon-blue eyes dropped. “We have a household servo. It will take care of him.”

“A robot?” I asked in shock. “You can’t leave him with a robot. He needs the hospital. He needs me.”

“No, he doesn’t,” Mr. Harding snarled. “You’re sick, Patel. A robot isn’t perfect, but at least it won’t be in love with death.”

It was no use. I felt I was caught in a surge of destiny. Deep inside the coils of my DNA, perhaps there is something left that is Hindu.

“Yes,” I said. “You’re right. A robot is in love with nothing.”

* * *

Six months later Moss called to tell me Tonya Soares had had her baby. It was a boy, and they named him Gilberto. I put in a call to the Hardings again, They were back from Australia, apparently. Mr. Harding answered the video phone.

“This is Dr. Patel,” I said. “May I speak to Bobby?”

He looked at me. There was a long silence. Through the speaker I could pick up the light whisper of Harding’s breath.

“Is Bobby there? I need to speak to him You can watch and listen in, if you like.”

“What do you want?” he finally asked. His voice sounded hollow. It clashed with his new tan, his palpable aura of good health.

“I just want to talk to Bobby, please. Something has come up. I want to see if he’s all right.”

I’m sure it was anxiety that caused it. At least I’m almost sure. The right side of his mouth lifted in a smile that looked, through the phone monitor, victorious, “Bobby’s dead.”

I didn’t speak.

Harding went on, “He choked to death about a month ago. The servo was with him. If you believe in that superstitious shit about an afterlife, then maybe he’s happier. I don’t know. But I’d ask you not to call again and bother my wife. We’re in mourning.”

“You bastard,” I said.

He was stupid enough to look astonished. “What did you say?”

“You bastard. How many weeks did you have to leave him alone and unloved before he obliged you by dying?”

His face lost its color. Even wealthy tans fade in the glare of insight. “I don’t have to listen to this,” he told me as his hand moved to the right.

The screen went dark. The silent background of the phone changed to an angry buzz.

* * *

I am so afraid.

In the slanted afternoon sunlight of my room. I close my eyes and can see it. Over the canopy of trees in the jungle the sky grows dark. The toucans hush. The sagui monkey lifts its brown-masked, curious face upwards. On the dim forest floor the iguana scurries to shelter, the tapir curls to sleep.

A freezing wind whips from the north, carrying its load of poisoned snow into a fragile, warm land. It dusts bananas and palms. An orchid’s cupped leaves fill with white. Looking out at it for the very first time, this shrouded surprise must seem beautiful.

Author’s Note: Brazilians have a way of taking in all foreigners as if they are family. The Spanish are the same. The Portuguese, at least the ones in Lisbon, tend to be secretive and sullen as do the Peruvians of Lima. This story is for all those expatriates who live in hostile and bewildering third-world countries, always wondering if underneath the alien mores and the cultural jealousy there lies a richness they had not foreseen.

The ambassador made a flapping one-man tent of his raincoat and held a handkerchief against his nose. In the dark alley there was no use in walking carefully. He stepped in puddles and slipped on spongy, slick piles of refuse. Fetid water splashed up his pants.

At the third hut from the comer he stopped, pausing just a moment before he entered through the curtain. He’d been in Karee eighteen months and had not yet conquered the desire to knock.

“Hello,” he said in English as he entered, giving in to the niggling urge to announce himself. Even with that, he felt like a thief.

The room was black with shadows and soot. A murky fire against the far wall glowed sullen, smoky red. To the ambassador, raised in Earth’s parochial schools, the room was what Sister Mary Ignatius had once told him of hell.

A Karee looked from the table where it had been cleaning shota. Its hands froze. The articulated bony ridges around its eyes flowered open in astonishment. For an instant the human and the Karee stared at each other; then the Karee absorbed itself once more in work.

George watched for a few minutes. The three-fingered hand of the creature sorted through the pile of tiny, hard bodies, snapping off the heads with a wet click and then tossing them into the pan where they hit with a clatter. It never looked up.

When the ambassador had first arrived, his staff had told him of the Karee’s lack of privacy. The human understanding was flawed. It was just that the Karee had no sense of outward space. The privacy of their minds was absolute.

“Besseh Yo?” George asked.

Snap went the neck of a shota. Plink, it hit the pot.

“I come to find Besseh Yo.”

The Karee didn’t look up, but it laughed. George stood, water still dripping from the ends of his salt and pepper hair, and accepted the disdain of its amusement. Snap. The shota’s head was tossed to the floor.

“I bring money.”

The hand paused. The Karee finally looked up. Its eyebrows unhinged again. “What moneys is you bring?”

“Platinum.” George was irritated now, bored with the intricacies of Karee social rituals; angered by the cavalier attitude which made him feel like a fool. “Are you Besseh Yo?”

Without answering directly, the Karee rose and went to an interior doorway. “Yuma here!” it shouted.

There was an answering mumble from the other room.

“Yuma!” the Karee repeated.

With a jerk and a rattle the curtain was opened. George was staring at the oldest Karee he’d ever seen. Besseh Yo was bent by disease into a tortuous S-shape. Its eye-joints had calcified into huge misshapen knots. At first the ambassador assumed it was blind, but then Besseh Yo tipped back its head to bring George into its narrowed line of sight.

The magician laughed hugely. “Yuma,” it said with something like humorous suspicion. “Why does a yuma come through here to find Besseh and throw platinum at us? You got shit on your shoes. Smell it, Tyoresh?” it asked the other, younger Karee. “You smell shit on the yuma?”

Tyoresh wrinkled its nose, widening its nostrils so they covered half the width of its brown face. “Maybe yuma shit its pants.”

George fought the urge to check the soles of his shoes. If he even looked down, he knew the Karees would erupt into hurtful, loud merriment. “I hear Besseh Yo has magic,” George said, coming right to the point.

The old Karee scratched its bare stomach. It was naked. Folds of gray-brown skin hung from its waist, making a convenient skirt of flesh.

“I have come to buy this magic,” George told him. Besseh turned, showing the cleft of its bare backside to George, and walked away. After a moment George followed.

The bedroom was small and dim. The oil in the single lamp threaded black, stinging smoke into the heavy air. “Money,” Besseh said, gesturing to a table with an imperious wave.

George tugged the sack from his pocket and tossed it on the bare wood. Instantly Besseh was on it, running its gnarled hands through the chips of metal.

Tipping its head, Besseh studied the human through the slitted openings of its eyes. “Why do you come when yuma hate the Karee?” it asked softly enough so that the Karee in the other room could not hear.

His instinct was to dispute what Besseh had said, but that was the result of his diplomatic training. Here, in the close confines of the room, all he could manage was the evasion of the truth. “I’ve lost my wife,” George whispered. I’ve lost my wife, he remembered. The death was fresh enough so that even now he failed to believe it.

The Karee hooted. “Where you lose her, yuma? You ain’t so careful?”

George had always disliked the Karee. Most of the diplomatic staffs did. Now, looking into the distorted face where bone grew cauliflower masses against the pebbled skin, he realized what he felt went beyond dislike. He hated them. “She died,” he said in a strangled voice.

Lauren of the quick eyes; the graceful neck; the elegant, wild stride of an antelope. It couldn’t be, he thought just as he had thought the night they’d told him. Not Lauren.

George didn’t sleep much anymore; and sometimes, when he did, he would wake with a throat-cramping gasp and pass his disbelieving palm over her side of the bed.

“But you say you lose her. She die and you put the body away someplace you can’t remember where?”

“Shut up!” George snapped. His anger caught Besseh by surprise. The Karee inched away. “Goddamn you, shut up! Is everything a joke with you people?”

In the other room there was a clink and then silence. Besseh and George turned, knowing Tyoresh was listening. Suddenly Besseh chuckled. “You hate us, ta?”

The only sound in the room was George’s labored breathing. He licked his lips, tasting the tart residue of smoke and the moldy taste of Karee sweat. “Yes,” he admitted. It was senseless to deny it. “I hate you. But I hear you’ll do anything for money. If you don’t help me, I’ll take my money and go home.”

“Tyoresh!” Besseh shouted.

George stiffened, suddenly afraid they would throw him out. They’d throw him out of the house and he’d never find Lauren again.

The younger Karee poked its head in the door.

“Food for me. Food for the yuma,” Besseh said. The magician made its way to a rumpled cot and sat down, its legs spread in an unconscious and uncaring exposure of its bisexual organs.

George looked away.

“Magic,” Besseh said philosophically, “some is good; some is bad. You tell me what to do. If it is good, you have the good. If it is bad, you carry the hurt. I am . . .” The old Karee searched for a word, then gave up and uttered the rest in its own language, “reslani orgit.”

“Blameless tool,” George muttered to himself, staring at the lamp rather than at the flagrant nakedness of the magician.

“Ta? Blameless tool, yes. You want someone dead? You want a new wife? I do this for you, poor yuma who needs another to make sex with.” Besseh laughed, crooking its bead so that it could see George’s expression. “Look at me!” it shouted when it noticed the direction of George’s gaze. “You look at me! You come for help, so you look!”

Resentfully, George forced his head around.

“What you see, yuma?”

“I see Besseh Yo, a great magician.”

The Karee got to its feet and shuffled its way towards George. “Your words is pus. Say what you see.”

George tightened his jaw.

“I see an ugly yuma with shit on his shoe and fear in his face,” Besseh said, shoving a hard finger into George’s shoulder. “What do you see, ta?”

With a quick movement, George slapped Besseh’s hand away. “I see a naked little savage,” he said.

“Ta. What else?”

George bit his lip and stared hard at the lamp.

The finger punched him hard in the arm. “Naked little savage, ta? And more?” The finger jabbed bruises into George’s muscle. “More!”

George moved out of Besseh’s range and turned away from him. “No more,” he said softly. The Karee enjoyed confrontations. They thrived on scenes. When other beings lost their tempers with Karee, as they most often did, the Karee laughed with strident voices. The Karee were primitives with a taste for the dramatic.

There was a flash of movement at the side of his head, a jerk and then a gout of pain. Alarmed, breathing hard, George backed to the wall, one hand over his stinging scalp. Besseh had torn out a lock of his hair.

The magician stood for a moment, the neat silver-gray curl in its hand. Then it opened its toothless mouth and swallowed it. “You and me is one now, yuma.”

George’s lip curled in bewildered confusion. He felt violated and more than a little afraid. “Maybe I’d better go.”

“Lauren,” the Karee said.

George flinched.

“I eat of you so I know. Eating is knowing. You come here about eating the memories.”

“I come here to remember her, not like I can remember her now, but to relive those memories as If they were real. I want to touch her again. I’ve heard you can do that.”

Instead of replying, Besseh called for food again. Tyoresh came in with two bowls, one for George, the other for the magician. For a while George simply watched the old Karee eat.

“You eat, yuma,” Besseh said as it sucked the meat from the casque of a shota.

George looked down at the pinkish mass, plucked a shota from its gravy and peeled it. It tasted of mud.

The Karee ate with the slurping abandon of gluttony. When it finished it rinsed the bowl in a pan of sand and water.

“You haven’t asked who I am,” George said.

Besseh stuck out its bottom lip, a Karee shrug. “You is yuma. More doesn’t matter. All yuma is alike.”

“All humans aren’t alike, Besseh.”

“All yuma is alike, it said, twisting its face in George’s direction and tilting its head back so that it could see. “We got power of the mind; you got power over the body.”

George’s eyes were drawn to the hunched back, the twisted limbs, the deformed eye sockets of the creature. The magician, he imagined, had an intimate relationship with pain. For the first time since he had come he felt more pity than discomfort.

“You take the body from here to there, yuma. You come from your planet to this. But the body is stupid.”

“Stupid. Is that what you think of us?”

Behind the twin slits on its face George thought he could see Besseh’s eyes glitter, black diamonds in a cave. “Stupid,” it said.

George got up from his stool and walked to the pail of sand and water. Besseh, with an odd gentleness, took the bowl from his hands.

“You ain’t eat much,” it said critically as it washed the bowl.

“Will you do the magic for me?”

“Sure.”

“When do we start?”

George was unprepared for the splash. Grit and stale dishwater exploded against his eyes. He raised up a protective arm, but it was too late.

“Now,” Besseh said with a laugh.

George felt himself falling. He twisted his body to the side, trying to catch himself.

Across the thick mauve carpet in the lobby a woman stood with Sanderson, the chandelier above her casting bright lights in her hair. As he approached into the subtle gravity of her slim body, the tug of her perfume, Sanderson asked in a strangely far away voice how he’d liked the Beethoven. Then he turned to the woman at his side. George’ s eyes had never left her face.

“George Hatterly,” Sanderson said, “Lauren McKnight.”

* * *

“Yuma!”

George thrashed.

Lauren was arguing politics with him over the breakfast table. He won a point more by sheer force of the argument than facts. Smiling, she lifted the pitcher of orange juice, flourished it and poured it into his coffee. The cup overflowed onto the counter.

“Yuma!”

George was a pragmatic man with a limited sense of the absurd, so irritation hit him first. Then, because Lauren had been a good teacher, the humor finally kicked in. He glanced up, fighting a smile. She was laughing.

“Goddamn! Yuma!”

Lauren’s perfect face burst like a warm bubble.

“Yuma! You got visitors!”

George took in a deep breath that tasted of damp and old food. He opened his eyes to see Besseh standing over him in the semi-dark. The Karee looked scared.

“You get up,” Besseh said as he pulled on George’s arm. “They think you dead. You get up and talk.”

George’s mouth felt funny. He swiveled his legs from the cot, but his knees wouldn’t hold him.

“Ambassador Hatterly?” a resonant voice asked.

Blinking, George looked up. His aide and the Chief of Intelligence stood just in the curtain staring at him.

George lifted a slow hand and ran it over his face. There was stubble on his cheeks. “How long?” His lips didn’t work right.

“Sir?”

“How long have I been here?”

“Presumably eighteen hours, sir,” the intelligence officer said. “That’s how long you’ve been missing.” The officer had flat, suspicious eyes and he kept his hand near the weapon at his belt.

“George. We’ve been looking all over hell and gone for you,” his aide told him. “Jesus Christ. We nearly started an interplanetary incident.”

The ambassador coughed. He licked his lips. They felt glued. With practical, professional solicitude, Besseh brought him a drink. George had raised it to his mouth when the intelligence chief stepped forward. “Don’t!” he snapped.

“You don’t know where that cup’s been,” his aide sighed, “or even what’s in it. You know the hygiene around here.”

George took a sip, anyway, much to the intelligence officer’s alarm. It was fresh water.

Taking another sip, George turned to the subdued and frightened Besseh. At one time George had wanted the Karee to be cowed. Now he found it painful. Besseh had crawled into himself and was looking at some neutral spot on the floor, what the Sisters at Sacred Heart School used to call “custody of the eyes”; only the nun’s institutional shyness came from duty. Besseh’s came from fear. The magician knew what the humans were capable of. The mind was powerful, but sometimes the body was stronger.

“. . . can never tell what these people can do with drugs and the like,” the intelligence officer was saying. “Anyway, to extract information by kidnaping is a crime in anyone’s book.”

“I wasn’t kidnaped. You know that.”

The officer closed his mouth with a nearly audible snap.

“I came here of my own accord.” He smiled weakly. “Besseh Yo is merely a blameless tool.”

“Guard!” the intelligence officer ordered. “Get this stinking Karee out of here!”

George watched in silence as an embassy officer shoved the magician out of the room. “You can’t arrest Besseh,” he said when the Karee was gone.

The aide sat down on the cot next to George. “Look. Let’s be reasonable, okay? The magician does its little magic number on you. You don’t know what you’d say. Shit, George. This was stupid.”

“That Karee has to disappear. Hence you were kidnaped. That’s what we’ll tell the League. No questions about that. They don’t like the Karee, either,” the intelligence man said.

George was only half listening. Suddenly his gaze lost its focus. Oh, my God. I can’t remember how I met her.”

“Huh?” asked the aide.

“I can’t remember.” He stood. Vertigo hit him and he nearly toppled. His aide grabbed his arm. “Get Besseh in here!” George shouted. He was terrified and it came out in his voice. “Get Besseh in here quick!”

The intelligence officer left and came back with the little Karee. Besseh crooked his neck to look at George.

A violent tide of tears rose in the ambassador’s eyes. He blinked, scattering light. “I can’t remember. Oh, Jesus God. I can’t remember.”

Besseh put out a calming hand that stopped some inches above George’s arm. “Yes, yuma,” it told him softly and with some hint of compassion. “I eat the memories. I tell you this.”

“Get out!” George screamed at the two other humans. Both men hesitated a moment before they left the room.

The little Karee stood before him, less mysterious in the light from the open door. “You simpering, ugly dwarf,” George said. “You made me forget her. Goddamn you. I know you hate us, but how could you do that?”

“Sit. You will be tired.”

He sat on the cot. Besseh sat on the stool next to him. In a moment George gave in to exhaustion and laid down. The ceiling of Besseh’s room was black with soot.

“The memories are good, George,” Besseh told him. It smacked its lips. “Tasty memories. I understand yuma now. Only sometimes is your words pus. But Lauren is different. More like a Karee, I think. Hah. You love her for make you laugh, and hate us for laughing. Stupid, the yumas, like I say.”

George flicked a glance to the side. Besseh was smiling, more sure of itself. Irony suited the magician better than servitude. “I can remember the last few months with her. I can remember that. But I can’t remember how we met, or the first house we lived in.”

“We don’t finish because the stupid yuma come and think you dead.”

“How much, Besseh? How much besides Lauren to you remember?”

With a groan the Karee rose and walked to a barrel of drinking water. Besseh dipped in a cup. “You don’t tell me you be ambassador, ta?”

“I tried. You wouldn’t listen.”

Besseh stuck out its lower lip. “Well, the body is stupid, but sometimes the mind, it stupid, too. When I eat memory, I have to eat everything.”

The ambassador knew the governmental secrets were important. He knew that, but it didn’t seem to matter. His mind was besieged with Lauren’s death and the rest of his thoughts were laid waste.

He pictured her, but the image other face was faded somehow, as if usage had dulled the colors. “In my mind she’s got four months to live. I’ll always remember her as dying.”

One hand to its contorted back as if its spine were sore, the Karee shuffled its way back to the stool and sat. “I never stop in the middle before like this. Maybe I shouldn’t eat more.”

“What would you do?”

‘Besseh sat quietly for a moment, its hands in its lap.

“What would you do if you were me, Besseh Yo?”

The Karee nodded. “I seen this a lot, this sort of bad stomach like you got. I would live it. The hurt in you should come out like vomit.”

The magician was a brown gnome crippled by the weight of vicarious pain. “Is that what it’s like, eating vomit? Does it hurt you, Besseh, going down?”

There was a jerk of the bent shoulders. Besseh was surprised by the question. “I don’t keep the memory, yuma. When you finish, and I am full, I go and wash her away in the water. All will be gone,” Besseh warned him. It leaned forward so closely that George could smell the musky, dank odor of its body. “Be gone, understand? Everything. Secrets. Lauren. Everything. Can’t get it back never.”

“I understand.” At that moment George realized how much he had loved Lauren. He loved her enough to give up his happiest memories to end the pain of her loss. “Please do it,” he said before he could change his mind.

He closed his eyes and felt the moist press of Besseh’s hand on his forehead. George wanted to utter some murmur of gratitude. ‘His mouth wouldn’t work.

And Lauren was laughing in the kitchen.

* * *

Something hit him hard in the chest. He opened his eyes to see Besseh over him. George put his hands to his face and discovered he had been crying. He couldn’t remember why.

“Men still outside, George.”

“Yes.” He sat up. His staff was angry with him. But why had he come to the Karee’s house? he wondered. It was something vaguely connected with a death.

“You help me? You protect me? I only do what you ask for.”

George hesitated. “I’ll protect you,” he said. It seemed as if, for some reason, he and the magician had known each other for years. George’s trust was instinctual, as it would have been for a good, close friend.

The magician handed him a cup of water and twisted its head so it could see him. “Lauren,” it said.

“Yes? Should I remember?”

Besseh rose stiffly and walked over to the barrel. For a moment the magician simply stared downwards. George felt a tug of sympathy and more than a clutch of fear. Then Besseh raised its hands and brought them in a slow downward plunge to the water.

“Wait!” George said.

The gnarled hands paused a scant inch above the liquid surface. Besseh turned towards him.

“Should I?” George asked anxiously. He hated to see those hands come down. The movement seemed so final, but he wasn’t sure why. “Should I remember?”

For a moment the magician regarded him. “No,” Besseh whispered. His voice was nearly lost in the splash his hands made.

Author’s Note: This particular short story intends to cut like a knife. On rereading it I wasn’t prepared, in fact, for the pain it elicits. Perhaps all mothers and daughters will find hurt in these few pages, just like all fathers and sons will find pain reading Pat Conroy.

Walking up the steps, she automatically straightens her dress. It’s habit with her now, after having been trained for years by the electric-shock therapy of her mother’s words.

On the way to church, Mama finally looks down, down, and down, like those cartoons where the person seems big as a mountain. She doesn’t really speak like a mountain, though. A mountain should boom. Mama hisses. Don’t you have a comb in your purse? Your hair’s falling all in your face. And, God, didn’t you iron that dress?

She pauses to check her hem in the glass doors as they open. Mr. Parks, the only human in the lobby; breaks off a list of instructions to a bot as soon as she walks in. The smile on his face is of a sort that should be legal only on morticians.

“Ms. Jouette?” His eyes are the gray hue of mold on spoiled food. His gaze lowers to her hands.

She looks down to see smears of the paint she had been using that morning: a poisonous yellow, a vicious blue.

The handkerchief comes out. Mama spits on it. The spit is slimy and doesn’t feel like water at all. Can’t you keep yourself clean for even a few minutes? Didn’t you wash your face this morning when you got up? The cotton hankie, rubbed hard, is as hurtful as sandpaper. When it’s pulled away, she looks in the tiny compact mirror Mama has thrust into her hands and sees the red smudges like bruises where Mama has scrubbed.

“Will they take her?” Mr. Parks asks. Even his voice is unctuous. If she were to spend the night with him, she would wake up, she imagines, to find oil smudges on the sheets. He would make love with the slick, uncompromising rhythm of a piston.

“No.”

His head nods on its greased hinge. “I assume they’ll take you. It would be quite a coup for them, actually.”

“There’s no reason for me to go, now.”

For a moment his gaze rests on her face. There is a bitter envy there that makes him seem more real, less of a meaty machine. “It’s for the best, I suppose. You’re not the type.”

She feels the sting and lashes back. She’s learned to protect herself from everyone but her mother. “Well, Mr. Parks. What type do you assume to be the right one?”

When a knife tip is pressed against flesh, the flesh dimples in. The skin stretches to its breaking point. There was something of that frantic yielding in Mr. Parks’s eyes. “The pioneer woman. You know. Hard-bitten, rough.” He changes subjects as if her cowardice and softness are no more remarkable than her hair color. “Your mother had a bad day today.”

All Mama’s days are bad, she thinks.

“The Synadase is no longer working.”

A bot chair brings a toothless old man into the room. The chair and the old man are having an argument about a patch of liquid sunlight in the atrium. The old man wants to sit in it. The chair is patiently explaining the dangers of ultraviolet radiation.

“Ms. Jouette?”

“I heard you.”

“You’ve done everything you can do. You can at least feel good about that.”

“I can feel good about trying to get my mother to a place where they would let her live. Now I can feel good about telling you to kill her.’” She is still looking at the old man and the chair. The chair is winning the argument by cheating. It simply refuses to move forward, and the old man is apparently too feeble to walk. He bangs with futile anger on the padded armrests.

“Most of our families are not so insistent. They realize that what’s done is it blessing.”

“A blessing for whom?”

Mr. Parks doesn’t answer.

She turns to see him looking at the little square of incandescent sunlight that dominates the atrium like a visit from God. There is a shocking sort of longing in Mr. Parks’s face.

“A blessing for whom?”

Mr. Park’s tongue darts out to lick his lips, leaving no wetness behind, as if he had no moisture in him. “None of our families has fought as hard as you. You must love your mother very much.”

It surprises her that Mr. Parks has not understood. If he understood he would speak of guilt. He would speak of anger.

“Loving someone,” Parks says, “means letting them go.”

Yes, she thinks. But then I’m not certain I love Mama. I need her to live long enough so that I can decide.

“A bot will take you,” he says.

She follows the rococo cleaning bot down the hall. In the third room her mother is waiting.

“Mama?” she calls.

Her mother doesn’t look up. She’s staring out the window into the green of the lawns. The rest home is an expensive place to buy time, and it has all the amenities of the rich: open spaces where nothing at all happens.

Nothing is happening on the lawn. A few old people, bright umbrellas over them, have been set out to bake in the spring heat. Three bots, generic models, stand by to move the umbrellas as if they were mechanical daisies tracking the sun.

“Is it raining?” her mother asks. Fingers like dry twigs lie uneasily in her lap.

“No. It’s not raining. Mama, listen, Mars Colony wants to take me. But they won’t take you.”

Mama never takes her eyes off the lawn. “Nurse?”

“No, Mama. I’m Lou.”

Mama’s vague blue gaze rises to focus on some spot just past Lou’s shoulder. “Nurse?”

“Maybe you know me better as Tina Louise. I always hated that name.”

Mama smiles. Her pink skin is transparent with age and it shows painfully through the thinning white hair. If the government would wait, the problem would solve itself. A little while longer and her mother would be invisible. “Is it raining?”

Lou looks back at the lawn but in her mind sees the cruel light of the desert. Mars would be like that: all burnt umbers, siennas, purples, and a pale blue wash of sky. “They want me on Mars,” she says to her mother. “They want somebody to paint it now. Before it gets civilized.”

Without her makeup her mother already looks dead. A bot has brushed her hair until it glows and washed her face until it shines. She wonders if the bot was gentle.

That’s a terrible color lipstick, her mother says. It is eleven o’clock in the morning and it is the first time her mother’s really looked at her all day. It makes you look jaundiced, Mama says. Can’t you dress yourself any better than that? Why do you always want to look ugly?

The store is crowded. People are all around them. Some of the people hear and turn their heads to stare. She feels very ugly, very yellow.

“Even when I offered them a lot of money, they turned me down. Colonists must be useful, they told me. Everyone must have a job. I explained that it would be important to me to see you buried. There’s lots of land there. I pictured a little plot for you, just six feet by two, all your own. And a headstone with one of your favorite sayings. ‘STAND UP STRAIGHT.’ Or, ‘YOU’RE GETTING FAT.’ Something to remember you by.”

Mama’s head twitches like a bot with a program error. The slight palsy has made one eyelid permanently lower than the other. “Is it raining yet?” she asks in a wavering, piccolo voice. “Remember to close the window.”

“Say something meaningful for once, Mama. Talk about something other than your health or how your geraniums are doing.”

Her mother turns those time-blinded eyes out to the lawn. A silly-baby smile tugs senselessly at her lips. “It’s raining.”

Lou sits. “Please talk to me.”

That’s nice, dear, her mother says as she stands back and looks doubtfully at the painting. Lou stands poised, toes balanced on the precipice, waiting for something, anything else. Her mother speaks. Are those the bluebonnets? That patch of blue, there? And is that green color the grass?

Yes, Mama.

They’re not very realistic, are they?

Don’t you like it?

I wish you’d filled in the rest .of the painting. And I don’t understand why you put the highway in it. Seems like a funny scene to paint.

It is funny. That’s what it’s supposed to be. Don’t you read the title, see the painting and laugh?

“Bluebonnets #17?” That’s the title?

Yes.

It’s hanging in the National Museum of Modern Art, Mama, she wants to shout. Some people think it’s funny. The curator of the museum says he laughs every time he looks. Can’t you even smile?

Your Aunt Penny was an artist, her mother says. I know.

She painted bluebonnets, too. But those paintings had pretty oak trees and little wooden bridges and cows. The bluebonnets looked like bluebonnets. Couldn’t you do something like that?

No, Mama. To me, bluebonnets always looked this way.

The door slides open and Mr. Parks is there.

“Not yet,” Lou says.

He says, “I’m sorry,” and comes forward anyway. He kneels down beside Mama. “Hello, Mrs. Jouette,” he says.

“Hello,” she replies, turning to look down at him. Her expression seems suddenly very coherent.

Lou stiffens. Her mother has not acknowledged Lou’s arrival, but she knows Mr. Parks is there. Perhaps, Lou thinks, she will see a side to Mama that has been well hidden. Mama and Mr. Parks will play chess and discuss Immanuel Kant or suspension architecture.

“How are we today?” Mr. Parks asks.

Mama’s smile broadens into a sweet benediction of a smile, a smile Lou has seen on the painted faces of Blessed Virgin Marys. “Is it raining?’

Mr. Parks takes a medication disc from his pocket. He is smiling, too. A Jesus-With-The-Children sort of smile.

“Is it time already? Lou asks.

Mr. Parks darts a glance at her’ with his muddy gray eyes. “There’s no sense prolonging it. He presses the disc to the frail white of Mama’s wrists, right where the veins show through like velvet purple cords. His thumb rubs gently and persistently over the bulge of the medication as he looks into Mama’s eyes. Mr. Parks’s messages are mixed. His thumb and eyes talk of love, but they also talk of murder.

Mama’s smile broadens. She was never very good at the nuances of language.

“It won’t be long now,” Mr. Parks says to Lou. He is still smiling at Mama. Mr. Parks is very good at his job. “Take her other hand.”

Lou hesitates.

Mr. Parks looks up at Lou. The smile has fled and, in its place is a shocking, angry command. “Take her hand!” he snaps. Lou does. Mama’s hand is cool and dry.

“Tell her you love her.”

Lou looks at him with disbelief.

“Tell her you love her,” he says.

“She doesn’t know me.”

“It doesn’t matter. Tell her you love her, anyway. There isn’t much time.”

Tears spring up in Lou’s eyes. They surprise her. “Mama?” Her voice shakes. “Mama? It’s Lou.”

Mama’s eyes are closing. She is still watching Mr. Parks.

“Mama?”

Please look at me, she thinks. Won’t you even look at me? “I love you,” Lou says. Even now she is embarrassed by saying it.

Right now, she thinks. Right now Mama will finally look at me. She‘ll see me for once, not just the way I’m dressed or the way my hair looks. And there will be one of those moments when everything becomes clear. Isn’t that what death is all about? And she’ll explain herself to me. Just a word or two is all that’s needed, but something I can think about and finally understand.

Thin, translucent lids roll down over the marbles of Mama’s eyes. Her mouth opens just a bit. Lou strains forward to catch the last whisper and feels a puff of warm breath at the side of her face.

Mr. Parks says, “She’s gone.” In a moment he says in a louder voice. “You can let go of her hand, now. She’s gone.”

Lou jerks. She loosens her grip and stands, straightening her skirt. Her knees feel watery as if her body wants her to kneel some more.

Her mother’s death leaves a taste in her mouth like vinegar and a sound like low-level humming in her ears. If the death were to have a color, it would be an artificial, heavy-metal green.

“There’s a little ceremony before cremation. You might like to attend.”

“No, thank you.” Lou wonders if her tears have damaged her makeup.

Mr. Parks follows her out the door. The hall is empty. “We’ve had our problems, Ms. Jouette, but I want you to know I admire you.”

She glances at him, surprised.

“I think your fighting it was wrong, but I think it was admirable, too. It reminded me of that poem, ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.’”

She can think of no way to respond.

“We’re trained, of course, to see death as a gentle, fitting conclusion but I can sympathize with the way you see it.”

Her lips move for a moment before sound emerges. “How do I see it?”

Mr. Parks seems surprised. “If you haven’t come to grips with it, of course, we have counselors. It’s hard losing someone you love in just that way. That’s why I had you hold her hand. It’s not so important for the traveler as it is for the leave-taker. And, in our institution, the leave-taker is never forgotten.” He holds his hand out. She takes it, wondering if he too, is planning to die and if she should tell him she loves him.

“Your paintings . . .” he says. For a moment they stand in the hall very much like lovers, hands clasped and growing somewhat sweaty. He looks at her with a lover’s confusion, too. “I’ve always liked your paintings.”

“Thank you, Mr. Parks.” She slips her hand from his, her palm hot from his touch. “That’s more than my mother would ever say.”

She turns and makes her way out the door.

Outside in the sun she stops, confused. Two gardening bots are working among the flowers. With a sense of disorientation, she realizes she has been looking for her car. Her mother’s death has been a trip in time of sorts.

Turning aside to the covered, motorized walkway, she steps on and lets it take her to the station.

Two stops before her apartment she gets off the tram and wanders into a supermarket. She realizes that if the bots working the aisles could show surprise, they would have. She feels conspicuous, as if her slip were showing.

Lou makes her way around a startled black woman with a cheap stained coverall and three children in tow. The woman stares at her with hot, dark, suspicious eyes.

I used to come here all the time, Lou wants to say to the woman. Mama and me. The grocery store was an outing for us. We could relate here, for the most part, talking about the breads and about the meats. While we were in the store at least we had a topic of conversation. Something that interested us both for a while. But even though Lou walks within a foot of the woman, they don’t speak. The death of the supermarket, like the death of her mother, has been so protracted that there isn’t much left to say.

Going to the fresh food section, Lou picks through the produce. The oranges have a slick, nubbly skin; the potatoes are dusty and smell of earth.

I just think you should do bluebonnets the way they used to be, Mama says. I like to see them as if they were still real, the way your Aunt Penny used to paint them.

You used to take me every spring to look for bluebonnets. To me the ride was the most important thing. There were never any bluebonnets without cars to see them by.

They used to be so beautiful, and now they’re gone. It’s a shame to remember them that way.

Bluebonnets were only background, Mama.

Lou stands staring at the peach in her hand. With its heavily rouged cheek and yellow skin it reminds her of the way morticians used to paint corpses.

Dropping the peach back into its refrigerated bin, she turns down the next aisle and stops short. Red and white Campbell paper cans are ranged over nearly half the shelves. She remembers the ache of childhood fevers and the taste of chicken noodle soup. She remembers Mama coming in the darkened room like a sweet ghost

Trembling, she reaches out and picks up a can. The household bot will fix it for her, but it won’t be the same. It won’t be bluebonnets.

I want to go to Mars, she thinks, with abrupt vehemence. The thought is surprising, but the decision, in many ways, is not. l need to go there only because I’ll never have to remember Mars the way it was before. Or should have been.

The soup can in her hands, she walks to the checkout counter: The bot arm reaches out and clamps the can gently as the side of its metal claw scans the price.

“Five ninety-five,” the bot says. “Will that be cash or card?”

She looks across the counter. The voice has come from the side of an elderly liquid crystal screen which shows the total and the words, “IT WAS A PLEA URE TO ERVE YOU.” She starts to shake.

“Will that be cash or credit?” the bot asks again, very pleasantly.

It waits for an answer, its mechanical hand pushed forward to accept payment.

She’s sobbing now, helplessly, her shoulders moving with it. Her mouth opens in, an O of anguish.

“Is this a robbery?” the bot asks politely.

A childish “whuh-whuh” sound of misery comes from her throat. She wants to answer, but can’t.

After a programmed wait, the bot asks, “Are you ill?”

When she doesn’t answer this time, there is a quiet TING over her head. Having exhausted its possible responses, the bot has called a human. He arrives, looking disheveled and surprised. Apparently not much goes on in supermarkets anymore, Lou thinks.

She leans on the counter. A warm tear splashes out over her hand. She can hear the ugly sounds she’s making, but can’t stifle them.

Stop that crying, Mama says. Stop it. Everyone’s looking at you.

“Ma’am?” the store manager asks. “Ma’am? Are you okay?”

Here, baby, here, Mama says. Put your head right here. And let me see your knee.

The crying has made her feel helpless, the way being sick or hurt always made her feel.

Oh, God, Mama, Lou thinks. It’ll never be better. It wasn’t even any better when I was living it. For you it was the bluebonnets; for me it was only the ride.

A warm hand reaches out and takes hold of her arm. The man is very close to her now. He slides his other arm around her shoulders and leads her to a chair. “What’s the matter?” His voice is concerned in the practiced way Mr. Parks’s voice was concerned.

She wants to lean her head on his shoulder, but that wouldn’t do, either. That part, the child-in-the-protective-land-of-the-adults part, has been gone for a long, long time. Even if she marries, no one will ever hold her that way again. No one could ever be that big; and she will never again be that small.

Her mouth stretches wide and very carefully over the words, as if the words themselves are made of splintered glass. “My mother. . .”

“Yes?” the man asks.

She looks at him, but the tears make him a confusing jumble of light and dark, like an angel in an abstract stained-glass window. She thinks to explain the bluebonnets to him, but finds, after all, that was only one of the givens, too obvious to mourn. “My mother just died,” she says.

Author Note: Whoa! Talk about a blast from my past! This was a very early story indeed. I see now that it is terribly sloppy in places; and as I reread it, I itched to rewrite the thing.

Still, it was fun to think as a paranoid. You know, a true paranoid’s sinister plots must make a linear sort of sense in order for the whole delusion to hang together. I believe that’s where this story shines. The protagonist sees everything as evidence of his wacko theory. Never mind that the protagonist, in the end, is correct. He’s still crazy as a loon, isn’t he?

I hear the kids sometimes. They’re the worst. But when I run to the cargo bay to look at them, they’ve climbed back in their little coffins and put that mummy stuff around their faces. I can even see ice crystals in the wrappings. Clever.

I tell Mike.

“What do they say to you, Danny?” he asks.

I watch him. “They don’t say anything to me. They’re ghosts. They talk to each other.”

“Those children are in cryogenic suspension. You know that,” he tells me. He also says, “Besides, there are no such things as ghosts.”

Sometimes I slip up and say stuff like that to Mike. I forget that androids have no imagination.

“You’re an android,” I tell him.

He looks surprised. “Why in hell do you think that?”

“I killed somebody to get here. What’d you do?”

Mike looks away. When he’s trying to be evasive he does that. It’s so I can’t look into his eyes. They don’t do eyes very well. “I don’t think that’s pertinent.”

“It’s pertinent if you’re here. My ticket was murder. I sliced somebody. I forget now just why. Maybe I was going to rob them. It’s been a long time.”

I look out the window into space. Stars that I don’t know look back. I never thought much about the stars until I was sent here. I still don’t think much of them.

“How long has it been?” I ask.

“I don’t know.”

“If you’re an android you know.”

“Maybe I’m not an android. Maybe you are.”

I think about that, of course, then I go into the kitchen and cut my arm with a knife. Red stuff comes out. It looks like blood.

Mike doesn’t sleep much. Sometimes he lays down in his bunk and pretends; but he never shuts himself off. Mike doesn’t bother me, though. It’s the kids that keep me awake.

“Maybe I’m going crazy.”

“Maybe so,” Mike says.

“You bastard. You’d like me to think that, wouldn’t you.”

Mike pretends to ignore me.

“I want to go home.”

Mike was pretending to read. He was pretending to be annoyed that I was interrupting him.

“Take me home. I’ll be good. I promise.”

He puts down the book. “You should have thought about that before you made the deal with the judge. Now it’s too late. We’re almost thirty light years from Earth. There’s nothing anyone can do.”

“I can kill the kids,” I tell him.

He picks up the book again. “I know you too well. You wouldn’t do that.”

“Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think. I killed once, didn’t I?”

“I read your report. Sounded like a case of self-defense and a bad lawyer to me.”

“Are you my guard or my jail-mate?” I ask him.

He doesn’t look up. He doesn’t answer, either.

“Anyway, I’d like to see if the kids are ghosts or not. If I can kill them, then I guess they were real.”

Finally Mike seems mad. He puts down the book and stares at me for a long time. “Then I’d have to kill you.”

Androids take their jobs very seriously. They also have no sense of humor.

I go to my cabin and turn on the Tactile. The bar is smoky the way it always is. The woman sitting on a stool is a blond this time, but she looks the same: Too much makeup; too little dress. Her top is cut to the navel, exposing a pair of cantaloupe breasts. Her skirt drags the floor.

Bending forward, I bring my lips right next to hers. She smells like sweat and perfume. “I’m a leg man,” I tell her. “Can’t they ever get that straight? I’m a leg man. Who do I have to complain to around here?”

It was fun the first time I did that. Then I found out they don’t read.

“Buy me a drink,” she says in a throaty voice.

The bourbon makes my eyes water. The smoke in the room makes me squint. Off to the right I catch the sweet tang of marijuana.

“My place or yours?” the blond asks as she rubs a hot hand up the back of my neck.

I reach over to kiss her. Her mouth is soft as ripe fruit and she tastes of liquor and stale cigarettes. She disappears when I turn the Tactile off. I walk to the lounge.

“Don’t they have any better programs?” I ask.

Mike shrugs. “They have a whole library. You’ve been through them all.”

“You never use them.”

“I don’t get my pleasure that way.”

“What kind of pleasure do androids have?” I ask him.

He shakes his head wearily. “I’m a pretty good programmer. Maybe I can make you up one. What sort of thing would you like?”

“I’m tired of whores,” I tell him. “A nice girl would be good.”

Mike seems offended.

I stare down at his foot. It’s bare. The toenails are great. Very realistic. I’ve never seen Mike cut them. He has a brush in his room and there are blond hairs in it. They’re always the same hairs.

“I’d like to meet a nice girl,” I tell him. “We get married, raise a family. In this life, in this pretend life, I go into business. Something dull like insurance maybe. Maybe marketing. I got a son who goes to Princeton and a daughter who marries a doctor. We move to the country into a house with a white picket fence. We got a dog and three horses. Mary, my wife, loves the horses. She’s not much of a country club type, though. She stays home, takes care of the house and cooks me dinner. I come home from the office for lunch: Hot soup and a sandwich. Think you can make something like that?”

“Maybe,” he says and his voice is real quiet.

I get up from the chair and go to the back so he can’t see I’m shaking.

Mike follows me, anyway. “I’m scared,” I say.

“Of what?”

“I’m scared because nothing’s real. Time’s not real. I’m scared when I go to sleep because I sleep for a long time. They put a gas into the cubicle and I sleep for years. Then they wake me up so I think I’m living.”

“Who’d do that to you?”

I glance at him. “You would.”

Mike doesn’t say anything, but his eyes look strange, the way android eyes look.

“The only thing I can’t figure out is why you don’t let me sleep forever.”

“Maybe I’d get lonely.”

I laugh. “You can’t get lonely. You’re an android.”

For a minute Mike looks hurt. Then he lifts his eyebrows just like he was surprised again. “Oh, yeah. That’s right. I’m an android. I keep forgetting about that.”

“Maybe it has something to do with my sentence. Maybe I’m supposed to be awake.”

“Probably. Do they let lifers sleep their way through prison?”

I don’t answer. There are small blank spots in my memory, and the blank spots move: Bubbles in carbonated water. “You put me to sleep sometimes because you’re afraid I’ll go crazier.”

Mike shrugs and starts to walk away. “Whatever you want to think, Danny.”

I stop him by grabbing his arm. He looks around like he’s afraid or angry or something. “Where are, we going?” I ask him.

“A nice place. They promised us that. We spend our prison term in space, and when we get the kids to the new planet we’re free. They promised us that. Don’t you remember?”

“But why are we here? And who are those kids?”

“They’re going to colonate . . .” Mike stops, realizing his mistake. A strange mistake for an android. Maybe something’s wrong with his program. He laughs. His eyes don’t. “. . . I mean colonize . . .”

“I liked it better the other way. Colonate. They’re going to colonate a new planet. Me, they’re going to murderize.”

They’re going to murderize me. I can feel it. The kids talk about it among themselves.

“Why do you put me to sleep, Mike? It scares me. Don’t put me to sleep.”

He smiles sadly. His mouth is done good. After I eat I go to my cabin. Mike puts me to sleep for three years.

“How long has it been?” I ask him.

“I don’t know.”

“Time goes fast.”

“Time’s dilated with the speed we’re traveling.”

“You know what bothers me?” I ask.

“What?”

“I’ve been wondering why I’m here.”

He looks interested.

“They have you. You’re an android. You’re an immortal, as much as anything can be. You take care of the ship. I don’t do anything. They really don’t need me. I’m a murderer, after all. And I’m slowly going crazy. I can’t be around the kids when they get to that new place.”

It looks like he’s trying very hard to follow my train of thought. “So you tell me. What do you think you’re doing here?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I’m scared.”

“I think you’re already crazy,” he says.

When I go to my cabin Mike puts me to sleep for another three years.

I wake up screaming.

It’s the first time I’ve ever seen Mike upset. He comes over and puts his hand on my shoulder. He has a strong hand, a hand that should belong to a father or a big brother or something. “Don’t, Danny. It’s all right.”

“Oh, Christ. I’m so scared.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“Of being alone.”

“I’m here,” he tells me.

I’m ashamed to cry because I cry ugly. Not like some people I used to know. When I cry, I blubber. Mike puts his arms around me and holds me tight, my head right up against him. I can hear his heart pound easy and slow in his chest. His body is warm. On the index finger of his right hand is a tiny white scar, no wider than a hair.

I tell him, “Sometimes I think something will happen to you, like your program will fail or something, and I’ll be here all by myself. Me and the ghosts of those kids. Can you die?”

“Everyone dies. Everyone.”

“Just don’t leave me.”

His warm breath lifts the hair on my forehead. “No, Danny. I won’t leave you. Don’t be afraid.”

He holds me for a long time, not saying anything else. When he takes me to my cabin to rest. I sleep for four years.

When I wake up we’re there.

“That blue planet. It wasn’t there when I went to bed.”

“We travel fast.” Mike says.

“How long has it been?”

Mike stares at me with his empty, android eyes. “Thirty-nine years,” he tells me.

Before we go down, I wander into the bathroom and study myself in the mirror. I can’t remember too well, but it seems like I haven’t aged. I don’t know if Mike is lying about how long it took, or if, when he puts me to sleep, he freezes me, too. I’d never know. I’ll never know.

He gets me into the landing vehicle. He knows how to fly it. They never taught me anything except how to work the Tactile and where to find the programs. .After we land. I wait a long time before Mike opens the door.

“What are we waiting for?”

He looks up from his instruments. “I’m checking the air. We don’t want to walk outside and get poisoned.”

“Right. How long has it been?”

“Couple of hours. I had to make sure of the particulate count, fungus, pollen. That sort of thing. I had to take soil samples with the corer and check for bacteria. So,” he says somberly. Mike’s always somber. “You ready, or what?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

He opens the door. Bright, friendly light flows into the airlock like a promise. I take a deep breath. The breeze smells of rain.

We walk outside. It’s not Earth, but something like it. Trees bearing purple pear-shaped fruit tower over my head. I stroll a few feet. The moss under my feet is spongy. The air is cool and damp. To my right is a stream with neon-pink fish in its depths.

“Pretty?” Mike asks.

I take in a long breath, watching the pattern the sun makes as it lances through the strange leaves. It has been so long that my voice isn’t quite steady. “Please tell me. Is it real?”

“Yes,” Mike says from behind me. “It’s real. But is it pleasant?”

I start to ask if he doesn’t see that for himself, but then I remember he can’t. It’s not his fault. Androids can tell safe; but they can’t tell beautiful.

We’d been together a long time. Mike and me. He’d made me feel fear. At times he’d made me feel hatred. This was the first time I felt sorry for him.

On a broad oval leaf next to me cool globes of dew shimmer. “Yes,” I say as tears gather in my eyes and roll, sweet and hot, down my cheeks.

“Danny?”

I turn and see the pulse pistol in his hands .. He’s pointing it at the center of my chest.

“Thank you for telling me,” he says.

The world explodes into color. The targeting field makes rainbow auras around things. I hear the excited beep-beep-beep as the lock-on of the pistol finds me.

Then the beep-beep and the colors go away. I can breathe again. Mike’s hand is jerking up and down. His eyes roll up into his head. There is something very wrong with his program.

I hear the SHOMP sound as the pistol fires and the PLINK as the laser hits a boulder not a foot away from my side.

Mike stops shaking. I’m looking right at his face. His voice and mouth are sad. His eyes are empty. “I’m sorry,” he says. He’s not looking at me.

Then he turns and makes his way back into the carrier. He’s not moving very well. I cross the stream and hide in some bushes. In a few minutes he lowers the back of the carrier and rides out on a digger.

He has to stop every few minutes because he can’t plough a straight line. Finally he manages to dig a hole. He makes it deep. When he’s finished, he comes back and picks up the boulder. It is a big boulder, and must be very heavy, but he carries it gently. He lays it in the hole and stands over the hole for a long time.

He’s started to shake again. I want to go over and say something to him, but I’m afraid. In a little while he fills in the dirt, gets back in the carrier and lifts off. I think I won’t ever see him again.

The next morning the carrier wakes me up. Mike lands and leads out the kids. They pile out of the ship and stand around him. Mike is walking a lot better now, and the kids are doing kid-things.

I’m hungry. Towards noon I can’t stand it any more, and I stand up in the bushes where I’m hiding. Some of the kids look over, but Mike doesn’t notice.

“Hi, Mike,” I say, wondering if he’ll shoot me. He still has the pulse pistol in his belt.

Mike is solid; the only solid thing here. He’s so real that it makes my chest hurt. If he’d look around at me I’d touch him. Maybe I’d cry. “Mike?” I call. He is fiddling with the aircrate machine, and even though it’s making noise, he should have heard me. He doesn’t turn around.

I walk up the ramp and go into the kitchen.

“Who are you, mister?” a little girl asks me. She comes up to about my waist.

I’m stuffing food in my mouth and putting freeze-dry envelopes in my pockets. I look down at her. She’s blond and small like some white kind of spider.

“Who are you?” she asks again, but I don’t answer. She is too pale to be real.

I walk out of the ship and back to my hiding place. Mike doesn’t turn to see me go.

Mike does real good with the kids. In the afternoon he makes them nap. When evening falls he builds a fire. He tells them stories about Cinderella and the tortoise and the hare. Then he tells the kids how their parents, who wouldn’t have survived freezing, loved them so much they sent them away.

And when the kids at the edge of the circle are falling asleep, he explains how he was put in charge. He tells them how much he loves them.

When they’re all asleep, he goes around, picks them up, and carries them into the cabins he’s made. Then he goes outside and stands guard for a little while. When everything is quiet, he walks over to where he buried the rock. He sits there for a long while. He sits there so long that I get tired of watching and go back to my hiding place. I sleep for a few hours.

The next day I go to the ship for more food.

“Who is that man?” one of the kids asks Mike.

“What man?” Mike asks. His gaze slides past me.

The kid, a dark one, doesn’t ask again.

Hiding is lonely, so I sort of hang around with the kids. They tried to talk to me yesterday, but I didn’t talk back. Today they don’t look at me much.

Mike’s finished with the cabins and he’s putting in the gardens. He plants peas and beans and squash and hangs the empty little packets of vegetables on tiny crosses at the end of the rows, like something he loved was buried there.

When he is finished planting, he straightens. I am standing down at the end of the rows.

“Hi, Mike,” I say.

He looks down and dusts his hands.

“Thank you for not killing me. I know you were supposed to.”

He pretends like he doesn’t hear. After a moment he picks his way through the rows to the ship. He makes a big white cross out of two sticks and pounds it into the dirt where he buried the rock. He stands over the cross for a while. When two of the kids get into a fight, he goes to them.

Mike gently pulls the two kids apart. He kisses the one kid who’s crying and hugs the other who’s not. Then he gives every one of the kids candy and tells them to take their naps. I guess being a babysitter is what his program is all about.

That night, around the campfire, he tells them the story of Beauty and the Beast. Mike tells a story good. His voice is all hushed and tense at the exciting part; his tone loud and happy for the ending.

When the story is over there are a few minutes of quiet. I’m not sure if the kids are just tired or if the story got to them. Then one of them turns around towards me and points at my chest the way Mike had pointed the pulse pistol. “Who is that ghost?” he asks.

The kid must have asked the right question, because Mike stiffens. He finally looks around the flames, sees me in the orange shadows and closes his eyes. His face looks like they had programmed him to understand pain.

“That used to be Danny,” he says. He sounds like he wants to cry.

Author’s Note: This story has a supernatural base, but it springs from the same horror-of-aloneness that is found in “Guardian of Fireflies.” And to think that this comes from a person who was an only child, who is happiest when not married, and who has no problem whatsoever spending time by herself. It’s just that every once in a while you want to get on the phone, call a friend, go to the supermarket, that sort of thing. It proves that you never can tell what fear lies around the next corner in your mind.

The Yankee was standing by the rail in his white pants and sweater. Looking at him nearly made me laugh. The sweater had that tiny yellow piping around the bottom that expensive sweaters have. I wondered if he thought we’d get busted, and he wanted to impress the Coast Guard.

He was looking into the water, and just seeing him standing there, the yacht going up and down, made me feel funny,

The deck was slick, so I slid more than I walked over to where Dale was. Being on the bridge wasn’t good, but it was better. We were traveling into the wind, and when the prow sliced the swells, a fine spray washed over the rails.

“He carrying?” Dale asked; His hands were sure and steady on the wheel. Looking at his hands made me feel safe.

“No.”

“Stupid of him. Trusting of him. Ease on down, son.” Dale chortled. “Easing on down.”

I bent out of the Yankee’s sight and pulled the Browning 9mm out of a cabinet. When Dale cut the engines, the wash nearly threw me off my feet.

“Watch it,” I snapped, grabbing Dale’s seat to keep myself from falling.

“Gotta get your sea legs, boy.”

“Do it to him quick, Dale. I just want off this fucking boat.”

Dale didn’t pay any attention. He was used to my grousing. “Amateur Yankee’s gonna get his sea legs,” he laughed. “Deep down, twenty-foot sea legs. Leaning to his side, he picked up the Uzi that had been resting under a sky-blue cushion.

We were counting down to zero minutes. I was standing half in and half out of the shadow of the bridge, and the Texas sun burned where it hit. In the shade my right arm was cold. The patterned gun grip felt clammy.

“Mr. Morrison?” Dale called.

The Yankee started walking up the deck to where we stood.” I glanced around Padre Island was a blue haze to my right. To my left was the exposed hump of an oyster reef dotted with neat gray-and-white gulls that looked like they’d cleaned up for the party.

“Yes, Dale? Anything wrong?”

“I don’t know. Come see.”

Stupidly, the Yankee came on, no fear at all in his face.

“You did put diesel in this thing, right, Dale? Port Aransas’s still a good fifty miles away.”

I was watching for the Yankee’s expression when Dale pulled the Uzi.

It was a good one.

“What . . .” was all he said.

“Thought we might do some fishing,” Dale told him with a smile.

“Thought we might get us some bait and fish Troll a bit. Don’t you think that’d be fun, Billy?” he asked me. I was laughing too hard to answer. A little trolling might be in order.”

“Trolling,” I said, and bent over to laugh again. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t hold the gun straight. It didn’t matter. Dale had the Uzi.

“You don’t want to do this,” the Yankee said, sounding a lot calmer than he should have.

“I don’t know, Mr. Morrison. Ain’t the stars propitious?”

Being with Dale always made me feel good. A few minutes ago, knowing we were counting down to zero, my chest had felt so tight it had been hard to breathe. Now that Dale had taken over, my chest had unkinked.

The Yankee backed up a step, but there wasn’t anyplace for him to go.

Dale’s smile sort of shut down, the way it did when he started getting serious. “We got the names of your contacts in Cabo Bueno. We got $3 million of coke in the hold. It’s my boat. As I see it, I got salvage.”

The Yankee was quiet for a minute. He had a funny little smile on his face like he was hoping this was all a joke. “But you were recommended to me by a client of mine, you understand? A powerful client, remember? He wouldn’t be happy to know you backed out on the deal.”

“You won’t be around to complain, will you, Mr. Morrison?”

“O.K. All right.” The Yankee backed away, hit his hip against the railing, and stopped. “We’ll work this out.”

“I think it’s already worked. And I think we’re going fishing.”

Dale held the Uzi on him while I tied the Yankee’s hands. Up close I could tell the Yankee was scared. He stank of sweat. There were beads of it on his upper lip. His hands weren’t steady, not like Dale’s which were always steady.

“You don’t want to do this,” he said again. This time it sounded more like he was pleading.

Dale told me to tie some rope around the Yankee’s chest, up under his arms where it couldn’t come off. Then he had me tie the other end of the rope to the boat.

“Jump in the water,” Dale told him.

I stood out of range of the Uzi.

The Yankee stayed where he was, sort of shaking. “What do you think I do for a living, Dale?”

“You’re some big-deal psychic. Old ladies come to you to find their lost poodles. I guess with the money you make, you bang ’em a little, too. Like when Aquarius is in the seventh house or something.”

“Venus,” the Yankee said, sounding more like his old self. “It would be Venus in Scorpio. I’m warning you.”

I laughed so hard I had to sit down. Dale cocked his head as if he were really interested. “You’re warning me?”

“I’m a demonologist, Mr. Griffin. -Not an astrologer. Not just a psychic. A demonologist. Do you know what a demonologist is?”

Dale’s smile had sort of faded down into a washout of a grin. It was the sort of expression he got when he was tired of the game. “I know what it means, Mr. Morrison. But I don’t believe in demons. Please get into the water.”

“Nobody screws around with a demonologist, Mr. Griffin.” The Yankee sounded perplexed. “Nobody’s that stupid.”

The Uzi ripped a few bursts past the Yankee’s head, making a sound like the end of the world. The Yankee toppled over the railing and hit the water with a splash.

I jumped up, ran over, and saw that he was treading the green-gray water. He couldn’t tread with his arms, of course, but his legs must have been going great guns.

He looked up. His fifty-dollar haircut was plastered down over his face. He was whispering something that didn’t sound like English.

Dale cranked the engines and raced off so fast that the bow jerked up and knocked me to my knees. Behind the boat the Yankee made a frothing wake of white.

In a little while, Dale cut the engines back to idle and told me to go see if the Yankee was dead.

He wasn’t. He was huffing, and looked tired. His legs weren’t keeping him afloat very well anymore, but his head was more or less out of the water.

“I’m warning you,” he said. I could hardly hear him over the growling of the engines.

I couldn’t think of funny things as quick as Dale could, so l just leaned my arms on the brass rail and watched him.

He spat some water out of his mouth. “You’re afraid of the ocean, aren’t you?”

Dale came out from the bridge to look.

“I’ve watched you two. I’ve watched you a lot. Dependent on each other, aren’t you? Billy more than you, Dale.” At that moment a wave caught him, banged him pretty good against the side of the yacht, and slapped water over his face.

When he came up, he was spitting. It was awhile before he could speak. “Get me out now before it’s too late. Dying is bad, but other things are worse.”

I leaned most of my weight on my arms and watched him. The movement of the boat bothered me; but not so much that I would miss the show. “You think you know so much, but you don’t know shit. There ain’t nothing worse than the way Dale kills people.” I turned to Dale, expecting to see him grinning but he wasn’t. He was looking real serious, and he wasn’t looking at me.

“You think your demons are gonna save you?” Dale asked.

The Yankee laughed tiredly. “No. They won’t save me. They love fear and death, even the deaths of the ones who serve.” For a moment he looked resentful, then the frown was gone. “Everyone has a special demon, Billy. Did you know that?”

His dark eyes gave me the shivers. I wished that Dale would shoot him or start the boat again.

“Their own special demon. I have the name of yours, Billy. All I have to do is call his name, and he’ll come. Get me out of the water.”

Dale asked for the Browning and I gave it to him. He raised the automatic and took careful aim. I saw the Yankee’s eyes grow wide. His lips moved a mile a minute, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. At this point most people prayed, but I wasn’t sure what a psychic would do.

The clap of the shot was so loud that I shut my eyes and went deaf for a moment. When I opened my eyes back up, I saw that Dale had wounded the Yankee in the shoulder. Blood streamed, making rusty red patterns in the water.

The Yankee was gasping.

“I got my own demons,” Dale said. “And in a little bit they’ll be coming your way.”

He walked up to the bridge, put some gas to the engines, and dragged the Yankee a few yards. When he stopped, the Yankee was still treading water. Dale cut the engines and came back.

“The name of my demon is ‘shark.’”

The Yankee was beginning to tire. His head didn’t stay above water as much anymore. He went under, not over, the small waves.

“What’s the name of your demon, Mr. Morrison?” Dale asked him.

The Yankee looked as if he was too tired to answer. A few yards away, I saw the first of the dorsal fins. The Yankee turned his head and saw it, too.

Dale was enjoying himself at last. There was a big smile plastered across his face. I tried to enjoy it, but instead of thinking of how the Yankee was about to die, l was thinking of buying myself a big-busted, dark-headed whore, taking her to an air-conditioned motel back in Corpus, banging her, and watching some TV. Then I’d go out to dinner with Dale. We’d drink a lot and laugh. Dale liked the zero hours, but I liked the partying afterward.

“What’s the name of the demon, Mr. Morrison?” Dale asked. He looked like he was having fun, and that made me feel good. I liked it when Dale was happy.

The Yankee was holding up better than what I’d thought he would. He didn’t scream. He didn’t beg. All of us, especially the Yankee, watched the fin slice silent and easy through the small waves.

Then the fin disappeared, just like that. One minute it was plowing water, and the next minute it was gone. A second or so later, the Yankee was jerked down, just like a cork when a bass strikes bait.

He surfaced the same time all the blood did. The water erupted bright red. There was enough blood for me to think that the shark had cut him in half. Only, if the shark had cut him in two, he wouldn’t be treading water anymore.

It was almost over now. I could taste the beer in my mouth. I could almost hear the noise of the bar. I could picture the way the whore would rub up against me. I could imagine how Dale would kid me the way he liked to do when zero hour was over and the fun started.

Now there were more fins in the water; at least ten or so. Some were big and nasty; some were small and mean.

The Yankee either didn’t have enough left in him to cry, or he’d decided to go out brave. The Yankee turned his face up to us. His eyes were wide open, so round it looked like it must have hurt to hold them that way. It was the way I’d seen eyes before when zero hour came around—like people, when they’re about to die, want to see everything one last time.

His body splashed around a lot, so I knew his legs were still connected, but he was tired, and they didn’t move smooth the way they should have. They didn’t keep him much above water, either. A dorsal fin swept by his right side and bumped him. I wondered if the shark had taken a chunk.

The Yankee didn’t pay any attention to the shark. His dark gaze settled on mine. All of a sudden his eyes relaxed, and there was a strange stillness in them. His mouth sort of turned upward a moment, and I wondered if he was trying to smile. “Alone,” he whispered the minute before he was dragged under.

There was sun in my eyes.

I winced and put my hand up quick. Then I wiped the tears away. I hated that. Dale would think I was crying.

Blinking and squinting, I looked down to see that the Yankee was gone. There weren’t any sharks, and there wasn’t any blood. l guessed the sharks had eaten the blood, and I thought that was neat, so I turned to tell Dale.

He wasn’t there.

“Dale?” I said.

I went to the bridge, but the bridge was empty. The boat was moving hack and forth under my feet like it was alive.

“Dale?” I clambered down into the cabin. The beds were made. The john was empty, the door ajar. I walked into the tiny kitchen and stared at the bags of coke on the counter. The sun flooded in the round window, turning the cocaine blinding white.

“Dale?” My voice seemed to go out of my mouth a ways and disappear, like the silence had swallowed it up.

Stumbling back up the narrow stairs, I bruised myself pretty good. “’Dale!”

I checked the bridge again. He wasn’t there. The engines were off, and the air was heavy and quiet except for the soft slap, slap of the waves against the hull. To the side where the oyster island should have been was nothing but open water. I glanced around and couldn’t see Padre Island anymore.

The tide came in, I thought. The fucking boat drifted.

I walked around the deck and saw that the anchor had been lowered. It surprised me because I couldn’t remember doing that.

“Dale?” I wandered down and checked the cabin again. Then I went up to the bridge and sat in Dale’s chair. I put my hands together in my lap and looked out over the water. There was a pressure in my bladder, not bathroom pressure, but sick, scared pressure. My head felt numb.

Dale would have known what to do. But in that time when the sun was in my eyes, Dale must have fallen over the side, and the sharks must have gotten him.

After a while I went to the anchor winch. I started the motor and watched the chain wind in. After a few feet of chain, there was a soft clunk. Poking my head over the rail, I looked down.

Dale was there. Dale was gaffed on the chain; just like a fish. His dark hair was plastered down on his face and his chin was resting on his chest. Where the chain came out of the skin between his shoulder blades, there wasn’t a big wound like I might have expected, but a smooth pucker like the chain had grown out of his back.

“Dale!” I screamed.

Real slow, he started to lift his head.

I jumped back from the rail and threw up all over the deck.

“God! God!” I was shouting. He couldn’t be alive, not with that chain growing right through where his heart should have been; not with being underwater all that time;

I hit the winch and heard the splash as a body struck the surface. Sliding in the slick of my vomit, I ran to the bridge and keyed the ignition. Nothing happened.

“Oh shit. Oh shit,” I was saying over and over. I ran to the opposite side of the boat, bent over the rail; and threw up some more.

I didn’t see that, I was thinking. Dale isn’t on the anchor chain. I’m going to go over and hit that winch again, because all that’s there is an anchor.

But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

And I didn’t want to stay on that boat.

Running down into the cabin, I got out the inflatable raft. Then I tore open a bag of coke and took a good sized hit. It didn’t matter that I got into the coke now, not with Dale gone. The coke made me feel better.

I was even laughing a little as I sat on the deck and watched the dinghy inflate. When it was full and round as a Mexican whore, I lowered it and loaded the coke. l got myself a couple of beers from the refrigerator, sneaking around the spot where the winch was like I was afraid Dale would see I was leaving him.

I was leaving Dale. I was leaving him hanging on the anchor chain.

Clambering into the dinghy, I got the oars out and put them into the water. Then I sat there.

I didn’t know which direction to go.

My stomach was starting to feel funny again, so I thought about what Dale would do. Padre Island was north, so the afternoon sun should be to my left.

I looked up. Above my head the sun was a tiny, white-hot thing. The sea had a murky sheen to it, and where the sky met the horizon was a dazzle of light misty blue.

Shouldn’t the sun be setting? I wondered. What time is it, anyway?

It doesn’t matter, I told myself. None of this crap matters. Padre Island had to be to the right of the boat, where it was before. I got the dinghy turned around and started rowing full steam. If I got into Padre, I’d find somebody, vacationers, maybe. I’d hide the coke in the sand, and I’d get them to come out and help me with Dale. I wasn’t running out on him, not really. I was just going for help. It made sense. Dale would do that.

Rowing was O.K., seeing that I had the coke. When I started coming down from the high, I felt an ache across my shoulders and cramps in my arms, so I snorted a little more.

The oars were red. I looked down at my hands and saw they had frozen into claws. In the time I had been rowing, I’d rubbed blisters onto my palms, and the blisters had burst.

Opening up one of the beers with my teeth, I held the can with the heels of both hands and drank. The beer was hot. Licking my lips, I looked up to where the sun lay, a white aspirin tablet in the steel sky.

Shouldn’t it be setting? I wondered.

Around me the sea stretched to where it was lost in the metallic summer mist. Squinting, I looked for the boat, but I must have gone so far I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t see Padre Island, either.

Maybe I was rowing the wrong way.

When the beer was gone, I tossed the can into the water and watched it float. My legs and arms were sort of shaking. Inside my chest, my heart was on a jittery coke trip of its own.

“Dale!” I screamed, not really thinking he’d hear me, but hoping he’d hear me all the same. “Dale!” I shouted across the empty water. If Dale could, he’d come and make a joke of it.

Cold fear oozed up my neck and spread itself over my sunburned shoulders. Yeah, old Dale will come, I thought. Dragging his chain. His white face will peek over the side of the dinghy, and he’ll smile with his putty blue lips and say, “Hey, Billy. The water’s fine.”

I picked up the oars real quick and started rowing like hell again, not bothering to check where I was going, but rowing fast, anyway. When I stopped the next time, it was because I couldn’t row any farther. My back had seized up. My hands were bleeding bad, and I couldn’t breathe steady for my crying.

“Dale,” I whispered.

Dale would have known what to do.

I lay down as best I could In the bottom of the rubber raft and gazed up into the harsh noon sky. The sunburn on my shoulders and back had formed blisters that leaked crusty yellow fluid.

What time was it, anyway?

Picture a calm, beautiful scene, I decided. That was the way Dale used to do when he got upset. I tried to visualize a forest, but all I saw was a beach, the breakers coming in in long, marching lines.

Breakers.

I started to sit up, but couldn’t. The ache in my back was too bad. It wasn’t important, anyway. Waves went to beaches. Everything moved toward land.

Tears welled up in my eyes and slid, thick and heavy, down my cheeks. My mouth opened and made a “whuh whuh” sound like a kid when he’s at the tag end of crying. If Dale had been there, he would have laughed at me.

It was O.K. Everything was going to be fine. The waves would take me, just like the crap that always washed up on beaches. The sea would take me home. And there would be people and laughter and something to eat. There would be women and noise and fast cars.

I relaxed and let the sea move me. With the sun beating down, turning the light behind my lids pink, I dozed. I dozed and listened to the slosh-slosh of the ocean. The ceaseless motion of the waves rocked me to sleep just like a baby in a cradle. Back and forth.

Back and forth.

Author’s Note: I will tell you a secret: normally I know the beginning of a story and I also know its end. Writing for me is a voyage of semi-discovery, in that I know my destination, but how I will get there is another tale altogether.

This story—hell—I nearly had it fully written, but it had no ending! How would the characters get out of this mess? What was their solution? Were they all going to (gulp) die? Then Lubinov said his final bit of dialogue in my brain; and as I typed it out on the screen I laughed uproariously. The solution to the dilemma was as much a surprise for me as I hope it will be for you.

I was standing out by the drill, just sort of looking towards the horizon when Lubenov came riding up in his creeper. I could tell he was real: First, the creeper threw ‘a lot of dust into my faceplate; and second, I could touch him.

When I grabbed him by the arm, you know, just sort of checking out a little muscle and bone, he looked at me strange. “Bad weather coming,” he said as he jerked away from me.

The Russian was a worn-looking sixty. Under the polarized glass of his helmet I could see blue, ill-shaven jowls sagging over his collar. The paunch at his waist nudged the belt of his fire-engine red uniform. Fat people shouldn’t wear red.

“Yeah,” I said.

“So are you going to cover up the machinery?”

“I guess,” I said.

He helped me. Then he tied down his creeper and we went into the quarters. When we walked in, I took off my helmet. The lounge had a locker-room smell. Chee was sprawled drunk on the sofa. I poured some of the Indian’s moonshine into two jars and handed one to Lubenov.

He pulled his helmet off, sipped at the jar and winced.

“Chee made it,” I explained.

The Soviet’s cheeks were chipmunked out like he was trying to decide whether to drink or just go ahead and-spit it on the floor.

“Canned pineapple,” I told him.

He swallowed, shivered and put the jar down on a table. Then he sort of looked around the room, eyeing the dead plants.

“Chee had the last cleaning detail,” I told him. “He was supposed to water the ivy.”

“Up yours, Dawson,” Chee said from the sofa. He’d made a sort of blanket of dirty uniforms. It was cold in the quarters. The sun threw a miserly light against the smudged, flexible windows. On everything was a layer of red dust. When you breathed, you felt it in your nose. When you ate, you tasted the grit in your mouth. Chee called it “sucking Mars.”

Lubenov had eyes like little ball bearings. They moved away from Chee and settled their oily gaze on me.

“You are both thin. Have you been ill?”

I shrugged.

“You are taking your food and making liquor with it. How many supplies have you left?”

I looked at Chee. Chee looked my way. We sort of laughed.

Lubenov walked over to the pantry cooler, opened the door and started to walk in. He didn’t get very far. He spat something in Russian as he slammed the door shut. For a while he just stood there, his hand over his stomach, looking like he was going to upchuck. When he finally glanced at me his heavy face was pale. “It smells in there,” he told me. “Haven’t you noticed? It smells in there.”

“Must be Standifer,” I said.

“Standifer?” His thick eyebrows came together when he knotted his forehead.

“You remember Standifer,” Chee said. He turned over on his side on the couch, letting a uniform slide off his shoulder onto the floor. “The gemologist. Short, fat black guy.”

“I keep telling him to stay out of the pantry, but he won’t listen to me,” I told Lubenov.

Lubenov looked at me a while. “Standifer is dead,” he said.

“I know. Maybe that’s why he won’t listen.”

“He walked out without his insulated suit. He froze to death. You buried him.”

“Yeah. I know,” I told him.

“So he is not in the cooler. What smells in the cooler is spoiled food. There is container after container in there which has been half eaten and left open to rot.”

I took a sip of the moonshine Chee had made and sat down on a chair. “I see Standifer in there all the time. Maybe he’s hungry or something.”

Lubenov looked around the room again. “Where is Martin?”

Chee and I glanced at each other.

“Is Martin in his room?”

When we didn’t answer, Lubenov opened the door to the basement quarters and walked down the steps. He was gone a few minutes. When he came back his face was tight. “Martin is not down there. He is not in the quarters. Where is he?”

I shrugged.

Lubenov looked at Chee who shrugged, too.

“There are only three of you left. You have to know where is Martin,” he said. His English was beginning to get a little worn around the edges. “You must know where each of you is at all times. Five of you Americans are dead already. Three of us Soviets. Life has gotten too precious. We have to find him.”

“Gone on a walk to meet the Coyote,” Chee laughed. “Everyone eventually goes to meet the Coyote when he calls. One day he’ll call your name, Lubenov. Nik-o-lai Lu-u-u-benov, he’ll say. And you’ll come running.”

Lubenov was quiet for a long time. When he spoke, his tone was a hoarse, angry whisper. “Are you crazy? There are no animals here.”

Chee put on his best cryptic Indian expression, the one that made you forget that the closest he’d ever been to a reservation was the time he bought turquoise on the street in Taos. The expression seemed to do a job on Lubenov. He got real quiet.

“But there are spirits,” Chee said. “There are totems. And the only totem who made it here was the Coyote, the trickster. He thought to play the ultimate trick. Only the trick got played on him. He’s on fucking Mars, man. Don’t you get it? He’s on fucking Mars, and he can’t get back. It’s lonely here for a spirit. And he’s pissed. An angry spirit is a dangerous spirit, even if it specializes in pratfalls.”

The Russian’s voice shook. “There is a sandstorm coming and Martin is out there.” Without waiting for an answer, he tore open the door to the hydroponics section and peered inside. “Oh, God! The pump is off!” he shouted. “You idiots! Did you turn off the pump?” When he turned the skin of his cheeks was still pale, but the part around his eyes was red and swollen as if he wanted to cry. He was shaking a little like he’d caught a fever.

I got up out of my chair and ambled over to the controls. All the lights were green except one. “Looks like it broke,” I told him.

Lubenov screamed in my face, “If it is broken, then you must fix it! You must fix it now! If your plants die, you will die. Don’t you understand that?”

“So big deal. So we just didn’t notice,” Chee said as he shifted his long body on the couch. A couple of more uniforms fell. He retrieved them and arranged them over his legs.

“Pump is broken a long time now,” the Russian said, his grammar suffering from his fury. “I smell rot in the water already. And you are telling me you have just noticed?”

“Let the Coyote fix it.” Chee sort of giggled.

Lubenov moved faster than I’d ever imagined he could move. I know he moved faster than Chee had counted on. In three quick strides Lubenov was on him. The Russian grabbed the Indian by the front of his uniform and jerked him upright. Slap. Slap. Slap. The Russian’s arm pumped so fast I could hardly see the motion. Lubenov’s open palm against Chee’s face sounded like three rapid shots. Slap. He hit him once more for good measure and then let the Indian drop back into the scattered dirty clothing. .

Chee had never once put his hand up to stop the Russian. I stood in the corner by the pump controls and never said a thing. Chee’s nose was running blood, as bright red as Lubenov’s uniform.

“Idiots,” Lubenov said sadly. He sat down on the sofa next to Chee and stared at his hands. “You are such idiots to let them kill you.”

At that moment the roof creaked. The bubble bowed in a foot or two on the left side. Lubenov’s head snapped up. He stared at the ceiling suspiciously. “You have checked the seals?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said.

Lubenov got up and went to check, anyway.

The blow was going to be a bad one. The metal struts above my head groaned. The bubble rubbed against its armature with the sound of a badly-tuned oboe.

“Martin is dead now,” Lubenov said. “Are you happy?”

I poured myself another fair-sized hit of Chee’s moonshine and sat down.

“He is out there in this storm, and now he is dead.”

The Russian sounded pretty upset about the whole thing. Chee rolled over and went to sleep, his nose still running blood. In a few minutes Lubenov got up, went to hydroponics, found a spare pump and started to work.

A little later I went in to watch him. “If you knew there was a blow coming, why did you go out?” I asked.

He wrapped electrical tape around two wires and flicked the switch. The pump started a shusha-shusha rhythm. “I have cleaned the filter, but the water will taste bad for a few days.”

Lubenov was sitting on the floor. I was standing over him. From that perspective I could see that he was going bald in a neat little monk’s-tonsure at the back of his head. He got up and studied the ceiling again. It was making end-of-the-world noises.

“It’ll hold,” I told him, speaking loud over the roar of the storm. “It always does.”

He sniffed a laugh. “Such faith. You Americans have such faith in engineering. We Russians understand technology, therefore we’ve learned not to trust it.”

In a moment he walked back into the lounge and sorted through our next shipment of diamonds that was due out in three days.

“I hate the South Africans,” he said.

“Good. They’re dead, anyway.”

Lubenov went on as if he hadn’t heard. “They and their nuclear suicide are the cause of this. Why did they have to do it?”

“Serious deed restrictions,” I told him, but he didn’t seem to get the joke.

I looked over at Chee. The Indian might have died in his sleep, he was so still, so quiet. I wondered if I should go check.

“A good Kimberlite pipe,” Lubenov said in what sounded like envy as he held up a four-carat VSI. Below the fluorescent lamp, the uncut stone glinted with a cold, bluish light.

Then he leaned over and whispered in my ear, as if he thought Chee were a spy or something. “We can get home.”

I shook my head. “The U.S. doesn’t have funding for replacements.”

He dropped his gaze to the stones and ran his fingers through them. They made subtle, clinking music. Ice music. “That is the excuse they give us, too. But the funding is here. Right here. We simply refuse to ship. We do not load and fire our rockets when the time comes. I ask you which is less expensive: To lose the diamonds or to send replacements for us?”

I shrugged. “Yeah. Maybe,” I said. “Then again, they could punish us. Not ship the food. They could starve us to death.”

“That is why you must preserve everything. Everything,” he hissed. His face was close to mine, close enough so that I could smell the ghost of Chee’s liquor on his breath. “We are dying already.”

He backed away from me as if he’d just realized he’d come far too close. “I have a plan,” he said.

I raised my eyebrows.

“We send both governments a message. Whoever gets here first gets all the diamonds. Understand me? The first to get here and take us all home, wins. My miners already agree, but you must be in the plan.”

“A Martian revolution?” I laughed.

He didn’t. His eyes picked me apart. “Yes,” he said. “A revolution.”

He dropped his gaze and ran his hands through the stones again, this time lovingly. “I am thinking. They will be angry with us. We will lose our pensions, perhaps. But diamonds can be hidden in the anus.”

“I hear my people X-ray.”

Lubenov glanced at me, startled. Then he gazed back down at the stones, amused. “Americans. So they don’t have as much faith as I thought.” He picked up a diamond, a good six-carat fancy yellow, and weighed it in his hands. “Then we hope that the Soviets will get here first.”

“Okay,” I told him. “I’m in.”

His eyes were tiny, bulbous and grey. The whites were a little bloodshot from the dry air in the lounge. “You are sure?”

“Yeah. Might as well.”

“And you will tell Chee to go along with it? He will listen to you.”

“Chee doesn’t give a shit. He stays drunk.” I wandered over to the other sofa and lay down, my hands crossed at my chest, my eyes to the bowed ceiling.

Lubenov followed. His heavy cheeks sagged as he bent over me. “Standifer is dead,” he told me.

“Right.”

”He does not come back to the lounge. He is buried out on Mars. I came to the funeral, you remember?”

“Yeah.”

“So you do not see him in the cooler, Dawson.”

“He comes,” I said as I closed my eyes, shutting out Lubenov’s worried face. “I see Standifer and Mike Bledsoe and all the others. They’re just as real as you, only I can’t touch them.”

“They are dead. They are buried. They cannot come back,” he said patiently. “You must believe that. If we are to die in this revolution, at least we should die sane.”

My eyes popped open in sudden fright. “Give me your hand!” I said.

He hesitated, then put his hand in mine. It was warm. I could feel the pulse in his wrist.

“Okay,” I said with relief. Releasing him, I closed my eyes and slept

Lubenov woke me up. It was late afternoon of a polar summer day when the light is stretched so long, so thin, that day itself seems brittle. The lounge was silent except for Chee snoring in the corner.

“The storm is over,” the Russian said.

“Yeah.” I wiped my eyes. They stung.

“We will go search for Martin.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

He helped me up. We got our helmets and went out the airlock to the Soviet creeper. We tugged the tarp off, brushing away mounds of sand and a scattering of ice. Lubenov and I clambered up into the chilly cabin. The creeper started with a roar and a jerk, picking its way north over the stones.

“How do you know which way Martin went?” I asked him.

In the protection of the cab he’d taken his helmet off. Loose skin bagged under his eyes. “Martin is from Vermont,” he said as if that explained everything.

Dry air, prickly and perfumed with the stench of heating coils, beat against my face. Ahead of us knife-edged shadows ran straight as plumb lines from the russet rocks. To the west the sun was a blood spot in a bruised and purple sky.

“Have you ever thought,” he asked after a time, “how much Mars looks like just any desert?”

I looked out the cab window to my right and stared at the sharp, blue edges of a mountain. It seemed that there should have been predatory, birds wheeling the updrafts above it.

“Did it ever seem to you,” Lubenov asked, “that if you simply kept walking that you would finally see trees and then houses?”

“New Mexico,” I whispered. Suddenly I saw myself in Albuquerque, the way I used to be. I’d kept a scrupulously neat office filled with painstakingly neat files. There had been a place for everything but ghosts; and everything that was ordinary had been in its place. Tears of nostalgia welled up in my eyes. I turned my head hard to the right so that Lubenov couldn’t see.

“Afghanistan,” he said.

I dared a glimpse at him.

He wasn’t looking my way. “When I was seventeen my troop transport was shot down over Afghanistan by an American rocket.”

“Sorry,” I muttered.

He shook off my apology. “When I climbed out of the wreckage I walked a long way. And while I walked I kept thinking . . .” Lubenov stopped as if he had simply run out of words.

“What?”

The creeper clambered and slipped over a crumbling ridge. Lubenov held the steering wheel steady. “I thought that if I walked far enough, I would get home. I was right, of course, but I pictured not arriving in Uzbekistan, but in Siberia, instead. Isn’t that strange? I thought that if I kept walking north, I would come to the snow, and there I would find the hunting cabin that my grandfather had built. And I imagined that I would walk up to find smoke drifting out of the chimney. The ponies would be tethered in the front yard, the dogs sleeping beside them.”

“Yeah. Strange,” I said.

“I could smell the tang of wood smoke so . . . vividly. In the air I imagined I caught the scent of snow.”

We were quiet a few minutes. The sun dipped lower but didn’t set. The day slipped into the lingering, dull twilight that passed for evening. Lubenov turned on his headlights. They were a warm yellow in the blue haze. “What happened?” I asked.

“The helicopter they sent found me,” he shrugged.

“So?”

“So I am thinking I understand what our people are looking for when the Coyote calls their names and they walk out into the rocks. I am afraid that if I hear the call of the Coyote, it may be a voice I already know.”

Lubenov stopped the creeper. I could feel the thrum-thrum of the warm engine under my legs and hear the ticking of the heater.

“What?” I asked. He was staring off to his left. I looked left with him and saw the blue-clad leg sticking out from under a new dune.

I put on my helmet. My hands were shaking. We clambered down from the creeper and walked over to Martin. There was no sense now in hurrying. Getting down on our hands and knees, we scooped the sand from around the rest of his body. Martin had taken his helmet off and it lay beside him. His eyes were open. There was dust clotted in them. His mouth was ajar and sand trickled out of it in a stream.

With an oddly maternal gesture, Lubenov lifted the body up by its shoulders and cradled the head in the crook of his arm. He wiped the sand from the staring eyes and closed them. For a moment I thought he was about to rock Martin to sleep, but he whispered, “Help me lift him.”

I got Martin’s legs. He was heavier than I would have expected, but I supposed the weight was from all the sand he’d eaten; all the Mars he’d breathed. We carried him to the back of the creeper. Lubenov opened the boot with one hand and we settled Martin behind the heavy glass. The boot hadn’t been designed for bodies. Martin was too long. So Lubenov coaxed him into a fetal posture on his side: Arms crossed over his chest; legs tucked to his middle.

If seemed as if we should have said a few words over Martin, but all Lubenov did was gently close the, boot.

We got back in the cab. I was shivering, so Lubenov found me a blanket and tucked it around me. It smelled of wool and rich human oils. He turned the creeper around and set off south towards the American mine at a slow, funereal pace. I closed my eyes and in the heavy-machinery beat of the creeper’s engine, drifted off to sleep.

I woke up with a jerk. The sun was peering over the horizon to my right, turning the sky and rocks pink. The creeper was stopped, its engine still throbbing but Lubenov’s captain’s chair was empty. The headlights were still on.

Ice granules fine as snow filled up the low spots in the sand around me. They blew in smoky drifts against the rocks. “Nikolai?” I whispered.

In the glare of the headlights I could see the corrugated tracks of a set of boots. A single walker, heading north.

Snatching my helmet from the floor, I stuffed it on and climbed outside. “Nikolai!” I shouted.

Even though I knew he wasn’t there, I walked around the cab to the back. Martin was still curled in the boot. The sun edged into the dark space behind the glass and lit up his face with peach light, so that he looked like a transfigured saint in an Eastern Orthodox icon. Sand still leaked from his open lips. St. Martin, the patron saint of sand-drowned men.

“Nikolai!” I screamed and then listened hard. In the rose-pink dawn I thought I should have heard the wake-up calls of birds, but there was only Mars’ huge silence.

I stumbled a couple of yards after the mute tracks of Lubenov’s shoes and wailed to him again. “Nikolai!”

I listened for the only living sound possible, but heard the empty hiss of the wind; the soft clatter of the ice. I struggled back through the ice-blown sand, clambered up in the cab, put the creeper into drive, and started after him.

The sun had freed itself from the horizon by the time I saw the Soviet. Ahead of me in the glaring white was one tiny spot of red, as if something had pricked the ground and brought out a bead of blood.

As I drove closer I could see the lowered helmet bob with the rhythm of his walk. Lubenov was making good time towards nothingness.

When I drove abreast of him, I opened the door of the cab and shouted his name. He didn’t look up.

I put the creeper into neutral and scrambled down the side. “Nikolai!”

I knew he could hear me, but he didn’t stop; he didn’t answer. He kept going as if over the very next rise he would see his grandfather’s cabin, the fire banked in the hearth. “Goddamn it! Nikolai!” I reached for his arm, but my thick glove slipped off his sleeve.

It was clumsy in my suit, but I sort of tackled him, coming down with my spread arms on his shoulders. He dropped hard to his knees, one hand out to stay his fall. We teetered there for a moment, two beasts of differing species in a brutal coupling: A red creature and a blue. I bent far enough towards him so that our helmets clicked. “Don’t you leave me alone out here, you bastard.”

He turned his head a bit. Frost had grown skeletal, grasping fingers up the outside of his helmet. The inside was fogged. With an angry movement, he shoved me off him. “Our resistance. It will never work,” he said.

“Jesus, Nikolai. Lenin would be disappointed.”

The opaque faceplate of his helmet snapped towards me. On the glass I could see the reflection of Mars’ weak sun. It made a eerie Cyclops of him. “You make fun of me.” Even through the filter of his speaker and my receiver, I could tell his voice was tight.

“No, man. I’m not making fun of you. But think about it for a minute. The Martian revolution is upon us. What would Lenin say?”

He grabbed me by the arms and shook me. My teeth clicked together and I bit my tongue hard. “If Lenin could speak, he would call me traitor!”

He let me go suddenly. I was dizzy. Maybe Chee was right, I thought, and the only totem who got to Mars was the Coyote. If he had, if he were the god here, then it would make sense that we’d think we could walk out of Mars’ desert and somehow find it home. In the blue mountains beyond I thought I caught a glimpse of a swiftly moving shadow.

“What do they do with the diamonds?” Lubenov asked quietly.

I looked away from the shadow and towards him. The Soviet was featureless: A red rag doll with a black bowl for a head. The playful Martian wind chortled in my helmet.

His voice rose a notch. “Answer me! What do they do with the diamonds?”

“Precision drill bits.”

“What else?”

“Screw it, Nikolai. I’m no metallurgical engineer. I don’t understand all the new technology.”

“What do they do with the rest? Why do they continue the expense of keeping us up here during a world-wide recession?”

“I don’t know.”

His padded glove hit me hard on my padded shoulder with enough force to drive me backwards. I fell with a crunch in the ice.

“Think! You may be crazy and irresponsible, but you can think!” Then he answered the question for me. “They hoard them! Just like OPEC used to do with oil. Just as De Beers used to do with their own diamonds. Our two nations hoard the diamonds to drive the price upwards. And then they dole them out in little bits and pieces to other countries. That is where they get their power. So, if the Soviet Union gets to us first, that will mean the end of the American empire; and if the Americans reach us instead, they will drive the Soviet Union to its knees.”

That was the most ironic trick of the Coyote, I decided, that he would give his idea to the very one of us to whom the consequences still mattered.

“Let me go and I will walk home. The revolution is over. I don’t know how I could have ever believed they would let us get away with it. The cartel will work it out between themselves and let us starve.”

“There,” I said, looking out towards the denuded mountains that burst up like knives from the white ice.

Lubenov turned to where I was pointing. “What?” he asked.

The shadow was closer, nearly upon us.

“There,” I said and started to laugh.

I couldn’t tell if Lubenov saw it, too. He may not have gotten to the point of hallucinations yet. But he jerked, it seemed in recognition. And he stared out into the mountains for a long, long time.

Finally he shivered hard as if something with a cold breath had whispered a secret into his ear. I started to get up, but Lubenov whirled and pushed me down again. He leaned over and the dark globe of his helmet was above me; his fingers were pressed to either side of my faceplate release.

“Dawson,” he said. There was a little manic giggle in his voice.

I started to struggle. Any moment I figured I’d feel the pressure of his thumbs at the edge of the polarized acrylic. There would be an anticlimactic pop. A hiss.

“Listen. Dawson.”

He held me tighter and brought his faceplate right down to mine, so close that there was a light tap as the two helmets met. Behind the dark screen I could finally see his expression. There was a glint in his eyes, a grin on his lips.

“Let’s call Japan,” he said.

Author’s Note: This is one of those “what if” stories which grew out of reports of abductees who swore they had been cured of illnesses. I was also exploring the terror of coming face-to-face with the impossible, whether the contact be beneficial or malevolent. This was also part of what I dealt with in the novel Cradle of Splendor: i.e. the nature of good and evil, and how close they sometimes are.

No, it is not meant to be sacrilegious, but if you’ve never considered the panic inherent in a brush with the divine, perhaps you should.

The people on the north side of the lake had given him good information, but on the south side, closest to where the sightings had occurred, the families were so reticent as to be rude. By the time he’d reached the fifth house, where a woman was scrubbing her porch, his feet were tired and his temper worn. As he started up the drive, a liver hound rounded the side of the house. Harry stopped dead and stared suspiciously at it. “Shit,” he said under his breath, holding his camera and tape recorder a little closer to his chest in case he had-to run.

But it was the dog that fled, backing away with a hesitant growl at first and then taking to its heels with a yelp as if Harry had really flung the rock he’d considered throwing.

Harry took a long breath and let it out before he continued his trudge up the hill. At the bottom of the porch steps he stopped and pushed his glasses back up on the bridge of his nose with an irritated gesture. It was a hot day and the skin of his face was oily, his armpits damp.

“I’m Harold Sterns with Mutual UFO Network,” he said, trying to conjure some warmth into his voice, “and I’ve been told that some of your neighbors have seen strange lights.”

The woman didn’t look up from her cleaning. She was on her hands and knees, a position which looked oddly natural for her; and her face was stamped with the seal of the mountains, an old-before-its-time sort of look.

Doggedly, Harry continued. “Your neighbors on the other side of the lake say that nearly every night for the past six months they’ve seen a flash just after dark that lights up half the sky. They’ve also sighted what they call ‘little dancing balls’ over here near where you live. You ever see anything like that?”

The metal bucket made a teeth-gritting sound across the concrete as she pulled it closer. With dull concentration, she plunged the bristle brush in the bucket to rinse away its coating of pink scum and began scrubbing the floor again. The air was prickly with the stench of ammonia.

“He comes ever night,” she said without looking up from her work, “and stands just where you’re standing.”

Harry felt an icicle of fear dislodge from the top of his spine and slide its way downwards. The woman’s brush made a shus-sha-shus-sha rhythm against the raw cement. “He?” Harry asked.

“Stands just where you’s standing now. Then when we walk out, he comes up on the porch. Never comes in the house. At least he never comes in the house.” She paused in her scrubbing and sat up on her knees. Wisps of gray hair had come undone from her bun and they hung around her face like spider webbing.

Harry licked his lips. Surreptitiously he flicked on the tape recorder and noticed his hand was shaking with excitement. “Who comes to your house?”

She gave him a flat, country look and went back to her scrubbing. “Him. The man.”

“What does he look like?” Harry asked. He mounted the porch slowly, so as not to alarm her.

“Tall as you. Plaid shirt. Jeans.”

Harry’s face worked itself into a puzzled frown. “Is he human?”

The brush paused. The pause was so brief, so sudden, that it seemed that time itself had stopped. Then she picked up her scrubbing rhythm again. “Don’t know.”

“What does he say?”

“Nothing.”

“He just stands on the porch?”

“Uh huh.”

“And he never says anything to you?”

“Wish he would,” she hissed angrily. “Wish the bastard would say something.”

“Uh huh. And then you come out on the porch to meet him.”

“Don’t have no choice.”

The brush made a hollow thunk as it was tossed into the bucket. Taking up the handle, she walked into the house.

After a brief hesitation Harry followed her. The parlor was faded, the hooked rug worn. The floors smelled of oil, but there was another smell under that: the lye soap scent of clean poverty.

The linoleum in the kitchen had once been green. He could see glimpses of color in the corners. The traffic areas, though, had been bleached to an off-white. “What do you mean you don’t have any choice?”

She poured the foamy pink water down the drain and filled up the bucket with clear from a tarnished tap. “He don’t give us no choice is what I mean. Sometimes he comes at dinner and we get up from the table and walk outside.” She had to raise her voice to be heard over the thrumming of the water.

“Like you’re drawn or something?”

“Just like we don’t have no damned choice about it. Just like we don’t have no say in it at all.”

“Tell me something, Mrs. . . .”

“Foote.”

“Mrs. Foote. Do you remember anything after you get to the porch?” His voice was staccato with anxious energy. Harry had utterly forgotten how tired his feet were, how his back ached from his walk. “Do you find that after he’s gone you’ve lost time? Like maybe you’ve been watching one program on TV and after he’s gone another totally different show is on? Maybe it might seem like he was only there a few minutes, but you find out later a couple of hours have gone by.”

She turned off the tap and looked at him. Her eyes were a dirty brown and her eyelashes were gray as her hair. He guessed her age in an indiscriminate area between a hard forty and a gently-worn sixty. “I remember,” she told him.

“Remember what?”

“I remember what happens when we gets to the porch.”

She pushed past him and walked outside where she splashed the clear water over the cement. Through the screen door he watched as she took up a broom that had been matted by time and use into a permanent comma. She began to sweep the suds away. In the middle of the porch was a stubborn, dark sienna stain.

“He cuts my heart out,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“He cuts out my damned heart.”

The ancient broom moved methodically over the porch. Her arms were thick and strong; and when she swept the water she swept it out in a high arc across the yard. The motion of the broom was angry, as if she were imagining murdering someone.

The dog had come back and was whining under the stairs. Harry pushed at the screen door. It opened with a pained squeal. Careful of where she had swept, he stepped outside with her.

He considered turning off his tape recorder.

“What are you talking about?”

“You ever been raped?” she asked suddenly.

Harry cast around for an appropriate answer, but found none. He shrugged and shook his head.

“That’s what it’s like. Being raped.” There was an uncatalogable expression on her face.

Suddenly he understood the look. He hadn’t recognized it at first because he wasn’t expecting it. Mrs. Foote was watching him like a lost young kid might look for help from a policeman. Quickly he dropped his eyes. “I’d like to go over your statement again,” he said.

Mrs. Foote dismissed him with a disappointed, cynical sniff. “You think you’re so smart. How many times I gotta tell you?”

“You want me to believe that a man comes to the door, you come out, and he literally cuts out your heart while you’re standing there, and you let him?” Harry couldn’t help the tone that had crept into his voice. “Come on, Mrs. Foote. Really. If he cuts out your heart why aren’t you dead?”

“Don’t know,” she said wistfully and without the abrasiveness he’d been prepared for. “Jimmy Lee killed hisself. Don’t know why I don’t take the shotgun to myself, except for the boy.” She jerked her head to the right. Harry looked over to see a gangly teenager emerging from the barn. “Don’t seem fair to the boy.”

“Jimmy Lee?”

“Husband,” she said. There were no more suds on the porch but she set to sweeping again, anyway.

“Mrs. Foote . . .” he sighed. Turning towards her, he saw she had halted in her sweeping to open her blouse. Embarrassment nearly made him leap down the step to the ground. Talk about rape, he thought to himself. She must be kidding.

The neat, pink line stopped him in mid-flight. It ran from just below her collar and disappeared someplace past the still-fastened fourth button. “He takes his finger,” she said, “just so.”

She stepped up to him and ran her own finger down the front of his shirt, etching a trail of cold through Harry’s sternum.

“And I open right up, dress, bones, and all. Then he takes out my heart and holds it in his hand like he’s giving me some sort of gift. He looks at me while he’s doing it, looks right into my eyes. And l can see my heart move up and down like a mouse twitching in his palm.”

She was standing very close to him, closer than he would want anyone he didn’t know well to stand.

“I hate him,” she said. “He cured my angina, but I hate him. It’s like he comes back ’cause he wants me to know what he done for me. I don’t give a shit. Wish I was back the way I was, even with the breathing hard to walk across the room, even with the waking up in the night with the pain in my chest. He hurts me,” she told him. “He hurts me so bad. Seem like if it was a miracle, it wouldn’t hurt so much, don’t you think? Seem like if it was a real miracle he wouldn’t have to come back all the time.”

She stepped away. He looked down. The sienna stain was right between his feet.

A few yards away from the porch steps the boy stopped and made a hooting sound like a night bird. Harry flinched and glanced the boy’s way. The boy’s blond hair was plastered over his forehead with sweat. His eyes were the same dull, muddy brown as his mother’s. His expression was frightened.

“It’s all right,” Mrs. Foote told her son. “He ain’t here to hurt nothing. Just asking questions is all.”

The boy made a “whuh-whuh” noise that sounded like it might have been a question, but the woman ignored him. The dog crept out from the shade of the steps to stand with the boy.

“Donnie was deaf,” Mrs. Foote said as she turned to Harry, “’til the man cured him. He hears now, he understands what I’m saying, but he still won’t talk.” She held out her hand to her son. “You want to come up and show him what that man done to your ears? You want to come up on the porch now, Donnie?”

The boy backed away three paces and then swiveled and sprinted back to the barn, the dog at his heels.

Mrs. Foote’s blouse still gaped open. Harry’s gaze was drawn to that line. It ran between the crepy mounds of her breasts, too straight, too neat, to be an incision.

She took the broom, placed it against the side of the house and then walked down to the yard, Harry tagging after. In the back was a clothesline with its burden of mended cotton. On the fronts of all the dresses were faded blotches of brownish red. There were dark auburn stains on the shoulders of the wash-stiff shirts.

“He holds onto my heart and looks into my eyes and I keep thinking that one night he’ll squeeze. Donnie screams when he cuts into his ears. I don’t when he cuts me, ’cause I don’t want to upset the boy any more than need be. No need to make it any worse than it is.”

“Who do you think the man is? I mean do you see him well enough? Do you remember him clearly?”

Her voice changed to a harsh, spitting whisper. “I’m afraid . . . sometimes I think . . . what if it’s Jesus? I mean, he don’t look much like those pictures they got in Sunday School, but what if it’s Jesus all the same? Who else can heal like that?”

“The other people . . .” Harry said before his voice died. He had to clear his throat to ask the rest. “Your neighbors. Have they had experiences like this?”

She tossed a stiff, torn towel into her clothing basket and straightened to look at him. “Janie Mitchell killed herself three months ago. With her it was just the dyspepsia. The man took out her stomach just the same. Dutton Friendly put a gun in his mouth just last week. He used to have the arthritis in his back. I don’t know. Some people can take it more than others, but you get tired of it, hear? You get real tired.”

Mrs. Foote looked tired, tired in a way Harry knew he could never understand. Mrs. Foote was worn old by her very survival; the woodstove cooking; the farming; the burden of the nightly miracles.

“And your husband?”

“It was his eyes,” Mrs. Foote told him in a strained voice, her face knotted up into an expression of pitying repulsion. “Oh, sweet Jesus,” she said in a whimper, “Jimmy Lee just couldn’t stand what that man did to his eyes.”

Harry swallowed hard and pushed his glasses back in place. To Mrs. Foote’s back the sun was crouching down fast behind a stand of trees.

After a moment she got her face back in control. She tried to smile, but shouldn’t have. “Stay on a bit. I’m about to set out dinner.”

The air was cooling down, but it was suddenly hard for Harry to breathe. “Maybe I’d better go.”

“Sit a spell,” she said. “Please. I’ll fix you some tea and hominy cake and greens.”

“I think . . .” He took a step backwards.

“It’s hard being alone with Jimmy Lee gone. I don’t mean . . .” she seemed embarrassed for a moment. A seemingly impossible blush spread across her sun-wrinkled cheeks. “I don’t mean that, exactly. But you’re different. From the city. Maybe he wouldn’t come tonight if you was here. It’s scary all alone.”

He backed away another step. “I’m pretty tired and everything.”

“If you don’t stay, you’ll tell somebody? The government’ll come out and tell the man to go away?”

“Yes. I could send somebody out,” he agreed, knowing he’d never have the courage to talk about Mrs. Foote’s visitor. Being a UFO researcher had held him up to all the close-minded ridicule he could stand. He had a sudden mental image of an army of Catholic priests, maybe a Bishop or two, standing around a plaid-shirted, jeaned Jesus, telling him to put the heart back in Mrs. Foote’s chest. He tried to end the image by Jesus disappearing, but all his mind would picture was the sullen, angry look on the large-eyed face and the gout of blood as he squeezed his hand into a fist.

She shot him a knowing glance as if she had seen inside him to the dark nest where his cowardice lay. “Mind that you do,” she said curtly. Then she gave up on her brief attempt at courage and started to cry silently. “It don’t matter any more if he tells us why he’s doing it. I’m way past that, now. Just want him to stop. Please. You got learning and all. Just make him stop.”

Harry turned his back on her and started down the hill fast. The dog had come out of the barn and when it saw him it turned and ran again. Yard dogs don’t run, Harry thought. Holy Mother of God. I’ve never seen a yard dog run.

He hit the dirt road at a brisk trot, his camera bouncing against his chest. Down by the lake night pooled among the trees. Bullfrogs thumped in the reeds.

After a few yards Harry slowed reluctantly to a fast, purposeful walk. His lungs hurt; the backs of his legs were on fire. For the first time in five years he wanted a cigarette badly. Ahead of him he could see lights: the squares of the windows yellow. His flight became a limping, sore walk. Remembering his tape recorder, he glanced down to turn it off.

A strobe light went off in his face.

Flinching, he looked up. The light came again, turning a twenty-degree arc of the sky into noon. Above his head small orange spheres were dancing a waltz in the purpling, star-lit sky.

“Damn!” he said. Raising his camera quickly, he started snapping pictures. Behind him a big dog howled a single, bass note of terror.

He saw the plaid-shirted blur through the lens first and slowly lowered his camera. The man was standing in the middle of the now-bright road, his arms down at his sides, a cryptic, gentle smile en his face.

“Please,” Harry whispered.

The man walked towards him. Without wanting to, without having willed his legs to move, Harry found himself stepping forward to greet him. When they were inches apart, the distance of a lover to his beloved, the man put his hands up and tenderly slipped off Harry’s glasses. Staring directly into Harry’s eyes, he folded the glasses and put them into Harry’s shirt pocket.

“No. Please.” Harry was crying now, his cheeks and mouth twisted. He tried to move, but, like all the nightmares of his childhood, he couldn’t.

Harry couldn’t move his head, but his mouth was still under his control. There was no one around to see, and no one who needed him to act brave, so like Donnie, he started to scream.

The man seemed oblivious. There was a piercingly sweet smile on his face, one that was sad but at the same time intensely, hurtfully loving. He put his fingers up, up, up towards Harry’s eyes as if all in the world he wanted was to wipe the tears away.

Author’s Note: I loved this story, and it was the first that Gardner Dozois bought for Isaac Asimov’s Magazine of Science Fiction. The first time I met Gardner, he stopped me while I was walking past his table at WorldCon Orlando to tell me that he had anthologized “For No Reason” in his new Robots anthology. I was happily surprised both by the inclusion in the anthology and by the fact that he recognized me. It took me a while to realize that this was most probably due to my name tag.

I don’t know why some other writer didn’t write this story first. At that time I took both Scientific American and Discover, and in one issue of Discover was an article about nanotechnology and one about the new social structures of fire ants. Whoa! Short story city! I hurriedly wrote it and sent it off, meantime scanning all the mags wondering when my nanoant story was going to be scooped. It never was.

A few yards into the tunnel, there was a dead Pharaoh. It lay on its side, both antennae ripped away, the round, pebbly eyes tweezered out. From the scent, the body had been killed elsewhere and dragged to this place. It was a billboard of sorts. Without tasting the chemical signs that had been left, Morgan could read the typical invicta warning; what would have been a crude warning for man, but was a terrifying sophisticated warning for ants.

If the invictas caught a spy, they cut out his tongue and gouged out his eyes.

Don’t fuck with us, the warning said.

Morgan took a narrow side tunnel that led to an abandoned food chamber. The room stank of battle.

Most of the brown pharaohs had been carried away to be eaten. The invictas weren’t choosy about meals, and they needed the chitin, anyway.

But in the sand of the tunnel the Pharaohs had left their dying last words, not as profound as some of the messages often left by their attackers, but still poignant. The first to enter the chamber had only the time for a chemical scream. The rest, outnumbered, bewildered by their defeat, had stroked the soil with their slow agony.

Morgan was glad to see a few bright red bodies littering the chamber floor. The Pharaohs had lost, of course, but they had taken some of the invaders with them.

In their sense of justice, the invictas were barbarians; but in their battles, they were as perfectly organized as the old Roman army. This nest of Pharaohs, like all the rest the invictas had invaded, had never had a chance. At the end, the Pharaohs had known it. Resignation had been left scrawled in the sand of the chamber.

There were three exits from the room. Morgan dug his sensors into the dirt at the mouth of each. The taste didn’t tell him much. The victorious army had divided and taken all three routes home.

They knew he was coming.

He chose the middle exit and stepped forward cautiously. A few yards into it, the tunnel began to narrow until the dirt brushed his legs to either side. He negotiated a difficult ninety degree turn and suddenly his headlights lit up a wall to his front. He groped forward and touched his sensors to the fresh earth of the cave-in.

His name was written there.

Backpedal. His legs butted against the tight walls. Sand grains clicked as they fell against his metal hide.

He knew what would come next.

Frantically, he dug a little chamber for himself, large enough for him to turn around. The lights set above his optical scanners dipped and rose as he shifted, making the shadows dance. He twisted, bent in half, and suddenly he was stuck.

Looking over his shoulder, he found himself staring into the expressionless eyes of invictas.

There were three of them; two tagged with blue stripes; one tagged yellow. The Yellow one moved. His forelegs scraped at the ceiling. At last, too late, Morgan noticed the dirt walls of the tunnel were new. They had never really been tightly packed.

A blue-striped ant rose to help the first. The two were prying at a sand grain the size of a boulder that was set into the ceiling.

Morgan was fighting to flip himself over and free his rear legs, fighting so hard he feared he was about to cause his own avalanche.

The boulder dropped a little. The invictas backed up quickly and stood waiting. But Murphy’s Law caught up with them. The boulder, in dropping, had crushed two smaller grains together, and the grains had form a makeshift latch. The latch was stuck on CLOSED.

Morgan’s foreleg was wedged between the tunnel wall and his shoulder. He shifted his weight furiously back and forth.

An invicta, number three, stepped forward and reached up, up for the precariously balanced lever. The delicate red foreleg touched the rock.

Morgan reared. His body popped free.

The ant tugged. There was a grinding sound. A ghostly puff of dust dropped onto the invicta’s glossy back.

“NO!” Morgan screamed.

With a crack, the boulder fell. After a brief hesitation, the tunnel went with it.

* * *

Novotny was staring into Morgan’s face, the remote helmet in his hand. “So. You lost another one.”

Still streaming tears, Morgan bent over. He gulped air and blinked at the light. Once, just for fun, Novotny had left him buried for over a hour.

“How many this month?” Shirley asked in her deep alto voice.

On the other side of the room, the techs were still laughing. Novotny was laughing, too. “Should have seen your face.” Morgan took another deep breath. The room smelled of stale cigarette smoke and plastics. He coughed, raised his eyes, and stared for a moment at Shirley. The lab coat nearly swallowed her. He noticed how curious small she was: small for a worker; much too tiny for a female.

“I can’t believe they buried you again,” Shirley said.

Novotny chuckled, “The invictas tell me, ‘We’ll bury you.’ Just like another old Red, Nikita K., used to say.”

Morgan’s hands trembled as he peeled the leads from his fingers. It took two tries before he made it up out of the chair.

Shirley followed him out of the room. “I noticed in the monitor that Blue Nest warriors have integrated fully with Yellow. That’s why they’re on this territorial kick with the Pharaohs. The nest needs more space. We’ll knock off for today. I’ll send for another unit and we’ll go in tomorrow morning to see if they’re food-gathering with Yellow, too. Then we’ll get the queens.”

He stumbled into the locker room. Shirley, who was not squeamish about those things, followed. She watched as he peeled off his wet shirt.

“Scares the shit out of you, doesn’t it?” she asked.

Morgan sniffed cautiously at the shirt, grimaced and tossed it to a pile of dirty towels at the side of the bench. He unzipped his fly, ran out of energy all of a sudden, and had to sit down quickly. He put his head in his hands.

“You still think they sucker you in?”

“Yes,” he whispered.

They knew his name. It had been written on the end of the tunnel. This one’s for you, they’d said.

“Well, burying you is their only way of fighting back. Nobody ever said ants were completely stupid.”

The invictas knew his name, but not his human one. They’d made one up for him, and now the taste of that new name was more familiar than the sound of his old.

Some things, of course, were beyond the invictas’ understanding. They knew of war, certainly. They knew about killing. It was motiveless murder they didn’t understand.

Morgan neither ate nor did he invade. When the workers were tagged and the nest was empty of queens and eggs he walked away, leaving stunned turmoil behind him.

Had they known the term they would have called him Serial Murderer. As it was, they took the essence of what he was doing and called him by the scent-name For No Reason.

His very name was the question they longed to ask him: Why?

An invicta could have understood the human robber killing for money. They certainly would have understood the plea of self-defense. But what Morgan was doing was a type of murder not even humans understand.

For absolutely no reason.

He figured the invictas thought he was crazy. He knew Shirley thought he was.

Morgan was so tired that it was an effort for his mouth and tongue to form the words: “They know when I’m coming.”

“Yeah. No surprise. That’s what this research is all about, isn’t it? Finding out how they set up communications. When the queens are dead, the colony is dead, right? And the survivors have to move it or loose it. Question is, how do they integrate and why do the other nests let the alien workers in? Myself, I think it’s for entertainment value. Invictas are like Boy Scouts around a campfire. They get out their marshmallows and listen to horror stories the new guys tell about you.”

He stood up, swayed for a moment, and then dropped his pants. With his undershorts still on, he walked into a shower. He turned on the water, slipped off his jockey shorts and tossed them over the opaque glass door.

“Hey! Watch it!” Shirley shouted.

With the hot water beating into his face, Morgan leaned against the tile wall, closed his eyes and laughed silently. In a moment the edges of his lips pulled down and, still without sound, he was sobbing.

There was a soft thud. Shirley had thrown his shorts against the shower door. “Jesus Christ,” she whispered in disgust.

He wiped his face. “You just going to stand there? You coming in here with me, or what?”

There was a muttered reply.

“If you don’t want my bod, then what is it you want?”

“It is your bod, Morgan . It always was your bod. You’re going in tomorrow, right?”

He took a bottle of shampoo from a side ledge and squeezed some onto his hand. It was a woman’s shampoo that was pink and smelled like a discount whorehouse. After a hesitation, he wiped it over his head.

“You’re the best robot manipulator we’ve got. And you understand the damned fire ants.”

Morgan had become sensitive to smells. The musk scent of the shampoo nearly made him sick. He quickly worked it into a lather and rinsed.

Scents. That’s how the ants spoke, in scents. Morgan could read them, but in the land of the ants he was mute. If he could tell the invictas anything, it would be to get out of the cities while they could. He’d tell them to go back to the country while they still had a chance, even though the Solenopsis invicta-specific poison was there. When Shirley and the others figured out how the nests worked, the invicta would have no chance.

Invictas were taking over the household nesting spots of the Pharaohs, the Argentines, the carpenters. They had left the pastures and were fucking with human habitats, and the humans were finally pissed. That’s why Shirley was studying them so intently; and that’s why Morgan was murdering them.

He did have a reason. However convoluted, murderers always do. He just couldn’t explain.

“I always come back, don’t I?” he asked.

“Yeah. I just keep thinking that one day you won’t.”

“Maybe I won’t. But it won’t be tomorrow.”

In a minute, he heard the locker room door creak shut.

* * *

The wide treeless expanses of the suburbs bothered him, but the day made up for it. The clouds were low, the dusk light deceptive as if it were about to storm. In the distance, Dallas rose like a shrouded specter; and the proscribed path of Central Expressway was a river of small, bright bodies: Red ones heading north; white ones heading south.

He took the Greenville exit and entered the close-packed apartments by The Village. The joggers had gone in, but the dogwalkers were out en masse. He walked quickly from his car to his darkened living room and peered into the light beyond tile breakfast bar, watching Donna move, an ant behind glass.

She left dinner simmering and came out into the living room with him. “Home early? You want a drink?”

“Yes.” Then he thought about it. “No.”

She walked back in the kitchen and poured herself a glass of wine. He followed.

At the stove she flinched away from him. “You stand too close, you know that? It’s spooky.”

He stepped a pace back and looked at her.

“Don’t watch me. You’re always watching me lately.”

“Sorry,” he said, and looked away, riveting his eyes to the picture on an empty tomato can.

Without warning, she was crying.

He was afraid to come too close; afraid to stare at her. “What is it?” he asked from a few feet away. The tomato can was green, The tomatoes were bright red. There was white and black writing across the front of the tomato picture.

“You’re not a human any more, Stevie. You don’t act like a human, you don’t think like a human.”

He wondered if it would be all right for him to look at her now. He tried it. She wasn’t looking his way, anyway.

“Don’t you know I love you?” he asked. He would die for her. He would kill for her. And he didn’t understand why. All he knew was that Donna and the apartment were wrapped up into the same package in his mind. It upset him when he went out.

She was still crying, so he stepped forward, stood at her shoulder and ran a hand down her arm. Donna shivered and jerked away. He was confused because he thought he remembered that was the way he should act. “You don’t want me to touch you?”

“Not like that.”

He was frightened, confused. “Like what?”

Donna rubbed her arm hard where his hand had been. “I don’t know. It’s a touch like feathers. I don’t like it.”

Because he couldn’t understand what she wanted, Morgan left the kitchen. He sat contentedly in the living room and watched her move back and forth from the sink to the stove in her prescribed, safe place.

* * *

The drive back to Plano in the morning was disturbing. Above him the sun sat unblinking in the blue gaze of the autumn sky. The only gravity that kept Morgan from flying off the earth, the only power that kept him warm, was the traffic.

Inside the research station, Morgan started to calm. By the time he had eased himself into the chair and slipped the controls of the mini-robot onto his hands, his hands had stopped shaking. Shirley bent down with the helmet. At the last moment, he brought his palms up and pushed it away. The leads on his fingers clicked against the heavy plastic of the headgear.

“What do I look like?” he asked her.

Her eyebrows raised and lowered, doing a little formal dance of confusion. “Huh?”

“When I’m in command of the unit. What do I look like? I’ve never seen anyone do it. Do I look funny?”

She shrugged and put the helmet into his lap. It was heavy and no one, particularly the petite Shirley, could hold it for very long. “You twitch a little when you walk. You don’t really take the steps. You know that. But your muscles and your arms act as if they do.” She started to lift the helmet again.

He stopped her. “And when I kill?”

All animation left her face. “The mandibles are the thumb and forefinger of your right hand.”

“I know.”

“Then why do you ask?”

“I want to know how it looks to you.”

“They move. Together and apart. It’s not much to see, really.”

He licked his lips nervously. “Do I smile when I do it?”

“No,” she said softly. “No.” Then she slipped the helmet over his head.

* * *

The maimed body of the pharaoh was still at the start of the tunnel. Morgan touched it as he went by. It didn’t tell any new stories.

At the chamber, the death messages were already getting old and the invicta bodies had been carried away. He took the right-hand corridor this time. The tunnel was old, well-used. He could taste the remains of pharaohs, the original builders, and the spicy tang of the new tenants.

The Pharaohs had left simple food markers, directional signal; the invictas had left tart splashes of paranoia.

After a few yards, the tunnel made a slow S curve downwards. In the center of the S, he caught the shadow of antennae coming his way. The invicta was on him before it knew he was there. It was a Yellow; and the job he had done of marking it, Morgan noticed, was sloppy. The yellow paint lay in an uneven zigzag up its forehead, making the cranium appear as if it were an egg about to birth the sun.

The ant backed away hurriedly, trying to turn. Morgan caught it just at the wasp waist and squeezed, cutting the scout in half. In the close confines of the tunnel, it writhed, stroking agony and hatred on the walls, on Morgan’s face.

Bending forward over the broken body, Morgan sank his steel mandibles on either side of the paint and into its brain. The ant died in inert silence, the pebbled eyes wide, not with astonishment, but with an absolute lack of expression. The slender red legs twitched and then curled in the silent, insectile body language of death.

Morgan had to crawl over the corpse to go on.

A few more feet downwards, the tunnel branched. He caught the first whiff of excitement: the smell of busy ants carrying food to the heart of the nest. The trail was a few days old.

He hurried down the left-hand corridor and, in only a few feet, came to another fork. The taste on the floor was newer. Emerging from that tunnel, he surprised an entire line of food gatherers marching back from the surface.

The first invicta by the gap turned to touch him. Morgan caught the yellow-streaked antennae in his jaws and snapped. The ant backed away in astonished pain, dropping its load of food.

Morgan shouldered his way out into the new tunnel. The ants, both blues and yellows, had skittered away a few inches to stand indecisively bottlenecked. The ones traveling away from Morgan dropped their food, doubled back and attacked.

A pair of serrated jaws clicked and slid off Morgan’s metal shoulder. Legs thin as reeds fought for purchase on his slick back. He heard a tap-tap-tap on his underside as an invicta battered its stinger futilely against his belly.

He cut through them slowly, having to stop every inch and wipe his jaws clean, having to struggle for every bit of tunnel. They tried to shove him back, but he weighed more. Lower into the corridor he fought, three invictas clinging to his shoulders, a puree of dying ants behind him.

When he came to the next tunnel mouth, he crawled inside and dropped to his belly, exhausted. The invictas prowled around him for a while, touching, tasting. Finally, they went away.

Morgan put a feeler up to his head. They’d branded him with scent.

Murderer.

Since he wasn’t moving, he wondered if Shirley would take off his helmet. She didn’t. He lay on the cool floor of the tunnel and nearly went to sleep. A long while later, still exhausted, he rose and followed the alarmed trail of the workers downward.

A few yards down, the now-empty tunnel branched. Wearily, he swept his light over the dark entrance. Sight told him nothing. Taste did. The line of workers had split, too.

He took the entrance on his left. It turned and dipped, righted itself, and then dipped precipitously again. At the bottom of the long hill, his headlights caught an oily glint.

Suspicious, he halted. Bang. Something hit him in the back and suddenly he was tumbling, the attacking invicta tumbling with him. He dug his legs into the side of the corridor, but momentum had hold. He rolled end-over-end until he hit the pool of honey at the bottom, the invicta under him.

The servo motors whined as he fought to free his legs from the ooze. There was a bright flash and a sizzle as the right foreleg burned out. He nearly collapsed on top of the ant.

That’s when he noticed the invicta wasn’t moving much. It didn’t seem at all surprised. It wouldn’t be, of course. As a Blue, it knew him. And it knew what he wanted. It had never hoped for escape.

Morgan struggled for a moment; then gave up in exhaustion. To his front, the invicta’s hive brothers were sealing them both in the tunnel. Morgan could feel the feathery touch of the doomed invicta’s legs against his waist, his shoulder.

Morgan’s legs failed. He dropped over the fallen invicta, chest to chest, belly to belly. He put his head down slowly until his face touched that of the trapped ant. The huge eyes told him nothing. The antennae stroked gently down the side of Morgan’s cheek, not saying much, either, really.

The ant didn’t talk of hatred. He didn’t even talk of fear. It seemed that the ant was speaking more to himself than he was to Morgan. He talked of the hive, and of queens tucked in, and of the brittle fragility of pupae.

Morgan didn’t move. Cradled in Morgan’s metal arms, the ant stroked him, and told of food sharing and the hatching of eggs in the dark.

* * *

Abrupt light made him blink. “You okay?” Novotny asked.

Morgan, mouth open, eyes slitted, didn’t answer. He wondered where the gentle, dying ant was.

“Hey! Hey! Morgan! Rise and shine!” Novotny shoved his face into Morgan’s.

Morgan raised his hand and, tenderly cupped Novotny’s warm cheek.

The tech jerked away. “Shit,” he said, wiping the side of his face and glancing around nervously to see if anyone was laughing.

Nobody was.

“Get up,” Shirley said. “Let’s go take a walk down the hall.”

Morgan’s legs were unsteady. Shirley helped him.

“What the fuck’s happening to you?” Shirley asked, when they had closed the door behind them.

At the entrance to the locker room, Morgan paused and then went in. “Take a shower,” he mumbled.

Shirley followed him. “You still think they talk to you, don’t you?”

He tried to unbutton his shirt. His fingers wouldn’t work.

“They’re just ants, Steve.”

For some reason, he was highly aware of her next to him. One second she hadn’t been there, the next moment she was the only real thing in the room. He grabbed her and shoved her against the steel lockers. The impact was metallic, loud. He pressed his body against hers: belly to belly, chest to chest. He rubbed his head against her cheek. Her skin was a blank page.

“Get off me!” She shoved.

He stumbled away.

With brisk hands, she wiped the touch of him off her. Morgan wondered if he had left his scent markers behind: the scent of longing, the scent of regret.

“Tomorrow,” she said, “Tomorrow you kill the Yellow queens, and then you take a vacation or something. Go skiing.” _

He shuddered as he imagined Colorado and its wide, dizzying expanse of sky. “I don’t ski.”

She backed up. “Do something.’ Go somewhere. You’re getting weird.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. Then he remembered he was probably staring, and looked quickly away.

* * *

After turning off the ten o’clock news, Donna fell asleep and left Morgan awake, his arm crooked over his forehead, his eyes open to the ceiling. The space between the slats in the mini-blinds had captured a stripe of gray light-blasted city sky and a single blue star.

After a while he pulled his pajama bottoms down, rolled her over and slid his body over hers. She made a protesting sound in the back of her throat. Her legs parted sleepily and he thrust himself partially in.

Then he lay there.

In the apartments around him, he imagined the moving of bodies. He could even hear their faint sounds: water running in a tub; footsteps on the ceiling. It made him feel safe.

Then, in the dim glow from the street lamp outside the window, he saw her eyes pop open. “What are you doing?” she whispered.

“Nothing.” He caged her slender shoulders between his elbows.

She moved her hips. “Are you going to come, or what?”

Lowering his head to hers to smell, not to kiss; be freed his right arm and caressed her cheek. His thumb and forefinger spoke of death. He couldn’t help that.

“I said, are you going to come?”

“I don’t know.”

She moved her hips again. He lost what little erection he had had. With a wet, limp plop, he fell out of her.

There was a flurry of movement under him. With hard fists and sharp nails, Donna fought her way out of bed. His chest was bruised. The scratches stung. She’d succeeded in hurting him, something the ants had never managed.

“Jesus Christ,” Donna spat.

There was the slam of the bathroom door. The sound of the water running in his own shower. A little while later, she came out and got dressed. Her hair was wet.

In the light from the bathroom, she opened a drawer and began flinging things out into a shopping bag.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

She didn’t look up from her task. “Leaving.”

Morgan reached down and pulled the sheet up to his chin.

“Listen,” she said and paused. “There’s somebody else. I’ve been seeing him for a while.”

Morgan thought of another man with Donna. Infidelity. It seemed that the word should have had some meaning. Aimlessly, he rolled it around in his mind. “Don’t leave.”

“God. I don’t believe this. You don’t ask who. You don’t even ask when.”

It didn’t matter. Lying back down on the pillow, he listened to the sharp, angry sounds of Donna’s departure. “Please,” he whispered.

There was a bang as a drawer was slammed closed. He looked down to see her bent in silent grief over the dresser. Underwear, hers and his, was scattered on the floor.

“I won’t touch you again. Not ever. I promise. Just don’t leave.”

She shook her head slowly. Her eyes were closed. “We can’t live like this.”

Oh, yes, we can, he thought. The point wasn’t touching, it wasn’t making love. The point was having her enclosed in the dark apartment walls and knowing she was there. “You can sleep with him, okay? You can sleep with anybody. Please. Just don’t leave me.”

She left anyway. When she was gone, Morgan rose and walked, disoriented, through the once safe chambers of the house.

* * *

After putting his helmet on, he went down the way he had gone before, past the dead Pharaoh, past the battle chamber. He made an excursion down the long, winding tunnel to the honey and the last inoperative unit. Before the wall the invictas had hastily constructed, the last robot lay humped on the curled, still body of the ant.

Morgan reached out :carefully and touched one of the invicta’s dead legs. He would have saved the Blue if he could have; but when Novotny had pulled the helmet off him, the full, dumb weight of the robot had pressed down, shoving the ant under the ooze. It had quickly and peacefully drowned.

He turned and looked up the long tunnel, realizing at last what an opening he’d given the invictas. His nerves on edge, he crawled his difficult way up the loose gravel of the tunnel. Only when he was at the top of the incline did he relax.

There was one other corridor. He started down it. Surprisingly close to the entrance, he found the first of the queens’ chambers.

There were hundreds of them.

The bodies of the huge females filled the far end of the room, their fecund scent making the atmosphere thick. Slowly, gracefully, as if she knew fate had arrived in the form of the smaller silvered body, the nearest queen turned her velvet eyes towards him.

He started forward, but something tugged at his arm. Looking around he saw the first worker he had seen all day.

The ant, a Yellow, dropped off him and started to sway. Morgan understood scent language. He’d never been around live ants long enough to learn the meanings of the dance.

He watched it. Backwards and forwards it went. Sideways, its antennae making patterns in the air. Behind the worker, a crowd of Blues and Yellows had gathered, all waiting.

At last the invicta stopped, its antennae weaving questions. Morgan came forward slowly. The ant froze.

Putting his metal antennae towards the translucent red ones, Morgan touched it.

My wife left me, he thought.

The invicta stroked him back, not understanding, but talking of hives, of queens, of satisfaction. Morgan knew what it was really saying, that it knew Morgan was invincible. The invicta couldn’t stop him from killing for no reason; so it was giving him a reason not to kill.

To survive, the invicta had first learned not to wage war among themselves. The queens had learned to share hives. And now they had finally learned the difficult lesson of how to live with others.

Morgan caressed the slick, blank face so carefully that the metal never made a sound against the chitinous armor.

If he could tell the ant anything, it would be that he understood the pain of dead queens, barren nests.

The ant’s antennae fluttered, making scented, soft peace.

* * *

When Morgan maneuvered the robot to the exit where the recovery tools were waiting, Novotny took the control helmet off. “You didn’t get the queens.”

“No,” he said. He stood up and wiped the tear from his eyes. The front of his shirt was wet with them.

“I saw every thing,” Shirley told him. “You didn’t kill the queens!”

Morgan raised his voice. “I’ll get them tomorrow, okay?” He hurried out of the room towards the showers, Shirley tagging at his heels. “Goddamn it. I can see it in your face. You won’t be back tomorrow.”

“I’ll be back.”

She whipped out her hand, caught him by the arm and pulled him around. Her face was close, soft and pink. “You motherfucking liar.”

He started to laugh.

* * *

Back at the apartment, he closed the shades and then walked into the twilight kitchen, running his hands along the microwave, the toaster. He didn’t understand why Donna had left; he’d worked so hard to make the chamber right. Unlike the Blues, there were no friendly Yellows to take Morgan in. He would stay in his abandoned nest until the food ran out.

On the shadowed surface of the formica, small dots milled happily around a spill of grease. Ants. He brought his face down closer to see them.

Pharaohs.

Somewhere in the dark, below the apartment foundation, were cool acidic tunnels with moist walls. There the bloated queens waited. And there, perhaps, the invictas would come with their deadly jaws, their bladders swollen with alkaloid poison.

If invicta came, they’d kill them all. They’d conquer the Pharaoh’s nest. As the invicta had recently learned, and the humans had learned centuries ago, that was the right of intelligence; the demand of civilization. A shudder started from the back of his brain and worked its way through his body.

He turned to the sink, ran water over a sponge, and took it to where the ants were gathered. Pushing each gently back, he wiped the grease spot away.

For a little while the Pharaohs lingered, confused that the food had suddenly gone.

“My wife left me,” he whispered, but the ants didn’t understand. Pharaohs had never been very smart, had never learned the tricks of sleight-of-hand, of warfare, of diplomacy, of evolution. Finally, one by one, still apparently content, they wandered down the crack between the stove and the cabinet to home.

Author’s Note: I worked for a time with one of those raw-boned, wry-humored, savvy Good Old Girls who grow best in Texas. One day we’d been talking about pets, and I told her about the egg-sucking dog I had in Brazil who was cured of the habit when I tossed a hot hard-boiled egg into the yard. Well, naturally that led to discussions of training farm animals, like how to make chickens sit a nest and how to deal with blowflies. She topped my lore with the information which became the basis of this short story. Good God. I don’t think I’d have the stomach to try this.

In the tarry blood on the chicken wire white, delicate feathers were stuck. They trembled in the wind that soughed through the pines. On the sandy floor of the coop were whole hens, looking somehow deflated in the first stages of death. Around the bodies were pieces of chickens, which looked worse.

It was near ten of a hot May morning, but the coop had trapped a shaded twilight. The air was claustrophobic; rancid with the rusted iron stench of blood and the ammonia-reek of chickens.

“So whatcha gonna do, DeWitt?” Hody Knight asked as he turned his pale moon face towards the sheriff. He stood, his prissy bow mouth slightly ajar, his doughy hands stuck into the ragged pockets of his overalls.

DeWitt looked away from him and kicked at the severed, beady-eyed head of a leghorn. The head was easier to look at than the man. Hody had been a snot-nosed kid who had grown up into a snot-nosed adult. There was always something green and moist lying on Hody’s upper lip. In the quiet of the henhouse the sheriff could hear the man’s heavy liquid breathing. “Shit, Hody, what do you want me to do? We ain’t got no proof it was them Murcheson dogs.”

Hody hawked pensively into a stained handkerchief. “Seen ’em run off that way.”

The sheriff bent and fingered the hole in the wire where something had burst, not tom, through. “You told me it was a dark night, Hody. Don’t see as how you could spot a thing.”

“Might find some chicken blood on them dogs still, if you wasn’t too afraid to run over there.”

Straightening, DeWitt felt the beginnings of a kink in his back. The humid air in the hen house had given him the queasy start of a headache. “Let’s go look outside,” he said.

Swiveling, he strode through the coop door and out into the yard. A fat laying hen, one of the few survivors, made a warm thock-thock sound in her throat and hurried away like a windup toy.

“What was your dogs doing?” The sheriff glanced up fast in time to see Hody’s consternation. The big man looked marshmallowy, as if he contained more air than meat; and his two blank blue eyes sat in a balloon face that was empty of expression. Hody was a child’s drawing of a man.

“They was barking.”

“Uh huh.” DeWitt stopped to inspect broken twigs. Something big, strong and determined had crashed its way through the brush.

“But they didn’t go out. Don’t blame ’em any. Them Murcheson dogs is pit bulls.”

“Don’t have to be dogs, Hody. Could’ve been a bobcat.”

Hody hawked and spat, perilously near DeWitt’s shined boots. The sheriff moved out of range.

“Ain’t seen a bobcat round here since ’sixty-eight. Seen a lot of them Murcheson pit bulls, though.”

“Uh huh.” Hands on his thick belt, DeWitt ambled over to his squad car. Out of the relative cool of the shade, the late morning sun made DeWitt squint and his latent headache blossom into full-grown pain. The metal of the car latch was hot to the touch.

“You gonna arrest her?” Hody asked with a wide, idiot’s grin.

“Yeah, Hody. I’m gonna arrest her: accessory to chicken murder. Vet’ll have to give her a lethal injection.”

“No need to make fun, DeWitt,” Hody said as the sheriff gunned his engine and put the squad car into reverse. “Weren’t your chickens.”

“Right,” DeWitt called back. The wind tore his reply away as he negotiated a fast three-point turn in Hody’s yard, splattering gravel.

DeWitt drove down the farm-to-market road a mile, turning in at the next mailbox. Above the clay road to the Murcheson house red oaks and pecans had interlaced their branches into an evening quiet tangle of green. The ruts in the weed choked path jarred DeWitt’s teeth together, punctuating his headache.

When he drove up he saw Miss Murcheson already standing on her porch, her hands to either side of her wide hips. She’d apparently heard the car coming.

“Sheriff,” she said simply.

DeWitt waited a few cautious minutes before unfolding himself from the front seat. Leaving the door open, he touched the brim of his hat and glanced around the yard for signs of her dogs. His right hand never strayed far from the reassuring weight of his service revolver.

“Been some trouble up to Hody Knight’s place,” he began.

“Come on up in the shade, DeWittless. No sense you and me yelling across the yard at each other.”

“Yes’m.” His suspicious eyes took in the empty yard. A rusting chair led from a pine to a naked scar in the grass that was as perfectly circular as if made by a compass. The studded leather collar was still fastened at the end, but her male dog was gone. “Dogs run off?” he asked. He stopped in the shade of the stairs’ overhang and propped one foot on a riser.

When Miss Murcheson didn’t answer, DeWitt dared a glance in her direction.

With her granite-gray hair and dry-leaf skin, she seemed like the wrong end of an Earth Mother. Her print housedress was faded into a non-color, the exact hue of bones.

“I said, them dogs run off?”

“Who wants to know?”

“I do. I want to know bad. Could be them dogs is off running in a pack. Most of the feral dogs round here is farm mutts; but if we got a pack of pit bulls—could be real dangerous. Once they has a taste of blood, cain’t never train ’em not to kill.”

Talking to Miss Murcheson was like talking to a mountain. The words sort of settled around her oblivious shoulders and soaked in for a while until she percolated up an answer. “My dogs is dead.”

“All of ’em?”

“All of ’em.”

“Uh huh. How they die?”

“I shot ’em.”

DeWitt squinted up at her She looked uncompromisingly solid, as empty of moisture as a dead tree. “Why?”

“Got tired of feeding ’em.”

He didn’t like the answer, but it made some sense. He could see Miss Murcheson killing dogs for that. He could picture her killing a person for a lot less. “Uh huh.”

Some movement out of the comer of his eye caused DeWitt to swivel. He crouched. His fingers fumbled for the snap on his holster.

“Just the boy,” Miss Murcheson said.

There was a child standing hunched in the dust of the yard. Two deep-set eyes were punched into the brown clay of his face as if they had been put there by a careless, inattentive workman. His clothes were torn and streaked. At the end of his long arms hung huge hands: a man’s hands.

DeWitt’s own hand trembled on the diamond-patterned gun butt.

“Just the boy,” Miss Murcheson said again.

There was something wrong with that boy.

She whistled and the boy lifted his head, staring at her from under the deep shadow of his brow. When she whistled again the boy came to her in a shuffling, crab-like walk. He climbed the stairs using his hands and feet both, as naturally as a monkey

DeWitt backed away and stood in the sun, staring at them. The boy wrapped his long arms around Miss Murcheson’ s thighs and returned the sheriff’s gaze. Something about the boy’s eyes made DeWitt’s stomach contract with cold, even in the East Texas noon heat.

“Your boy?” DeWitt had to swallow before he spoke.

“My boy, now.”

There was, the sheriff decided, some family resemblance, but it had more to do with expressions than the shape of the boy’s lumpy face. Together the two looked like an American Gothic gone wrong.

“You . . .” DeWitt hesitated, wondering how to phrase the next question. He wanted to phrase it right because fear had made his sweat freeze down his spine and across his palms, so chilly he expected his skin to be brittle.

He was as afraid of the two people-shaped things on the porch as he was of himself. He was afraid he’d draw his gun and shoot them dead, not because they were doing anything particularly wrong or particularly illegal; but he’d shoot them out of disgust, like he might kill a rattler.

The look on Miss Murcheson’s face went beyond an Indian’s stoicism. Her patience was more like the patience of a rock. The boy’s knotted, greasy hair fell down over his low forehead and hung in an unspeakable waterfall of black over the caves of his eyes.

“Where’d you get him?”

“From my sister’s people.”

DeWitt had heard enough lies to recognize one. “So if I was to go back to the station and enquire about a missing kid, I wouldn’t find him on the list.”

Miss Murcheson did an eerie thing: She laughed. He’d never heard her laugh before and didn’t want to hear it again.

The laugh ended as suddenly as if she had been strangled. “That chicken killing. Was probably Hody’s own dogs, like as not. Or maybe Tanner’s dogs to the other side.”

“The Tanner’ve got chihuahuas, Miz Murcheson. Don’t seem likely.”

“You tell Hody Knight for me. You tell him there’s one way to teach his dogs, if he’s got the balls to do it. Tell him to take baling wire and tie a chicken carcass round that dog’s neck. That dog’s gonna paw it off and bury it, but tell Hody just to dig that carcass up and tie it on again. Tell him to tie it real good, ’cause that carcass’s gotta stay on two weeks till that chicken’s real ripe. Dog won’t eat nor sleep. It’ll drive him crazy. But when that two weeks is up, he won’t go killing chickens no more.”

DeWitt backed up until his hip hit the fender of his squad car. He felt his way around the fender until he was at the door.

“You tell Hody Knight that for me,” she said. “See if he’s got the stomach for it.”

* * *

It was the height of August when the first of the sheep was killed. DeWitt stood next to Scharina Wallace and looked down at the carcass at his feet. The sheep’s eyes were gone, plucked out after death by either a turtle or a blackbird, and its empty blind gaze was riveted towards a far line of trees. Its mouth was open, and the overall expression on the face was that of bovine amazement.

“Be dogs,” Scharina said.

“Wouldn’t be surprised.” Not as surprised as the sheep, DeWitt thought as he glanced down. The wound to the throat had killed, but it was the soft parts, the anus, the guts, that had been eaten. The pelt had been ripped from its ribs. The flesh stretched across them was dry and hung like gruesome papier mache to the barrel-stave bones.

“A.J. be out in the pasture tonight,” Scharina told him. Her mahogany cheeks glistened with sweat. Her tight black curls wore a sprinkling of moist diamonds. “Got him a shotgun. Gonna kill me some dogs.”

“Yeah. You tell A.J. to be careful.” As DeWitt walked away he thought about the Murchesons’ pit bulls. Then he thought about that Murcheson boy. DeWitt remembered the way the child had knuckle-walked up the stairs. He remembered the size of his hands and the flat look in the sunken eyes.

“Was a real messy kill,” Scharina said as she walked beside him. Her head was down. “Messier than coyotes.”

“Yeah,” the sheriff said. He didn’t like the look of the kill.

He didn’t like the look of that Murcheson boy, either. It was less like the boy had been born deformed than it was as if he hadn’t quite made it to human.

DeWitt swiveled to look into Scharina’s dark eyes. “You tell A.J. be careful, hear? You tell A.J. don’t take no chances.”

“Say he hide in a tree.”

“Yeah;” DeWitt said doubtfully as he cast his gaze up to the sky where vultures were already circling for a landing. “Yeah. Tell him not to take no chances.”

From August to early October, the Sheriffs Department was quiet. Then, within a week, all Hell broke loose. Three of the Tylers’ heifers were torn apart and the Andersons lost five sheep. DeWitt gathered some volunteers from the town to hunt predators; and while the men were out sipping beer, cheap heroism on their minds and their .30.06s on their shoulders, Forgey Dentwilder’s wife left him. Forgey came back, found her gone, got drunk, and shot out the Main Street signal light.

At three-thirty in the morning when he would have been better off asleep, DeWitt stood in jail and listened to Forgey cry. “She left all her stuff, too. All the stuff I give her, like it wasn’t worth nothing. Shit!” Forgey shouted suddenly and slammed his hand against the unlocked bars of the cell. As quickly as his rage had come on, it disappeared. He was weeping again.

In the harsh overhead light Forgey looked bad. His eyes were swollen and puffy. His shoulder-length hair fell in greasy ribbons down his neck.

“Went off with that tractor salesman she was eying.”

“Yeah. Like as not,” DeWitt said, feeling badly that the wife had left while Forgey was out with the volunteers.

Because he felt guilty, DeWitt released Forgey the next day on his own recognizance. After that atonement, he began to worry about the dead livestock and forgot about the missing woman.

Then a week later A.J. Wallace disappeared.

By the time DeWitt made it out to Scharina’s place, her family had already started arriving. That, more than anything, was a sign they’d given up on A.J. Black families gathered when someone was dead.

The men on the porch eyed the sheriff with sullen suspicion. He ran the gauntlet of their stares into the house.

The women were in the front room with Scharina. A side table was already piled high with food. When Scharina saw DeWitt her mouth opened in an O of anguish. She bent double at the waist and wailed.

“Get me Robert,” DeWitt told a woman he didn’t recognize. “Go get me Robert so he can tell me what’s going on.”

The younger boy came out of a back room and stood in a doorway. The sheriff put a hand to Robert’s shoulder and walked him out to the squad car. At his back he could feel the sharp resentment from the men.

“A.J. was out in a tree in the east pasture,” Robert told him.

“Yeah. Any sheep dead?”

“Three.”

DeWitt sighed and stared at his boot. “Let’s go out there.”

They found the three dead sheep. They found the tree, shotgun pellets embedded in the trunk. DeWitt followed a trail of blood and broken branches about four miles to where it ended in a thicket. He told Robert to stay back and then went in himself. A.J. was there. His throat had been tom out. The soft parts of his belly had been eaten.

DeWitt walked Robert back to the house.

“Sheriff?” Robert asked in a .mall voice. DeWitt had always felt the boy was either awed of or scared by his badge.

“Yeah?”

“Does dogs climb trees?”

DeWitt looked away quickly from the narrowed, dark eyes. “Mebbe it was a wildcat. Mebbe a puma.”

“But I seen those sheep, sheriff. Weren’t a claw mark on ’em.”

The Sheriff wrapped one arm about the boy’s thin shoulders. “Shhhh,” he whispered in what might have been construed as solace; what might have been interpreted as the safekeeping of secrets. “Shhhh.”

When Robert started to cry, DeWitt hugged him tight. Back to the house, the sheriff told Scharina the news himself and called for the coroner. Then he went to his trunk and exchanged his .38 for a .45 automatic. He filled two extra clips and stuck them into his pocket. He checked the barrel of the automatic for stray grease and slid the nine-round clip in. His hands were shaking.

* * *

Miss Murcheson was waiting for him, an over-and-under shotgun cradled in her arms like a baby. When he got out of the car, he drew his .45, but left it dangling at his side.

“You want to put that shotgun away, now,” he told her.

She didn’t put it down; but she didn’t point it at him, either. She just stood there.

“You didn’t kill them dogs, did you,” DeWitt said, watching her carefully. DeWitt was so scared he knew if she moved, if she even shifted her weight, he, was going to shoot her.

She must have read something in his face, because she didn’t even blink.

“They was purebreds. You wouldn’t of killed them dogs. You would of sold ’em. If they was in any shape to be sold.”

The sun slanted down across the porch, cutting the woman into half bright and half shadow.

“What kind of creature can kill a pit bull, Miz Murcheson?”

Her eyes darted to the right.

DeWitt froze where he stood, wondering if she was trying to draw his attention away. Then he wondered if there was something even worse than Miss Murcheson standing at his side.

“Go on, now,” Miss Murcheson spat.

The wind shifted a little, bringing the greenish stench of rot into the sheriff’s nostrils. Raising the .45 hip-high, not aiming, really, but prepared, DeWitt turned his head.

The boy stood in the yard, his thick neck strung with baling wire. The lump that had been Mrs. Dentwilder nestled its swollen, blue lips into the hollow of the boy’s neck. Her platinum hair, in tangled disarray, spread down the flayed ruins of her shoulders. The corpse had been chewed apart from the waist down.

“Go on, now, honey,” Miss Murcheson cajoled. Her voice was soft with a sort of maudlin, despairing love. “You go on round back.”

Looking right at DeWitt, the boy licked his lips.

“Only way to break ’em, “ Miss Murcheson was saying. “He tore her off and buried her three times already. Another week should do him. He’ll be all right, then. Won’t do it no more.”

DeWitt’s right arm twitched, bringing the .45 up into position. Out of the corner of his eye DeWitt saw a quick metallic glint as she wrestled the heavy shotgun to her shoulder.

The sharp clap of the .45 was as sudden and bewildering as thunder from a clear sky. It was so unexpected that for a moment DeWitt was sure it was her that had done the shooting, not him. He would have stopped and checked himself for pellet holes if the kick from the automatic hadn’t jerked his arm over his shoulder. Across the blue-white fog of cordite, he saw Miss Murcheson fly backwards. Droplets of blood spray-painted the weathered wall behind her.

“Jesus wept!” he shouted in terror.

He’d never shot anyone before, but he had seen the effects of bullets. DeWitt felt amazement and then a weak-kneed sort of relief when Miss Murcheson pulled herself up from the porch.

“Don’t you hurt him, DeWitt,” she was saying. Her left arm was waving frantically for his attention. Her right hung heavily at her bloodied side.

Across the yard the boy was sniffing the air, his nostrils wide and quivering. His pale eyes were alert and steady the way a dog’s are before the kill. He was staring right at Miss Murcheson’s bleeding shoulder.

“Don’t you hurt him, now,” she was still saying when the boy leapt.

Miss Murcheson saw the boy coming and uttered a short cry of anguish. Still screaming, she sprinted towards the trees. The boy bounded after her with his long, leaping strides. It would have been smarter for her to have picked up the shotgun. It was the running away that killed her. Shouldn’t ever run from a wild animal. Miss Murcheson knew that. But the sheriff also knew that there were some people you couldn’t bring yourself to shoot. Not ever. No matter what they had done. There were some people you’d just rather die than kill.

DeWitt’s first bullet took a chunk out of the porch railing. His next hit the platinum head of the rotting corpse, sending bits of flesh up in a pink and gray explosion.

It took DeWitt fifteen minutes to track them through the pines. By the time he found them, Miss Murcheson was pretty well dead. Her eyes were still moving and her hands still twitched, but the boy had already started feeding.

DeWitt took slow aim, holding the gun with both hands, and pumped six quick rounds into them. Some bullets hit the boy’s knotted face; some hit the woman under him. DeWitt would later excuse himself by thinking he couldn’t have helped that.

But he could have helped the next thing he did. When the automatic was empty, he put another clip in. He fired until that one was gone. He pumped every bullet he had into both bodies, partly out of his own fear; and partly out of his own disgust.

Then he buried them. All three of them. He didn’t know quite why he did that, either, except he really didn’t want to know what that boy was or where he had come from. He was tired and really didn’t feel like telling Scharina or anybody else the story. His job was to protect people, after all.

He went back to the house, cleaned up the blood, wiped the shotgun free of prints and put it into its place above Miss Murcheson’s mantle. She had a pot of beans going, and he turned the gas off under them. When he left he locked the door.

He drove back to town and got another group of volunteers together. Under DeWitt’s direction, they shot every coyote and feral dog in the county. They celebrated when the predation stopped.

Author’s Note: Most men and most childless women idealize the maternal instinct. It has little to do with love. It is fashioned, instead, of responsibility: a crushing, suffocating, maddening responsibility—one which makes moms at once overly protective and resentful of that very protectiveness.

There are times that you want to kill your kids (and some moms actually do); times you want to run away from home and leave no forwarding address. But you don’t. You stick it out. You go on changing diapers and settling sibling arguments and putting up with the God-awful noise and mess of it until the kids are grown. And if there was a house fire, you know you’d go back into the flames just like that mother cat who saved every last damned kitten in her litter. You’d do it not for love, but because you’d have no choice.

Chuck. Chuck. Chuck.

The ubiquitous sound comes to him through his open study window. He hears it in his sleep. It is the sound of nightmare, not the heart-racing, cold sweat kind, but the grueling sort, the sort from which you fear you’ll never awaken.

Chuck.

The gritting of the metal trowel against the sand makes his teeth ache, and he wants to run to the window and scream to her to stop. But he is a quiet man who has always been generous to the people around him, so he goes back to his papers.

In a little while a young lieutenant enters the room. “Governor,” the lieutenant says with a snappy salute that makes the governor think the soldier has not yet understood their predicament. “Mrs. Leeds is out in the garden, and it’s raining.”

Now the governor is sure the boy’s comprehension is limited. Leeds nods as he scans the daily list of the dead.

“It’s against your direct orders, sir. We’ve told her to stop, but she won’t listen.”

“I see,” the governor says. At last he gets up, but only because it appears that the boy expects him to. His back is stiff from sitting. “I’ll take care of it.”

He walks out to the porch where the young lieutenant hands him an umbrella. In the yard an embarrassed, officious sergeant with a Geiger counter stands over the bent form of the governor’s wife, a colorful, striped golf umbrella held over the both of them.

The umbrella is brighter than the day. The dark sheets of rain smell of oil. The low clouds are greasy. Holding his own umbrella up, the governor splashes across to where the sergeant is standing and can hear the slow, unsteady popcorn-maker excitement of the boxy counter.

“I’ll take over now, sergeant. Thank you.”

“Thank you, sir,” the soldier says gratefully.

They exchange umbrellas and the sergeant trots back to the house.

Chuck.

At his feet his wife digs diligently with the trowel. The yard is a dense pattern of holes, as if squirrels have been at war with tiny mortars.

“It’s raining, Mary,” he says. “Come on into the house.”

Chuck.

She does not look up. He has not expected her to. Across the yard the old holes she has so painfully dug are dissolving in the rain. Under the cover of the umbrella, she digs more. Penelope at her loom.

“Come on,” he says. He takes her arm. With his help, she rises, but she won’t trust him enough to hand him the trowel. He doesn’t insist.

Her blank face gives no hint of emotion. Only her scarred hands do. No one but the governor knows that they speak of guilt, not grief.

She never really loved the children. There were always too many quarrels, too many complaints. An entire card catalogue of “Can’t yous.”

GODDAMN, CAN’T YOU TURN THAT MUSIC OFF? CAN’T YOU CLEAN UP AFTER YOURSELF? WOULD IT KILL YOU TO WASH A DISH?

And then the “I can’ts”: “I can’t stand it much longer. I can’t put up with them. Let’s just take a few days to ourselves and go up to the mountain cabin.”

She jerks his arm as if she wants to go back and dig some more. Her protest comes six months too late. He pulls her, stumbling, along. “I left them behind, and they were my responsibility, too,” he whispers.

She doesn’t speak, but her quick look says, Not like my responsibility. I was their goddamned mother. Your part was easy.

As she turns away he wonders if cats who eat their young mourn for their kittens. No one should outlive her children.

They walk up the porch steps and pass the young lieutenant. Leeds can see the bewilderment in the boy’s face. He, in his limited understanding, thinks Mary digs because she has gone insane, but the governor knows the truth. Given time, given a trowel, he would dig, too.

The governor leads his wife to the bathroom and draws a bath. He undresses her and puts her in the tub. They have a small tug-of-war with the trowel, and finally he has to put it within her reach so she won’t be frantic.

She sits passive as a child and lets him bathe her. He idly notices the loose skin on her arms, her thighs, the blue veins in her breasts. He cleans her as he might clean a kitchen, taking pains with the most important places: the exposed hands, the face, the hair.

When he is finished he dresses her in a robe. She takes up the trowel again. When he walks her out of the room, he sees that Colonel Glick is waiting. Glick has tracked mud on the clean hardwood floor. Leeds hates him for that.

Glick’s face is a slick, mahogany-colored, human-shaped mask. Only the eyes move. He salutes wearily the way most of the guardsmen do.

“Go to your room, Mary,” Leeds says, and watches as his wife obeys him.

“Rain’s surprisingly clean, sir,” Glick tells him as Mary disappears down the hall. “Not enough rads to concern ourselves with.”

“Ah,” says Leeds. “At least not for another twenty years of exposure, you mean.”

The colonel’s eyes shift behind the dark lids. “Yes, sir. Of course, sir. I’ve been asked to inform you that a triage crisis has arisen. There are too many Stage 2 survivors for the medication we have, so that even some of our Stage 3s are dying. Any orders on this, sir?”

“Tell the doctors to start treating by age, youngest first. Any Stage 2 over forty should be considered a Stage 1, understood?”

“Understood, sir.”

“Just let them die.” Leeds studies the colonel carefully, but there is no indication of criticism in Glick’s face. “Any news from outside, Colonel?”

“Sir?”

“Maybe something about how the enemy is doing?”

The colonel blinks rapidly. He looks like a robot whose program has just gone awry. “Enemy, sir?” Glick seems as if he’s wrestling with a problem, an odd problem for a soldier. That is because, unlike his young lieutenant, Glick is perceptive. He knows he is the enemy. All the survivors are.

“The Russians,” Leeds explains patiently.

The colonel’s composure splinters for an instant so that, very briefly, Leeds can see the man behind it. “We have no information that it was the Russians. A lot of countries had nuclear arsenals, sir.”

“Well, I think it was the Russians. And I think they’re afraid to invade. They should be. Nuclear war doesn’t count on invasion. You never spoil your nest, Colonel Glick.”

They walk out the door together. Leeds passes the muddy footprints Glick has left. He is not so annoyed with the colonel now that he knows the mud is simply mud and not slow death.

On the porch they pause. Across the lawn Leeds can see the small, empty graves his wife has dug. Mary, wanting so badly to bury her dead.

“Will anyone come to help us, Colonel?”

“It’s doubtful, sir. Everyone has problems, and we’re stuck with blasts on three sides. I have to assume they’ve given us up for lost, sir.”

In fact they are lost, Leeds thinks. Perhaps the graves his wife digs are not graves after the fact, but preparatory.

“What were you before?” Leeds asks.

The colonel turns to him, a smooth dimple of puzzlement between the eyebrows on the mask. “Sir?”

“Part-time warrior and full-time what?” Leeds tags the colonel as a high-school biology teacher, an engineer, perhaps. Some job where his hands never got dirty.

“Computer sales rep, sir.”

Leeds’s lips turn up at one side and, for the first time in six months, he nearly laughs. But the humor isn’t quite strong enough, and the slack muscles of his face care too heavy.

“Sales,” he says.

“Yes, sir. Government contract stuff was a lot of it, sir. Component parts and .things.”

Leeds nods. “Computers. The Russians should have had our computers. Maybe more of their rockets would have hit the targets. Wasteful that they fused two ten-mile patches of desert. A great coyote kill, I would imagine.”

“Yes, sir. If you insist on Russians, sir. But then Phoenix was hit.”

“Yes,” Leeds says quietly. How could he forget Phoenix?

“Whichever country struck us, that must have been an intended target, sir.”

“None of it makes any sense, does it, Colonel? I suppose we’ll know who struck us and why when everything is back to normal.”

Back to normal. Glick looks at him so strangely that Leeds picks up on his mistake.

Finally the colonel shrugs. “I suppose the worst part is not knowing. It was like walking to work, minding your own business, and suddenly being mugged from behind.”

Leeds watches as the colonel unfurls his umbrella and walks out into the gray, oily rain. But Glick has made a mistake, too. The worst part isn’t the not knowing. No, the worst part is living through it.

When the colonel drives away, Leeds goes back to his office. In emergencies, even long-term ones, there is always paperwork. With the overcast skies, the nights come faster now. In an hour he lights a candle and reads until he falls asleep in his leather chair, his head nodding to his chest.

The ring of the phone awakens him. The candle has burnt down. He gropes out in the darkness of the desk and, on the second ring, finds the receiver.

“Hello.”

He’s greeted by an electronic howl and a burst of static, the call sign of the jury-rigged local service.

“Hello,” he says again.

On the other side of the tempest of noise he hears a faint voice. “ . . . nor Leeds.”

“This is the governor.”

There is a squeal which makes him jerk his ear away from the receiver, but he has caught the worst of it. His ear canal hurts. “ . . . wife, sir. Could you go check?”

He doesn’t need to hear the rest of the message. He understands all too well. Putting the phone down, he lights a candle and walks down the hall to his wife’s room. The robe is on the bed, and the bed is empty.

When he comes back he finds that the static is gone, disappeared as stealthily as his wife, and the phone connection is clear. “No. She’s not here. Do you have her down there?”

“Yes, sir. We think this is her. Sorry to disturb you, sir, but she just wouldn’t answer our questions. She was very determined to get through the roadblock, governor.”

It would be so easy, he thinks, for him to give the order to let her go. No muss, no fuss, no body. She could walk down the highway into the grey limbo where the children wait.

But Leeds is experienced enough to know that recriminations breed in uncertainty. Responsibility ends with a corpse.

“Bring her back, please,” he says to the boy with the unfamiliar voice. He has become used to giving orders to people he doesn’t know; and he has become used to trusting them utterly.

“Right away, sir,” the boy says. The line goes dead. The one thing Leeds will never get used to is that emptiness. He holds the receiver cradled against his ear for a moment as if he can wish back into existence the old AT&T hum.

When the driver arrives with Mary, Leeds takes her in and gives her another bath. When she is asleep, he pries the trowel from her hand and places it on the night table where she can find it in the morning.

Then he goes to Jerry’s room to sleep. Each night is a different vigil in each of the three rooms. The rooms have been left the same as when they vacationed there as a family. Jerry’s room is quintessentially him: rock posters and a star map. Even though the night is cold, the governor stretches out on top of the cheap plaid comforter. He doesn’t want to disturb anything, in case the boy, or the ghost of the boy, should come home.

He doesn’t expect to sleep, but he does. He dreams that he is making mud castles at the beach. And he dreams that Mary is smashing them.

The chuck-chuck-chuck nudges him awake. He opens his eyes to stare at the pine ceiling. For a long time he lies there as if he were ten years old again on a school day, pretending to his mother that he is asleep.

When his body becomes sore and stiff from the mattress, he gets up, showers, and goes out to his wife. She has already dug four square yards of shallow holes and her hands are bleeding.

“Breakfast, Mary,” he says. He leads her into the house and scrubs her hands and face. They eat fried Spam with slices of canned pineapple. Leeds thinks of toast. He remembers the smell of the hot bread, the greasy, salty taste of the butter. He remembers the crispness in his mouth. The Spam feels like mush. The pineapple feels like nothing.

While they are eating, Colonel Glick knocks at the kitchen door. Leeds tells him to come in. “Some breakfast, colonel?”

“Thank you, sir, no. A problem has come up.”

“What problem?”

Glick stands just inside the door, in perspective a small man, like a man at the wrong end of a telescope. “Some people have broken into the contaminated food dump, sir.”

“Wasn’t it guarded?”

“They beat the guards. They were hungry.”

Leeds looks down at his plate. He wonders if Glick has eaten breakfast, or if he is simply refusing to eat. “How contaminated was the food, Colonel?”

“Very, sir.”

The governor picks up his empty plate and takes it to the sink. There was not that much Spam, not that much pineapple. Mary is still playing with her food. Her hands are crimped from holding the trowel, and she moves them as if they hurt her.

“Shoot them, Colonel.”

The colonel blinks. His eyes are the only part of him that has moved. “Sir?”

“Firing squad, Colonel. It will teach a lesson to the others and be a blessing for the condemned. You’ve seen enough slow death, I think.”

“Yes, sir,” Glick says doubtfully.

“Well, I have, too.”

The colonel salutes and opens the door.

“Colonel Glick?”

He turns. “Yes?”

“Will you ask Flagstaff to send us something?”

“Yes,”, he says. “I already have.”

“What did they say?”

“That they had their own problems.”

“Did you tell them we have people starving? Can’t you beg them, Colonel?”

There was the can’t again, Leeds thinks. CAN’T YOU DO ANYTHING RIGHT?

The colonel looks away. “I have, sir. Believe me.”

Leeds takes a deep breath. The colonel swivels on his heel and marches out into the grey day.

When breakfast is over, Mary goes back to the garden. Leeds cleans the kitchen and returns to his office. At noon he goes out to get Mary for lunch and finds that Glick has been waiting for him.

“Completed, sir,” he says in a soft voice, as if he is afraid that God might hear. There is a strange tension in his motionless face.

“How many?” Leeds asks.

“Forty-two.”

The governor closes his eyes. Chuck. Chuck. Some sounds humans get used to, repetitive sounds, some single-note tones. Hear a sound enough and it becomes, in effect, silence. But the noise that the trowel makes in the earth is one Leeds knows he will always notice.

“See that the bodies are buried.”

“Not burned, sir?”

“No,” he says harshly. Enough have gone that way. “Not . . .”

He stops cold, his mouth still ajar. Behind the colonel’s back a spot in the western sky is catching flame. The glow brightens until Leeds can no longer look straight at it.

The colonel, his face creased in bewilderment, slowly turns. The soldiers on the road freeze in place.

“The sun,” Glick says with soft wonder.

Only the sun. It has pierced the clouds and laid a brassy benediction on the far mountains. Leeds’s body unkinks. His knees go soft. In a moment he sits down on the steps.

Next to him Glick stand transfixed. The soldiers at their jeep burst into cheers. And in the yard, the sunlight turning her hair aflame, the burning woman still digs.

“Glick.”

The colonel hastily wipes tears from his eyes.

“I’ve been going over the supplies.”

The sun has shattered Glick’s mask and Leeds can read the colonel’s face easily now. There is awe there, but over that are annoyance and incomprehension. He looks like a man who, upon finding the stone rolled away and Jesus’s grave empty, has been asked about the time.

“If we stay here without airdrops, we’ll all die eventually. I want you to get the wounded into the trucks. The uninjured can walk. I want you to take the people off the mountain. Take them north to Flagstaff. They’ll have to share once the problem’s in their laps. I know they’re getting supplies from Utah.”

“Sir?”

“Get it together now, Colonel. I want you to leave in two days. No later. It’ll be a long haul, but there’s water on the way. And get me a jeep. You don’t need to put much gas in it. A quarter-tank will do. Mary and I will be going back to Phoenix.”

Glick sits down heavily on the steps as if an invisible stranger has knocked him off his feet. He stares out where Mary still digs, her back to the glory of the light.

Above the governor’s head the clouds are breaking up and scudding east, leaving the sky the deep, clear, unbelievable color of blue enamel.

Glick is still staring hard at Mary. He looks frightened. “It would be illegal for me to evacuate, sir. You’re the governor.”

Leeds doesn’t quite manage a laugh, but he gets out a dry chuckle. The colonel turns his head sharply toward him, a look of hurt on his face.

The governor lays a hand on the colonel’s arm. He has never before touched him. Leeds remembers being at a governors’ conference a long, long time ago, and he remembers what the governor of Arkansas told him about military coups. Never happen in the States, the squat governor had said. First time they want appropriations, they’re going to want to go to Congress, and the coup will be over.

American military officers, Leeds knows, need civilian demands. “This is an order, Colonel. Get the people to Flagstaff and surrender to the mayor there.”

Glick gets to his feet without saluting and wanders away, his hands in his pockets.

The next morning there is a jeep waiting in front of the cabin. Glick has loaded it with supplies.

“I gave you a half-tank,” the colonel says. “That will get you into the worst part of Phoenix and get you most of the way out, if you wish. There are clothes packed in plastic. If you want to leave, drive out of the area as far as the gas will take you, then ditch the jeep. You can walk the rest of the way.”

Leeds looks at the flashlight, the cartons of food, the water. Glick has given them too much. The supplies are an excess, so much so that he feels the peculiar guilt of the wealthy.

He goes into the house without saying a word and wakes Mary up. He helps her dress.

When she is dressed, she is frantic. The trowel is not on the nightstand. She pulls the blankets off and looks under the bed. He follows her as she darts from one room to another, hummingbird-quick. A small noise, a sort of whine, is coming from her throat. Leeds tries to stop her, but she flutters and spins out of his hands. “Mary,” he says. “Mary.” She’s not listening.

With a bang she is out of the door, sprinting past a startled Glick. In the sun-dried mud of the yard she finds the trowel. She snatches it up and holds it to her breast, curling her body around it.

“Come on, Mary,” Leeds says gently.

She is breathing hard with fright. Her eyes are round and animal-blank.

“Come on,” he whispers.

He takes her to the jeep. Glick holds out his hand. “Good luck, Governor.”

“Good luck,” Leeds replies. There should be more to say.

Glick closes the door for him and steps back. Leeds starts the engine and, at a sudden urge, puts his hand out to the colonel again. Instead of taking it, the colonel salutes. It is good, snappy salute, managed the way salutes used to be.

Ten miles down the mountain at the checkpoint, the soldiers wave them through. Forty miles after that they drive past the first of the abandoned, undamaged houses. The radiation buzzer goes off with a hysterical, electronic whoop, startling Leeds so much he nearly runs off the road. Quickly he reaches down and jerks the wire from the unit.

He looks furtively at Mary. His wife is sitting against her door, the trowel still cradled in her arms. Her gaze is riveted forward, and he wonders how much of this she understands.

“Twelve forty-three, Mary,” he says. “They’d have been in school. That’s where we’ll check.”

Ten miles later they get into the first of the damage, the first of the stench. Hell, Leeds decides, must smell of burnt insulation.

It’s more difficult finding his way than he had imagined.

Into the worst of it, he can’t find the road at all. He realizes he has gone too far when he sees their bank building rising unaccountably from the rubble. In an hour or so, he believes, by the scattering of red bricks and the charred floor of what might have been a gymnasium, he has found Carolyn’s middle school.

From that landmark, he drives, in fits and starts, southwest. The east wing of the high school is in ruins, but, miraculously, the west wing still stands, its windows like mouths of splintered teeth. Nothing, not even birds, moves there.

He shuts off the engine. It is very quiet. The sun catches the sparkles of mica in the dusty, dun stone. Except for the limitless blue of the sky, the world is the color of disaster.

Carolyn never had a chance, but Jerry and Jimmy might have. Leeds is nor sure where their classrooms were. He hopes they were in the east wing where it would have been quick, and not in the west where they might have lingered.

When children are afraid, fathers should always be there.

Grief hits like the incapacitating ache of angina. It is only much later that he realizes that Mary is weeping. The trowel has dropped, forgotten, to her lap.

“Should we go see?” she asks.

Leeds is surprised by her voice. It is almost, but not quite, the way he remembers it.

He looks at the stark skeleton of the school and shudders. After all this time he doesn’t have the courage to go further. He doesn’t want to know what secrets lurk for him behind the quiet, blasted stone. “I don’t think it would be a good idea.”

“Can we go home now?”

Leeds watches the wind weave mists of dust across the ruins. “No.”

He starts up the engine. Turning the jeep in a difficult three-corner turn, he heads back the way they came.

“They’re dead,” she says.

“Yes.”

He sees the tightness leave her as abruptly as his grief had come on. Her back unhinges. She slumps. The trowel drops to the floor and she doesn’t pick it up.

He stops for the night in one of the undamaged houses in a high-rad zone. They eat a silent dinner. Mary goes in and lies down on the strange bed.

They’ll die here, surrounded by someone else’s things. When night falls he comes in and sits beside her, holding her hand in the night. She is sleeping soundly for the first time in months.

As he keeps watch he notices a pale glow coating the sill. It is the returning moon. He pictures the silvered blanket it is casting over the graves of their children.

He should be brave enough, and able enough to find their bodies, but everyone has his limitations. He simply can’t.

Their entire lives have been structures of can’t.

JIMMY, CAN’T YOU CLEAN THAT ROOM?

DADDY, CAN’T YOU LOAN ME . . . ? CAN’T YOU BUY ME . . . ? CAN’T YOU TAKE ME . . . ? CAN’T YOU GIVE ME . . . ?

He had come at last to look, too late to be of use. Now he clutches his inconclusive answers. Of all the can’ts that ever were, he realizes, only one has meaning.

Can’t you forgive us? he asks.

Author’s Note: I have to admit that I love this little story all the way from the pun of the title to the quiet resolution. It says something about sin and redemption, of course; something I didn’t know that I even believed until I had the story finished. I love it for the voice (“limp-dick .25”) and its throwaway humor.

I mean, if you’re a normal person with a normal sense of right and wrong, how do you live with the guilt of murder?

He thinks he’ll go crazy killing the Cambodian again, but as soon as he feels the weight of the borrowed .25 automatic in his pocket he’s forgotten about losing his mind and he’s back in the swing of things. His heart’s going a mile a minute, faster than it had ever gone on meth, even faster than the foot-to-the-floor acceleration of good snow.

Here it is again, two in the morning of a cool Tuesday night, and he’s jittery and sweating like a maniac. Roger always promised a holdup would be like the best blow job he’d ever had, and Jerry’s starting to wonder when the feel-good part starts.

The streets are moist and empty. No cars are juicing up at the gas pumps. No losers are standing around the pay phones trying to get dates.

Jerry hits the glass doors of the 7-Eleven with his shoulder, and when they don’t open, he panics.

He fumbles around a moment before he realizes he needs to pull, not push. By the time he gets the doors open and enters the fluorescent glare of the store, he’s sure the guy behind the counter has figured out what’s happening. He’ll have dialed 911 and’ll be shouting “HOLD UP!” into the phone line. Listening on the other end will be a standing army of a thousand or so cops. Not just any cops, but Dallas cops with non-regulation .357s on their belts and murder in their eyes. They’ll all pile into their squad cars and head on down to Columbia Avenue where the action is, where silly little Jerry with his limp dick borrowed .25 is holding up a 7-Eleven because Roger thinks it’s a good idea.

Jerry peeks around the movie rental rack and over a stack of 12-pack Cokes. The guy behind the counter is smiling at him.

“Hello. Hello,” the clerk says cheerfully. “How are you this evening?”

Jerry’s tongue’s Super-Glued to the roof of his mouth and there’s no way to unstick it to answer. He just looks blankly at the clerk. The guy’s small and skinny and dark. He has a smooth, innocent face and tiny stick wrists. His hands are toylike. They’re little kid’s hands.

Jerry stares at a bag of Brach’s mints, thinking that maybe he should just forget the whole damned thing, just buy that fucking bag of mints and get out. Only he doesn’t have the dollar fifty-nine.

When Jerry doesn’t respond, the clerk points towards the rack. “If you can’t sleep, you should rent a movie. Fire in The Clouds. All customers like Fire in The Clouds. Space station goes ka-boom.”

Ka-boom, Jerry’s thinking nervously. Ka-boom.

“We got the newest Crawler movie, too,” the guy’s saying. “Very scary.” The guy laughs a clear high tenor laugh, a laugh like a bird’s song.

Jerry finally pulls the gun from his pocket, and the guy stops laughing. His dark eyes get wide.

“Gimme the money,” Jerry says, hoping the clerk doesn’t notice the adolescent crack in his voice.

“Sure, sure.” The guy’s scared now. Jerry can feel fear coming off him like heat from a Dearborn heater.

“Come on!” Jerry snaps.

The guy’s fooling around with the cash register like he’s forgotten how it works and he can’t get the damned thing open.

“Goddam it, come on!” Jerry shouts in a ka-boom voice, and all of a sudden time starts to slow down like a VCR that’s inching forward from PAUSE.

The clerk drops his hand down, drops it down, oh God Jerry sees the hand go down, and he knows the guy’s going for a gun, some big-ass over-and-under twelve-gauge.

There should be time because everything’s going so slow. There should be time enough to reach over the counter to stop him. But it’s like God’s smiled over Jerry and said, “Hey, Jerry, you got a string hanging off you, man,” and God pulls what you thought was just a loose thread and all of a sudden your whole sweater’s coming apart.

Jerry’s whole evening’s unravelling at the seams—and all in slow-mo.

He watches the clerk’s hand go down down down while his own hand comes up up up. For a few centuries or so Jerry figures he’s not going to make it. The suspense is killing him, so to speak. And then all of a sudden, before he knows it, there’s his arm out and the pistol pointed and the trigger pulled back and everything. All at once. Just like that.

Ka-boom.

The explosion from that wussy .25 sounds like the end of the world. The Cambodian’s side is squirting blood, but a .25 isn’t a Dallas Police .357, or a hidden under the counter shotgun. A .25 never stopped anything in its tracks. The Cambodian’s got hold of something and he’s bringing it up, anyway. Jerry shoots again, shattering a giant bottle of pickles. He fires a third time and hits the clerk, but it’s too late. The hand’s already free from the counter and Jerry knows that he’s never going to make it to the door.

The Cambodian’s fine-boned fist pops up over the counter.

There’s a key ring in it.

Open-mouthed, the clerk shows him the key ring and then kind of slides to the linoleum, leaving a smear of blood on the counter near the Cricket lighters and the tiny roll-up astrology charts.

It gets real quiet. Jerry can see the blue smoke from the gun hovering in a layer in the air like smoke through a late-night bar. The store smells of cordite and blood and dill pickles.

Jerry looks over the counter and sees that the Cambodian is lying in a pool of brine and gore trying his best to breathe. Not much is happening in his nose and mouth but blood, though. The blood has little bubbles in it like the guy’s a carbonated Cherry Coke somebody’s shaken up.

Clunk. The little pea-shooter .25 drops right out of Jerry’s numb fingers. His mouth is going a mile a minute, driven by a kind of agonized, nightmare helplessness. “Oh Jesus Oh Jesus Oh Jesus.”

The clerk’s chest is making a sound like someone drawing the last of a double thick shake through a straw. If only the guy would close his eyes, Jerry thinks. If only the guy would stop looking at him like that, like he’s confused as to why Jerry shot him and he’s terrified to die.

“I didn’t mean it!” Jerry screams, forgetting about the Dallas Police, forgetting about the money, forgetting about anything but how the blood’s running out of the holes he, himself, silly Jerry Walker, desperado extraordinaire, has made in this convenience store clerk.

He runs around the counter and kneels by the guy’s side, trying to push the blood back in and hoping that he’s not transfusing him with pickle juice. He supposes not. The guy looks kind of peaceful now. He’s staring at Jerry like he’s appreciative or maybe like all is forgiven.

“You’re gonna be okay,” Jerry’s saying to him helpfully and Jerry starts to think that maybe the clerk’s not as bad as he looks, that maybe they can sew him back up at Parkland. Then, just before he starts screaming for real, screaming so hard and so long that that’s the way a cop darting in for a piss will find him, Jerry notices the guy’s not breathing.

* * *

Jerry hates transitions. He hates their breath-snatching, bowel-wrenching abruptness. Blip, he’s looking down at the dead Cambodian. Blip, he’s back in the prison clinic staring up at the ceiling. His face is wet and he realizes he’s been crying again.

The chin strap’s holding him down so Jerry can’t move his head. He slides his eyes right as far as he can and sees that Dunlap hasn’t budged. He’s sitting exactly the way Jerry saw him before the memory-mode transition ten minutes ago. The director’s hunched over the monitor in his velour sweat suit with the intensity of a fat, turquoise vulture regarding a dead cow.

It’s a while before Jerry can find his voice. His eyes are rolled to the side so hard that they’re beginning to ache. “We get a good take that time?” he asks.

“Um,” Dunlap grunts. The director reaches out and fiddles with the controls on his ten-inch TV. On the screen Jerry can see himself. The candy-ass .25’s coming out of his coat pocket.

Quickly, before the pain of that sight can smack him good, Jerry shuts his eyes. He shuts them very, very briefly. In that instant the image of the dead Cambodian has time to float up from the darkness.

He pops his eyes open. He’s breathing hard; his voice sounds falsely high-pitched as though he’s been sniffing helium.

“We through? I’m kind of tired today and everything. Please. Aren’t we through?”

Dunlap turns around, his round, nerd face drawn up in a pensive expression. “Still getting some peripheral fuzziness.”

Jerry, knowing what’s coming, starts squirming against the straps as much as he’s able and starts talking fast. “I think I need to be checked out by a doctor or something, you know? I mean, I need to be looked at and stuff. Because I keep dreaming about the Cambodian, you know? Is that normal?”

Dunlap’s bending over the bed repositioning the needles in Jerry’s scalp. His movements are gentle and his hands smell of soap, like a dentist’s.

“I don’t want to do this no more.”

“Please don’t move,” Dunlap says.

“I mean, is that what happens to people in your documentaries?” Jerry asks. “I used to dream about the murder sometimes but now it’s every night. When I’m awake I think I catch glimpses of the Cambodian in the mess hall. At night before I go to sleep I can hear him laughing at the end of the cell block. I’m goddamned losing my mind.”

Dunlap, big-deal director, winner of an Academy Award for Best Documentary, three-time winner at Cannes, doesn’t bother to answer. Jerry’d hate him if only Dunlap weren’t so hard to hate. Dunlap’s a geek. He’s vanilla ice cream. Hating Dunlap is as useful as hating Cream of Wheat.

“Please. Can I go back to my cell now?”

The probe needles are so thin and Dunlap’s so gentle that the repositioning doesn’t really hurt, but Jerry’s crying, anyway. A drop of blood trickles through his hair, down his temple, and into his ear.

Suddenly Dunlap steps pack and glances at the monitor, and his index finger plunges towards the keyboard.

Jerry tries to scream but no sound comes out. IT HURTS TOO MUCH TO GO THROUGH THIS AGAIN, he decides, but somehow he’s in the 7-Eleven, the .25 in his sweaty hand and the Cambodian guy’s staring at him.

This time I won’t kill him, Jerry thinks; but of course he does.

This time it’ll be different. But of course it’s not.

* * *

“Dunlap’s playing with your head,” Freddie D. says. They’re in the cell, a couple of hours before lights out, and Freddie D.’s getting some reading time in.

“The shrink thinks after five years I should have come to grips with this shit. He thinks the filming’s going to help me face what I did, you know? But Dunlap’s shitting killing me, FD,” Jerry says, staring at the cracks in the concrete ceiling. “I can’t take it no more. I wish I’d never volunteered. He’s doing weird stuff to my brain, FD. I can feel it.”

“Um,” FD hums. There is a snap and a flutter as a magazine page is turned. “Neural pathways, my man. That’s where it’s all at. I read all about Dunlap in Time and Discover. He shoot you up with all them neurotransmitters and then he fire electrical impulses to where he think them juicy memories -is. Dunlap’s widening your neural pathways so he can get a good, clear shot of your Murder 1. You being sacrificed for art.”

Jerry is lying down on the top bunk, exhausted by a day of filmmaking. His feet are crossed at the ankles and he’s tapping his right toe against the grimy, green wall. It’s a great and joyous freedom to move his body.

After a moment he rolls his head over and looks at Freddie D. The former embezzler, his shirt open to expose the black diamond shape of his bodybuilder’s pecs, is reading his Scientific American and eating one of Jerry’s Snickers bars.

It’s a no-no for Jerry to profit from his crime, so Dunlap doesn’t pay him cash. Instead, he beats off Jerry’s brain and then hands him a bag of candy to use in trade around the prison; the reverse arrangement from that old men use to lure little girls into cars.

“Most memories, they like footpaths through the jungle, man,” FD says, licking the chocolate from his fingers. “But for stuff that gets up next to you and shit, the real traumatic stuff, them footpaths get wider. I figure what you got between you walking in that motherfucking 7- Eleven and the time the police slap them bracelets on you is laid down with an eight-lane superhighway of guilt.”

At the end of the shadowy block of cells, Jerry hears a high, tenor laugh. A bird song sort of laugh. It makes his scalp crawl so bad that the places Dunlap inserted the needles sting. “I been dreaming about the Cambodian every night now.”

“Yeah?” Freddie D. puts the Scientific American down and picks up Newsweek. “No surprise. You send a thought out, what direction is it going to go? Up the path of least resistance, right up that eight-lane superhighway you got built.”

Down the row Beaudreaux and Weidmeyer start their weekly battle of the cassette players. Beaudreaux’s playing 2 Live Crew and grunting like a rutting buffalo in time with the music. Weidmeyer’s got his shit-kicker stuff cranked up high.

FD gets up from his chair and walks to the bars. “SHUT UP! I’M READING!” His huge voice batters the raw concrete, resounds in the steel.

The music stops and for an instant the building is so silent that Jerry thinks he has gone deaf. It is breathlessly silent, as silent as the 7-Eleven after that third shot.

Then a clang—someone drops something on the concrete floor. A man gives a low, bass laugh, and the spell is broken. The background chatter of the cell block picks up where it left off. FD walks back to his chair and sits down.

“I dream I go walking into the 7-Eleven, you know?” Jerry tells the ceiling miserably. “Only this time before I shoot the guy, I reach out and get the keys, and there’s this one key on the ring that’s old and all rusted up. When I look down on the ground where this Cambodian’s bleeding, “I see that his chest has a built-in strongbox.”

Jerry glances over at FD. His cellmate has put the Newsweek across his lap and his gaze is intent and absorbed. “So what happens then?”

“And so inside this strongbox are rows and rows of what I think are baseballs .Only I take one out and—”

DON’T THINK OF THAT, Jerry tells himself. The act of thinking and describing what he recalls seems exhausting somehow, as though the memory is an eighty-pound sack on his back.

Suddenly Jerry, who quit smoking over three years ago, wishes he had a cigarette. He wants a cigarette so hard his hands have started to shake. If he weren’t slightly incarcerated he’d get in his car and go get a pack. He wants a smoke so bad he’d even go inside a 7-Eleven to buy some.

“PD?” Jerry whispers. “What would happen if you just keep remembering that traumatic shit over and over and the pathway thing in your brain got bigger and bigger? What would happen then?”

“I don’t know, man. What Dunlap’s doing to you is scary. It ain’t natural. Anyway. Don’t leave me sitting here with my dick in my hand. My arm’s getting tired. What’d you take out of the Cambodian’s strong box?”

The air leaves Jerry’s chest in a long sobbing sigh, a sigh that makes him feel empty and very, very ashamed.

DON’T REMEMBER THAT, he tells himself, but he can’t help it. He recalls the end of his dream as clearly as if Dunlap had shot one of those electrical impulses into his brain and it’s speeding down that eight-lane memory superhighway.

“Skulls. Oh, Christ, FD. He had hundreds and hundreds of skulls in his chest.”

* * *

That night Jerry dreams he is in the back room of the 7-Eleven. In a little clearing amid the boxes of cereal, the cartons of Coke, the Cambodian is having tea.

The Cambodian glances up and Jerry gets lost in the jungle of darkness behind his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Jerry says.

Then the Cambodian shrugs and picks up the white, skull-shaped tea pot, his movements so slow, so graceful, that his whole damned body looks like a dance. “We choose our own paths.”

Paths.

Sun sparkles off the gravel at the side of the road, making Jerry squint. A big wind pushes off the desert, blowing ghostly patterns of sand across the empty highway. Beside Jerry the Cambodian walks, head down as though in thought.

“Why aren’t there any people here?” Jerry asks.

The Cambodian laughs with a sound like a bird. “I killed them all,” he says.

* * *

The next morning at breakfast Jerry thinks he sees the Cambodian sitting down at the end of the table, and so when the guards come to get him to take him in to see Dunlap, he sort of goes ape shit.

The guards aren’t bad guys, but it’s pretty clear they want to get the job over and done with, so they drag him, kicking and screaming, down to the infirmary.

“You volunteered for this,” Leo’s telling him as he’s muscling him towards the clinic door. “The prison shrink says it’ll be good for you.”

Jerry’s crying and snatching at Leo’s blue uniform shirt. “Listen to me. I feel like Dunlap’s woke up something in my brain, man. Like they woke up a monster in there or something. You got to get me to a doctor, Leo. Okay? Get me the prison counselor. Promise me you’ll get somebody to help.”

Looking properly sympathetic, Leo drags Jerry into the clinic and then helps the other guard strap him down.

When Jerry’s all cozy and belted in, Dunlap comes to the side of the bed and starts the IV.

“He thinks something’s wrong,” Leo tells Dunlap. “Should we have a doctor examine him?”

Dunlap looks up with a near-sighted, geek expression and says simply, “No.”

Leo hangs around for a split second to make sure Jerry’s going to be okay. Then he turns on his heel and walks off.

Jerry’s trying his best to tell Dunlap not to put him under, that he’s going crazy, that any more remembering is going to make that Cambodian and the 7-Eleven so big it’s going to push everything else out of his mind.

But he can’t get the words in order. They’re stumbling out of his mouth, tumbling over each other like kittens playing chase across the floor Then Jerry sees the syringe plunge into the IV tube and the fireworks start going off in his brain and he feels Dunlap sliding needles into his scalp.

“Please don’t,” Jerry’s saying. His appeals have come down to basics. “Please.”

Dunlap, child genius director, winner of the fucking Academy Award, is back at the keyboard and the monitor, programming the instructions and acting like no habla the language of desperation.

“Please,” Jerry says as his nails dig into the mattress. And then he’s back in the 7-Eleven.

The Cambodian is seated at a table in a clearing he’s made for himself among the boxes of cereal, the cartons of Cokes. Jerry glances around the dim room. The back of the 7-Eleven smells of ground coffee and sugar and the spicy tea the Cambodian is drinking.

“It wasn’t like this,” Jerry says.

The Cambodian seems to have the patience of a slow-growing tree. Movements deliberate, he picks up the tea pot and pours it tiny, thimble-sized cup just for Jerry.

What Jerry has worried about has happened. He’s finally gone round the bend. He’s lost a couple of cards out of his deck. His elevator doesn’t go to the top floor any more.

“It never happened this way,” he says.

“Neural pathways,” the Cambodian says. “That is where it is at. Please sit down. Have some tea.”

But Jerry doesn’t want to sit. Jerry wants to get back to where things, even if they weren’ t very happy, made some sense. “Dunlap’s going to see this and he’s going to wake me up, right?” he asks hopefully. “He’s going to see this and know something’s wrong.”

The Cambodian tips his head to the side and regards the tea pot. “Dunlap will see what he expects to see. He will film what he expects to film. Dunlap has no imagination. To him, the shortest distance between synapses will always be a straight line.”

Jerry walks around the room, searching for the way out, thinking that if he could just get back to the main part of the store he could catch Dunlap’s attention. Maybe Dunlap will come and help him or something.

“There is no door,” the Cambodian tells him.

And after a while Jerry discovers the guy’s right.

“Please sit.”

There’s not much else to do, so Jerry sits down and sips his tea. The tea’s strong and hot and sweet.

“This never happened,” Jerry tells him. “When the electricity hits my brain, I’m supposed to remember real stuff.”

The Cambodian nods agreeably. “Yes, indeed. What is reality? Neurons fire an electro-chemical burst and subjective time is frozen. A river, when it floods, builds new banks. Time is more like water than fire.” He opens his chest to expose the neat rows of skulls. “Choose one,” he says, as if he is offering Jerry a cookie to go with his beverage.

Not wanting to be impolite—Jerry figures murdering the guy has been uncouth enough—he takes a skull.

With the empty eye sockets staring balefully at him, Jerry naturally starts thinking of death. He starts remembering how the Cambodian seeped foamy blood onto the bone-colored linoleum.

Then a funny thing happens. He realizes with a shock that the memory is just plain boring, like a bad movie he’s seen once too many times.

“Hey, man,” Jerry says as gently as possible. “Look, I’m sorry for everything, but enough’s enough, okay?” Jerry does feel sorry. He is sincerely sorry. Has been remorseful now for so long that his apology-transmitters have started building calluses. And suddenly the spark’s just not there. Yeah, he’s still sorry for killing the Cambodian, but he’s getting fucking tired of wallowing in it.

“When I was ten years old,” the Cambodian tells him, “the government put a gun in my hand and made me a soldier against capitalism. I was a very brave soldier and I shot many capitalists: elementary school teachers who did not know how to harvest rice; surgeons who did not clean latrines well. When I was ten years old I planted many fields with dead capitalists.”

Jerry turns the skull over in his hands. “I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” Jerry says. There is something in the back of the skull that looks like a small eye-socket. He runs his finger around the edges and after a moment realizes what he is fondling is a bullet hole.

“I became tired of apologizing, too.”

Jerking his head up, Jerry stares across the plain board table to the Cambodian. The guy’s childlike hands are spread on the wood.

“Paths,” the Cambodian says sadly.

Like gray fingers on a dun table, the eight-lane highway divides and spreads across the desert. Jerry blinks his eyes against the glare. He hears the click-click of the Cambodian’s shoes on the gravel and smells the dusty, metallic odor of noon.

“It is time to choose your path,” the Cambodian says.

So that’s what happens when the highway gets too big, Jerry thinks. Nature abhors unwieldy things, so when memory gets too big, it just sort of breaks up and goes in different directions. In his hands the skull feels pleasant: cool and smooth.

Jerry glances at the eight different choices before him. “Well, I guess it’s time to get back, huh? Which one takes me to Dunlap?”

The Cambodian stares at him with those wise, dark eyes and says, “Returning to Dunlap is your fate, so anyone of the roads will take you.”

“Thanks,” Jerry says, sticking his hand out. “Hey. It was nice meeting you.” The pleasantries his mom taught him don’t seem so fussy or hollow as they did when he was a kid.

In fact, that Tuesday night in the 7-Eleven has always seemed incomplete because it lacked the usual have-a-nice-days, the good-to-see-yous, and the y’all-come-back-nows.

The Cambodian’s hand in his is dainty; the handshake is as firm and righteous as destiny. “It was a pleasure meeting you, too,” he says.

Jerry turns to study the choice of paths again. When he turns back the Cambodian, of course, is gone.

The middle road looks like a comfortable choice for Jerry. Except for trying to knock over the 7-Eleven, he’s always been a man of middle-ground; of moderation.

As he hikes down the sun-hammered asphalt to the place where Dunlap waits, Jerry unlocks his chest and puts the skull on its shelf where it belongs.

Author’s Note: I’ve taught creative writing in Plano for a number of years, and on the way home from one of those evening classes I realized that I needed to come up with a short story idea for the next weekend. I first imagined noise—the small sharp sound of needles being dropped onto polished stone—then I thought, “What the hell does that mean?” It was a thirty-minute drive from the college in Plano to my house in Dallas, and by the time I was pulling up into my parking spot, I had the plot of this story.

Although the tense was changed from present to past, the story otherwise appears in its entirety in my first novel Cold Allies; and, yes, the short story was written first. Odd how the protagonist changed from the wounded young boy of the story to the rather unlikable but wounded young man of the novel.

The trajectory of needles in fog. Sleet falling through a dense methane atmosphere.

He snaps awake from the dream, and, disoriented, finds himself curled in a high-backed seat, a blanket rumpled about him. Except for the faint growl of the engine, the bus’s interior is burdened with silence, the sort of sticky, late-night silence in which nothing moves.

Beyond the night in the window, a bloated moon coats the desert with fish-belly light. He stares out, wondering where he is. Arizona. Maybe New Mexico, he thinks. Then the rocking of the bus and the musty smell of long-enclosed and heavily air-conditioned spaces lulls him to sleep.

He shuts his eyes and dreams of the persistent tap-tap of cold fingernails against his bedroom window, a sound like the dead wanting in.

Shit, he thinks, jerking himself out of his light doze and jackknifing his body forward. It seems that he’s had this dream before, and it seems that he can never quite awaken from it. His heart’s doing a heavy metal rock number in his chest and his breath’s coming hard and fast and painful. Panicky, he blinks into the magazine and potato-chip-bag-littered darkness.

On the aisle near the front of the bus, an elderly man snores softly, mouth ajar, hand curled by a bent-spined paperback. Reading lights halo the heads of the sleeping passengers, as though the small group is dozing away the miracle of Pentecost.

The sight is so normal that his heart finally slows. The ache in his chest subsides. Peering over his shoulder, he is relieved to see someone else awake. His gaze locks with the girl’s, and they exchange co-conspirator’s smiles. The girl has brown hair and bonbon brown eyes, and she reminds him so much of home that he is confused by the deluge of pain the nostalgia causes him.

An American girl, he thinks. As his mind forms the words, he sees her smile flicker and die.

He hears pellets of ice rattle against rocky ground, a sound so loud that he wants to cover his ears with his hands. Instead, he yanks the blanket up and shifts his gaze to the window in time to see a shooting star flash orange across the dark.

“Hello. My name—”

He jerks his head around. The girl is sitting next to him in the neighboring seat, and for the life of him he can’t remember moving over to let her sit down. But I must have, right? he asks himself. I just moved over and forgot about it, that’s all.

Her brows furrow and then clear. “Ann,” she says as though she has just now decided on the name, and finds her decision charming. “My name’s Ann,” She cocks her head. A pretty gesture for a pretty girl.

“What’s yours?”

“I—” He can’t remember. He can’t remember his own name! “I think there’s something’s wrong,” he hisses.

The clatter of frozen rain is so intrusive, so loud, that the noise makes him forget what he was about to say. It is so thunderous that he begins to wonder if in the morning, he will find the inside of his skull coated with ice.

Swiveling, he stares out the window again, and sees a fiery orange smudge moving through the night sky.

No. He’s mistaken. That burning thing. It’s not a falling star at all. It’s an F-14 crashing.

“Read me your book,” Ann says.

Her voice startles him. He looks down at his hands and sees that he is holding a Navy manual with the words TOP SECRET emblazoned in white across the dark blue cover.

“Read it to me aloud,” she tells him, leaning over intimately.

He opens the first page.

CHAPTER ONE, it says in huge sans serif type.

And under that is printed:

MAYDAY

MAYDAY

MAYDAY

With a spasm of fear, he slams the book shut. The girl is staring at him. “What’s the matter?” she asks. Suddenly, her face begins sagging, the features drooping, as though the underlying meat is boneless as a snail’s.

“Let me up,” he gasps. He’s trying to get out of his chair, but the strong clasp of the blankets is holding him down. “Let me out of here. I—”

There is a mushy, arctic feel to her hand, “In a moment. I want you to read me the book now.”

He moans and twists, dropping the book out of his lap.

“Don’t be afraid,” she says. “We won’t hurt you.”

The bus is rolling side-to-side, like a ship on a heavy sea. Down the aisle the bus driver comes, steadying himself by the tops of the seats.

“What’s the matter, boy?” he asks angrily. The bus driver is jowly and his face is running to pallid fat. The armature of his skull is nearly buried under the weight; and the boy knows that if he dared touch the driver’s cheek, his hand would sink through that gummy flesh.

“Don’t you want to fuck her?” the driver asks.

The fat driver, the boneless girl, have him trapped against the window. He turns to look out, to see if there is some escape.

The sight of the crashing F-14 shocks him motionless. The fighter is going down in the desert, falling in a quiet blaze of glory. Behind it trail dandelion fluffs blown by the wind: two parachutes.

“Take her to the back,” the driver’s saying. “There’s empty mats in the back, and no one’s looking. You can fuck her all you want. You can fuck her brains out.”

He tears his gaze from the crashing plane, the drifting chutes, to look at the girl. Behind her blank eyes he can sense the chill weatherhead of her thoughts.

They are in the very back of the bus, on the long bench seat. He’s using the blankets as a pillow and she’s on top of him, already moaning toward climax. He’s coming, too. He’s coming. The bucking of his hips is frenzied. His breathing is fast. He grabs her at the bunched skirt and squeezes tight, sensing the cold sponginess of her waist underneath.

The next instant there is a throb, a spurt of release. He’s climaxed, but there’s no pleasure in it at all.

“I want to go home,” he says, and, to his shame, he begins to cry. “Can I please go home now?”

Ann, ignoring both his tears and his question, crawls off him and lowers her skirt. “Will you read me your book now?” she asks politely.

Dazed, he sits up, and notices that his zipper is undone. It seems to him that he should have been wearing his speed jeans, and helmet, but they’ve disappeared somehow. He zips up his flight suit, while, outside the window, an F-14 is crashing in the desert and two men are ’chuting down over the twisted skeletons of burnt Arab tanks.

“My plane crashed,” he whispers to her.

“Read me your book,” she says.

“My name is Justin Morris. Lieutenant Justin Morris. And I ejected from my F-14.”

“Read me your book now, Justin.”

Rage and terror exploded in his belly. He shoves at her. “You captured me!”

The Arab National Army must have captured him, and have started feeding him drugs. Justin’s pounding on the window now, trying to get out, and the bus driver’s back, wanting to know what’s happening.

“Come on, boy,” the driver’s saying.

Outside the window, the desert is flashing by. A burning oil field blossoms on the horizon like a night flower.

“Come on, boy. Don’t you want to fuck her again?”

Ann leans over and grabs his groin. Justin elbows her hard in the chest. His arm plunges into her, dives right through her pink sweater, chill blood and putty-soft bone, until it fetches up against the bus’s seat.

He starts to scream.

“Now you’ve gone and done it,” the bus driver’s saying.

He’s gone and done it. God! He’s gone and done it. There’s something he should remember now, he knows, but the terrible din of the sleet batters all thought out of his brain.

“What do you want?” Ann asks. “What will make you happy?”

He grabs onto the nubby material of the seat in front of him and holds on for dear life. “Take me home! Please let me go home!” he’s shouting over and over, even though somehow he knows that he’ll never be allowed to go home again.

A calm voice says, “Go ahead. Call your mother.”

It is suddenly very, very quiet. Justin drops his hand from his eyes. He’s standing in one of those bus station rest stops, a place of fluorescent lights and bad food and Formica. To his right side is a pay phone. To his front is a long bar where passengers hunch over their coffee, motionless as stuffed animals. The place smells of onions and grease.

“Call your mother,” Ann says.

Justin turns to the pay phone, and realizes that there is a quarter clasped between his forefinger and his thumb. He puts the coin in and dials the old number.

“Hello, Justin,” a voice in the receiver says.

The voice is female. It’s not his mother’s.

“Mom,” he says anyway. He’s not feeling much like a fighter jock any more. His confidence is no longer high, and he’s so scared that his voice is cracking under the strain just like a little kid’s. “Mom. Where am I?”

The woman sighs. “You’re very near. Just picture home in your mind. Picture it very, very hard.”

He thinks of Florida, the squat, blocky pink house. The mango tree in the front yard and the orange tree in the back. The thick, sweet, green grass and the gray thunderheads in the humid sky.

“Now they’ll let you come home,” the woman says kindly. “If you’ll just read them the book.”

He slams the receiver down on the hook and stares in horror at the phone.

Oh Jesus Christ. The Arabs have him, and he’s never going to go home again. The Arabs have him by the short hairs, and all he’s allowed to tell them is his name and rank and serial number, and he can only remember two thirds of that.

He glances out the plate glass window. In the night sky, an F-14 is going down in flames. The cool blue light of woofers surround the pale, wispy mushrooms of parachutes.

“Good thinking,” a familiar voice says.

He turns to see Lieutenant Commander Harding.

“Name, rank, and serial number,” the exec nods. He’s dressed in his whites, and there are huge rings of sweat under his arms. It was always hard to get cool in the desert. “Tell you what, lieutenant,” he tells him. “You’ve come through this test admirably. Let’s go have a cup of coffee.”

Harding puts his huge hand out and Justin takes it. The man’s palm is firm and dry. Light winks off the exec’s balding dome and the embossed anchors on his brass buttons.

“A test, sir?” Justin asks, afraid not to believe it.

The XO claps him on the back. “Sure, kid,” he says, so gently that the concern in his voice makes Justin want to weep. “Don’t you remember the test? Well, I guess the drugs are still working on you. Let’s have a cup of coffee and wipe those cobwebs out.”

There aren’t any cobwebs in Justin’s mind. There is only that scatter-shot ice so slick that his thoughts just kind of slide off it.

He sits down on a stool next to a glass container of donuts. The waitress pushes a white cup and saucer in front of him.

Saucers. He stares at the saucer. Something nibbles and frets at his memory.

“You run into many woofers, son?” the lieutenant commander asks, taking a cautious sip from his steaming cup.

“Always run into woofers,” Justin answers, dragging his eyes up from his intense scrutiny of the dish. The waitress is staring at him. Something in her cold eyes, her pulpy face, reminds him of Ann.

“Tell me your story. Everyone’s got a woofer story, don’t they?” Clink clink. The XO’s spoon makes a musical, frosty sound against the thick sides of the cup.

“The first time Tyler, my Radar Intercept Officer, saw one in his screen, it scared the shit out of him,” Justin laughs into the sudden, vacuous silence. “Then he got where he could recognize their fuzzy return and they didn’t worry him any more. I’ve seen ’em fly off my wingtip and follow me like a dog, like they’re curious or something.”

“Oh?” the exec asks with a strange, flaccid smile “Do you think they’re curious?”

“I guess so, sir. They’re just like big, friendly dogs.” Justin’s coffee is strong and hot. The sip he takes bums the roof of his mouth. “When we hit the deck, my wingman makes a joke of it. ‘Hey Justin, my man,’ he says. ‘You got a blue woofer sniffing your tail. A woofer with a twenty-foot hard-on.’”

Abruptly he has the jarring thought that his wingman has been downed over fifteen minutes ago. Behind him in the pit, Tyler is screaming, “Approaching woofers!” but Justin, who’s preoccupied by the missile they took up the port engine a minute ago, is fighting the stiffness of the stick and the crazed, bumpy-road feel of the stalling plane.

MAYDAY

MAYDAY

MAYDAY

“Eject,” Justin says as he turns around, expecting to see his RIO. Lieutenant Commander Harding is there instead.

“Eject?” the exec asks pleasantly.

“We were hit,” Justin says. Or were they? Or was that part of the test, too? He whirls around on his stool to stare out the plate glass window. Over the desert mountains streak the red dot-dash-dot of tracers. Chaff sparkles in the dark. From a desperate, evading plane, hot pink flares fall like garish beads from a broken necklace.

“Look into your coffee,” the exec says.

Justin looks. The inside of the cup is a green radar scope, and at twelve o’clock is a tight pattern of white blips. Fuzzy bogeys.

Woofers.

“What do you think they are?” the exec asks.

Justin is sweating now. In the back of his nostrils is the ghost of a stench, the smell of burning insulation. “I don’t know, sir. I just don’t know.”

“Look it up in your dictionary.”

Justin glances down. WEBSTER’ S COLLEGIATE DICTIONARY, the front of the book says. And below that is printed TOP SECRET.

It’s not the words which make him remember. It’s something else. Maybe the frigid blue of the executive officer’s gaze, maybe the wintry chatter in Justin’s own mind.

He remembers the numbers in the Heads-Up Display counting down below minimum controllable airspeed; the way the nose of the plane was struggling to dip.

Oh, he remembers. He remembers reaching down between his legs and pulling the loud handle; how the separation of the canopy unleashes a chaotic, battering wind.

He recalls the bone-jarring jerk, the way his speed jeans inflate against the G-forces. He remembers the fluttering sound of the deployed parachute above; the sight of the F-14 plummeting to the dark earth below.

And, almost peripherally, he notices that some sort of light is painting him blue. His parachute is blue. His palms are blue. He realizes that there is something cold at his shoulder.

Something very, very inquisitive.

“Oh, Jesus God!” Justin screams. He lurches up from the stool and runs to the window, where an F-14 is going down in flames and a woofer is snaring its slow-falling prey.

He launches his body through the window, shattering the paper-thin glass. There are shouts of alarm behind. Beyond the broken window, the air doesn’t have that scorched-metal smell of the central desert nor the sweat-sock, humid smell of the land near the Gulf. Instead, the atmosphere is blue and moist and January cool and suddenly Justin realizes beyond a reasonable doubt, beyond the blind faith of a fighter jock’s high confidence, that there are things he’s better off not knowing.

“Read me the book,” Harding says.

Justin looks down in his lap and gently strokes the balding head leaving imprints of his fingers in the skull. Clack, clack. Clack, clack. The interior of the bus is dim and the sound the carriage makes against the rails is soothing.

Smiling, Justin turns to the first page.

“Chapter One,” he reads.

With his other hand, Justin reaches into the executive officer’s unbuttoned blouse and runs his fingers along the ice castle of the breast, the hailstone of the nipple.

“Procedures on Encountering UFOs.”

The words are meaningless. Justin sees them and mouths them. The book seems to please Harding, though. The exec settles down and sighs with satisfaction.

On the seats around them sit the bus driver and the waitress and Ann, their eyes huge and dark with wonder, as though Justin is telling them the most interesting story.

Justin reads.

His mind is an albatross running over the snow, taking to the air on its clumsy, wide wings. The wind catches him and boosts him into the glowering clouds, where there are no hurtful missiles, no hot flak.

He looks up momentarily from his book to smile into the freezing rain of their gazes.

Author’s Note:This was hubris—doing black male POV. I dared it for two reasons: Brazil rid me of many prejudices that white people in the U.S. normally possess; and working among many African Americans at the Dallas Morning News allowed me to see what I call “stupid white people tricks.” I was fortunate. Many of my Black friends were forthcoming about the scores of little hurts and unintentional insults they encounter day after day. They taught me lessons in race to which most whites are never privy.

I only hope that “Secret Language” is an honest look at racism Southern style and that I have not perpetuated one of those same tricks I disdain.

Because Robert had been raised up in the South he knew that if any little old white ladies existed within ten miles, they’d come over as soon as he moved in. They didn’t disappoint him. A day after he and Yuri were settled, the obligatory white ladies arrived, a pilgrimage of two spinster sisters with a pie. Robert liked them as soon as he saw them.

He admired the way they’d hid their surprise when he, and not a white man, had opened the door.

They hadn’t even glanced toward each other. Their smiles had flicked to high beam, and they had shone on him without flinching. To flinch would not have been ladylike.

They might have thought to themselves that it didn’t matter very much he was black. It wasn’t like he was a real neighbor.

Of course he invited them in, and Yuri, who wasn’t used to little old Southern white ladies, kept staring at them as if he wasn’t sure what they were doing there.

They came in like curious hounds, their noses pushed forward into all the nooks and crannies of the station. They smelled of lavender powder, and their conversation was as sweet and insubstantial as cotton candy.

“Isn’t this nice . . .”

“So much like a real house . . .”

“’Course it wants for some curtains . . .”

“Oh, now, Ida. It’s a military installation. What would the Air Force be doing with chintz?”

And Robert fell in love.

It was his own past he’d fallen in love with, really. They were all the little old white Southern ladies he’d ever known.

And they were more. They were grass growing thick and summer green when he was eight years old, and Miss Sarah Riddles calling him from the mower to high tea of the iced sort. They were Mrs. Nelson fussing at his bare arms in the November chill and giving him a homemade chocolate chip cookie just to make him feel warm. All white Southern ladies thought little black boys were cute. For an intense, fleeting while they loved them the way they loved puppies and kittens.

Of course Robert was grown, and he wasn’t sure how elderly white ladies would feel about him now, except that he was certain they were a lot more comfortable knowing the Russian was in the room, too.

He straightened his tie, cleared his throat, and, careful not to slip into the accent of the black, poverty-stricken side of Alabama, asked them if they wouldn’t care to sit awhile.

* * *

God’s calling me. I wish he’d shut the fuck up. He’s got the voice of a complacent white man, the sort who puts mayonnaise on his hot dogs.

And just like a fat-assed white man, He sounds a little pissed that things aren’t going His way.

“Captain Strickland. I know you can hear me,” He keeps saying with that backyard-barbecue voice of His. God sounds like the kind of guy who you’d find on the porch, a long-handled fork in one hand, a beer in the other, and a plaid apron on that says HEAD COOK.

Only you look over on that divine gas grill and you’ll see all the steaks have little black fingers, little black toes.

Oh, Jesus, I’m scared.

* * *

When the sisters spoke, they leaned forward intimately, as if they were about to tell the most wonderful secret, and their hands made gentle patting motions in the air. The first time one of them touched Yuri on the arm, he seemed startled.

Robert noticed the Russian’s discomfort, and he was sure both the women had, too. At least the toucher, Miss Minnealetha, had to have seen it. She never missed a beat in her monologue, but she didn’t touch the Russian again.

Like all old white ladies, they talked a lot about cooking. Miss Ida allowed as how she might have put a smidgen too much sugar in the sweet potato pie.

“I’m sure it’s going to be tasty,” Robert said, speaking quickly so as to get a word in without interrupting one of them. Southerners, at least the ones who were raised right, never interrupted. “It looks too pretty to eat.”

The women sat down, but innate nosiness won out. Leaving Robert on the sofa as if he were the minor deity in charge of graciousness and the pie were a small tribute, they were on their feet again, peering blatantly at all the equipment.

“I think it came out a little lumpy,” Miss Minnealetha told him, eyeing the open blast door of the control room and the IBM computer console inside. When the old lady got close to the doorway, Robert noticed that Yuri shot nervously to his feet. The Russian was running the fingers of one hand through his crew-cut graying hair in an anxious grooming gesture more native to cats.

Miss Ida was staring out the window to the collector. “And it browned all uneven.”

Robert figured the way the women were bad-talking it, he had to be holding the best pie in the world.

“Is it on now?” Miss Ida wanted to know.

Robert put the pie on the table, straightened his tunic, and walked to the window. “Yes, ma’am. You can’t see anything, but you can sort of hear a low-level vibration. In fact, if you were using an electric oven, the energy that baked the pie came from this. We made the switch over yesterday.”

Miss Ida was giving him good, polite eye contact, but she had to lean back to do so. Her head was on a line with his shoulder. Her complexion was so perfect, so translucent, that it seemed artificial; and Robert figured that, if porcelain dolls could age, this is what they would look like.

“Minnealetha, come look,” Miss Ida said. “You can’t see a thing.”

Yuri had flung his squat body between Minnealetha and the door; but she’d apparently lost interest in that and was checking out the power gauges.

“The microwave energy the satellite sends is invisible,” Robert explained. “Just like your oven at home.” He liked the way the women were poking around the station. They studied it as a pair of pink-skinned white mice would study a new maze. And most of all he liked the polite way they looked at him while he explained things.

Miss Minnealetha finally came over and threw an uninterested glance out the window to the football-field-sized grid of cells. “Now, that’s a hundred-year-old recipe,” she told Robert as she turned away, “handed down by a Nigra cook who’d been with our family for forty years.”

In the time he’d lived up North, that word had slipped through gaps in his memory. Miss Minnealetha’s use of it made his throat constrict. But he was a Southerner by birth, so his eyes never narrowed, his smile never faltered. He thought his face would crack.

“You remember how Glory’s crust was so light it just came right apart on the fork?” Miss Minnealetha asked Miss Ida, her tone nostalgic.

“Glory made the best crust in all creation,” Miss Ida said as if that, indeed, were the last word on pie crust, and the highest and best compliment they could give a black woman.

“I wouldn’t ever consider using an electric oven,” the other sister said. “Or a microwave. Always used wood or gas. Nothing ever comes out right on electric.”

“Can’t control the heat,” Miss Ida explained.

Miss Minnealetha laid a trembling, fragile hand on his arm. “But then the electric lights are just fine and the television reception’s wonderful, isn’t it, Ida? I notice we can get Birmingham real clear, isn’t that right?”

Miss Ida’s social radar had picked up on the possible slight. She quickly agreed with her sister.

That’s when Robert was certain he was in their good graces. He’d always explained to his Northern friends that white Southerners were like big dogs: If they thought you fit in, they’d jump up and lick you; if they thought you didn’t fit in, they’d tear you apart.

He wasn’t certain just how the South had changed since he’d been away, but he was pretty sure he was going to get licked.

I’ve always liked the eccentricities of well-bred Southern white women; but all Southern white men are the same. I found that out when I was a short black kid living around pink giants who always spoke in code.

ISN’T IT TIME FOR YOU TO GO ON HOME, BOY? I HEAR YOUR MAMA CALLING.

YOU AIN’T ALLOWED TO PLAY AROUND HERE, SON. YOU GO ON, NOW.

GET YOUR HANDS OFF THEM JACKETS NOW, BOY. THERE’S SOME CLOTHES FOR YOU ON THAT OTHER SIDE OF THE STORE.

Codes, like I said. But when I translated it, the message was always the same: Fuck you.

“Robert? I know you’re awake. Open your eyes.”

It’s the HEAD COOK of Hell talking again. Satan may baste you, but it’s God who’ll light your fire. I know better than to open my eyes. God loves surprises. Open my eyes and He’ll get me, just like Moe used to get Curly, with two stiff fingers up the sockets.

* * *

Yuri was the U.N. Observer, an electrical engineer who was a child of the pre-glasnost era. He had never ended his love affair with paranoia. “They could be spies,” he said when the old ladies had left.

Robert laughed. “They’re not spies. They don’t even know that the collector can’t affect TV reception.” Then he felt badly about laughing at them and added, “poor old things.” He made himself a cup of coffee and cut himself a slice of pie. It was as good as he had imagined it to be.

The Russian watched Robert eat, apparently waiting for the poison to work its way through the American’s system. “She said ‘nigger.’”

The word shocked him so much that for a moment Robert froze, his mind and heart deciding all at once that he would take that word from a Southerner, but he’d never take it from the Russian. It wasn’t Yuri’s birthright. Then, he literally shook his anger off, and said, “No, Yuri. She said ‘Nigra.’ Southerners just can’t make themselves say that final ‘O’ sound. It’s a genetic problem.”

“It sounds like it to me,” Yuri told him. “I think they meant to insult you.”

Robert finished the first piece, considered his waistline briefly, and cut himself another. “Let me explain how things are down here. White people probably mean well, but they’re confused, so they talk about us in euphemisms. If old people want to be polite, it’s colored or Nigra; and they got some others if they don’t. They can’t use the names we’ve come up with ourselves. African-American’s too long and makes us sound uncomfortably exotic. And black’s a color proper for crepe de chine, not humans.”

They burn you on crosses and hang you.”

Robert laughed. He wished the Russian would shut up. He didn’t know him well enough to discuss color. To argue prejudice he’d have to know the Russian like a brother.

“The real bad stuff’s all over and done with.” What he didn’t say was that he knew that a lot of little bad stuff remained. “Besides, Southerners must have an instinctive respect for the military. The black part may make them think less of me, but the Air Force blue sort of evens things out.”

“They could be spies for the Chinese. I will let my superiors and the U.N. know that you leave the control room door open and that you allow civilians in the station.”

Robert shot Yuri an irritated glance. “Great. You call anybody you want. But remember that a few security-cleared civilians have permission to visit. Civilians weren’t allowed to go into the nuclear plants and look what happened to nuclear power.”

Yuri put on his supercilious look. Robert figured the Russian practiced it in front of the mirror. “If the Chinese learn this technology, it will come from you.”

“Just what do you have against the Chinese, anyway?”

“I don’t trust them.”

“Their slanty eyes and everything.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Their slanty eyes and their yellow skin.” Robert snatched his plate from the table and walked into the kitchen.

Yuri didn’t say a thing.

* * *

God’s walked away from me, talking to somebody. I open my eyes and what do I see?

Not a band of angels; a platoon.

God’s dressed as a general, of course. And there’s a broad in surgical greens.

“Can he hear us or not?” God asks.

Oh. What a disturbing question.

God knows everything in my mind, doesn’t He? I mean, that’s what I always learned when I was a kid, learned so hard that I was afraid to look up girl’s dresses, afraid that God was seeing just what I was seeing and not liking a bit of it.

When I was growing up they talked in church about the wrath of God, and, my, didn’t I know it. When I was growing up I was scared of God because I always knew in my heart He was a white man.

It’s not that white men ever really did anything bad to me. It was just the little chicken-shit stuff that wore me down. It’s hard living with power like that, rubbing right up next to you.

They had power over my body.

HERE, HERE’S A DIME, BOY, GO OVER THERE AND GET ME A PAPER.

They had magic over emotions.

WIPE THAT SMILE OFF YOUR FACE, BOY. WHAT’RE YOU LAUGHING AT?

Their power just wore me down.

And if plain white men had so much power, then what would the power of a white God be like?

So why doesn’t God know I’m awake? This can’t be God, right? Am I right?

Jesus. You think you know what to expect out of life, know what I mean? You think you know your place. You got it all figured out and suddenly everything’s upside down. No way. This isn’t God at all.

Maybe it’s only General Gabriel.

“I think probably he does, sir,” the angel in green says.

General Gabriel swivels and focuses those small, cold eyes of his on me. I feel the power in them.

WHAT THE FUCK YOU STARING AT, BOY? he’s thinking.

* * *

The sisters came back a few days later with a pot roast. Yuri stopped them at the electronic checkpoint and didn’t want to let them in.

“Open it,” Robert said. “And then get your damned shirt and tunic on. You don’t greet visitors half-dressed.”

The Russian gave him an incredulous glance, but then he hit the button to open the barrier and, putting his Newsweek away, got up to put on his shirt. He didn’t seem happy.

“I know how you boys are,” Minnealetha said when she came in the station. “You just don’t cook for yourselves.”

Robert didn’t like the word “boys,” but including Yuri in it took the sting away. The sisters were old. A white man his age would be a boy to them, too. He lowered his nose to the warm, foil-covered pan when Minnealetha pushed it into his hands. The pot roast smelled like heaven.

The women stayed about an hour, knitting vague, rambling sentences about nothing in particular, the way old white ladies do. When they went home, they left a gentle aura of lilac behind them, and Yuri got on the phone and talked a mile a minute in angry Russian to somebody on the other end.

“What’d you tell them?” Robert asked when Yuri hung up.

“I tell them I think you are naïve.”

Robert’s lips twisted. He rose, went to the refrigerator, and got out a can of beer.

Yuri followed him, raising a censorious eyebrow. “We shouldn’t have liquor. It is against the regulations. We will get in trouble if they find it.”

“It’s just beer, not your rotgut vodka.” Robert loosened the plastic garrote from a second can of Bud and held it towards the Russian. “You want one?”

‘After a brief hesitation, Yuri took it, wandered over to the sofa, and sat down, Robert trailing after.

“Why naïve?”

“I think you hide the fact that you, too, are afraid of this place. I think you feel as if you must be friendly to everyone else. You put yourself in the hands of these women to snow that you are a nice fellow, and I believe they will take advantage of that.”

“They’re just old ladies.” Robert slammed back his beer, belched, and went to get himself another. He stared a long time at the contents of the refrigerator: the remains of the sweet potato pie; a wilting head of lettuce, a single-serving container of pudding, and the beer. All of a sudden he felt a crushing, exceptional loneliness, as though he were the last member of a dying species.

“Tell me about yourself,” he asked the Russian.

There was a long silence from the other room and then the bland reply, “There is not much to tell.” Yeah. Growing up in the old Red Army had made Yuri careful, all right.

“You’re from Moscow, I hear. I guess one big city’s like another. Boston was nice, for example. Good classical music.

“I like jazz,” the Russian said flatly.

“No kidding. Jazz. That’s strange.”

The voice from the other room was defensive. “Why is it strange?”

“Well, jazz sort of demands soul, know what I mean?”

Now the tone was chilly. “No, I do not. Russian musicians play good jazz. Because jazz comes from America, must you be American to play it? And if so, to play Bach, must you be a good German?”

Since Yuri couldn’t see his face, Robert allowed himself an impish grin. “You ever hear blues?”

“Yes. I like the blues. At home I have many records.”

“So I don’t understand how you can understand the blues, man. Know what I mean? You gotta have a background for blues. It comes from the whole culture. White people in this country can sort of do it, if they’re familiar with the cultural roots. The blues are my music.”

There was a short, bitter sound from the living room: Yuri laughing. “And not mine? I cannot like blues because I am not black? I think you are being a snob.”

“Snob?” Robert asked in disbelief. A cultural snob. He’d never thought of himself that way. “Listen. I was the only kid from my family to graduate from high school, you know that?” he asked over the hum of the refrigerator motor. In a moment he popped another can. “I got two brothers and two cousins in the pen. Funny, isn’t it? None of my white friends had ever known anybody who’d been to jail, and I got four relatives there. Those white kids I studied with at MIT might have liked the blues, but they couldn’t understand it, either. For them it was like going to the zoo and seeing the elephants and thinking they were neat. But no matter how hard they listened, they couldn’t hear the voice of the elephant.” With his thumb he wiped a stripe down the condensation on the can. “At MIT I didn’t talk about my family a lot.”

“So?” the Russian asked.

Leaning one arm over the refrigerator door, Robert stared towards the doorway blankly. He’d utterly forgotten the point he’d been about to make. “So we don’t know much about each other, do we? You like the blues, huh? You got relatives in the pen?” he laughed.

“No,” Yuri said. “Nor do I know anybody in prison.”

Face hot from sudden embarrassment, Robert slammed the door shut. “God, you’re a tightass. You should get into classical, man, where a mistake is always a mistake and you play all the notes like they’re written.”

“There is a way music should be played and a way it should not. There is nothing wrong with order. For example, if I had relatives in prison, l doubt my government would give me this assignment.”

“What’s -that supposed to mean?” Robert walked into the other room, his hand in a tight fist.

Yuri stared up him. “I understand jazz one way; you hear it another. Why did your government assign you to a place where people hate you for your color? Have you ever asked yourself that?”

Robert’s lips twitched. He wondered if the station were bugged and then hated himself for wondering. Suspicion was an infectious disease. If Robert didn’t watch himself closely, he knew he’d catch it from Yuri. “Come on. You know in the military there’s never any meaning to anything.”

“So you hate your government.”

“No,” Robert said quickly.

“But you are afraid to be here. As afraid as I am.”

“I grew up here. Alabama’s my home.”

“Is it?” the Russian asked. “Well, Alabama may have what you call soul, but I think you are not happy here.”

Robert thought about it for a minute, then shrugged. “I had no choice but to come when I got the invitation. You does what Uncle Sam wants and you goes where he sends you.”

A puzzled expression worked its way across the Russian’s face. “You does? You goes? Why do you suddenly use incorrect grammar?”

Robert threw up his hands in surrender. “And you say you like jazz. Jesus Christ. I don’t know why I bother talking to you.”

A brother would have completely understood; even a white American would have known what Robert had meant. One thing they didn’t have much of in Russia, Robert reminded himself, was brothers. “You don’t understand me. You don’t understand my music. You don’t understand shit.” He finished the beer in his hand and, feeling very sad, went to get himself another. It had been a long time since anyone had understood anything about him.

* * *

“I don’t understand. Why don’t you talk to me, Major?” The head angel’s voice is self-righteous. “I’m here to help you, but I need to know why this happened.

The lights of heaven are too bright. They make my eyes water. Maybe the lights are trying to tell me I don’t belong here.

Yeah? Well, big surprise. I never belonged anyplace.

I never felt good in the South, but I never felt at home in the North, either. The Yankees expected me to fall down in gratitude because they were letting me live with them, as if they thought the white people in Alabama kept me in chains.

Well, only sort of. Chains of a different sort.

But chains is chains. And sometimes those Yankees would stand back and give me the gimlet eye, just waiting for me to thank them.

Oh, thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you for letting me go to a white college and study white things like electrical engineering.

As long as I stayed with Yankees I never picked up the skills to understand them. And just like a wife longing for her abusive husband, damned if I didn’t start getting nostalgic for Alabama.

Oh, Jesus. I hate it when I cry. Tears are just sort of sliding down my cheeks. My hands are tied and I can’t move them to wipe my face.

I try to close my eyes, but Gabriel, who understands the wisdom of preparedness, shakes me hard, hard enough to wake the dead.

Being black means always feeling guilty for shit, for all the brothers who ever held up 7-Elevens; for all the black men who ever killed white men on the TV news; for a whopping part of the infant death rate; for welfare mothers; and for a good portion of the illiteracy statistics.

“Answer me, “ Gabriel says.

I would. Believe me I would. But I forget what the question is.

* * *

Robert dreamed of tornadoes.

He woke up, disoriented by a sudden adrenaline high. Next to him, Yuri was screaming.

“Get up!” The Russian shoved at his shoulder hard, pushing Robert out of bed.

There was a bad storm outside.

As he flailed his way up from the floor, night flashed from black to stark blue-white. Lightning boomed and sizzled just outside the window.

Robert ran to the control room feeling a manic pulse in his temple, his throat. His mouth tasted of stale beer. The alarm was buzzing, the computer on.

He stared at the monitor stupidly. Then he turned to the Russian. “You bastard!” he shouted. “What did you do?”

When Yuri didn’t reply, Robert stumbled back to his room in the strobing dark and searched a dresser drawer for his weapon.

By the time Robert got back into the living room, 9-mm in hand, he was fully awake. That’s when he realized that the lightning wasn’t lightning at all. The directional satellite feed was off target. Incandescent electricity was playing along the cells, and something huge, invisible, and very hot was walking the pasture.

Yuri looked terrified, but he ignored the gun. He pulled frantically at Robert’s pajama sleeve. “You were drunk. You don’t wake up.”

Robert pushed the Russian away and ran into the control room. “Jesus Christ,” Robert whimpered as he logged on the terminal.

“You don’t wake up!” Yuri was screaming over the earth-rattling booms from the field. “Suddenly it is arcing, and you won’t wake up when I call, so I go to the computer to see what is wrong, but I can’t log onto the program. In emergencies I should be able to get into the program—”

Robert tapped the keys, nudging the satellite back into position. The backup had gone catastrophic. And in the field, not two hundred yards from where they sat, microwave energy had been loosed like Satan from the deep.

“Get it back on target!” Yuri screamed. “Can’t you get it back on target?”

Robert stood up from the terminal. “Goddammit! It is back. The damned thing’s sitting right on top of the collector!”

Yuri stared at him stupidly.

“Don’t you get it? The cells have been compromised. We have to go out there and see what’s wrong.”

The Russian backed away into one comer of the concrete control room. Each sharp crack of electricity made him flinch. “Call somebody. Let somebody else do it.”

“They’ve already been called,” Robert said. “That’s an automatic with the program. Besides, I guess they’ve figured something’s wrong. They should be able to see the arcing from here to the plant.”

Yuri was breathing in uneven jerks. “We must shut it down.”

Blink, the open doorway was dark. Blink, it was bright again.

“You’re an electrical engineer and you’re afraid of electricity?”

Yuri ignored the American’s tone. “Yes! God, yes! Who better to be afraid of that sort of power? Who better to understand what it means?”

* * *

Power. It wears a white face and a badge. It’s worn them for as long as I can remember. That’s the law of God. And my brother, who understands Yin and Yang although he’s never heard of it, always figured that since he was my opposite, he should act the opposite, too.

God never sleeps. He’s the one from my childhood who knocks on the door at two o’clock in the morning, wakes Mama and Daddy, and asks where my brothers are. God wears a uniform and carries a pistol and that must be one of the reasons I love the military, why I am fascinated by electrical engineering.

Power. All I ever wanted was just a little of it.

* * *

Robert grabbed the Beretta from the table and pointed it at the Russian’s chest.

Walk out that damned door. You’re going to help me.”

After a moment he realized how melodramatic he looked, how useless was the gesture. After all, he couldn’t hold a bead on Yuri while they worked the outside controls. He shoved the gun into the waist of his pajamas, but the 9-mm was too heavy for the elastic. It slid like a cold hand down his thigh and landed with an anticlimactic clunk on the floor.

“Please help me.”

The Russian hesitated.

“I can’t do it alone.”

“Yes, yes, all right,” the Russian said.

Robert bolted to the door, Yuri lagging behind. Outside the station, threads of fire snapped like whips through the dark.

Heads down, they ran the two hundred yards to the first of the cells. On the west side of the collector they came across the tom and desiccated body parts of a small herd of cows:

Where the energy had touched ground it had leached the earth, transforming it into a strange, powdery substance, pale and dead, like the inorganic stuff of the moon. On the west side the stanchions had sunk in a foot, parting the cells and leaving the metal armature exposed, to the satellite feed.

Robert smelled ozone. He could feel the electricity like a tingling itch in his bones. Pulling Yuri after him, he lowered himself to the hot ground and slid under the first row of cells, searching for the hydraulic levers.

“Here’s A-1,” he told the Russian. “Put your hands around it and pull at my order.”

On his hands and knees, he crawled up the line to B-1, groped and found the soft, insulated bar. “Up a quarter and stop!” he shouted.

There was a whir of motors. A crunch. The seared ground had given way. Not ten yards from Robert’s head the microwave energy hit the armature and arced again, sending a tonal buzz through his chest, cutting off his breath.

Gingerly, Robert reached out and touched the lever again. “Go! Go! Up another quarter!” he screamed. The engines strained. With a weary crunch the ground compacted more. Turning onto his side, he held desperately onto the lever, hoping that the energy wouldn’t find its connection into the insulated part of the armature.

Synthetic lightning rang on the metal. Yuri was howling something in Russian ‘that sounded suspiciously like a prayer.

“Up another quarter! Now!”

Robert’s hand cramped on the butt of the lever, and he found himself staring out into the field at the decapitated head of a bull, its brain case exploded and empty. Red powder was still leaking from its vacant eyes.

* * *

I must have slept a little bit or something, because when I open my eyes again there’s another fat-assed important white angel in the room. God doesn’t have any black angels, I’m noticing. When you get that big, you don’t have to worry about busing.

The new angel’s got a Russian uniform on, and he’s impersonating a general, too. He seems very, very worried, and he’s picking at a brass button on his coat.

The two big-deal angels are talking, talking in goddamned codes again.

Mama always understood the codes better than I did. She had a facility for language. But language acquisition is never handed down, and I had an extra problem with the speech because I was smart. It scares them when you’re smart, whether you’re black or whether you’re white.

SHUT YOUR SMART MOUTH, BOY.

DON’T GET SMART WITH ME.

See? You just don’t fit in with Southerners if you’re smart. That’s the one sin they’ll never forgive you for.

I glance over at the two angels and wonder how smart they are. No one’s looking my way.

“ . .. but we don’t know who.”

The Russian angel sits down heavily. He puts his head in his hands. Old Gabriel’s standing in front of him, a look of divine pity in his face.

“I’m sorry,” he tells the Russian. “And there’s something else. We’ve found extensive neurological damage.”

The angel with the blue epaulets on his uniform glances up. “In which one?”

“Both,”“ Gabriel sighs.

* * *

The farmer who owned the dead cows was furious. “Containible damage?” Sutton asked, leaning both beefy forearms on the conference table. His face was as red as raw meat, and his blue eyes were staring with ironic disbelief at Colonel Gomez.

Robert darted a quick glance down the long, polished wood table. Gomez was tight-lipped.

“I lost eight good steers, Colonel,” Sutton said. Whatever goodwill the Southern farmer had had for the Air Force had apparently evaporated. “And it ruined a chunk of pasture. You been out there, Colonel? You seen that ground?”

Robert could sense Yuri shift his weight on the chair. After the incident, both of them had hidden the twelve empty beer cans, so Yuri knew where all the bodies were buried. Robert, his hands laced together on the table to his front, prayed hard to any god who would listen that the Russian wouldn’t talk.

Next to the furious cattleman who owned Zone 1 sat Miss Ida and Miss Minnealetha, who owned Zone 2. The sisters were perched on their chairs, attentive as well-trained children.

Any minute now Robert figured Yuri would spill his guts. The Russian had drunk a few beers of his own that night, but not enough to make any difference.

Captain Strickland was drunk, Yuri was going to say. I may be a tight-assed former Commie who thinks he likes jazz, but Captain Strickland, the smart-assed black person, who very much understands the blues, was the one who screwed up.

Then all the white people around the table would turn to stare at him.

Sutton, who wasn’t very smart, raved on. Robert wished the farmer would shut up. A headache had sprung up in back of Robert’s right eye. He unlaced his fingers and rubbed a spot on his forehead.

“You seen those cattle, huh, Colonel? Exploded into shit and steaks—” Sutton stopped dead, as if he had just remembered the sisters were there and said, “Pardon my French,” in an abashed tone.

Smiling, the two old ladies nodded.

“The microwave energy excites molecules, Mr. Sutton,” the colonel explained. “If you ladies will excuse my being graphic, the blood literally boils. And it boils in the contained environment of the skin. The same thing would happen were you to stick a rat in a microwave oven.”

“Nothing’s gonna ever grow in that pasture,” Sutton said.

“That is absolutely right. The ground has lost its ability to retain water, Mr. Sutton. Rain will roll right off it. Which is why the government is making restitution to you.” The colonel had repeated the ruined-pasture/government-money equation several times that afternoon, and he sounded like a man who hated to repeat himself.

“That ain’t enough. Listen. You told us this was just like an electric station, but you were lying. You got a weapon out there, Colonel.”

The colonel sighed. “Yes. It could be used as a weapon. Hence Major Yeremin’s presence as a U.N. Observer. We have a failure probability of 0.0001 percent, but accidents can happen. Tell me, though, Mr. Sutton, which would you prefer, a small accident such as this one which involves only a few square yards of damage, or a coal-powered electrical plant which can damage the environment for hundreds of miles around?”

“To hell with the environment! I want that thing out of my goldurned pasture.”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Sutton. You and the two ladies have signed a ninety-nine-year lease.”

Robert put his hand over his eye. Flashes were going off in his peripheral vision again. Blink-blinkblinkblink-blink. He had never learned Morse, so he wasn’t sure what it meant.

“Well, why the hell did it happen, anyway?” Sutton’s shout filled the room.

“A gyroscopic stabilization failure of the satellite itself. We think. We’re sending the shuttle up to take a look and make sure.”

“Well, maybe the Russian done it!”

Robert was close enough to Yuri to feel the startled jerk of his shoulders.

He’s going to talk, Robert thought. Any second he’s going to talk to save his own skin. Oh, yes, indeed. The colonel already wonders why I couldn’t get the satellite under control sooner. I can see the question in his eyes. Gomez’s covering my ass, but when Yuri talks, the jig’s up. And they’ll have this jigaboo dancing the brain-death jig to the Home In Alabama blues at the end of a borrowed rope.

The colonel’ s words emerged hard and definitive as little steel pellets. “Major Yeremin cannot get into the main computer program, the one that adjusts the satellite feed. The computer recognizes Captain Strickland’s unique touch on the keys. It would be impossible—”

Sutton half-rose from his chair. His face was purplish red as if microwave energy had hit him and he was about to explode dried brain matter onto the polished table. “You leave something like that in the hands of a damned foreigner and a nigger captain?”

Whack. The Colonel brought his open palm down on the table. He jumped to his feet. “Captain Strickland has a doctorate in electrical engineering, Mr. Sutton. He knows more about this system than all but four other people in the United States. And at great personal risk, he went out and hand-calibrated those cells, something I imagine you wouldn’t have the guts to do. He saved your white ass, Mr. Sutton.” The Colonel’s lips twisted into a sneer. “And your red neck.”

In the tense silence Miss Ida’s voice was sweet and unexpected as a perfect C-major chord at the end of a dissonant symphony. “Mr. Sutton?”

“Ma’am?”

“You Know Minnealetha spent a good two hours making those pecan and molasses cookies for you, and you haven’t even touched them.”

The men stared at her.

“My, I’d just love me one of those cookies and a cup of that good coffee you make, Colonel. Would you be so kind as to put a pot on?”

Neither woman’s smile had dimmed.

After a pause the colonel turned on his heel and walked over to the coffee pot.

That afternoon when Yuri and Robert got back to the station, the Russian said, “The old ladies are crazy. They talk of cookies.”

Robert’s head throbbed; his eyes wouldn’t focus. “They wanted everybody to shut up.”

“Then why don’t they just tell them to?”

Robert ran the security program. Numbers danced across the screen as if he were reading them above a car hood at noon on a summer’s day. “They speak in code. All white people do. The only language I ever learned was the language of the elephant.”

“I am afraid of this man, Sutton. I was once a Communist; you are black. Will they put us on a cross and burn us?”

“Yes,” Robert said. “It’s all gone too far.”

Yuri sounded frantic. “Let us call someone and tell them of what is happening. Won’t anyone help us?”

“They wouldn’t understand us when we speak.”

“Listen, Robert. I think the ladies come in here and leave something to interfere with the program’.” The Russian was tearing the cushions off the sofa. “I think they caused this accident so that it can be blamed on us.”

Robert watched his frantic search for a while. “You know what I think?”

“I do not care what you think.”

“I think you may be the problem,” Robert said.

Yuri’s hands froze on a pillow. He inched away.

“You were at the terminal when I came out,” Robert said. “Maybe you moved the satellite.”

“It was a micrometeorite or perhaps a misfiring of the stabilization jets. Do not blame me for shoddy American engineering.” Yuri’s eyes shifted nervously towards the door.

Robert saw the movement of the Russian’s eyes and very carefully put his foot between Yuri and possible escape. “Maybe you slipped something in my beer. Yeah. That’s it. You slipped something in my beer so I’d sleep.”

The Russian’s laugh was skittish. His face was very pale, even paler than a white man’s should be. “Why would I wish to do that?”

“So they’d blame a black man.”

Yuri laughed again. “This is crazy. I have nothing against black people. Besides, I cannot get into the program. Your idiotic government has decided that only you can. We did not correct the error quickly because you were drunk. You may feel guilt, but do not expect me to indulge in it with you.”

Putting a hand to his forehead, Robert winced. The pain was very bad. “Forget it. Just forget I ever said anything.”

“Yes. We get angry at each other. That is to be expected. It would be best to forget, it.” Putting his hands in his pockets, Yuri sauntered back down the hall, casting a glance, behind him as he went. He walked into Robert’s room.

In a few minutes he came out and Robert could see discomfort in his face. But there was ironic vindication there, too. If a paranoid lives long enough, he’ll find out one day he’s right.

Robert slipped the automatic from under his thigh and held it where Yuri could see it.

“I haven’t made up my mind about you, Yuri. Whether you’re a real white man or not, I mean. What do you think about that?”

“I think your military wishes to kill me,’” Yuri said. “I think that there is no place now that I can run. I think all this time you have hated me because I was once a Communist.”

Robert laughed. “You may be right.”

* * *

“Both of them?” the angel dressed like a Russian general’s asking. I’m thinking that if he keeps worrying at his button that way, he’s going to pull it off. “Neurological, damage in both of them?”

“Yes,” Gabriel himself says. “And it’s too bad. There was damage apparently dating from the first arcing incident. There’s no way of telling who was guilty, but whichever one it was, it’s important for us to remember that they both were heroes once. It’s very important to remember that it was because of that heroism they became sick. They weren’t responsible for what happened later.”

“Have I told you how I regret this?” whispers the Russian angel.

“Everyone regrets it.”

“There is the official word, of course. And also the dismay of the environmentalists at losing their one hope. But I wanted you to know of my personal feelings. God, I am so sorry.”

God.

Me, myself, Captain Robert Strickland, black boy wonder from MIT. I’m more powerful than God.

Listen very carefully, children.

For a time I made God dance on the tips of my fingers.

* * *

The pickup was back. Every night it came back.

Yuri watched for It. Every time he saw it in the camera, Yuri would call Robert to come, and Robert, looking in the television screen, would see the blurry black and white image of the truck lying in wait outside on the dark road.

It was a big flare-fendered pickup with a roll bar and gator-gigging lights. Coon-hunting lights. To the side of it, on the concrete gate barrier, he could read the spray-painted words they had left on the first night of their vigil. The white men weren’t communicating in codes any more.

GO HOME, RED, it said.

And below that:

GO HOME, NIGGER.

Simple and to the point.

But Robert, after all those years up North, after all those protective years in the Air Force, was home. Southerners were like big dogs, and Robert, who was also a Southerner, knew he was about to get his throat tom out.

“Why do they come back?” Yuri wailed. “They come every night now. What do they want?”

Robert knew very well what they wanted, but he shrugged anyway.

“They are waiting.” Yuri giggled. “They come with their Bic lighters and their charcoal briquettes to make burning crosses of us.”

The inside of the truck was dark, but Robert imagined he could see darker shapes moving in the shadows: the round shapes of heads, the lethal, thin shapes of rifles. The truck’s engine was idling, and it breathed puffs of white smoke from its tailpipe.

“Shut up,” Robert said. He couldn’t see them yet, but he knew they were coming. In the screen of trees to the back of the truck he could feel bodies moving, he could sense 30.06s. in shadowy hands.

“The U.S. military has caused this. I understand now that is why you have not called them. You mow they have always hated black people. I myself have nothing against blacks, of course. No Russian has. But I have been thinking of a way out. We should call my embassy,” Yuri said. “They will grant us asylum. My army will come with a helicopter and many soldiers. They will shoot these men who mean to kill us, and then they will take us away to safety. To safety, Robert.” The Russian was trembling like the DTs had hold of him.

Robert sat cleaning his Beretta and staring at the blurred shape in the television screen. Next to his leg was his M-16 and three hundred rounds of ammunition. “No,” he told Yuri.

When Yuri reached for the phone, Robert slammed the clip into the automatic, spun in his chair, and leveled the pistol at the Russian’s face. “No,” he said.

* * *

The next day the old ladies came with a lemon cake. Robert started to eat some, then thought better of it. He put it down on the counter and backed away.

“You look peaked,” Ida said. She patted Robert on the arm and then turned to look at Yuri, who sat rigid and tight-lipped in his chair.

Robert glanced at him, too, flashing a code out of his eyes: YOU OPEN YOUR MOUTH YOU SON-OF-A-BITCH AND I’LL BLOW YOUR BRAINS OUT.

Yuri didn’t even blink. He might have been afraid to. Robert didn’t like folks who talked back.

The two women had surrounded Robert. Out of the comer of his eye he caught a glimpse of Minnealetha. She’d remembered that it was necessary to be polite, and she’d replaced her sweet, porcelain mask over the horror.

Robert grinned at her. She grinned back. Oh, my, Grandma. What big eyes you have.

And Ida was growing twin yellow fangs. When he whipped around to face her, she had already hidden them, the way old white ladies always do.

See what big teeth you have, my dear.

Minnealetha was looking out the window, sending signals to the white men gathering on the other side of the woods.

On the security screen in the comer there was the pale shape of a pickup truck on the road, passing fast. The microphone picked up the clunk of a thrown rock.

Ida laughed. “Don’t you pay any attention to those Sutton boys. Their Daddy just got them riled up. It’ll all be over soon.”

Yes. Soon it would be over. Robert looked out the window. In the pasture was a scarecrow shaped like a black man burning, and in the woods, black men hung like heavy fruit from the trees. The light from the flaming scarecrow made Robert’s eyes water.

He turned around.

* * *

The Russian angel comes up to the bed. “I must know. Was Major Yeremin in it with you?”

I feel the smile start at the corners of my mouth and work its way wide and happy towards the middle.

“Did he find a way into the computer system? Did you kill him when you saw what he was doing, or did you kill him for trying to stop you? Please, Captain Strickland. It is important to both our governments that we know the truth.”

The truth.

The truth was that He wasn’t a white man. That was the secret they were trying to hide, because if I had known it, things would have been so different.

God was never a white man at all.

* * *

Out in the pasture God was walking. When His foot hit the high tension lines there was a roman candle flash, a bone-jolting zzzzzzt. Trees exploded into flames.

“I speak God’s secret language,” one of the sisters said. “All white people do.” Robert wasn’t certain whether it was Ida or Minnealetha who had spoken.

On the horizon a tongue of fire shot up towards the heavens as God marched towards Birmingham. Robert tapped a few more commands on the keyboard, and above his head, in the cold depths of space, he could sense the satellite turn in a slow, deadly waltz.

Yuri was staring at him in horror. There was a wet, red hole in the Russian’s chest.

“Do you know the secret language?” the old woman asked.

“‘No,” Robert said softly. He had always, always wanted to learn it. “Can you teach me?”

Ida was talking even though her mouth no longer moved. Her eyes were half-open. Blood had made a thin, neat crimson stripe down her face.

“Of course,” she assured him, as if Robert were eight again and she had made him a promise. Promises to children, even little black boys, were never, ever broken. “I have a recipe for it,” she said.

Author’s Note: I’m a sucker for Victoriana, therefore this novelette is one of my all time favorites. I was pleasantly surprised when one of the male members of my writer’s group told me that it was his favorite, too. “The husband could have been a cardboard villain, but instead he becomes a tragic figure,” he said, much to my relief. Having survived an awful marriage, I’m not particularly sympathetic for the plight of controlling husbands.

I’ve often thought of expanding this into a novel, but each time I realize that I would ruin the impact of the story. This says everything I wished to say about the serenity of the mind and the cruel bonds of some marriages without saying a word more.

Lionel always said the plain muslin dress was one a parlor maid might wear on her afternoon off. Had he known Iona was wearing it with company in the house, he certainly would have made her change. But Iona was one whose rebellions were quiet; and so, to forestall any arguments, she’d taken early breakfast in her rooms.

The morning dew on the meadows outside the manor was dense. Where her hem brushed the grass, it came away wet. In her left hand she clutched a small cheesecloth bag; her right was occupied with her walking stick. Every few yards she paused and studied the ground to see if she could spy any tracks of gastropodae.

The night before, the revelation of her interest had spawned great derision and some shudders. Lionel’s huge-bellied uncle Edward, a veteran of India, had scowled and asked why Lionel could not manage to keep his wife from tramping the fields. Dowager Lady Darcy, visiting from the neighboring manor, had lifted an incredulous eyebrow and wondered whether snails weren’t something more to be banished from the garden than collected. Rosanna Powell, the widow of Lionel’s younger cousin, had asked in her superior way if Iona couldn’t find a more agreeable pastime such as pressing flowers.

The fact was that she could not. And had the guests known the entire truth of it, a truth she also carefully hid from her husband, they would have been stricken speechless. Iona studied the reproductive cycle of gastropods, not for any salacious knowledge, but for the science itself.

She moved towards the opposite shore of the lake, whisking past fat spiders who dangled patiently in their webs. The forest was a jewelbox: the fog pearlescent, the dew-burdened leaves diamantine. As Iona studied the depths of the untouched woods, a thrush trilled in the gloom. She stepped into the shadows, shouldering her way past two young ash trees.

Suddenly the air was illuminated as though a pale match had been struck in the darkness. Disoriented, she took a moment to notice the trees were gone. In their place was a small, white room where an unlikely creature sat, peering at her from a chair.

She had never before experienced a swoon, but perhaps, she thought, this was what other women saw when consciousness faded and the mind disarranged itself.

The atmosphere was hushed. Apart from the chair and the creature, the room was barren, aglow in soft, parchment light. Hand held to her throat, she backed up the way she had come.

Within an instant the atmosphere darkened. She was in the forest again, the two ashes and the thick spring woods behind her. For a moment she stood there, stunned. By the evidence, she hadn’t experienced a swoon at all, but a mutiny of her imagination.

Creeping around the saplings, she inched into the woods. The forest was aromatic with the sweet scent of loam, the sour pungency of leaf rot. There was no gnomish creature sitting astride a plain chair, no otherworldly room. She might have continued her search for polygridae; but, reminding herself that timidity was unconscionable in a researcher, she turned back and entered the small opening between the ashes.

The change in the lighting was breathtaking. She blinked and then blinked again as she caught sight of the being in the room.

He was improbable in a humorous way, rather more amphibian than man. Placed to either side of his flat, brown-gray face were two inquisitive eyes which at her entry closed and then slowly opened, like a morning glory welcoming the sun.

A less well-bred woman might have screamed. Iona did not. “I do beg your pardon,” she murmured.

Those sad, intelligent eyes shut briefly, the lids wrinkled and dry as a bird’s.

“As I don’t believe in goblins or trolls, you must be a figment of my imagination, sir,” she said, feeling childish and silly talking, as it were, to the air.

He opened his eyes as though in inquiry.

“I am, to put it bluntly, delusional,” she said, detached from both the statement and the occurrence as though she were speaking through another’s lips. “But it is in a scientist’s nature to question, even though he plumb the horrifying depths of his soul and discover his own Mr. Hyde.”

Of course this was her own Mr. Hyde, she told herself. The room reminded her of the spartan rooms of her beloved Kyoto, that strange land where paper walls blushed with brittle light. The creature astride the chair might have been her own rough self, a specter which was comfortable only in the small- confines of its own imagination.

“Quite nice,” she told the being playfully, deciding to face her own insanity head-to-head rather than flee from its terrors. Indeed, the room was nice. It was free from the excessive ornamentation and damask-curtained gloom of England, more elegant and bare than the conceit of British pseudo-oriental decor. “But, if you will forgive me for saying so, you have need of a window.”

She glanced around the bare walls again, and her eyes snagged on the sight of a small square—how could she have missed it? —that opened onto gray sky.

She walked up and looked through, her tightened throat ensnaring her breath. Outside the window it was raining, the drops dimpling a bamboo-lined lake. Across one slender arm of the pond a lacy bridge arched, and from somewhere, faint and distant, came tile discordant tinkling of wind chimes.

“How lovely,” she said with a sigh. “How magical the mind can be. This is quite like the Gardens of Perpetual Happiness which lie outside the palace of Emperor Mutsuhito.”

It was like, yet not like. The flowers near the lake were a bit too colorful, the bamboo a sight too perfect. No, this was not the real place, but the magical garden in her memories.

Swiftly she turned away, tears wetting her eyes. How unbearable, how unbelievably sad. She’d come to look for snails and had instead found herself, her entire universe carried on her back.

“Please do come again,” the creature said.

She turned towards him, surprised.

“I see that you are ready to leave. I wish you would come again. It is so lonely for me.”

She studied him. His gentle voice rang in her head even though she hadn’t seen him open his mouth. No need of that, of course. The thoughts, the words, were her own.

“Naturally I shall come again,” she promised him.

How could she not? The boundaries of her loneliness were paper-thin, the atmosphere within bright and cramped, with room only for herself and her caged aspirations. Hefting her walking stick, she strode through the far wall, exited between the ash trees, and, specimen bag quite empty, made her way to the house.

By the time the butler had met her at the door, she had nearly put away the feelings of strangeness. Catching sight of herself in the glass, her cheeks high-colored from excitement, her blond hair blown wild by the wind, she hastened to straighten herself as best she could and, reminding herself of duty, inquired after her guests.

“Sir Edward is up and about as befits a soldier,” Haverty told her, his black, twinkling eyes belying the solemnity of his tone. “And Mrs. Powell has slept late and has taken her breakfast in her rooms.”

She had started up the stairs when he called after her, his voice now strained with timidity, “Madame? I’ve taken the liberty of informing cook about your interest.”

On the steps Iona turned, painfully aware of her sodden dress, her wet shoes. One part of her was .anxious to return to her, rooms and the ministrations of her chambermaid; another part was trapped by Haverty’s words.

“She encounters snails in the herb garden, madame,” the butler told her, all vestiges of his early smile vanished and a fearful apprehension taking its place. Haverty’s hand fidgeted at his coat and then lifted to his dark hair as though trying to neaten its already brushed perfection. “I have informed her that she is to save all interesting specimens she finds. I hope that is to your liking.”

“Thank you,” she replied absently, her gaze flicking around the hall, anxious that she might, in her disheveled state, meet Uncle Edward, or worse, Rosanna Powell.

“Cook has them ready for you, if you’d care to see them.”

Curiosity besting her, Iona came down the stairs and followed Haverty into the kitchens. The tweeny was polishing silver at the table. By the stove, cook was in command of an army of boiling pots, her sleeves pushed up on her thick, floury arms. When Iona entered with Haverty, the woman wiped her hands on her voluminous apron and smiled. “Got some snails for you, missus,” she said. “Cooked them up for you as Haverty ordered, so they’d be clean and all and not nasty when you puts them with the others.”

Iona took the silver tray that was handed her. Cook had painstakingly boiled and cleaned at least a dozen specimens of helicacea, .the common white garden snail.

“I’ll get you more,” Cook offered. “There’s plenty about.”

“Yes, of course,” Iona told her. “I’m quite pleased.” And she was pleased, she realized. The pair had accepted her pastime, although it was obvious they did not quite understand the point. She stood in her kitchen, bedraggled from her hike, and was overwhelmed by the gentleness of her servants’ attentions.

“The master has gone off with Sir Edward,” Haverty told Iona in a conspiratorial whisper. “I’ll call the chambermaid to come up to you presently.”

She felt her cheeks bum. Of course the servants would be aware of the dissension her scientific interests had caused in the house, but she didn’t care for their knowledge to be tossed in her face. Without another word, she spun on her heel and, toting her platter of helicacea, hurried upstairs.

Later that day she brought her embroidery to the withdrawing room and sat with Sir Edward’s pinched wife and Lionel as they listened to Edward’s tedious rendition of the manliness exhibited at some battle or another.

“That is work more befitting a woman, my dear,” Edward said abruptly, pausing in his description of the red tide as it descended on rebellious natives.

Iona glanced up from her sullen jabs at the cloth. Sir Edward’s beard was trimmed into obedience, his great mustaches waxed and tamed. He was staring at her, his gaze critical and edged, as though he feared his own mousy wife might catch some of Iona’s mutiny and he might have to single-handedly put it down.

“It is agreeable,” she said cautiously, aware of her husband’s dark, warning look. “But not altogether challenging.”

Edward harrumphed. “Men have challenges. The call of battle and such. Women need none other than bearing children and raising them properly.”

Iona’s face grew hot. “We have not been so blessed,” she told him.

“Perhaps if you’d not spend your time poking and prodding in the grass,” he told her, resting his clasped hands comfortably on the bulge of his waistcoat, “you would discover that blessing forthcoming.”

Lionel glanced from his uncle to Iona, his expression stony; and much later, after a boring dinner conversation which was conducted uncompromisingly by Edward and not much lightened by Rosanna Powell’s Mosaic handing down of the laws of fashion, Iona repaired to her rooms.

As she was sorting through her collection of exotic Eastern shells and deciding what to do with the dozen or so cook had given her, Lionel knocked at her door.

“Put them away,” he snarled. “And while my uncle is here pretend to be a dutiful wife.”

She swung around on her dressing stool to regard him. “I should think I do more than pretend,” she told him.

“Put them away, I tell you!” He crossed the carpet to her, his tall body in a threatening stance. “By law all that you have is mine. Should you forget that, I’ll gladly take them from you.”

Meekly she slipped the tray back into a drawer, afraid he would exhibit one of his rare, but violent tantrums. He had never forbade her the studies before, but should he wish to, he clearly had the right. When she glanced up she saw him contemplating her in the mirror, the stem expression gone and a simpering one taking its place.

“Just for a while, Iona,” he said. “Just while the guests are here.”

She nodded and rose, thinking that he would leave. He did not. As she turned, his arm encircled her waist and his lips sought the solace of her neck. She stiffened for a moment in his embrace, hoping that tonight he should find his manhood and not blame her for the failure. The argument ended as all their disagreements had, smothered by Lionel’s needy and despairing groan.

* * *

However peevish Lionel might be about her studies, Iona knew promises were meant to be kept. The next morning she arose before the sun, dressed in a plum gown that was slightly out of fashion, put on a pair of scuffed boots, and walked out to the lake.

Before she reached the forest and the twin ashes, she had the chance to wonder whether she had achieved sanity and the odd creature of her imagination might be gone.

As she slipped through the space between the trees, she saw the being sitting as he had sat the day before, plumped in a chair in the plain white room, his somber eyes drawn to her face.

Part of her wanted to flee, but curiosity engaged her. Thinking to see how far her madness might go, she walked past him to the window and looked out. In the Garden of Perpetual Happiness it was still raining. Fat, yellow chrysanthemums dipped their heavy heads in the force of the shower.

Whatever the creature was, she realized, symbol of her aspirations or guardian of her conscience, he was not much of a gentleman. He had not risen as she had entered, and he did not bother to offer his seat.

She turned, and her skirts nearly toppled an empty chair just behind her. It was a wondrous thing, of a brilliant white which seemed not to have been painted on, but which was part of the integral structure itself, like the pale of milk glass.

She sat and faced the creature, who was gazing at her with interest. “Are you comfortable now?” he asked. The hands clasping the arms of the opposite chair were slightly webbed, the digits altogether too long and thin for relaxed study. His skin in places was bubbled up like hardened foam.

Before she had a chance to reply, he told her, “I am not what you think. And I am older than you imagine.”

“Imagination,” she answered sweetly, “is ancient.”

He glanced away. Through the window came the dripping, liquid music of the rain and the heavy perfume of flowers. The creature looked sorrowful there, dressed in his tight, white suit, and she reminded herself that grief and loneliness, too, were as primal as imagination.

“Does it please you?” he asked. “What I have made for you in the window?”

“Yes. But then you would know it does.” Inquisitively, she ran her hand over the slick arm of her chair and then up the warm white wall.

“It is not paper,” he said.

She paused in her study of the odd room and met his gaze. “I see that you wish it to be paper, but I hope this will do.”

“Why?” she asked.

He lifted that great head in apparent query. “Why what?”

“Why do you wish to please me? Is it because I have not been pleased in so many years?”

He looked down at his legs, spread presumptuously and casually apart. “No. It is because I have not been pleased in such a long time and I wish you to come back.”

He looked so downcast that she laughed. “O, dear Froggy. May I have leave to call you that? For it is altogether what you remind me of. My dear sir, I can see you are my shell, made of my very warp and woof. Where I go, you go. Why look so forlorn when I carry you with me, except that perhaps my mind is forlorn as well?”

“Look through the window,” he said.

After a pause for confusion she rose and looked out. The Gardens of Perpetual Happiness were gone, and in their place was a harsh, red-lit land where a bloodshot and angry sun peered down onto low apartments. Startled, she leapt back.

“Do you see?” he asked.

She whirled to face him. “Of course I see,” she said with a frightened gasp.

His magnificent head lowered. “No, you do not. But I perceive you are anxious to get home, and I will not stay you.”

She walked to the blank wall, and as she did, she heard his low, desperate plea behind her, “Please. Do come again.”

* * *

The next day was stormy, the wind lashing the branches of the laurels outside the French doors of the withdrawing room. She and Lionel and their subdued guests sat before the fire nudging a recalcitrant and dying conversation, Iona thinking of Froggy.

The following morning dawned sparkling and fresh, but, before she could quit the house, Lionel reminded her she was due for a day of good works and should call on the farm families. She might have asked Rosanna Powell to accompany her, but the woman was still abed. She asked Sir Edward’s wife instead, and to Iona’s surprise and regret, the woman accepted.

Adeline was so frightfully shy that she looked about to bolt from the trap. Her nervous hands clutched and plucked at the side of the carriage. The carriage was just approaching the gates when Adeline, a rare glint of mischief in her eye, leaned across the seat and whispered, “Your butler cuts a handsome figure.”

The butler, had she said? Iona was not certain for a moment that she’d quite understood.

“Oh, Lionel is all right, as far as that goes,” Adeline added pensively. “But he’s too old and much too British for my tastes. A bit smooth-faced and weak about the eyes. But Haverty is young and possessed of a dark, gypsy charm. You are a lucky one, my dear.”

So shocked was she that Iona failed to do the proper thing and draw away. Instead, she accepted the woman’s presumption with wide and startled eyes.

“Yes. Quite comely,” Adeline added, “and I can plainly see that he is smitten with you.”

Iona sat frozen, her hands clasped in her lap. Adeline cast her gaze wistfully to the road where oaks grew to either side at stem attention. “How I do miss the wars,” she said softly. “And all the virile young Ghurkas.”

For a moment Iona searched for a pleasant reply, then gave up the effort and sat in rigid silence. At the farmhouses she handed out cakes to the children and jars of chutney to the wives, all the time grappling with the shocking nature of Adeline’s confidences.

Iona had known adolescent fantasies of romance, of course. Then the cage of her arranged marriage had snapped closed. During her wedding night’s awkward and hurried deflowering she’d begun to suspect that there was wisdom in her mother’s whispered injunctions. Iona had closed her eyes, endured, and thought, with limited success, of England.

When she and Adeline rode back to the manor house it was Haverty, not the footman, who came out to hand her down from the carriage; Iona had the harsh thought that Adeline might be right, and that the butler had indecorous ambitions. She discovered that, after all those years of marriage, she had them, too. Some scandalous part of Iona cherished the firmness of Haverty’s gloved hand in hers. She was aware, for the first time, of the strength in his shoulders and the fit of his trousers at the joint of his legs.

Fleeing from her thoughts, Iona raced up the steps and paused, turning in time to catch the simpering glance from Adeline and the answering discomfort in Haverty’s lowered gaze.

Soon after luncheon Iona made to repair to her rooms, but exited the French doors instead and went straightway to Froggy.

“So sorry I was detained,” she blurted as she walked through the wall.

Froggy glanced up, a sparkle of amusement in his eyes. “But you did come,” he said.

She crossed to the window, where the Garden of Perpetual Happiness was being washed by the rain. Casting her mind back to the puzzle of the red, dreary land she had seen during her last visit, she was not aware of Froggy’s quiet approach until he grasped her fingers.

It was not Froggy she thought of in that instant, but Haverty. Haverty and his wide, sympathetic smile. Instantly she drew back, slipping her hand from his.

He let her go. “I did not mean to alarm you,” he told her. “I simply meant to show you I was real. Look out the window, please,” he said.

She looked. In the ruddy light of a foreign sun tenements sprouted thick and round as mushrooms. Grotesque frog-shaped forms darted through the bruised and purple shade.

There were more beings like him. Someplace.

Froggy left her side, her stunned gaze following him. When she peered again out the window, the rain-swept gardens were there.

“So,” he said, sitting down and leaning forward over his knees expectantly. “As I sense your thoughts, I see that you begin to understand. I, too, am a scientist. I, too, went out on exploratory expeditions. I was left here by my fellows a great long time ago.”

She did not wish to believe him, but the scene out the window had given her no choice. It was detailed, very real, and unlike anything her own mind could have conjured. The blood suddenly drained from Iona’s cheeks. She was fighting for breath, her lungs struggling against her whalebone stays. Her head swam and she flung her hand out to the chair.

“Are you all right?” he asked solicitously. “You aren’t dying, by any chance?”

“No,” she sighed, dropping into the chair carelessly, her taffeta skirt crinkling. She looked up at him. Not a creature of her own imagining, then. Froggy was a being far stranger than that.

“Tell me about yourself,” he urged, settling himself back into his chair. “Tell me why you are lonely.”

She cast about for a response, but the answer itself was so huge that it made up the whole of her mind. There was no distinctive place where loneliness was and all the rest was satisfaction.

“As you have already perceived, I am a naturalist,” she began, lifting her chin as though defying him to refute her. Yes, she thought. A naturalist. And the specimen of a lifetime was sitting opposite her, his webbed hands absently caressing the smooth cloth at his chest.

“I study gastropods; snails in particular.” How odd, she thought, that she would think of her pastime first and her position second. “I am married to Lionel Whitstone who owns the land you live on.”

A glitter of humor came to his eyes. “Well, after all, it is not as though I take up much room.”

She laughed. The formal stiffness left her back, and she slumped with an unladylike posture in her seat. He was a charming creature, her Froggy. Not sour like Lionel sometimes could be; not lost in his element like Haverty. No, Froggy was very much his own man, as easy in his surroundings as a bullfrog on a lily.

But perhaps not a he, she thought, her brows knitting together in confusion. There was no hint of a bosom on his chest to be sure, but a furtive glace at his tight trousers assured her there was no bulge there, either.

“I am both,” he told her pleasantly.

“Pardon?”

“Both male and female at the same time.”

Iona fought her embarrassment. She was a scientist, after all, and had studied the hermaphroditic pulmonata. For a difficult moment she searched for a proper response. “How . . . convenient for you.”

He quirked his head to the side. “At times. Is it because you are not both that you are lonely?”

“I shouldn’t think so,” she told him earnestly. “And you have stated that you are lonely, as well.”

Poor, abandoned, lost creature, she thought, her own solitude grown suddenly paltry. How long had he been separated from home? And how comfortable could he be in this yellow-lit, alien place? She lowered her gaze and, from the comer of her eye, caught a glimpse of the watch pinned to her dress. Nearly four, she realized with a start. Lionel would be beside himself.

Froggy met her apologetic look with a knowing, jaded one of his own. “Given a choice in the matter,” he told her, “it is best to be both, I think.”

As soon as Iona arrived at the house she fled up the stairs to change. Entering her rooms, her eye swept over her terrarium, the tracks of polygyridae painted across its glass. Then her gaze caught the exotics placed on a shelf above. She stood for a moment, entranced by their beauty, afternoon tea quite forgotten.

The shells of the English snails were mostly all of a kind, but the Eastern ones were banded with color, complex as pagodas. She took one down and, lifting it to the window, gazed inside. Through the chamber, more delicate than any porcelain, glowed a gentle, kindly light like the light in Froggy’s rooms.

How long must Froggy have been trapped in that place, a two-dimensional spot between three-dimensional trees? He had told her time was not for him what it was for her, yet space must not be alike, either. Her mind played back the scene of the red-skied land in the window, a sight which for her was a nightmare, which for him must have been dear. How different they were, she thought. And in the confines of their existence, how alike.

When Lionel burst in without knocking, she nearly dropped the shell. His face was high-colored from fury, and his hands were clenched into fists.

“Where have you been?” he demanded. “Sir Edward has noticed your absence.”

She lifted the shell carefully to its place and turned to her dressing room. “I will change immediately.”

Behind her there was a horrendous, splintering crash. She whirled. Lionel had struck the terrarium from its base. Sand and snails and bits of glass lay strewn across the floor. He raised his boot and brought it down. Snails died under his feet, their lives crushed out with a gritty, broken-eggshell sound.

“There,” Lionel said. “Perhaps you’ll tend to me now, rather than to your snails. Perhaps then, if you become a real woman, I can—”

There was a sharp knock on the door and the chambermaid’s voice on the other side, raised in alarm. “Missus? Are you ill?”

“We’re quite all right,” Lionel shot back.

Iona could hear the tap-tap of the maid’s boots as she beat a hasty retreat down the hall.

“I’ll have Haverty clean out the rest,” Lionel said, his affronted gaze lifting to the shelf of exotics and then dropping with gratification to his handiwork. “And you will get dressed and come down to tea. Be pleasant, for God’s sake.”

Her lips parted. A lone tear dropped from her eye, leaving a moist warm trail down her cheek. “Why?” she asked numbly, her voice barely above a whisper.

He glanced up at her, a hint of guilt in his gaze. “Sir Edward knows of many opportunities for investments. He is well-placed in London society. I am surprised that you have not realized the benefit. It would be in the best of both our interests that we—”

In a moment of glass-clear lucidity she realized that Lionel had dared to do the unforgivable and that, like the crushed snails, her life would never be mended. “Why take from me my only pleasure?” she cried.

He jerked his head back as though slapped by an unseen hand. For a giddy instant she thought that Froggy had reached out through his pocket in the world to strike him. “I would think you get your pleasure from tending a home, from ministering to me,” he told her firmly. “And for once I would remind you of your place.”

With that he whirled and stamped out, leaving her beached on the broken-shelled, sandy shore of her ambitions. It was a while before she was able to compose herself. When she was calm she blotted the tears from her face, dressed in a suitable gown, and went out her door.

In the hall she met Adeline who, at her approach, hastened to hide a medicine bottle in the folds of her skirt. Perhaps realizing she had been caught, she gave Iona a simpering grin. The woman’s eyes were slightly glazed, her mouth a bit too slack.

“Laudanum,” she explained thickly. “For the palpitations, you know. They are all waiting for us downstairs, I suppose, but I felt the need for a little strengthening.” At that divulgence she tittered rather too loudly and hid her mouth with her hand.

Slipping her arm in Iona’s, more to steady her stride, Iona gathered, than from any show of friendship, Adeline walked downstairs to the withdrawing room.

A fire had been lit. The two men were seated, apparently trapped in one of Rosanna’s tirades on the frivolities of the young. The trio glanced up as the two women entered and Iona caught the sharp, accusatory glance Sir Edward gave his wife. Loosing her arm, Iona watched as the woman fell, rather too awkwardly, into a chair.

The conversation strained for a moment and then broke free, fraudulent and lighthearted.

It was well after dinner that Iona had the courage to enter her rooms. The floor had been cleaned; the shelf that had once housed the exotics was vacant. She swept her hand along the wood, feeling the places they had once been, her fingers sensing their cool, fragile ghosts all lined up in a row.

A while later Lionel carne in, approached her rather too roughly and was injured when she did not respond. He soon left, possibly, she thought, as much out of fear of his failure than from any rebuff on her part. She undressed and lay under the covers, thinking at first she would never sleep, but at last falling into a drowse and dreaming of sun-shot forests rising at her back, the trees tall as cathedrals, light as air.

A sound woke her. She roused and crept to the door. In the flickering of the gaslamp which had been lowered for the night, she caught sight of a figure making its way down the hall.

Haverty, she thought at once, her cheeks draining of blood. He must be making his way to Adeline. But then the figure turned and the gaslamp lit the face. No. Not Haverty to Adeline, but Sir Edward to Rosanna Powell.

She heard the old general’s furtive knock, heard the squeak as the door was opened, watched him disappear. Poor Adeline and her Ghurkas and her laudanum, Iona thought as she made her way back to bed. The woman had fashioned for herself a dark, heavy shell, one strong enough and thick enough to protect against the grinding, pressured seas of her husband.

Iona did not sleep again that evening. Hours later, just before dawn, she heard Rosanna’s door open and heard quiet steps retreat down the hall. A few minutes later Iona arose. Earlier than the parlormaids to their duties, earlier than cook to her post, she dressed and went down the stairs to the door.

Haverty caught her there, his face stark even in the kind glow of the candle. His hair was mussed, and he had put his coat and trousers on hastily over his nightshirt.

“I heard a sound,” he said by way of apology. Then his gaze grew troubled and he blurted, “Are you quite all right?”

“Yes. Of course,” she told him stiffly, hoping that he would not wake Lionel. “I couldn’t sleep and thought a morning walk might settle me.”

“I’m so sorry about the terrarium,” he said, his expression more than solicitous. “The pretty shells aren’t cast away, though. I’ve saved them for you in case the master should change his mind.”

“That is very kind,” she murmured, torn between the shocking implications of his disobedience and the utter generosity of it.

“I have them in my room, all wrapped in cloth so they shan’t break. They are quite attractive. With your permission, I should like to take them out occasionally and look at them myself.”

In the luminosity of his eyes she thought she caught a glimpse of fond words and heartbreaking questions. It would be best, she knew, to leave them mute. Muttering a short agreement, she walked out into the humid morning air.

On the steps she turned. Haverty was standing, still gazing at her cryptically. “Thank you for saving them for me,” she said.

He nodded. After a moment of what seemed to be vacillation, he quietly shut the door.

* * *

“You are sadder today,” Froggy said.

She strode past him to the window, not bothering to respond.

The scene in the window brought her a counterfeit peace. Rain pebbled the glassy surface of the pond. The chrysanthemums bloomed in their rocky borders, all unchanged.

“How long?” she asked and turned around.

He must have sensed her weariness, for the room had grown suddenly larger. A red chaise longue lay like a stripe of blood in a comer near his chair.

He must have also understood her question. Her mind to him was not a painting in a locked house, but a bas-relief on an outside wall. Therefore, when he did not answer, she knew he had simply chosen not to. “You’re very tired. Come and sit down. Tell me all that makes you sad. Telling of sadness takes the sting away.”

“Why did your people leave you behind?” she snapped, her tone more irritated than she had planned. She didn’t sit. She refused to. It was enough that she complied with Lionel’s every wish.

Froggy regarded her somberly. “Will you not come and talk? Must you stand there glaring and tight-fisted?”

The words made her aware of her defiant stance. With an effort she unlocked the muscles in her back and eased her fists open, brushing idly at her skirt as though she could whisk away her misplaced anger.

“Dear God,” she said in a grim undertone. “I think it is all that can be asked of life that one go through it a harmless creature. To please people is not only a futile undertaking, but it makes one subservient and eventually weak.”

When she glanced at him this time he seemed to be smiling at her, although his large mouth was in its usual expressionless line.

“Do not dare to find amusement in my sorrow, sir,” she cautioned.

His large eyes widened even further. There was no iris, no white, only a jet blackness that went on and on, like the unchanging gardens outside his room. “I was merely wondering if it would be advisable of me to try to please you when you appear to want to spurn all pleasure-givers.”

“I am a pleasure-giver!” she shouted. “Have I not tried, against my nature, to be a dutiful wife? Although, God knows, Lionel rarely has the ability to take his pleasure of me.” She bit her lip on the shameful admission and whirled to face the window again. “That can be fortunate, of course. At least his impotence saves me from the disgrace of his adultery.”

To her back the silence grew, companionable, but questioning.

“I am—” she began and paused. What she needed to say seemed so vulgar that she only went on with the greatest of efforts. “I am quite comely,” she muttered. “We are so unlike it is possible that you have no idea of that. Lionel saw only my beauty; and my father, who was dismayed by my unsuitable bookishness, thought hapless, sport-loving Lionel a good match. It was only later my husband would suspect my spirit rebelled under his rule. And, because he is a simple man with uncomplicated thoughts, it took Lionel years to discover the worst: that I was merely an imitation of a woman; I have no interest in fashion or child-rearing. By then, of course, it was too late.”

She turned to Froggy with a wry expression. “In my own way, you see, I am a hermaphrodite, too.”

He patted the chaise longue in invitation. She ignored him.

“Why should your friends leave you?” she asked. “Did they have no choice in the matter? Had you angered them?”

He tipped his head to the side. “It was altogether unavoidable. Now, come sit down and rest. Not for my sake, but for yours. Although I must admit it would please me not to be the focus of your irritation.”

She came forward grudgingly and lay down. Sleepily, she gazed at him, and an astounding idea wriggled through the dense earth of her consciousness. “I think you are dead,” she told him.

He closed his eyes, the wrinkled lids shuttering in either surprise or pain.

“That was the unavoidable circumstance, was it not?” she asked softly. “The visit must have been a long, long time ago, long enough so that no people saw your expedition. Otherwise there would have been stories. There would have been myths. How long have you been alone, Froggy?”

Sleep was overwhelming her. For the first time she was aware of the quality of air in the room. It was stuffy and warm, like a long-closed greenhouse in summer. Her eyes fell closed and she opened them with an effort.

She must have been dreaming, because Haverty was standing before her, his gloved hands clasped before his waist.

“Haverty?” she whispered, but he did not answer. He did not even seem to have heard. She attempted to rise and couldn’t.

Because it was a dream, she forgot about Froggy watching, forgot about the gulf between Haverty’s station and her own. She watched in fascination as he took off his gloves, coat, and shirt and laid them on the empty chair.

He came to her, his dark eyes larger and blacker than she had remembered. He touched her breast. She arched her back, her body rising to meet him as warm bread to the heat. His palm slid down and down, drawing in at the nip of her waist, flowing out at the swell of her hips.

When the hand reached her thigh, she looked into his eyes and saw, in their darkness, something alien and infinite. Terrified, she sat bolt upright. Haverty was gone. In his chair Froggy sat, studying her.

She stood, arranging her skirts, her face tight with embarrassment. “You go too far, sir,” she said, “to manipulate me as you have. Are you so lonely that you seek a voyeur’s solace? I am not an experimental creature to be poked and prodded and spied upon.”

“I merely gave you what you wanted.”

She brushed obstinately at her clothes as though to erase the memory of Haverty’s able hands, but need still clung to her, persistent and painful as a burr. “You mistake me.”

“No,” he said, shutting his eyes briefly. “I think I do not.”

She whirled on him, but in that instant reminded herself of what he was and how easily he might misjudge her. “Do not confuse that which I want with that which I will accept,” she told him in a stern but moderate tone. “This was ill-done.”

He seemed discomfited. “Will you please come again?”

Froggy had again picked through her scattered thoughts as easily as a nanny plucking strewn toys from the floor. She hadn’t until that moment realized she wanted to get away, and hadn’t foreseen that returning would be difficult.

“I will try,” she told him quietly.

“I would do anything for you, make concrete your every express wish, if you would only return.” He took on a fearful, woebegone look.

“I really will try,” she promised.

* * *

Outside the ageless sanctuary of Froggy’s room it was storming. Rain was coming down in sheets. By the time she made it out of the forest she was soaked, and by the time she reached the lake she was shivering.

On the road hard by the lake a carriage was waiting. There Haverty stood, a blanket over his head. When she saw him, Iona halted in shock and could not believe he was real until he splashed his way over the wet grass and lifted the blanket over her.

“How did you know where to come?” she asked, raising her voice to be heard above the wind’s rush.

He was standing without the protection of the blanket and was already soaked. His hair hung down miserably on his forehead.

“The grooms can see from the stables,” he replied, pointing towards the low barns. “They remark that lately you always go the same way.”

Froggy. Fear for him lumped in her throat so that she could scarcely breathe. Perhaps someone would stumble onto the passage between the ash trees and discover him. He would be studied. His immaculate, timeless room trampled with mud. Her fear for him came as a surprise, and she was struck by the novel idea that she was not so much a scientist as a simple questioner—her answers precious only to herself.

Haverty was making frantic motions towards the carriage as though he wished to take her arm but dared not. When she finally took his direction he seemed relieved.

“Tell no one else,” she cautioned him as they picked their way through the meadow.

He glanced up, his gaze startled.

“Tell no one where I go.”

The startlement left him and an injured suspicion took its place. “As you wish, madame,” he said, lowering his eyes.

They rode in uneasy and hurtful silence back to the house.

* * *

Lionel did not remark upon her disheveled state, but merely gave her a sullen glance from under his grizzled eyebrows. Iona hastened to her room and changed, the maid having all she could do to make her wet hair presentable.

When she was finally composed, she went down the stairs and was caught by the sounds of an argument in the library.

“I should ask where she goes,” Sir Edward said in a tone as blustery and chill as the weather.

Lionel’s reply was even. “She is not your wife.”

“Indeed, she is not. Were she, I would thrash her. It’s good for a woman, you know, just as it benefits a high-strung horse. She has mannish ways, Iona. Possibly that is the reason she has not given you an heir.”

“What?” Lionel sounded distracted, afraid. Then suddenly his voice seemed to clutch at the hope his uncle held out to him. “Oh, yes. Certainly. Yes.”

“When I was a general, I would brook no disobedience from my subordinates,” Edward said. “Compassion merely softens resolve. And a real man needs stiff-backed determination. Ask her what really interests her in the woods. Ask her, too, how the butler knew where to find her and why he went, rather than sending a footman.”

There was the soft sound of footsteps on the carpet. Someone poked viciously at the fire, toppling a log. “Damn,” Lionel said quietly, and Iona couldn’t be sure whether he had cursed at the fire or at herself.

“It is not snails, my boy,” said the old general in a self-righteous tone. “Surely you know women have no fascination in such things. Were you not blind, you would see the way Haverty looks at her, like a mouse on cheese.”

Careful not to make a sound, Iona crept to the withdrawing room. To her dismay she saw that Adeline was there by the fire, head down in thought, poking at something in her hand.

As Iona drew near she saw that the object of Adeline’s attentions was a helicacea, much like one of those Cook had presented her. When she sat down on a nearby settee, Adeline glanced up and met her gaze. The woman’s gaze was clouded with a surfeit of laudanum.

“I was trying to see what you saw in them,” she said.

Gently Iona plucked the snail from Adeline’s palm and set it on her own. In the library Lionel and Sir Edward were speaking of scandals, the worst one hidden from Sir Edward’s knowledge. Lionel could not admit to his own impotence, she knew; and if he must hide it, he might barter that for some other disgrace.

Given the choice, Lionel would choose to be called cuckold before being known as half a man.

With wry shame, she remembered how her body had strained toward the image of Haverty. It was not that she loved a servant. That was unthinkable. No, what needed consideration was that she was looking for something, and even desire would do.

In her palm the snail lay quiescent, snuggled in its narrow, solitary house.

“You are so pretty,” Adeline told her. “I was never pretty, you know. Yet you are of such a serious mind. I quite admire you for that.”

Iona lifted her gaze in astonishment and was trapped by the longing in the other woman’s expression. “It is such a delicious thing to be engaged in men’s studies. Tell me,” Adeline said, leaning forward in desperate, second-hand interest, as though prettiness and high-mindedness might be conveyed. “What do you see in these creatures?”

Iona looked down at the snail and smiled. It had poked its head out of its shell and had begun, shyly, to explore. “They are so like we are,” she said. “So limited in knowledge, so locked up within themselves. See how their horns strain forward in curiosity—” Her voice failed her and she went silent, watching the slow, guarded creep of the snail along her palm. “And then draw back,” she said, gently touching her nail to the creature’s waving horns, “in imagined harm.”

“So timid,” Adeline said, her voice catching.

Iona glanced up to see tears coursing down the woman’s cheeks.

“Yes,” Iona said softly, not knowing from where the woman’s sorrow sprang nor how to soothe it. “Quite timid.”

There was a noise at the door, the heedless, careless noise of the men’s entry. Iona looked up in surprise, meeting Lionel’s rage. “God!” he shouted. “You bring that filth into the withdrawing room?”

For a moment she feared he was speaking of her suspected adultery. Then he lunged forward, snatched the snail from her hand and threw it into the fire. When Iona turned to Adeline she saw horror and grief blanch the woman’s face as though she had been witness to a murder.

Without another word, Iona rose and made her way up to her room. A moment later she heard the heavy tread of Lionel’s feet on the stair. He entered her room without knocking.

“Do, er, whatever you do,” he said with a graceless gesture, “to prepare yourself to receive me. I will not be rebuffed as I was last night.”

She stood, highly aware of the clatter of rain against the eaves, cognizant of the quality of silvered light on the carpet. She lifted her chin a little. “No,” she told him. “I think not.”

His face flickered, through a range of emotions, possibly trying to translate her words. Had she meant, he might have wondered, that she would not rebuff him again? Or had she meant the unpardonable, that she would not receive his attentions? His expression hardened. “Put on some perfume or whatever you do to make yourself pleasant. I will wait.” “

“No, you will not,” she said.

His face altered again, this time to ‘a fretful insecurity. “Are you—I mean—indisposed?”

She turned her cheek away to stare into a comer of the room, wishing Lionel would leave. One of the things she loved about snails was that they were so utterly inviolate. “I simply have no wish—”

For a moment she was sure that the bedpost had somehow collided with the side of her face. As she fell against a footstool she saw that the bedpost had not been the attacker, but Lionel’s fist.

She brought her disbelieving fingers to her mouth. They came away bloody.

“God!” he cried. His face was twisted into a fearsome grimace as though he were the one in pain, and not her. “You are not the wife I married at all! Get up! Damn you! Get up!”

Unsteadily she rose, clutching the footstool.

He was glowering at her, tears in his eyes. “For years I have allowed you your little interests, yet even my generosity will not earn me your regard. God’s sake! How can I understand you?’ How can I lie with you when you shut me out? How do you expect me to do that?”

“I do not expect—” she began softly.

He raised his fist again, paused in the glare of her steady, unflinching look, then slammed his way back out the door.

She sat on the footstool, her head in her hands, dazed by his brutality. In a while he was back, bursting in unannounced. In his fist he clutched a scarf.

“Here,” he said. “I have discovered at least some of your secrets.” Releasing his grip, he let the scarf flutter open. Shells dropped like hollow, heavy rain.

Her fear forgotten, she fell to her knees to gather up the exotics. His boot was faster. She watched as he crushed them one by one, their gay colors ground into pale dust.

Lionel pulled her roughly by the elbow and flung her onto -the bed. The high wooden foot bruised her back. Her head hit the counterpane, loosing her hair from its pins. He was on her, pulling her skirt up, tearing at her petticoats. But his infirmity gelded him. After a frantic time of trying, he fastened his trousers and quit the room, leaving her exhausted and sore.

She did not venture downstairs all that day. The next morning when her chambermaid came to arrange her hair, the girl daubed a little powder on the bruise on her mistress’s cheek and then blurted, “Master has given Haverty the sack. All the house is in disarray for it.”

Iona’s heart fell. Poor, loyal Haverty. Her studies had undone him, as well. Guiltily, she glanced to the girl and saw tears standing in her eyes.

“He so admired you, missus, for your seriousness of mind and all. Because of you, he taught me to read and bought me books so that I might engage him more aptly in conversation when we married.” The girl’s gaze dropped to the floor.

So what Haverty felt for his mistress was not love but an overwhelming respect. “I’m sorry,” Iona murmured, uncertain whether the flood of emotion she felt contained a majority of relief or envy.

“And the worst of it is,” the girl continued, “he’s thrown out without no severance nor letter of recommendation. There’ll be no posting at all for him unless he hires on in the fields or is sent to the workhouse.”

“I shall write him a letter,” Iona said immediately, bringing a fragile cheer to the girl’s face. “And certainly he deserves a severance. I have some means of my own saved from the monies Lionel has given me.” She opened a drawer and drew out a velvet change purse, handing the maid two gold sovereigns. Then she took out pen and writing paper and inscribed a fitting recommendation.

When she opened her eyes the next morning, the sovereigns were glinting on her nightstand. Haverty’s letter of recommendation was lying next to the coins, the sealing wax broken, the thick paper tom.

Iona sat up quickly, holding the blankets to her chest. The room stank of whiskey, and across the carpet sat Lionel, glass in hand, his tall body slumped in a chair.

“It is like a fire that cannot be put out,” he muttered.

Sunlight trickled through a space between the curtains, igniting a stripe of blue in the carpet to stunning incandescence. “Watching you lie there, wanting so badly to take you.” He smiled a bit, his lips stretching without humor, a terrible tautness in his eyes. “It isn’t that I lack interest, you know.”

“I understand,” she whispered. .

“No,” he said. His voice was bitter and hollow at the same time. It reminded Iona of a bottle emptied of some caustic poison. “So clever in all other things, and yet you have no idea.” Suddenly his eyes grew glassy with memory. “I wasn’t always like this. Once I had control of my virility.”

She glanced in alarm at the coins, the tom pieces of the letter. “I agree it has gotten worse of late,” she said in a faltering voice, “but even in the beginning there were times—”

“The guests have gone home.”

To protect herself from the icy draught of his gaze, Iona pulled the covers more, tightly around her shoulders.

“I’ve had no choice in the matter, Iona. No choice. To be so betrayed, my trust altogether shattered. Of course the chambermaid and cook have been given the sack.”

When he rose she shuddered. When he came to her, she drew back.

He seemed to take no notice. Leaning over, he kissed her on the forehead. His lips were dry; his breath stank of stale liquor and sleeplessness. “You will stay in your rooms now,” he said.

It seemed to Iona that he meant she would stay there forever.

Lionel’s sickly melancholy pervaded the halls like the damp stench of rot. Shut in her room, Iona ached for the three loyal servants, turned out as they were without prospects; but the hurt of Froggy’s absence was like a soreness deep in the bone.

She took the precaution of hiding some of her books and congratulated herself on her canniness when Lionel took the rest of them away. When he wordlessly came to appropriate her books he did not accost her; but she was alarmed at the ragged pallor of his face, the hectic madness in his eyes.

He drank a great deal, so that she could not define a moment between his sobriety and his drunkenness. The footmen and the parlormaids took to tip-toeing the halls.

For four days she remained confined, feeling Lionel’s anger charge the house as electricity does a storm. His sullen rage chaffed at her, wearing her down, the fickleness of his blusters seeming to pull her now here, now here, so that she had no clear idea of their ultimate direction.

On the fourth evening he retired to the downstairs sitting room, and, although she stayed awake, she did not hear him come up. He had obviously drunk himself into a stupor.

Just before dawn she crept from her room and exited into the garden. Clutching her gift to Froggy, a slender copy of Keats which she had salvaged from Lionel’s ravagings, she hurried her way across the meadow. Near the lake a dark figure stepped out from behind a tree, directly in her path.

She halted, alarmed. In the gray light of dawn she recognized the tall, slender form, the hunched shoulders. Lionel’s coat was unbuttoned, his hair in great disarray.

“I found him,” he said, leaning unsteadily on his walking stick.

Her hand flew to her mouth. She imagined Lionel’s huge, drunken ungainliness in Froggy’s small room. Froggy would have met his sullen rage with curiosity and perhaps even amusement. Had they fought? she wondered. And could one do harm to such a creature?

Yes, she knew. Froggy’s peace was a fragile, hushed one, like the stillness inside a bubble. Shatter that, and Froggy might fly into a thousand pieces, too.

“Did you touch him?” she shouted angrily. “Did you hurt him?”

He reached out and furiously snatched the book from her hands. Swaying a bit on his feet, he blinked at the title. “Keats,” he muttered. “Milksop love poesies that you considered me too dull to understand.”

The sun had gained the horizon, turning the gray morning pink. With a growl of rage, Lionel flung the book. She saw it for an instant before it splashed into the lake, its brief flight dark as a startled bird’s against the sky.

“So you loved him,” he said, his gaze drawn to the water.

She considered that for a moment, all desire aside. Lust was an insignificant matter, she realized jadedly, when compared to the fierce attraction of like minds.

“Yes,” she said, astonishing herself. “Yes. I truly loved him.”

She knew Lionel would never allow her to see Froggy again. There would be no one who would share her delight in questions, no one with whom she could share her thoughts. Anguish, hard and brutal, thrust itself into her. Tears started up in her eyes. She saw Lionel’s hand go up and flung her own out to stay him, but her gaze was so clouded with grief that she did not realize the import of his gesture until the walking stick cracked her temple.

The blow drove her to her knees.

“God!” he screamed. “Enough that you cuckold me with a clever servant! Enough that he sneaks around the woods! I see him through the window at night, a shadow among the trees! Dear Christ, I see him everywhere!”

The silver knob of the stick came down. Bright agony exploded in her forehead. Dazed, she pitched forward, grasping his trousers. Her blood splattered his legs and her own clutching, desperate hands.

She thought to explain that the creature she loved was not Haverty at all, but something so strange that Lionel should have no fear of her dalliance. Her mouth and throat moved, but all that came from her was muddy syllables and nonsensical, terrified babble.

She was being dragged across the grass now, Lionel tearing at her fingers. The stick came down again, this time across her shoulders, driving the breath from her lungs.

The cold shock of the water was like a slap. Silt oozed into her sleeve. She thrashed as he drew her deeper and fought as her face was pushed under the wet chill.

She struggled, but Lionel was stronger. Opening her eyes wide she saw light filtered through the olive-colored water. In her chest was a sharp, burning ache as though she had swallowed badly and something hard had lodged in her gullet. For a moment all there was pain and the pellucid, greenish glow.

Then the agony wavered, dissolved, and drifted away on the current. The light grew brighter, the motes of algae burning to pale embers. What was left was a soft, blank white, a white like the beginnings of things: the stainless pallor of paper before it is written on; the white of untrampled snow.

Iona took a deep breath and turned away from her distracted contemplation of the wall. Across the pale room Froggy stood, looking out a pair of French doors.

“It’s stopped raining,” he said.

She put her hand to the center of her chest, feeling the absence of some forgotten hurt.

“Please,” Froggy urged. “Won’t you come and see the gardens?”

As she came forward he took her arm. She glanced down at the gloved hand, the cuffed sleeve.

“That won’t be necessary,” she told him.

“As you wish,” he replied. The hand on her arm elongated, the pallor of the gloves changing to rough brown-gray skin.

He opened the door and they walked out. In the Garden of Perpetual Happiness droplets leaked from the moist leaves. A breeze caught the wind chimes and set them to tinkling.

“Your mind is rich,” he said. “There is so much wonder to choose from. You must be diligent to tell me which of your thoughts makes you most cheerful so I do not pick merely those that interest me.”

Together they strode out down the damp promenade. A peacock hooted in the darkness beyond the chrysanthemums.

As they neared the crest of the bridge Froggy stiffened, his hand tightening on her arm. Noting his discomfort, she paused to look down and caught a glimpse of something floating just under the surface of the water, Terror ignited, a lump of coal in her chest. It spread its conflagration down her stomach, her trembling limbs. Suddenly it was difficult to breathe.

“Look away,” he told her, his tone gentle.

Quickly she shunted her distressed gaze to the side and the masses of golden flowers.

“It’s best that you don’t look down.”

But her horrified mind gave her no other choice. In a moment she looked again. The thing under the water was clearer now, as though it were rising from a depth, all lacy petticoat, jellyfish billows, and tangled blond seaweed. Slowly, inexorably, as though caught in the current, the thing in the water began to turn.

“There is no sense in recalling that,” he said, and steered her from the edge.

In desperation, she stared upwards into the whirled, porcelain arc of the sky so that her gaze would not fall to the water and its terrifying puzzle. She knew there was something she should remember, but the close heavens made her forget.

“Does it please you?” Froggy asked, bending to her, his voice hushed and timid and oh, so wise.

“Yes,” she whispered, grasping his long, nubbly fingers. “It does.”

All beings were ultimately alien to each other; all creatures lived isolated in their minds’ small rooms. But, even so, one could reach out at times.

The glad truth was that even snails touched.

Author’s Note: This story and “Blue Woofers” figured prominently in my first novel, but while “Blue Woofers” was used nearly verbatim, Cold Allies relates what might have happened after this short story ended. You got to figure—don’t you?—that this boy’s final trip with his Pa, although his best choice for survival, was destined for no good ending.

When he was drunk enough, Pa would get a wistful grin on his face and tell me about the time Texas used to be the biggest state, like goddamned ugly acreage was something to be proud of.

When things change, some parts of it hurt and some just get funny. Houston and Galveston they tried to save, Pa tells me. Pa, said all the people at the new capital in Dallas never seen the point. And when the state legislature finally just up and told everybody flat-out that they couldn’t afford to fund the dikes, all the people in the rest of Texas just grinned and let the crabs have Houston. What with the stink from the refineries and the bad traffic, they all thought the world would be a better place without it.

But losing Corpus had been hard for Pa. When he was on his second six-pack, he’d tell me about eating fried shrimp at some fancy white-tableclothed restaurant where big glass windows looked over the bridge and the bay. Then he’d start to cry. He’d cry for Corpus, and he’d cry for the white-tailed deer, and the red oaks. Pa could get sentimental like that.

Me, I never seen when the oak trees died. All I ever seen was their ghosts standing dead in the pastures. But God, I loved documentaries about the Change. I seen that news special on the TV, showing how the Antarctic ice-cap broke into big, glistening pieces that floated off around the sea, like fruit cocktail bobbing in Jell-O.

I seen a neat documentary, too, that counted up the deaths in the U.S.: Eighteen million from starvation, and twenty million from the spotted fever that arrived later, like a horseman of the Apocalypse with a lame mount.

What happened in Llano was pretty quiet. The spotted death didn’t hit the hill country, and, being farmers, we weren’t going to starve overnight. By the time I hit twelve, though, being a little hungry was just part of life and I never got to see no more documentaries. The Llano River dried up, and then the Colorado became a trickle, and people started emptying out of Llano like piss out of a steer. It just wasn’t worth the trouble for the electric company to maintain the wires.

The Colorado River and the electric company both went away, and left Llano to the scorpions. As soon as the dry started settling in, them black Mexican scorpions, some as big as a spread hand, started hoofing north. From the time I started to toddle to the age of eight, I got stung twice. The second time nearly killed me, which is what taught me not to go outside without my boots on and not to lay on the floor while I was reading.

I never was a fast learner.

If you was to ask me what I thought of the weather changes, I’d tell you, scorpions, creosote brush, arid goddamned longhorn cattle. Everybody else thought about how damned hot it was. When I was growing up, though, it just seemed natural for everybody to lay down in the middle of the day in the summer and not get up until about five o’clock. When I was a kid; I didn’t think much about the heat.

It was the fucking loneliness that got me.

The only people who stayed around Llano were T.J. Garza, who raised ostriches, and Pa, who was working on a crossbred cow that would mix the stick-to-itiveness of the longhorn with the eatability of the Angus.

But that bull Angus never bred true, and when them longhorn cows would throw their calves, they’d be white-and-brown spotted, with nubbly horns already pushing out of each side of their slick heads so fast you’d know they’d end up with a arm’s span each side.

The Angus bull was a terror, and he looked like a black box of meat with legs. Summers I had to wet him down so that he wouldn’t go to fainting, like he had a habit of doing. Pa told me once that the Angus come originally from Scotland, and sometimes I’d think that was what made him so goddamned mean. His blood was longing for them misty, cold mornings. Maybe he’d dream about them or something, and then when he’d wake up and find himself in Llano, he’d be pissed off for a week.

But them longhoms . . . wasn’t nothing could bother them. At breeding time, we’d bring them in, all scruffy and lean, full of piss and vinegar and blowflies and burrs. We’d wet down the Angus good and then lead him out like he was goddamned King of Scotland. Pa’d let him mount the cows in the coral, so His Majesty wouldn’t have to put up with the predators, and I’d spray him down like a male dog on a bitch so he wouldn’t have to worry about the heat. Then, when the longhorn cows took, we’d just let them loose out in the back forty to fend for themselves, and lead that old Angus back to his stall.

Every once in a while, we’d throw out a bale of hay or two and watch them cows come up with their new, scraggly calves, every one of them a longhorn, just like that Angus had never had no part in the breeding. I used to think that it was the desert who was their true Pa, and that as long as them cows had to forage for scrub, them calves would look stringy and hard, like they belonged to the place.

Everything soft just moved out of Texas, and when I was almost fifteen, I recall going over to T.J.’s for an ostrich-egg omelet and seeing an old Playboy magazine he had on the night stand. It wasn’t like I passed up peeking at all them women with their privates spread. I looked at them, too. But what caught me was a picture of a woman standing in a glade greener than anything I’d ever seen. She had a dress on with the first three buttons undone, but nothing really showing. That dress was a material soft as smoke, and it was the color of the thunderheads that roll over from the ocean on their ways to somewheres else. Her hair was like the sun just before it dips out of sight in the west and pulls cool night up like a coverlet. God, she was beautiful!

When the two men seen me looking at the magazine, they laughed.

“Sap’s rising in the boy, Duane,” TJ. said. “Need to take him over to the San Saba whorehouse.”

And Pa said, with a drunk’s sloppy grin, “Seen anything in there you’d like to grab hold of, boy?”

Fact was, I had. I wanted to grab onto that girl in the green glade and let her take me away to someplace where the rain comes down quiet and slow, someplace empty of scorpions, a place where oak trees go to leaf.

Pa was still ribbing me when we left TJ.’s.

“I want to leave this goddamned place,” I said. It was the first time I’d really known what I wanted, and maybe that’s what growing up means.

“Where you want to go?” he asked me. I was pure astonished that he didn’t sound mad. He sounded sort of thoughtful, actually. Maybe the thoughtfulness came from his being drunk and trying to keep the pickup on the road. “Down to Victoria and the coast?”

“I want to get the hell out of Texas. Want to go up north, where they have winters with snow and maybe some pine trees.”

“Shoot, boy,” he said in disgust, “they’s Yankees up north.” He sort of whipped his hand to the side and thumped my chest. He was joking, but the blow hurt. Pa was always hurting me and not meaning to, when he was drunk.

“Up to Michigan, it’s still green,” I told him, “and the summers don’t come on like blowflies on shit. There ain’t no goddamned black scorpions up to Michigan.”

He looked at me, taking his eyes off the road for a second or so too long for comfort. The light from the dash lit his pockmarked face in green, making little moon craters of the places where the doctors had burned the cancers off. I knew he was mad then, and I knew he was scared, too, because Ma had gone off just after I was born, the same way I wanted to.

“Don’t you go on about how the north’s so great and about how Llano ain’t no good, You never starved here. The spotted fever never come.”

“’Spotted fever never come,” I said, “’cause there ain’t no people here. There ain’t no people here, Pa, for the fever to fucking spread.”

He didn’t say nothing, but the next night he took me over to Willie’s Barbecue Bar and Whorehouse, so I guess he was trying any way he could to get me to stay. Even though that whore didn’t look nothing like that girl in the picture, I had her there on that sprung single bed, with us both sweating all over the bare mattress.

From then on, every Friday night, he took me with him, paying for the beer and the whores with an occasional longhorn steer. Willie’s had the toughest damned barbecue in all creation.

The food was bad, but at least it was a change from cooking. And there were good things about Willie’s, too. Willie, who had been a lineman, knew enough about power to keep his stolen electricity up, and he had an old television in the bar that played lots of commercials with smiling people in them, so I knew life was rolling on real happy somewheres else.

It was more fun watching commercials on Willie’s old television set than it was fucking Willie’s hard, ugly whores.

Then one day, Willie started talking about how he’d like to move down to the Sierra Azul, down near where Tampico used to be, and he started getting this look on his face, this soft look that told me he didn’t belong in the desert no more.

He’d talk about the cool air in the mountains and, the way the bullfrogs sang after a rain. He said when he visited the mountains he found out that green wasn’t just one color, but a whole lot of them. Near Tampico, you could find every shade of green from the chartreuse of banana trees to the blue-green leaves of coffee.

I could tell Pa was scared of that soft look in Willie’s eyes. “Move down with a bunch of greasers?” Pa growled as he pushed his beer glass back and forth on its coaster of water melt. “You’ll get lice. Your whores’ll get crotch-rot.”

Willie’s softness left and a hard-scrabble despair, took its place. “Used to get business from all the way down to Austin, but everybody who’s any account’s done left. Them bikers and dope-heads don’t bother coming up to San Saba to get their ashes hauled. Either that, or they ain’t got the money. Texas is dead. I can read the writing on the wall, and you’d best,” too.”

“Greasers, Willie,” Pa reminded him.

Three weeks later, when we come back for some beer and barbecue and whores, we found Willie’s place all boarded-up; and in the street in front of the bar, Pa kicked the bejesus out of a trash can.

“Come on, Pa,” I told him, grabbing his arm. It was dark but still hot, and the streets stank of garbage and shit.

He pulled away from me and kicked the trash can again, sending orange peels and egg shells exploding out of the top. Against the wooden wall of the bar, the can made a clap as loud and sharp as close-struck lightning.

“Shit. Shit!” Pa said. He’d drunk most of two six-packs at the house, and was at the stage dynamite gets to when it ages and starts to leak, and the least, most accidental jolt win set it off.

“Come on home,” I said, standing out of fist’s reach.

When he kicked the can again, the tip of his boot punched through the rusting side, and he laughed. The can toppled, pulling him down with it. On the ground, he started to cry.

I didn’t try to help him up. When Pa was in one of his bad drunks it was best to keep away from him. We stayed there like that for a long time, in the street in front of Willie’s boarded-up bar; me with my hands in my pockets, waiting, and Pa crying, rolling around in dog stilt.

After that, Pa started going all the way down to Austin to get beer, and he’d go without me. He’d come home two and three days later sometimes, with a bad head and a black mood, and I’d have to clean the puke off his clothes and get some food down him.

Nights alone, I’d peek out my window at the coyotes, on the hunt for field mice, rattling through the dry corn. In the day when the air smelled of hot metal and dust, I’d go out in the bright sledgehammer sun and cool down, the Angus.

Pa’s drunks got worse, partly because he was mad at Willie, and partly because he was so damned scared, I begged him to come back in the evenings and not to leave me by myself. I was sixteen years old, but I was scared, too—scared of the coyotes, scared of the scorpions.

Pa always promised. “Be back this evening,” he’d say. But he never would, God, he never would, It would be two, or three, or four days before I’d see him. Pa was never real good at promises.

Then, one time, he brought a woman home from Austin and kept her for about a month, All that month he was looking over his shoulder at me, as if he thought I was going to try and jump her. The woman was sick-skinny, like a coyote, and she had a coyote’s hungry eye. She wore halter tops, and I could count her ribs. She looked like something the desert had kicked out.

I never did know what he saw in her. She wasn’t smart enough for company and not pretty enough for bed. I guess he finally figured that out, too, because when she started bitching about the outdoor plumbing and the fire ants, he took her back.

Pa settled down again then, except for him drinking more than he should. He held it pretty much together, though, up to the day T.J. drove a horse trailer full of ostriches over to our place to say goodbye.

“Heading out west,” T.J. said. “Maybe Colorado, maybe California. When I hit the green, boys, I’m just gonna stop.” Pa, who had stopped having any sober times you could count, said, “You chicken shit,” in a hissing rattlesnake voice.

The sun was high. When the wind blew, it blew hot, and it spat sand in my face. Against the metal sides of the horse trailer, the ostriches’ beaks made small clattering noises that sounded like rain.

“Greaser!” Pa said. “You never was nothing but a greaser!”

I felt I could have dropped through the floor. T.J. had been too good to us for Pa to have any call to say that.

T.J. didn’t look angry, though. He just looked sort of sad.

“You just go on, then, you just . . .” All of a sudden Pa’s words dried up, dry as the Llano, dry as the pastures. His mouth worked up and down as, if he was going to cry. He didn’t. Instead he picked up a rock and threw it at T.J. The rock hit the side of the truck with a clang and bounced off.

Them ostriches set to clattering again, and I pictured as how I might go to the back of that horse trailer, open it up, and see rain inside there and a little stream. The moistness and cool would hit my face. Inside the walls of that horse trailer, birds would be singing to beat the band, and there would be tender grass and a bunch of yellow butterflies in there, too.

T.J. drove away, raising a plume of dust, taking the ostriches, taking the rain. After a while, Pa went in the house, and, when the sun got too hot, I went in, too. We didn’t talk about Willie or T.J., and that very evening Pa left for Austin, and didn’t come back for three days.

When he come, he brought another girl with him, a pretty little Tex-Mex girl named Teresa, with big brown eyes and a fall of black hair. Her arms and legs was so thin that the bones seemed as it they must be hollow. There wasn’t much flesh on them sparrow bones of hers, and on the inside of each arm, on the tops of her small hands, in the webbed skin between each finger, and on the back of her skinny little-girl knees, were the blue tracks of the needle.

She wasn’t no older than I was.

And all of a sudden, I had two to care for. Pa was starting to get bad sick from drink, and sometimes he and that girl wouldn’t get up till late afternoon. Pa’s bedroom got nasty, like giant mice were nesting there. He never pulled up the shades. When they’d get out of bed, I’d fix them something to eat, and they’d pick at the food, neither one of them bothering to talk. Then they’d crawl back in the bedroom and shut the door, like they was trying to lock the world out. In a lot of ways, it was lonelier than having no one there at all.

Pa brought in some of the longhorns and put them in a corral. Every sixth Friday, Pa would get up, get dressed, and load up a steer. Then he’d plunk the girl in the front seat with him and drive to Austin. He started coming home regular and on time, but with a load of whiskey where the steer used to be, and a bunch of brown stuff for the girl’s arm. When they got to the ranch, they’d get out of the truck and crawl right back in their nest.

Jesus. I don’t think they ever even made love. It didn’t look like they had the energy for it. What they did in that bedroom was a lot more private than fucking, a thing so terrible that I guess they thought that they just had to hide it away.

They were dying, is what it was. Teresa got sick first, with a bad abscessed knee. I got her up and washed, and used the same Blue Star ointment on the sore that we used on the cattle. Pa stood around with his eyes kind of glazed. I wasn’t sure he knew she was sick. I didn’t know if he cared.

“Told you I’d boil them needles for you,” I told her. I was pretty angry.

“Sometimes I just forget.”

“You lose your leg, that’ll be a fucking reminder.”

When she started to cry, I felt bad, as if I’d hurt a kitten. Then Pa went down sick, but there wasn’t much I could do but get some water and food in him. Teresa started washing her hair and getting dressed right. She started coming in the kitchen more, and hanging around.

“You’re just a little kid,” I said, staring at her baby’s hands, her stick wrists. “If things was the way they should be, with a sheriff still around and all, he’d put Pa in jail because of you.”

“Sheriff, he don’t care who junkies fuck.”

“How’d you get on that shit, anyway?” I asked her.

She shrugged. “I always been on it.”

“Get the pail and take it in to the Angus,” I always had to tell her everything, spell it out, like she was stupid and not just high.

She did it, though. Everything I told her.

“Don’t know what you see in Pa.”

“It ain’t like I love him,” she said, and gave me a look. She was staring at my chest. I was running all over sweat from the heat, and could feel the sting of the sun on my back and the sting of her gaze at my front.

“You want to fuck me?” she said.

I looked away. “No.”

“I won’t tell him.”

“No.”

She walked back into the house, limping a little from her leg. I watched her go, watched how she moved under her shorts. Even with the needle tracks, she was prettier and younger than the San Saba whores.

Pa got sicker instead of better, but when I was outside tending cattle, he’d stumble into the kitchen and get himself a drink. Nights he’d call to Teresa with that whispery dead-leaf voice of his; and then I’d hear her fumbling around in the kitchen.

“You can’t drink, Pa,” I told him. “Not while you’re sick like this.”

In the few weeks he’d been sick. Pa’d become an old man. His hands were all bones and veins. His eyes had sunk back into his head.

He promised me he wouldn’t drink no more, he’d tell me how it was eating up his insides and making him like an animal. He’d cry like a baby and tell me how much he goddamned loved me. But just as soon as I’d go outside to tend the animals, I’d see Teresa at the kitchen window, a bottle in her hand.

One night in the kitchen I screamed at her, “Stop giving him the whiskey! You stupid jerk! Can’t you see he’s dying!”

“I know his kind of need,” she told me straight out, and with a smart-assed tilt to her head, like having to lean on whiskey or dope was something to be proud of. “You don’t know nothing.”

I started slamming around kitchen cabinets and throwing a pot of chili together.

“You want to fuck me?” she asked.

I turned. She was so small that her tininess made my breath catch in my throat. Her eyes were brown and huge, like the sloe eyes of deer or the kind, dumb eyes of cattle. She wasn’t much like the woman in the Playboy picture. That woman had been soft but strong, something the earth had nurtured. Nothing fed Teresa. Not Pa. Not me.

I left the chili boiling on the stove, and we went out to the barn so Pa couldn’t hear.

She must have thought I should get acquainted with need, because in the next couple of weeks, she sure introduced us. I could see her just standing there, chin on her hands the way she did, looking out to the corral, and all of a sudden that need would steamroller me.

Having her around made the desert seem okay, not lonely any more or ugly. I started thinking about how I might marry her. And, God forgive me, I started wishing Pa would go ahead and die.

When her supply of stuff started getting low, though, things just fell apart. Cleaning up after dinner one night, she started fidgeting real bad.

“I need to go into town, Tommy,” she told me. I got this real bad need to go there.

I looked up from the dishes I was washing. She was sweating. Her skin was white, and it stretched over the hollow bones of her face like paper. “No,” I said.

“You don’t love me,” she said. “If you loved me, you’d take me.”

“I love you so much, I ain’t going to see you die like Pa’s dying. That’s how much I goddamn love you.”

She sniffed and wiped her nose. The tip of it was red, but she wasn’t crying. “They got methadone in Austin. It’s the stuff that gets you off the horse. Otherwise, that horse just keeps on running, you know what I mean? And the ground goes by so fast, and you’re up so high, that if you fall, you know it’ll kill you.”

She was holding herself like she was cold.

“I been wanting to get clean a long time now.” She started to shiver and looked real sick. “It’s your Pa keeping me back. I can’t quit without methadone, and he won’t buy me none.”

When I didn’t answer, she told me, “You can die from quitting cold. I ain’t no use to you dead.”

“Okay,” I said. “Just a little methadone.”

I loaded a yearling steer in the truck, and we set: off for Austin; me without even bothering to check on Pa, her without thinking about it, neither.

I knew that Austin had been hit harder than most places by the spotted fever, but I never expected how bad it could be. Austin looked like a town somebody’d kicked in the balls. There was empty buildings everywhere, and the state Capitol had most of its windows knocked out. There was dead grass and dead leaves all over the street, and the whole place gave me a hollow feeling in the gut, like maybe the people who’d died of the spotted fever were lurking around in the shadows, waiting.

In an apartment down by the old university, I seen the only signs of life. Three pickup trucks sat in the parking lot, and upstairs on the second floor, some lights were on.

We walked up, and a white man with dirty hair answered our knock. “Hello again, bitch. Who’d you bring with you this time?”

I wanted to punch the man in the mouth. He was too small, though.

His face was, too pinched. His shirt was open, and his bare chest was knobs all the way down to his stomach. I was afraid that if I hit him, the fist would go right through, and I’d find out he, was just a cardboard cutout.

Behind him, on a couch, sat a black man with a torn orange sweat-shirt, and on a coffee table was a big pile of jewelry: rings and bracelets and gold watches.

“This is the old man’s son,” Teresa said in a tiny, apologetic voice. “We come to get some stuff. You got the stuff?”

“Methadone,” I told him.

The white man ignored me. “A little. I been waiting for Julio. Delivery from Juarez tonight.”

I looked at the jewelry on the table again, and knew it was dead people’s jewelry.

“He brought a cow,” Teresa told him.

The man on the couch stirred a little. The man at the door perked up. “Get the gun, Dave,” he said.

The black man with the orange sweatshirt got up, went into the bedroom, and came back with a pistol. Then me and him walked down to the trailer.

I got in by the steer’s head and the black man pushed in, too. When the yearling got jittery and started butting, he raised his gun. “Goddamn!” I shouted. “Don’t kill the fucking steer in the trailer. We’ll never get him out!”

The man was shaking real bad, and he kept trying to aim in the dark. I touched his shoulder, and then jerked my hand back. I had never felt nothing like that. Under that sweatshirt, his bones was all raw, and he felt like a chicken leg a hungry dog had gone after. These men must be starving to death. And then it hit me what Teresa had seen in Pa.

I took the yearling’s halter and backed him out the gate. When I got him out in the parking lot, I seen the white man was there, and I seen Teresa squatting on the asphalt, hugging her knees and shaking her head like she’d just seen something beautiful.

“Oh dear Jesus. Oh sweet Jesus,” she was saying in a dreamy sort of voice.

The black man came up and tried to take the halter out of my hand. I pushed him away. He pushed too easy, as if he didn’t have no substance in him. The two men backed up, scared of me, even though they was the ones with the gun. In the dark of the parking lot, they watched me for a while. The black man was licking his lips.

“Come on, honey,” I said to Teresa, putting my hand down to her.

She kept rocking and shaking her head.

“Come on,” I said sweet as I could. “Get up.”

She didn’t. After a while, her rocking started spooking me bad. “Is that how that methadone is supposed to work?” I asked the white man.

“What methadone?” he said.

My chest went numb. I dropped the lead to the steer, got in my pickup, and left. When I turned the comer at the end of the street, I heard the first of the shots. There were three of them, spaced out from each other a bit. It was only after the third shot that the bawling of that poor longhorn yearling finally stopped. Those hop heads made a mess of everything they touched.

That night, I drove down to the coast and watched the sun come up over the mud fiats. I slept an hour or two in the truck, and then, about eight in the morning, I headed on back to the ranch. When I got there in the afternoon, I seen Pa wasn’t in his room no more. That scared me, and I walked around the barn and the corrals, checking to see if he had dragged himself someplace to die.

When I couldn’t find him, I up and packed my things: all my clothes and, the 30.06 Pa had give me one Christmas. When I got back in the yard, I seen Pa. He was standing against the corral, watching the Angus sniff the longhorns.

“Take a lesson from that old bull,” Pa said. I knew he was mad, and his anger had pushed a lot of the sickness out. He was smiling coldly, and there was color high on his cheeks. “You know, when I was humping her, she stayed. Soon as you started humping her, she left.”

I remembered Teresa crouched in the parking lot, rocking, and, for a minute, I wanted to get in my truck, drive back there like blazes, and see if she was all right. The shame of what I had done, and the need to see her again, was so bad that it made my hands start to tremble.

“I’m leaving, Pa.”

“Taking her?”

“No.” I wanted to take Teresa, but I knew that if I tried to pick her up, my hands would pass right through. She had never been nothing but a ghost, one of the thousands in Austin—dead as the ghosts of the red oaks that stood watch over Llano’s fields. “Heading to Michigan, I reckon.”

“Well, you just get your ass in gear, then. Me and this old bull, we’ll just settle down here by ourselves. He’s the only thing ever goddamned understood me, anyway.”

I could tell that Pa was remembering everyone and everything that had ever left him: Ma, Corpus Christi, the white-tailed deer.

In life, more than just the climate changes. People either leave you, or you leave them. Pa’d spent his whole life losing people, like he was an old man with the palsy who was always dropping his keys. At that moment, I knew that I was going to grow up into the opposite type—the one who always walks out.

Walking out wasn’t going to be easy, though. The more I tried not to think about Teresa, or about Pa, the worse I felt, and the more my fingers twitched.

“Ain’t had a drink since you left,” he told me. “Don’t know why I’m bothering to quit. Ain’t much other joy to life.”

I’d been lied to enough that I couldn’t be suckered in no more. Right then I hated Pa and Teresa and their broken promises; but I couldn’t help loving them, too. There’s a kind of an addiction you get to people if you live with them long enough. I’d only had a few months with Teresa, but I’d had sixteen years of Pa. “Come on and go with me,” I said.

“Get out!” Pa’s shout spooked the cattle.

I raised the 30.06 and he frowned at it.

“There’s only one pickup,” I said.

Pa seemed surprised, but then, real quick, the surprise left, and a steadiness took its place. I flicked off the safety, cocked the rifle, and raised it to my shoulder.

The bang that rifle made shooed the chickens off their coop. Pa stepped back a pace, still staring at me kind of stupid. And behind Pa’s back, that Angus bull dropped to his knees, and then settled over on his side, as if he was climbing into bed. A pool of blood leaked from his forehead and spread out across the sand. Neat, clean, and quick. That’s the way you kill something.

I shot three longhorns before the rest of them got the idea and broke down the fence. They hightailed it out into the desert, where they belonged.

When all that was left of them longhorns was the dust they had raised. I took a last glance at the dead Angus and the three dead spotted cows. Then I threw my gear and the rifle into the bed of the pickup and climbed up in the cab.

I sat there and waited. The air in the cab was blistering. In a few minutes, Pa opened the door and climbed up to sit next to me.

“Fuck it,” he said. “Michigan?”

“Yeah.”

“Why Michigan?”

“Just ’cause it’s somewheres else.” Just because the ghosts aren’t there, I thought. And because if you’re going to give up a habit, it’s best to get a good long ways from temptation.

He glanced over at the torn screen on the front door. “Think we should lock up the house?”

“I don’t imagine anybody is gonna come calling.”

He sighed and settled back in his seat as I started the engine. “I don’t much, either,” he said.

Author’s Note: When I recently read back over these short stories I was apprehensive. A writer’s craft naturally improves over time; and so I had worried I would find terrible errors: sloppy mistakes, overwritten and overblown prose.

In general, I’ve been pretty satisfied by these early efforts, although I have to admit that I winced several times during this one. Still, it’s a great deal of fun, being there as senile octogenarians relive the ’60s.

In the rec room The Who were bragging they could see for miles and miles. Shuffling down the hall, keeping pace with Monique’s arthritic gait, Tammi decided she’d be happy just to be able to read a newspaper again.

Beyond the open doorway from which the music seeped, Mother Aerobics was leading the old folks in sit-down calisthenics. All over the room lumpy, pale arms were raised like deformed sheaves of wheat.

“Night of the Living Dead,” Tammi said as they passed. Neither Monique nor Jeff turned around.

“The original, not the remake,” Tammi explained. “All black and white and grim. That’s what this damned place reminds me of.” She leaned to speak into Monique’s good ear. “I had the nightmare again last night,” she whispered.

Monique didn’t react. She kept walking, her back bent into a comma by the inescapable tonnage of time. In the years since her eightieth birthday, Monique had grown far too thin. Her face was a drear-expressioned skull, and her hair covered the cranium so skimpily that Tammi could see a pink sheen underneath the cloud of white. Glancing down to the padded grip of the automated walker, Tammi was shocked to notice how gnarled, how unfamiliar, her friend’s hands had become.

“You were in my dream,” Tammi told her. Gray light Ieaked from high windows, casting soft, pale bands on the carpeted floor. In one comer pouted an Australian pine, its back crippled as Monique’s. “Mike and Kevin were there.”

The wheels of the walker squeaked. Monique was doggedly shuffling the length of hallway as though the corridor were a horizontal Everest. Jeff, who had little else to do, seemed pulled along by the grappling ropes of her resolution.

Jeff’s lips flapped loosely a moment, a sign that speech was imminent. “I remember . . .” he said in a crepe-paper voice. The words had as much meaning as if they had come from a parakeet taught to echo a repetitive, banal phrase. Both women studiously ignored him.

“Why don’t you listen to me anymore?” Tammi snapped at Monique, her exasperation bubbling over into fury. The woman and walker never faltered stride. “I talk and talk and you never listen! I said I had the dream again.”

“I remember . . .” Jeff said, cocking his head as though he were repeating sounds broadcast in a frequency only he could hear. “I remember . . . the first time I heard the Beatles’ White Album.”

“Why do we hang around Jeff?” Tammi asked. “Is it because you always have to hold court? God. He goes on these memory binges, only we don’t know the people he talks about. When he’s not remembering people we never met, he still makes no sense. He’s white noise. Shit. If I was as senile as Jeff I’d kill myself.”

Or would I? The thought was so surprising a thing it momentarily stopped her in her tracks. Would she know when or how to commit suicide if the time came? Maybe consciousness was a more subtle thing than she thought. Maybe holding onto it was like grasping a cloud of steam.

“I’d want to kill myself,” she amended doubtfully. “I know that. Wouldn’t you?”

Head down in determined concentration as though only force of will were moving her legs, Monique didn’t reply.

“Please listen to me,” Tammi persisted. “Please. There’s nobody else I can talk to. My dream scares me. I wake up, only I’m not really awake. It’s a strange feeling.” Monique was making slow headway. Slide-step-slide-step. Despite an appropriate sympathy, Tammi found the slow pace galling.

“In my dream I’m trying to get up out of bed, trying so hard,” Tammi went on, her voice fretful. “And I can see my feet hit the floor, but somehow I know my legs are still under the covers. There are voices in the hall.”

They reached the end of the corridor, and paused by the windows that looked out onto the retirement home’s acre of lawn. A few old folks were playing a slow, geriatric game of Twister under an awning in the pellucid glow of the overcast day.

In slow tandem, the three turned and headed back past the rec room. The walker came close to rolling over Tammi’s foot, and she had to stumble back to avoid it. “Watch that thing!” she shouted. “Can’t, you watch where you’re going?” Instantly chagrin shut her mouth, and they walked it while in silence, Tammi gathering her scattered thoughts.

“I remember. . .” Jeff said, his eyes clouded by the fog of memory. “We were dropping acid. Is it cold in here? Annette. Oh, man. Sounds of . . . like rain. Do you hear it? And then . . . and then . . .” His voice trailed off into disoriented silence, Jeff astray in his past.

Tammi shot him a look and picked up the thread of her story. “So anyway, in my dream I get up, only I don’t get up, not really. And I’m walking through my bedroom. Only instead of the hall, there’s this dark place. There’s a monster in the dark. I feel it—a sort of tangible malice.”

“John’s my favorite,” Jeff said in surprise, as though his clumsy feet had just stumbled over that discarded bit of information. “I like John.”

“John Lennon’s been dead fifty goddamned years,” Tammi said cruelly. “Get with the program.” She took a long, calming breath. The building smelled of lunch: chicken soup and peach cobbler.

“Okay. So. I go through the darkness, and in my dream you’re there,” Tammi went on, “standing in the breezeway to our old apartment in college. You’re just the way you were when you were nineteen, long stringy hair and all. And Mike’s still alive. And Kevin’s still angry at the system. Isn’t that funny?” Her voice failed under sorrow’s weight. In the rec room, The Who finished their song and “Mellow Yellow” began.

“Annette had long brown legs,” Jeff said, licking his lips. “Long brown legs and a tight ass. She freaked when a cop stopped a speeder in front of the house and flushed a whole half-pound of good home-grown.” A cackle issued from his mouth, staccato and humorless as machine gun fire. “We went to Chicago and protested Nixon and on the way home we fucked. We played the White Album a lot. Played it until the grooves wore out and it started skipping. I always liked John best.”

Monique suddenly looked up as though Tammi’s skin, her bones, were made of glass. The focus of her irked gaze peered through Tammi and locked on Jeff. “John’s dead,” she mumbled.

“You can talk to Jeff but you can’t talk to me?” Tammi tried to snare Monique’s brief and precious attention, but the other woman put her head down and shambled on. “We’ve been friends for a lifetime. Doesn’t that mean anything? Are you envious of me because I’m not crippled? Are you so goddamned old and so goddamned petty that relationships come second to your arthritis?”

Slide-step-slide-step. The automated chair spoke up in its tinny voice. “I can tell by your pulse rate that you’re tiring. Wouldn’t you care to sit down a moment?”

“Stuff it,” Monique replied.

“Please,” Tammi whispered. Tears of frustration welled in her eyes. “I have to know, Monique. Think back on it. Do you remember being nineteen again, when you and Kevin and Mike were standing in our apartment breezeway? Do you remember an old lady being there?”

“I remember,” Jeff said brightly into the banded glow which made the hallway look like a stepladder to nowhere. “I remember I was young. I loved the Beatles’ White Album.”

* * *

Tammi drifted through the dark waters of sleep. Faintly and far away came the sound of laughter. I must wake up, she told herself firmly, but she couldn’t. She drifted like submerged flotsam in a deep current.

The voices from the breezeway beyond were muffled under pressure. Her mind tried willing her body out of bed, but only her mind obeyed. She got up, rising, like thick fog, never once feeling the touch of the blankets, not sensing the carpet or the ache of her sagging body on the weary bones of her feet.

In the next room was a buried-alive dark, a mud-thick blackness that clogged her nostrils. She paused, listening to the faint whoosh-whoosh of someone breathing near her shoulder.

A quicksilver fear wriggled through her. Turn, her fright whispered. Turn around and see what’s there.

She didn’t turn, though. She never did. Instead, as always, her terror and the Pied Piper music of the voices lured her on.

In the lighted breezeway the night air was cool and smelled of silt. Monique stood beneath a yellow bulb, her body straight and tanned and young. She was dressed in a hideous tie-dyed shirt and faded bell-bottoms, the flanged denim legs bedecked with flowers. Next to her lounged Mike, a Lazarus in cut-offs. And nearby Kevin stood smoking a joint.

“So I was like tripping out, you know?” Monique continued after giving Tammi an incurious glance. “So I was going to make breakfast, but I never did, because I started looking at this egg. It’s Iike everything that ever was was all closed up in this egg. And I was turning it around and around and everything, where I could see all the little bumps and all, and it hit me, this kind of Carlos Castaneda thing, that the egg was the earth. It was like—Wow, I don’t know.”

Kevin hitched in a breath and passed the joint to Monique. Before she took a toke, she went on with her story. “So, anyway, I left the tie-dye in too long.” She gazed down at her shirt in wonder. “And it’s like there was this message left on the shirt, you know?”

“Heavy,” Mike agreed. He cast a longing glance at the joint. “You gonna take a hit or what?”

Monique pressed the dwindling roach to her lips and sucked in air with the smoke. Holding her breath, she passed it to Mike.

“Puke,” Tammi said, eyeing the tie-dye, pattern critically. “The message must be puke.”

Kevin’s voice was ugly in a way only a young person’s voice could be. “Who invites the old bitch, anyway? I mean she’s like got this Nazi Storm Trooper establishment crap she lays on us.”

In the breezeway the wind died and the sweet smell of pot was strong. Through the smoke and the river smell Tammi caught the sour odor of someone’s unwashed clothes. Who stank? she thought. Then she dug into her grab bag of memories and came up with the obvious answer: Mike. She wondered how his poor hygiene had fared in the army the short four months before his helicopter was shot down.

“I’m Tammi Whitehead,’” she told them. Turning to Monique, she pleaded, “Come on, Monique. You know I am.”

“You’re not Tammi.” The girl looked quickly and furtively away. “You’re too old. Besides, Tammi’s at the library.”

Library, Tammi thought without surprise. During college it seemed she had always been surrounded by books, while Monique had been surrounded by people.

“And if you were Tammi you’d know my name was Starlight. Nobody calls me Monique any more.”

Tammi laughed an old person’s derisive laugh. “They called you Starlight until 1973, and then you put your tie-dye away and came to your senses.”

“Oh, wow,” Monique said morosely, flipping her wayward bangs from her’ eyes. “She always says things like that, you know?”

Mike tweezered the joint between his dirty fingernails and passed it to Kevin. “So, what do you want to do tonight?”

“There’s a demonstration,” Kevin suggested.

Tammi spoke up. “You might want to study. Mike’s going to fail second semester of his junior year and be drafted. He’s going to die in Viet Nam.” Could the future be changed, she wondered? Would Mike escape war only to become a boring, Beamered yuppie like Kevin? Would he deify family like Monique, and become a worshipper of diapers and soured milk and report cards? She met their irate gazes.

“Mellow out,” Kevin said, holding the roach toward her face. “Have a toke.”

“We were so boring!” Tammi shouted. “All of us. So trivial. After seventy more years of living, the pinnacle of Monique’ s existence will be that she can make it down the hall of the old folks’ home more or less under her own power, Kevin will be down in Florida voting Republican, and Mike will be sixty-nine years in the grave. What’s the use?”

“I’m going to be a movie director!” Monique lifted a rebellious chin. “You don’t know shit! I’m going to direct documentaries about bigotry and racism!”

“No, you won’t, Monique,” Tammi said quietly. “You’ll get married and there won’t be time between the babies. After a while you’ll just forget. When you drop the burden because it’s too heavy, I’m the one who’ll pick it lip. I always have.”

Mike gave Tammi a lengthy, level stare. “I don’t know, man,” he said judiciously. “She just brings us down. That’s all she ever does. You got some more stuff on you, Kevin?”

Kevin set about rolling another joint.

“Kahlil Gibran says—” Monique began.

“Oh fuck Kahlil Gibran!” Tammi shouted. “Something important’s going on here! I think this is a dream, but sometimes I wonder. Do you remember my being here last night? Do you remember that?”

Monique’s face had shut down, and hard little lines had sprung up to either side of her mouth, lines that one day she would not be able to erase. She peered at Tammi through her long, blond bangs.

“All this says something about time, Monique,” Tammi said, coming forward and grasping her arm. Under her fingers the flesh was firm. “I can touch you, you see? I can smell the marijuana smoke and the river mud. It’s cold out here and sometimes I find myself shivering. Is this a dream?”

“Cold?” Mike laughed. “Hey, old lady. It’s not cold.”

She whirled on him, dropping Monique’s arm. “Colder than in Arizona, where Monique and I ended up. Monique’s husband dies, you see? And her kids get tired of caring for her. But I never did.” She turned. Monique had dropped back into the shadows near the stairs. The hardness had fled her face under the fierce assault of bewilderment. “I never, ever left you, except when you pushed me away. We lived together until you got married and later we ended up sharing a room in the retirement home. Christ, Monique. We’ve been friends our whole goddamned lives.”

“You’re freaking her out, man!” Kevin shouted. “Can’t you see that? Leave her the fuck alone!”

Tammi took a step forward towards her. “This is important,” she said. “Do you remember?”

“Go away,” Monique whimpered. “I never did anything to you. Why can’t you just leave me alone?”

Over the messy tie-dyed shirt dangled the gold heart charm Tammi had given her their senior high school year. They’d been best friends since age eight. She was eighty-seven now, and Tammi still cherished that necklace’s identical twin, the one Monique had given her. Snatching a hand out, Tammi caught the delicate gold chain and jerked, snapping the links and spilling the charm to the concrete where it landed with an anticlimactic little clink.

Monique put her hands to her chest disbelievingly, as though Tammi had pulled from her a throbbing crimson heart and not the tiny gold one which lay on the floor.

“There now, dear,” Tammi said wryly. “I think you’ll remember that.”

* * *

But it was Tammi who didn’t remember. She couldn’t recall awakening. Didn’t remember getting dressed. Tammi was standing by her friend’s wheelchair, gazing down on her. Monique was having one of her bad days.

Monique’s sheet was awry, the empty bed slept in, but the neighboring bed was made up in severe hospital lines. Tammi’s eyes scanned the clean, dusted top of the nightstand.

Where were her pictures? she wondered. There had been a snapshot of herself and Monique together at Monterey in 1969, a photo of her own long-dead parents next to that, and a picture of herself receiving the Emmy. The top of the nightstand had been a sort of visual summary of her life.

“Did you envy me for never marrying?” she asked Monique. “I used to be jealous of you when we were kids. You were always the pretty one. The popular one.”

Monique’s eyes were closed. Tammi would have thought she was sleeping but for the irregular rise and fall of her friend’s chest, the occasional flutter of her eyelids. The nurses had obviously given her something for the pain.

“Before you married I hated you sometimes,” Tammi said. “And after your brats came I just wound up pitying you. Did you know that? Is that why you hid my pictures?”

With a groan, Monique lifted her head from her fallen chest to stare out the window. Outside the sun was shining. The green of the lawn stretched thin until it petered out tiredly in the desert. Tammi stared at the gleaming sand, the dun hills beyond.

“Oh, crap. I love you, Monique. Talk to me.”

But Monique refused to meet the demands of Tammi’ s gaze.

“I broke your friendship chain. Do you remember?”

Monique seemed as though she were going to sleep.

“You were nineteen and I was eighty-seven. I didn’t think I had the strength to snap it, but it was more fragile than I had imagined. Was our relationship that flimsy?”

When Monique didn’t answer, Tammi knelt down at the side of the chair and stared into her friend’s face, suddenly realizing Monique’s pain didn’t spring simply from arthritis or from simple old age. She was dying. Monique was weeping slow, fat, silent tears.

“Hey,” Tammi whispered gently. “You remember when we were kids and we used to spend the night together? We’d make popcorn and pecan fudge and watch old Dracula movies? You remember that? Jesus. I was there to help when Jason was born, came all the way from New York, took two weeks’ vacation to be there. And when I left, remember how you cried and said you wished we could be kids again?”

In some piece of time, she knew, Monique was a coltish teenager, at the height of her beauty. Closing her eyes and picturing her friend, she still remembered her not at eighty-six but at nineteen, the time of her greatest, most defiant, potential.

“Christ. Of course you wanted to be young again. I was always plain. Rebellion didn’t flatter me as much.”

Tammi stood and turned.

She was in the dark place again, hearing the youthful voices beyond like music from another room. Blind, confused, she staggered back. Instead of touching Monique’s wheelchair, she stumbled into a wall.

The collision brought her up short. Something terrifying breathed stertorously in the comer. Without wanting to turn, she found her head swiveling to the sound.

She saw lights where she thought no lights could be.

The lights flickered, Christmas-tree gay, across the bed where an elderly woman lay curled into a .grotesque fetal coil, the position of a terminal Alzheimer’s patient. It looked as though old age were bending the woman’s body so as better to fit death’s sterile, dark womb.

Tammi walked forward and bent down to the old woman. A thin line of spittle ran from the gaping mouth. The twig arms were drawn up, the tortured hands at the chest were twisted and stiff.

The face. Oh. The face was much too familiar.

She jerked back, colliding hard enough with a monitor that the blow should have knocked it down. The machine never moved.

Tammi inched around the machine, floating like a heavy fog. She couldn’t feel the carpet under her feet, nor the strain of her body’s weight on her aging ankles.

I’m dreaming, she told herself.

But beyond the bed of the old woman a dead boy laughed. A young girl’s voice rang out with clear, happy promise.

Tammi turned away from the laughter and gazed out of the blackness towards a sunlit room where the elderly Monique sat, wheelchair-bound, dozing morphine dreams.

Love drew Tammi out of the dark.

Down the hall Mother Aerobics had put a new CD into the player, and the music echoed down the hushed corridor.

Tammi stopped in a spot of sunlight by the wheelchair.

Monique didn’t look up, but that didn’t matter. Like a faithful priestess, Tammi had cared for her during the births of her children, the death of her husband. She’d been there through popcorn and pillow-fight nights. They were bound by a thousand cherry Coke secrets and a hundred small hurts, three quarters of a century of self-inflicted injuries.

Tammi cocked her head and eavesdropped on the seductive lies of the music. For a short and glorious while an entire generation had believed they were born to be wild.

“Listen, Monique,” Tammi whispered affectionately. “Listen. They’re playing your song.”

Author’s Note: All my life I’ve loved reading about strange happenings. I’m as addicted as Fox Mulder that way. The most horrific phenomenon I’ve encountered during my sensationalized reading escapades has concerned the few reported instances in which people vanished from sight, sometimes in front of witnesses. The folks would never be seen again, but they could be heard—somehow become invisible captives in an invisible world, calling for help. Oooooooh. Sends chills up the spine, doesn’t it? When I was eight years old or so I remember being afraid to turn over in bed, lest I fall into some dreaded Other Dimension. This kind of stuff, plus the fiction of Ted Sturgeon and Ray Bradbury, marked me for life.

I know you’ll ask, so I’ll just say it straight out: I hated Heinlein. Yes. Even the juveniles.

Five-year-old Kimberly ran across the twilight field, blond hair flying, small legs pumping, arms upraised. She chased her father’s voice as she might have chased fireflies.

Jeremy paused in his work to look. Now here, now there, Kimberly darted, the voice forever an arm’s length away. The red lights on the EM monitors waxed and waned with the drift of the Tink.

Jeremy noticed with shock how accurate she was, how honed the radar of her need. More intuitive than he, he thought, glancing at the laptop across his knees. The data’s pattern was frustrating, elusive, like an almost-remembered dream.

Frowning, Jeremy glanced up. In the center of the field Kimberly had stopped, wrapping her arms tightly around air. Her small face was bruised by the dying light, her head cradled to the side as though waiting for strong arms to lift her.

“Kimberly!’

At the terror-stricken shout, Jeremy flinched and turned around. Mrs. Taft stood, a shadow in the dusk, behind him.

“Kimberly! You come back here! You come back now!”

Softly, Jeremy said, “I doubt another Tink will form, Mrs. Taft. There’s no need to be afraid.”

Her tone was woven with razor-wire panic. “Kimberly? You hear me? You get on in the house!”

Without a word, the little .girl trudged through the thigh-deep grass toward the yellow window-beacons of the farmhouse.

Mrs. Taft stood for a moment, her worried gaze following her daughter’s progress. “Brought you dinner,” she finally said, handing him the basket she held in her left hand.

Jeremy took it, eying the other basket in her right. “You didn’t have to,” he said.

Ruby—At the soft whisper, Mrs. Taft raised her head. The breeze lifted invisible fingers to toy with her chestnut hair. “He’s calling me again,” she told Jeremy. “Thought you said he couldn’t do that.”

Jeremy glanced at the empty field. The EM monitors flickered one-by-one in no apparent pattern, like the haunting of fireflies. “If’s not what we expected.”

“Then you don’t know everything.”

He didn’t bother to reply. He was an interloper in Mrs. Taft’s rural meadow; an intruder in the wonderland of Mark’s truth.

“Tink,” she whispered. “That’s a funny name. Shouldn’t put a ninny name to something so terrible.”

Ruby please. Touch me. Can’t you—Mr. Taft’s voice came faint, carried on the wind’s breath. The trapped man’s entreaties had, over the last day and a half, reduced from the where-am-I’s, the what’s-happening-to-me’s, to form the thick sediment of need.

“It’s an observer in a kink in space-time,” Jeremy explained. He remembered the night they put a name to it, Mark talking of quantum mechanics, Jeremy a half-step behind, the magic just out of reach. “Mark and I considered ‘stink,’ but the connotation . . .” He stopped, ashamed, his fragile grin fading like the day.

Ruby—The whisper held a pillow-soft, reconciled sorrow. Not three yards distant, an EM beacon flickered and then steadied to a bright, red glow.

Mrs. Taft took a step forward and then another, inching fearfully toward the light, the basket held out as though she prayed the food would be taken, not her.

At the beacon she halted and put the basket down.

Ruby. Please—

The glow turned her tears crimson as her namesake. It looked for a moment as though she wept blood. Suddenly her courage failed and, shaking her head, obviously angry at her own fear, she stepped back.

“It’s an unbelievably rare phenomenon, Mrs. Taft. I really don’t think another one will form,” Jeremy said.

Her voice was sodden and bitter, words wrung from a vinegared sponge. “‘I don’t think’ this. ‘I don’t think’ that. Don’t you know nothing for sure?”

“No,” he admitted. The data was so confusing that only Mark could have known. Mark had chased his bright answers with the same passion he had pursued his smooth-skinned boys.

I should have been enough for you, Jeremy had told him after learning of Mark’s treachery, their shared illness.

Don’t you understand by now? Mark, the deceiver, had asked. Haven’t I taught you anything? The universe is hungry for new experiences, Jer. And inside us are fractals of that appetite. Nothing and no one is ever enough.

After a while Mrs. Taft left. Realizing it was time for his pill, he carried the laptop and the basket to the van. Sitting with the back doors open to the evening, Jeremy peered under the checkered cloth. She’d made fried chicken again, Mr. Taft’s favorite.

When Jeremy had taken his medication and had finished eating, he heard a rustling in the grass. A moment later Mrs. Taft emerged into the van’s rectangular spill of light.

“Come to take the basket,” she said.

He handed her the basket of biscuit crumbs, of chicken bones. “Excellent dinner again, Mrs. Taft. You really don’t have to bother.”

“No bother,” she said, plucking the basket from his fingers. A furtive glance over her shoulder. Jeremy knew she was searching the dark grass.

“He’s quiet now,” she said.

Perhaps Bill Taft was dead. Jeremy took a deep breath. The night air tasted of mown hay, of damp earth. In the woods by the creek tree frogs sang vespers. “Yes.”

“Maybe he’s asleep,” she murmured. “That’s good. It’s best when he’s asleep. When he’s awake and calling, he sounds so—”

Bill Taft sounded so afraid.

After a moment she perched on the bumper and stared off into the gloom. “It dark where he is?”

“I don’t know,” Mark would have made stars, Jeremy knew, Mark would have created galaxies. He doubted the creativity of Bill Taft.

“He ever coming back?”

No, Jeremy thought; but he wasn’t brave enough to tell her. It was Mrs. Taft who was made up of courage. Mrs. Taft, who believed in monsters; who stood and faced them alone.

“He sounds so tired,” she said, her own voice weary.

Bill Taft wasn’t simply tired. He was running out of air. When the Tink opened, it must have sucked in a limited supply, and now he was suffocating. “Yes,” he agreed. “He does.”

“Tell me again,” she said without taking her gaze from the dark, star-ceilinged field.

He told her the story as he had dozens of times, wondering if she didn’t yet understand, or if the telling simply made the night less lonely. “Spacetime has the consistency of foam,” ‘he said. “And the pattern that makes up the galaxies is repeated, smaller and smaller, down to the tiniest particles. Imagine that our universe is the beer and micro-universes the froth. Tiny, potential universes bubble up all the time. Mr. Taft walked into this field and encountered one which was just opening up. Because the universe now had an observer, it became stable.”

When she didn’t comment, he went on. “Mark explained once that it was like God played with dollhouses. When they were empty, the dollhouses would appear and disappear. Once a doll had been placed in them, though, the dollhouse had to stick around. Mark could explain this better,” he said with bitterness. “Everything came easy to Mark. He was always quick with analogy. Quick with anything.”

Jeremy had learned from Mark that good stories should be brief. Mrs. Taft was an intelligent woman, but one of simple words. After the first few tellings he had dropped puzzling phrases like “fractals,” like “quantum tunneling,” and “Big Bangs.”

Glancing to Mrs. Taft, he saw her nod in appreciation. Her voice. Though, was hard. “God should have been more careful.”

Out in the meadow a beacon flickered briefly, Bill Taft, restless in dream.

“Mark,” she said. “You talked about him before.”

“Yes. Mark. Dr. Guthrie. He conceived the theory, and we worked on it together.” Jeremy pressed his lips together hard. “He was—” His voice flickered and died like an EM beacon sensing transient life. “He is—a fine physicist.”

“Sometimes I think I won’t never hear him again,” she said.

For a disorienting moment, Jeremy thought she was talking about Mark and wondered how she knew.

“My Bill doesn’t hear me when I call.”

“No,” Jeremy said as gently as the truth allowed. “No. I doubt he does.”

After a while she took the empty basket and walked to the house, leaving the full one behind.

When she had gone, Jeremy sat, the laptop across his legs, reviewing his data. He drank one beer, and then another, not seeing, but sensing the net of uncaring foam tickle the inside walls of the can.

At midnight the beacons flickered.

Ruby. Where—Bill Taft called as he, wandered the empty field.

Jeremy drained his beer and put his can down at the end of the neat row of five others. Swaying a little, he walked out into the meadow. Whenever he approached, the voice of Bill Taft moved out of reach.

“I caught fireflies once,” he whispered to the dying man. “Like God, I put them in a jar.”

Ruby—The voice moved away, slippery as the breeze. To the back of the meadow a flutter of red. Bill Taft in his quantum bottle. Bill Taft left in Jeremy’s incapable, careless hands.

If you were going to cheat, you should have been more careful, he’d told Mark. You should have taken precautions.

Jeremy’s one hand had been clutching his suitcase’s handle, his other grasped the doorknob. .

Please don’t leave, Mark had said.

No wonder you weren’t content with me. I was always just a plodder, Jeremy had muttered. If God had given me your sort of genius, I would have eaten right. Would have worn my seatbelt. Wouldn’t have staked my life on the safety of a condom. Oh, shit, Mark. The thing that makes me the most angry is that you threw it all away.

Mark’s expression had been woeful, contrite. There isn’t any God, Jer. Just infinite probabilities.

With a sigh Jeremy gave up ego’s battle. He walked back to the van, lifted the phone’s screen and dialed the familiar number.

A hard-faced gray-haired woman answered. On the other side of the room, a television was playing quietly. An old movie, Jeremy noticed. One about black and white cowboys riding a monochrome meadow.

“I’m sorry,” Jeremy said in surprise. His lips felt numb, his tongue beer-mushy. “I’ve got—maybe I dialed the wrong number. I was wanting to reach Dr. Mark Guthrie.”

“I’m his night nurse. Do you know what time it is?” the woman shot back.

Blearily, Jeremy glanced at his watch.

“It’s one o’clock in the damned morning,” she continued. “And Dr. Guthrie’s ill—”

“I know,” he snapped. “I know that, but this is important. He’ll want to talk to me. I’ve discovered something vital about his theory. Tell him Jeremy Schoen’s calling. This will amuse him: tell him that, as usual, I’m in over my head.”

She put him on hold. The delay was so long that Jeremy nearly rebuilt the bulwark of his self-esteem brick by crumbling brick. By the time the picture on the screen blinked on again, he’d decided he could handle the problem himself and had almost hung up.

It was the nurse again. She whispered. “He’s awake. I know he wants to .hear from you, but don’t tire him out.”

Displayed on a nightstand was the miscellany of illness: an army of pill bottles; a pitcher of water, which, by the adherent, bubbles, had stood long enough to go flat.

And an open Bible. Jeremy’s gaze riveted on the incongruity, its marker lying across its pages like a stripe of blood.

The woman’s plump hand went out to the monitor and its attendant camera. The picture in the screen began to turn.

No, Jeremy thought in alarm, realizing what the presence of the Bible must mean.

Too late. Far too late for apologies. Mark was suddenly there, inert on the bed, bridled by oxygen tubes. In the months since Jeremy had seen him, the soft flesh of his face had weathered to the skull’s bedrock. On his cheeks he wore the purple hearts of Karposi’s sarcoma. His stick hands were lying over .his chest, the bone at the wrist naked and round as a marble.

Oh, Mark—Jeremy’s mind’s voice was as weary as Bill Taft’s. “I’ve been meaning to come by,” Jeremy lied fitfully. “I just haven’t had the time, what with the treatments and my work. “ Mark’ s work, his mind corrected. “Well,” he said with false cheer. “I’m in remission now, and the doctors think I’ll be just fine.”

Mark didn’t answer, The silence might have meant that, for the first time, he was jealous; it might simply have meant he hadn’t the strength. Jeremy listened to the hiss of oxygen through the tubes, the feeble rattling of Mark’s breath.

“Isaac Abrams told me he called you,” Jeremy said. “So you know where I am.”

Mark opened his trembling mouth as though to speak, but instead sucked in a labored, strangled breath. In his eyes was a drowning-man panic.

The nurse leaned forward, adjusted the oxygen, settled him higher on the pillows, With a tissue she mopped the spittle from his chin.

She finished and stood back. Mark was, in an exhausted sort of way, breathing again.

“I’m sorry for disturbing you, but I need your help,” Jeremy said, searching the ruined face for the man he’d once known. “I’m getting readings I don’t understand.”

Mark blinked slowly. The spark of curiosity in his eyes had burned out, smothered under the ash of terror.

“I’m lost,” Jeremy admitted. “There’s unexpected—”

Mark’s lungs rattled. His eyes wavered closed.

“He’s getting tired,” the nurse said from beyond the range of the phone’s camera.

He’s dying, Jeremy thought, feeling an urge to grasp the image in the screen, to feel the pixels run through his fingers like grains of ionized sand.

“Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Please. There’s an anomaly, Mark. He’s still alive,” Jeremy told him. “Do you hear me? Bill Taft’s still alive. I hear his voice. His family does, too.”

Suddenly the eyes opened. The face suffused with bewildering longing, a look of bottled hope.

“You can’t imagine how eerie it is,” Jeremy went on. “Hearing that voice coming from nowhere. It’s—”

A clogged-drain rattle. A ragged gasp. Mark’s sunken chest fluttered. He was trying, it seemed, to sit up.

“Don’t upset him,” the nurse said. “He needs his rest.”

“Just a minute, please. Mark. I’m coming to see you next week. I promise. But before I do, I need—”

A week would be too long, he knew. Like Bill Taft, Mark was left with too little air. “I need—”

Jeremy stopped himself, considering the importance of the Bible, considering the terror behind Mark’s gaze.

“Let him sleep,” the nurse said.

“Bill Taft sounds happy,” Jeremy said in a rush. “He sounds just fine, Mark. I know it doesn’t make sense, but the Tink he’s in . . . I think he’s created something. I think he’s created an existence. It’s—”

Just before the nurse broke the connection, Jeremy saw Mark’s fear supplanted by ravenous hope. Gently he closed the phone’s case and sat with it cradled in his arms.

After a while he rose and walked into the meadow to stand with the other dying man. “When I was eight years old,” he told the moving light, “I trapped fireflies in a jar.”

They had been beautiful, winking on his night-shrouded dresser. He’d ridden to sleep in their glow.

“But people are careless,” he explained. “God forgets things.”

And magic couldn’t be bottled. That was the truth Jeremy couldn’t allow Mark to know.

“My fault. I forgot to poke holes in the jar’s lid, you see,” Jeremy said to the flashing beacons. “They suffocated as I slept.”

Jeremy thought of his negligent hand on the suitcase, his indifferent fingers on the knob. The small, lifeless bodies at the bottom of the jar. Bill Taft beat himself against his quantum glass as Jeremy the plodder, guardian of fireflies, kept watch.

Author’s Note: When Mike Mara was editor of the Dallas Life Magazine, he called me one day to tell me that he was going to put four pieces of original fiction in the magazine for Christmas, and did I have a story? “Sure!” said I, lying like hell. I knew he would need a short-short, and I have never been known for really short fiction. But then I started thinking about my novel Happy Policeman, and I imagined a kid stuck behind the line—a big city kinda kid, and his nightmarish, never-ending trip to the country. Then the kid started telling me the story and—guess what?—the story that he told me was this perfect, seasonal short-short.

You’d think I’d get used to it, right? The geeks at school go, “Get a life.” Or, “Oh, wa-a-a.” I don’t know why it doesn’t get any easier, OK? I mean, it’s more than wanting to hang out at the mall or at Blockbuster. I always had the hots for Julia Roberts. I wonder if she’s still alive. If any of them are.

Sometimes I start thinking about movies and television. Malls and Chinese restaurants. Julia Roberts and Mom and Dad. That’s when I get on my bike, no matter what time it is, and run out to the Line—it’s not like Gran’s gonna freak and put my picture on a milk carton, you know?—And that’s when I start digging in the dirt like a nut-case, sort of like Jack Nicholson in The Shining knocking on that bathroom door.

He-e-e-ere s Kevin!

Holidays are the worst. You’re going along OK, maybe forgetting that cool in Dweeb City is a big initial belt buckle and a Garth Brooks hat. Maybe I’m even getting used to Gran and her arts and craftsy bean pictures. And he-e-e-ere’ s Christmas! knocking down your door with an ax.

So three weeks before my second Christmas marooned in Geekville—and, not that I’m counting, but also two years and nine months since the start of the granny visit from hell—here I am, pulling up grass and dirt in the dark. Right. Like I could really dig my way out. Then I realize a Torku’s sitting there, watching me totally lose it:

So I start in on the Torku, even though Gran says that since they feed us, we ought to try to be nice. So what? Who cares that they give free Hamburger Helper to the local yokel grocery, the kind of place where they stock Chung King in gourmet?

Anyway, Mr. Personality sits like a fat freckled rock while I tell him how real aliens beam around instead of driving geeky UPS vans. They bust out of your chest. They eat dogs. They do antigrav stuff to your bike. I ask where he went to alien school. And then I tell him real aliens wouldn’t put a Line around some snoozer Texas town so they could save blue jeans and kicker music and the 4-Hicks Club. They’d put a Line up around the world and save everybody. Everybody. That’s what a real alien would do. And he goes, “Why do you think something bad happened?”

Sometimes you gotta wonder how they ever made it across space.

I go, “Look, this town? We’re the only survivors. Maybe you guys dropped bombs on the other people, or maybe it wasn’t your fault, and there was some weird disease that killed everybody else. All I know is, we’re in a homeboy zoo. But something really bad had to happen, because if Dad was alive, he would’ve come got me out.”

Man, oh, man. It’s pretty cold out there by the Line at one in the morning. I start thinking about Dad and about how Christmases used to be, with 6-foot-tall fir trees, and pumpkin pies, and Santa Claus cookies, and I remember Gran saying, “Not so much fuss this year,” and all of a sudden I’m boo-hooing.

“You have not seen what has happened to the ones behind the line. How do you know that what has happened is bad?” the Torku goes.

“I don’t!” And—it’s weird, OK?—but these words start corning out of my mouth and I didn’t even know I was gonna say them, or how important they’d be. What I say is: “And it’s the not knowing that scares me.”

So this dork Torku goes, “Well.” Just like that. Then he tells me I have a very novel way of looking at things, and would I like a ride back to town? Like the thrill of my life would be riding in his big-deal UPS van.

No way, l tell him. He leaves. There I am, alone again in Dweebland.

So a week later Gran puts up the tree, the fake dollar-ninety-eight kind that sits on top of a table. She goes for broke—puts on all six lights and all three ornaments. Then she sets out some presents and some potpourri that’s supposed to smell like pine. The-e-c-ere’ s Christmas!

The next Saturday when she goes to macramé or candlemaking or whatever the Geritol set’s into, I stay home and—get this—rnake cookies

Anyway, here I am, up to the elbows in flour, The Joy of Cooking propped open—a cookie-making maniac—and the doorbell rings. When I open the front door, I see old Torku’s come to visit. He tells me he’s been thinking about what I’d said.

I have to invite him in, otherwise he’s spend the day on the porch, a mud statue. I take him to the kitchen. He. plops as much of that speckled butt as he can fit into one of Gran’s rattan chairs and he goes, “What is behind the oven door?”

I tell him I’m making cookies, that my mom taught me how. And while I’m explaining that cookies are a really important part of Christmas, and how I used to help Mom make pumpkin pies and com bread dressing, I look out the window and see the top of the Line over the trees. Yesterday it was red and white like peppermint candy. Today it’s kind of a faded tart with little pink flowers, and I remember that Mom had a blouse with tiny flowers like that.

It happens so fast that I don’t see it coming. Like smashing your thumb with a hammer—so quick you don’t even cry. Only this pain’s down in my chest, and it hurts so bad I can’t breathe.

And old Torku goes, “What is behind the oven door?”

I kinda gasp out, “Oh, man, gimme a break. It’s cookies!”

He goes, “How do you know that?”

I tell him because I put them there.

So he goes, “Then you have missed the point,” and before I can figure but what he means, he waves toward the cupboard and says, “What is in there?”

I tell him cans and spaghetti and stuff.

“It is a kitty.”

Wait. Wait a minute. Let’s think about this.

I mean, he came all the way from another planet. Got to have something going for him, right? So I go to the cupboard and peek in. Tomato paste. Canned green beans.

He goes, “You have ruined it by looking. Just before you opened the door, there was a striped kitty.”

I close the cupboard. “Get real. You couldn’t see in. How do you know?”

“Because I put the kitty in there. Now I have put it back.” So, like a doofus, I look inside. If there’s a cat, it’s doing this killer imitation of Campbell’s soup.

And Torku goes, “How can I be certain what is in the oven, even if I remember putting something inside? And if no knowledge is absolute then, why should I be afraid of what is in the cupboard? This is why the Line exists: The not seeing is the miracle.”

What he says weirds me out. I’m standing there, right? And I nearly get it. Like, I’m staring into the cupboard, and I can smell that stupid potpourri, I can smell the cookies baking, and I know if I looked around I’d see that cheap tree and all the dirty pans I’m gonna have to wash, but my nose is telling me it’s Christmas. Aw, man. It’s Christmas. I can feel someone behind me, and for a minute, just a minute, it’s Mom.

I hold my breath and turn around real slow. The Torku’s prying himself out of the chair. I ask him if he wants some cookies to take with him, you know, for the rest of the guys. He says no. And just like Mom always taught me, l walk him to the door.

On the way, we pass the tree. Under it is this rectangular box that’s gotta be clothes. I already shook it, so I know it’s a shirt. And if it came from Gran, it’s gotta be something that’s basic fashion for the Grand Ole Opry.

But still, it’s one of the all-time great-looking gifts, wrapped in the Christmas paper they make for guys—gold foil with brown and red and dark-green leaves. It looks like something you’d go duck hunting with. I hand the box to old Dorku. “Merry Christmas.”

He freaks, sort of freezes in place, like nobody’s ever given him a present before.

Is this great, or what? Man. The potpourri’s putting out pine scent like crazy, and the cookies I baked smell like heaven. No doubt about it. Christmas.

I go, “Hey. Get into the season, OK? This is part of the cookie and pine tree thing I was telling you about. Once a year, we pick out something special, wrap it in foil paper, and give it to somebody. This one’s yours.”

He nods, real serious. I watch him waddle down the steps, carrying that box.

See? What’s cool is, he’ll never open it. He’ll never know all it is is a dorky Western shirt. He’ll never realize that the paper it’s wrapped in is better than what’s inside. I want to call after him, “It’s a tabby cat!” but I don’t.

If his Torku friends ask what’s in it, he’ll say, “a Ranger’s coffee mug” or “Addison Airport.” That’s what’s so totally cool.

It’s chilly on the porch, so cold my breath comes out in a fog. I go back inside. The house is warm, the way it feels in winter—not like April, you know? But warm like someone just put their arms around you. When the timer dings, I walk into the kitchen and take the last batch of cookies from the oven.

There’s lots of trees in Dweebland, that’s the only neat thing here. If I stand at the window, I can see a whole forest. The leaves already fell, so it’s gray except for the cedar. Behind the house is a 30-foot wall the color of Mom’s blouse.

Here’s the thing—If you don’t open the present, anything can be inside, A cat. Fair Park. I mean, is that what the Line’s all about?

One thing I’m sure of: For the first time I can picture Mom alive. It’s a week till Christmas there, too, and she’s feeling kinda sad. But it’s all right. I know the house smells of that 6-foot-tall fir, and everything’s almost like it should be. Like it was. It’s 4 o’clock on a Saturday afternoon, and it’s cloudy. The air’s hazy and cold and blue, but I know the kitchen’s warm and bright. And sure as I’m standing here, I know she’s baking cookies.

Author’s Note: For fifteen years I worked an 8-5 job at the Dallas Morning News; and, being one of those anal-retentive folks who must be on time, I always arrived at the main downtown Dallas DMN location by 7:15. This put me at Pearl and Main, a busy intersection, by 7:00 A.M.

It’s dark at 7:00 in the winter, and one morning while I was turning onto Pearl, I saw a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye—something very close and very dark. Just a blink, if you will, of total blackness, a momentary view of oblivion. Only when I was a block away from that corner did I realize that the dark spot which had come so near my left side window had been a pedestrian in dark clothing who was crossing against the light (Dallas being a caveat-driver/caveat-pedestrian sort of place).

That morning I didn’t ponder the horror of nearly hitting someone. I pondered the darkness.

Sergeant Tunny, wire basket in hand, stopped in front of Cohen’s desk and started flipping out manila envelopes. The sound they made when they hit the steel-and-Formica top were the only due to what lay hidden inside them.

Clink. Clink. Jewelry.

Tap. Something light: A photograph or maybe a letter. Plop. A wallet? The form inside the envelope was thick enough.

Thunk. Cohen eyed that one for a moment, his gaze briefly following the drawn curve of the five.

Tap. Whatever was in six was thin and bigger than a business card, smaller than a sheet of regular paper. He could sense that much without touching it.

“Come on, guys,” Tunny said in his raspy bass. “We need witnesses.”

Four cops left what they were doing or not doing to walk over: three uniforms; one plainclothes detective.

“Begin,” Tunny said to Cohen.

Cohen reached a hand out to envelope number one. Before he could touch the edge of the manila paper, the darkness was back. And it stayed for a count of twelve. Cohen had been timing it lately so that he could describe it to any doctor who was interested the details of the symptoms.

It wasn’t just his imagination. Everyone sees bright spots in their field of vision; Cohen knew that. Bright floating spots were indications of a brief lack of oxygen to the brain. Big deal. So sometimes the brain said send, and the circulatory system, like an overworked file clerk, said send what?

And sometimes vision went dark. That was a circulatory problem, too, Cohen had learned. You have low blood pressure, and you get up too abruptly and—blam—you’re down again.

But vision wasn’t ever supposed to go dark in precisely the way Cohen’s did, and with precisely the same feeling. In that twelve seconds, he could dimly see, in the background, Tunny’s blossoming smirk; and in the foreground, like a panel of smoked glass, the square of darkness.

The darkness was his private black hole, a thing that sucked in all thought and held it like a startled breath.

After a count of twelve, it blinked out of existence and let him go.

“Worried you can’t get it up, Cohen?” Tunny asked. “Forgot who the perp was supposed to be?”

When the darkness evaporated, Cohen found himself staring directly into Tunny’s baby-blond good looks. The sergeant’s eyebrows were so fair that they blended into the pale of his skin. He was a lump of flesh and a thatch of yellow, relieved by two primary-blue eyes. Simple, even in colors, Tunny was.

For an instant Cohen hated Tunny. I could be dying here, he thought. I could be having a stroke. If Cohen fell off the chair, he could picture Tunny saying, Worried you can’t get it up?

Tunny upset him so much Cohen was afraid he couldn’t go on and that he’d have to delay the lineup for a while.

Cohen pushed his anger into the tight space where the black hole lurked, then reached forward and picked up the first envelope.

He could feel a chain inside; a thick, short chain, “A cop’s bracelet,” Cohen said. Tunny’s smile soured. Cohen stared hard into the sergeant’s eyes, a cruel turn to his mouth. “His wife’s running around on him.” One of the witnessing officers, a uniform, made a hasty snatch for the envelope. His face was purple. Tunny tore the envelope from the uniform’s hand and threw it back on the desk. Clink. “Fuck it, Ojeda. You don’t freak in the lineup, okay?” Tunny’s cheeks were pink from embarrassment or perhaps anger. “Let the man do his thing.”

Cohen picked up number two and held it a moment. Another man’s bracelet, about the same size and weight. “Pimp,” Cohen said. “He’s not the one.” He glanced up to see if he was right, but this time no one was giving him clues. Cohen put the pimp’s bracelet down and picked up the flat envelope, number three. That was Dickerson, the murderer. Cohen’s sensitive fingers could feel the quick, hungry pulse under the paper. All murderers had their own rhythm. This one was as steady and measured as blood in the veins, a beat that whispered l-want-I-want-I-want. Hurriedly, he put it down. “That’s the same guy I felt on the victim’s clothes.”

Tunny settled his clipboard against his stomach and made some notes. “You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“You want to check again?”

“No.” Cohen’s hands were shaking. He hated the touch of murder. Murder was a darkness of another sort; a darkness shot with crimson.

“Keep going,” Tunny said.

Cohen swallowed and reached for four, the one he figured was a wallet. There was a lump inside the envelope, but it didn’t tell him anything. “Zero,” he said, frowning. “Let it be noted that the psychic received no concrete impressions.” Tunny repeated the stock, formal phrase by rote.

“No feelings at all,” Cohen said by way of correction. He couldn’t tell whether Tunny made a notation. Quickly he reached out for five. When his hand hit it, an instinctive smile erupted from inside him and spread itself over his face. He glanced around the broad form of Tunny and could see the receptionist watching him. Cohen felt Tunny watching him, too. He stifled his grin. “Lila’s compact.”

“You like that one?” Tunny asked.

Cohen looked down at the table, hoping that Lila had noticed his reaction; hoping Tunny hadn’t.

And then Cohen reached for six. He had it in both hands before he realized something was wrong. By the time he sensed the danger, he was trapped. He couldn’t put the envelope down. His hands clamped to it as an electrocuted man holds moronically, helplessly, onto a live wire.

In the back of his brain, he could hear Tunny’s voice rise to a shout. “Cohen? Cohen!”

A primal wail started in Cohen’s chest, rushed up his throat and filled his mouth.

“Christ!” Tunny snapped. “Cohen! Let go!”

The policeman had hold of one edge of the envelope and was fighting a desperate tug-of-war with it. Finally, with a furious jerk, he tore it from the psychic’s grasp.

Cohen dropped back into his chair. Tunny stood with the envelope cradled at his chest. He was breathing hard.

“Thank you,” Cohen whispered.

Tunny licked his lips anxiously. “Was it the murderer?”

“No. Something else.” Whatever was in that envelope was something terrible: an unending, silent loneliness. “I want verification.”

At first Tunny looked confused. Then his cheeks went pale, pale as his hair, pale as his eyebrows. “That’s for amateurs, Cohen. You don’t need that.”

“Verification!” Cohen snapped. “Now! Right now!”

The policemen were ringed around him like a gathering of owls. Tunny tore open number one and upended it. There was a glint of gold, a clink. A bracelet dropped out of the envelope, and Ojeda quickly picked it up.

There was an identical bracelet in two. It was just like Tunny to have picked up two similar bracelets from two dissimilar men. The detective had a quirky sense of humor.

In number three was a lock of brown hair encased in plastic. He wondered how the cops had gotten it. Psychometrist’s samples were governed by search-and-seizure rules. Had Tunny, scissors in hand, asked Dickerson to give him a lock? Or, more likely, had he staked out the murderer’s barber?

“Four,” Cohen said.

Tunny glanced to the other policemen and tore open the end of the fourth envelope. There was a wallet inside. It still had the price tag on it.

“Bastard,” Cohen whispered.

The sergeant quickly opened five. It was Lila’s compact. The case was chipped, and makeup was caked in the ornate design of the white plastic.

Cohen picked up the compact and held it tenderly for a moment, as gently as he had always longed to hold her hand. The case was woman-scented, and the residue of the makeup outside was slightly greasy. Lila had a sweet, happy feel to her like the feel of a gift of flowers or a surprise letter from a friend.

Without putting the compact down, he said, “Six.”

Tunny hesitated.

“Six!” Cohen shouted.

The sergeant ripped open one edge and upended the envelope over the table. Cohen’s MasterCard dropped out.

“Shit,” Cohen gasped as he lurched to his feet.

Tunny looked like he was about to cry. “I’m sorry, Nathan. Jesus, you know I . . .”

“Shut up! Shut up!” Cohen held onto Lila’s compact as if he were suspended over infinity and the compact were his only lifeline. He was afraid to pick up his credit card. He was terrified to touch it.

Tunny was still talking. “You left your jacket on your chair again, Nathan. Your wallet right inside it. I just wanted to see what would happen.”

“You fucking cretin!” Cohen screamed. With a loud crack the compact shattered in his hand.

The ring of policemen watched as Cohen opened his shaking fist. A brush dropped out first, making a dull sound on the linoleum floor. His palm was covered with glistening, beige powder and shards of bone-colored plastic. Blood seeped, making dirty rivulets in his hand.

He hurried away from the table, and toward the bathroom.

“Cohen!” Tunny shouted behind him. “Cohen! What about . . .”

Cohen slammed open the bathroom door. The hydraulic mechanism caught it and, careful as a salesman in an antique shop, let it ease closed, muting the end of Tunny’s question. “ . . . your MasterCard?”

Beneath the tap the water ran red and beige. It smelled of perfume and blood. Cohen was pressing paper towels on his wounds when the door opened. He glanced up, expecting to see an apologetic Tunny. It was Schindler. The doctor gave Cohen’s bleeding hand a curious glance and then leaned up against the dirty tile wall, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Psychiatrists should be careful of body language, Larry,” Cohen warned.

Schindler shrugged, but didn’t change his posture. “Don’t want the MasterCard back?”

“Tell Tunny he can shove it up his ass.”

Schindler laughed. “Would that be an act that was emotionally charged?”

After a pause, Cohen laughed, too.

“Seriously,” Schindler said and then stopped. The psychiatrist had a habit of leaving dangling lead-ins behind him.

When Cohen was certain that Schindler was not going to go on, he said, “Tell Tunny to put the card back in my wallet.”

“You shouldn’t leave a wallet unattended. This is a police station. There are all sorts of crooks here.” After a perfectly timed comic pause, he added, “Some of them wear uniforms so you can spot them, but what about the others?”

Cohen didn’t bother to laugh. His hand was throbbing. When he looked up at the mirror, the darkness returned, a dead spot in the comer of his eye. As it vanished, he could see Schindler watching him.

“How’s the vision problem?” Schindler asked.

Turning off the water, Cohen threw the bloodied paper towels in the trash and yanked some fresh from the dispenser. Sometimes Cohen felt the psychiatrist could read his mind. Maybe Schindler was getting a little unlicensed Psychamine on the side. “The same.”

“Well?”

Cohen watched spots of red erupt from the nubbly surface of the towels.

“Maybe you should cut the Psychamine, Nathan.”

“They’ve done neurological tests. Nobody can find anything wrong.”

“The brain’s a bunch of weird shit, son. We don’t even know what the drug does.”

The towels had soaked through. Cohen threw them away and stuck his bleeding hand in the sink, hearing the drip-drip as his blood hit the porcelain.

“Want me to bandage it?”

Cohen shook his head. “It’ll be all right in a minute.”

“You’re working too hard.”

“I read Forbes so I understand I’m a workaholic. This should make you happy, not upset.”

“So what is it with you?” Schindler asked. “Power? Knowledge? What? Why knock yourself out, Cohen?”

“Why do you think I do it?”

“A power trip. You’re irredeemably awkward in social encounters, so you get a rush out of your job. Right? Am I right?”

“I’m the best psychic you’ve got.”

“Only because you’ve sublimated all your sexual desires into it. Tell me true. You think it’s the Psychamine that’s causing your blackouts, don’t you.”

Cohen applied more towels to his wounds. “They’re not blackouts per se. Besides, what am I going to do, Larry? Work in an office or what? I can’t type. I’m not trained for anything else.”

“Poor little mind reader,” Schindler said in a voice like sugared vinegar. “Your perp Dickerson’s the one. They’re calling in the verifying psychics now. If they point him out, the cops are going to pick him up.”

“’Who’s on Veri-Psi?”

“Durso and Ingram.”

“They’re good,” Cohen said in the easy tone of one who knows he’s better.

“Stop taking the Psychamine.”

Cohen studied his reflection. A shy, mousey man stared back. Under the fluorescent lights, the face in the mirror looked greenish, baggy and used up. “I can’t,” he whispered.

“Have you been counting? Well, I have. Fifteen years, Cohen. You’ve been taking it fifteen years, longer than anybody on record. What if one of the long-term effects is blindness?”

Cohen glanced down at his hand. Blood had made red spiderwebs on his palm and left rusty threads on the white porcelain. “It’s not like blindness.”

“Then what’s it like?”

“The darkness isn’t part of my eye. It’s inside my brain. It’s a suction monster, a fucking Hoover vacuum cleaner of the soul.”

Cohen glanced over his shoulder. Schindler’s easy, friendly manner had disappeared, leaving only the psychiatrist part behind.

“You know I’m clairvoyant,” Cohen said.

For a moment, Schindler froze. Then he shook his head vehemently as if the words were a wasp he could shoo out of the room. “Come on, Cohen. Come on. Don’t get absurd on me, okay? The courts recognize telepathy and psychometry, not clairvoyance. Seeing into the future leaves you with an ungovernable paradox.”

“I’m clairvoyant,”- Cohen said. “Consider for a moment what that says about time. Think what it says about space.”

Schindler frowned. “I’m listening.” Yes, Schindler was listening. He wasn’t happy, he wasn’t believing; but he was listening.

“I’ve bent time, Larry,” he told him quietly. “The past, the future, they’re all one thing. And the place where time is bent is a place where parts of me are so crushed, so dense, that it lets no light escape. One day, Larry, one day, I’m going to fall into that fucker and not come out, understand? And I’m scared shitless because I don’t know what’s inside it.”

Schindler stayed in his dim corner, leaning up against the wall, his arms crossed, his posture the same as when he’d come in the door. His face, though, had suddenly gone expressionless. “So that’s what you think.”

“That’s what I imagine.”

“Okay. Granted.”

“I’m afraid of it. I’m afraid of what I saw in the envelope. I’m afraid of the future I saw in my goddamned MasterCard.”

“Why did you think that was clairvoyance in particular, Cohen? Did some little sign pop up and tell you future event?” Cohen glanced at the wall. He would have glanced at anything, anything, to keep from facing Schindler’s bland, clinical scrutiny. “You see what people see. You can see it more clearly than I can. Truth: That’s what you see,” Schindler said softly. “Maybe the only thing contained in that card was your own pathological loneliness.”

Staring into the wall, Cohen felt the hot, gravid pressure of tears behind his eyes. Pathologically lonely? he thought. Was that the way everyone saw him? For an uncomfortable moment, his mind fondled the idea as though it were an interesting but somewhat suspect find that had washed up on a beach. “I’m not like that.”

“Oh, Nathan,” Schindler said tiredly. “Know thyself, okay?”

“Fuck you!” Cohen shouted. Schindler stood straighter, unfolded his arms. “Listen,” Cohen told him, firmly meeting the psychiatrist’s gaze in the minor. “I know the difference. There’s a difference in the feel. What hit me was clairvoyance, only I couldn’t see all the details. In spite of the Psychamine, you only see parts, and sometimes those parts don’t make sense. What if the vision was telling me I’m going to crawl into that dark place, Larry? What if it was telling me I’ll die there?”

“I don’t think the black spots have a physical basis. If you’re clairvoyant what you saw may be insanity. That’s a type of darkness, too.”

Cohen remembered the ones who had entered the program with him. Frazier had been a careful man, one who carried his umbrella when there was only a twenty percent chance of rain. He’d opened his wrists longitudinally in a tub of warm water, and then he’d opened the back of his knees, too.

Rowe was making baskets at an Iowa farm for the strangely inspired. And Karpovich, ah, Karpovich. He’d ended his new career as an alcoholic by jumping in front of a train.

“There was something wrong with us to begin with, right, Larry? There’s something missing in people who are born psychic. Guts, maybe. Maybe that last, tough, protective layer of skin.”

“If the Psychamine just augments what you had to begin with, maybe it augments the cowardice and the hurt, too,” Schindler said. “You should try giving it up.”

“I can’t quit,” Cohen said. “You’re absolutely right about me. I’m obsessive/compulsive and when I do an investigation I get a hard-on like you wouldn’t believe.” Cohen held a new wad of paper toweling to his palm, but the wounds were already closing. The paper came away with just a few dots of red.

“Spoken like someone in the throes of self-destruction.”

“It’s my goddamned life, Schindler.”

“No,” Schindler said. “No, it’s not. Just like the cops’ lives aren’t theirs, either. Medical leave, Cohen. Open ended, understand? When you’re ready to come back, we’ll do a physical and mental on you, okay?”

Cohen’s stomach went cold. “Hey. The obsessive/compulsive thing . . . all that talk about clairvoyance . . . it was a joke. You don’t have a sense of humor, or what?”

But Schindler wasn’t even looking at him. “Take some rest. Go to Bermuda.”

A small, weak laugh escaped Cohen’s lips. “Listen, we’re friends, aren’t we? I mean, that’s what all this talk was about, you know? Something between friends?’

“I’m a shrink first.”

Hatred grabbed Cohen by the neck and cut off his air. “Well, tell Lila I’m sorry about her compact.”

“Okay.”

“And get the hell out.”

After a moment, Schindler did. The door closed itself carefully behind him.

Cohen watched him go. He watched until the dark came back, a spot so black, so weighty, that not even thought moved there.

When it had gone, he wiped the last remnants of blood from his hand and left the bathroom. A few policemen glanced up as he walked to his desk.

Tunny came over. “I’m sorry.”

“Shut up,” Cohen whispered without looking at him. He grabbed his jacket, put it on, and walked out into the chill night. Durso and Ingram were on their way in. He stopped them.

“We shouldn’t be talking,” Durso said. The verifying psychic was a little man with a little man’s slavishness to convention.

“Wait a minute. Just please wait a minute.” Cohen could hear his voice shake. Tonight, when he went home, he’d be alone and lost in the darkness. Tomorrow, when he woke up, he’d be alone and lost with no place to go. “Are you clairvoyant?”

Durso drew himself up in his coat, his watery hazel eyes suspicious. Ingram pulled on an edge of his mustache.

“It’s important. I have to know. Do you sometimes see the future?”

Ingram’s chocolate face blended in with the night, but Cohen could see his eyes shift nervously from Durso to Cohen and back.

“The courts recognize telepathy . . .” Durso began.

“Goddamn it! Don’t you think I’ve memorized that by now? They don’t recognize clairvoyance because it doesn’t make sense. Don’t you see? If you really can see the future, then maybe there’s a place where tomorrow’s already occurred.’”

Durso snapped, “That’s right. It doesn’t make sense. Hence the ‘ungovernable paradox.’” He started to walk past, but Cohen grabbed him by the arm.

“Do you see darkness sometimes? I have to know. A dark thing just at the comer of your eye like something standing between you and the light. Do you ever see something like that?”

Durso was trying to get away. His face was a study in repulsed-shock.

Ingram laid a gloved hand on Cohen’s shoulder. “You need to go home, man. Understand?” he said with soft concern. “’Get some sleep, okay?”

“Don’t patronize me,” Cohen snapped. “Listen, Ingram, maybe one day you’ll see what I see. Maybe Frazier saw it. Maybe that’s what sucked Karpovich out in front of the train.”

Ingram made quieting-the-baby sounds.

“Please,” Cohen whimpered. He was crying. “Tell me. Don’t you ever see it?”

“No, man. I don’t.”

With a jerk, Cohen pulled away and started in a fast walk down the street. After a few paces, he glanced behind. Ingram and Durso were staring at him. The pity on their faces caught him unawares. It was as much of a shock as a chance glimpse of his own reflection in a glass doorway. Maybe, he thought, Schindler was right. Cohen wondered if he peeked too quickly into a mirror he would see a pathologically lonely man staring back.

After a few blocks, he slowed. He’d go home, turn on the TV, maybe, and the darkness would be there, slicing through the image on NBC. And tomorrow he’d wake up, read the paper and try to remember not to get dressed for work. Sometime in the coming week, Schindler would send him a ticket to someplace warm, compliments of the department, and he’d go and look out into the rhythmic blue of the Caribbean and see a black, timeless mass standing between him and the waves.

In his brain, minutes and hours curled in stasis, a spot of dead, heavy air.

He pulled up his collar. A few people stared as he walked past, and he wondered if he was crying again. He felt warmth on his hand, and when he looked down he saw he was bleeding.

He turned off on a side street and was halfway down a claustrophobic alley when—blink—the darkness was back, solid and very close.

“Your money, motherfucker,” a voice growled.

The darkness that throbbed with the aura of murder smelled of stale cigarette smoke and damp wool.

Something moved in that pressured place. Odd. Cohen didn’t think it could. A pain pierced his chest, drawing fire into his back.

His shoulder, his face, smacked against the cold sidewalk. Thick, heavy liquid gushed from his chest.

How stupid, he thought. How clumsy. He tried to get up and couldn’t. My God. What’s the matter with me? he wondered. Then he pictured Tunny’s bland, marshmallow-pink face. Afraid you can’t get it up, Cohen?

Yes, Cohen thought. My body won’t work. I can’t get up. - And I am so afraid.

CIose to his face he could see a pair of scuffed work boots, the laces on one broken and untied. He felt something jerk at his coat pocket. Across the alley was a dented garbage can, its load of green, plastic bags like scoops of unsavory ice cream in a cone.

His breath failed in his throat. He was too weak, too frightened to take another.

Someone would come for him. They’d have to. What he’d touched in his MasterCard didn’t have to be.

Hey, diddle, diddle, he thought desperately, forcing his mind to concentrate on something else besides his terror. If he held himself together long enough, someone would come and drag him back from the brink. There would be bright hospital lights and hot coffee. Cohen would be laughing with the doctor and saying how scared he had been.

Wouldn’t he?

Cohen drank in precious, temporal visions: thee light/shadow, light/shadow play of the tan work boots walking away from him; the way a pink-tailed rat poised, head inquisitively cocked, near a tattered plastic bag; how an oil-slicked puddle shone rainbow-colored in the dim glow from a bulb above a door.

The cat and the fiddle.

Something inside him came loose. The world slipped an inch.

Not yet. Oh, God, please. Not yet. The cow jumped over the moon. His eyes moved hungrily, memorizing all the parts of the world he could see in the moment he had left. And when he got there . . .

The glow from the bulb weakened. Going, going, gone. Black opened its doors, and he was sucked through.

Cupboard was bare.

It was dark. And the darkness did not move. An absurd phrase danced on the edge of his consciousness.

The dish ran away with the spoon.

The words sank into the depths without a ripple. He looked around, thinking that he must be blind, but knowing he was not.

He was dead.

So this is what death is, he thought. It wasn’t much different from what he’d left behind. He knew now that the spot which had haunted him had not been an overlay. It was the very foundation of his existence.

He’d always meant to go fishing. He’d loved it as a child; but when he was grown he never got around to it. Work had been so large and important a matter that it eclipsed the timer that counted his moments. Before he’d realized it, the clock struck midnight and time had just quietly run out.

A pity. He should have gotten to know Lila better. He’d always meant to marry; he’d always wanted to have children. When young, he thought he needed a pony more than he’d needed breath; and when grown, and with an adult’s more subtle desires, he’d wanted a big dog and a house in the country.

Now it all seemed equally important: Every dream, every kiss, every piece of candy he’d been denied. His longing for lost illusion shook the emptiness as a plucked violin string stirs the air. Across space and time, he cast at his memories and his last coherent thought, ironically the same, selfish pulse of a murderer:

I WANT.

His plea tore the thin fabric of the universe. In the abyss a single, faint star flicked on. The glow swelled to the size of a pinhead, the size of a fingernail, the size of a fist.

The light sped toward him in silence and with all the colors that ever were. It rushed joyously as though it knew him, and as if it believed it was coming home.

The light soaked up his knowledge of the Earth the moon, the rings about Saturn; it drank in the nonsense of a nursery rhyme and the, curl of a rat’s pink tail.

I WANT, he thought fiercely.

And in his desire, it became. The light shot through him, the photons it million small bullets from a million small inevitable wars.

Cohen was destined to love butternut ice cream. At thirty-three years old, his eldest child would watch and cheer as he hooked a tarpon off Florida. In fourth grade he would skin his knee and be unable to ride his pony for a week.

Because of Cohen, dinosaurs would stalk the earth and a single, brilliant moment would kill them. In the desert, Georgia O’Keeffe would dream of flowers; and complex organic molecules would discover the heady possibility of life.

Had he eyes to close he would have closed them, for the conquering radiance hurt. Until the interval of cooling, darkness was chained in the deep.

And yet darkness held alternative promises. It always had. Creation was his for the asking; that was the lesson he’d had to die to learn. With calm astonishment he realized how wrong, how deluded, he had been. The prophetic black had not been the lights-out at the end of the play; merely an expectant dimming for act one.

Cohen breathed his life into the script of the nascent universe. It would be eons before he had learned his new walk-on part and Cohen the director permitted him to draw breath.

Nothing in creation, even private creation, was hurried. But he could wait.

Author’s Note: I’m not an autobiographical sort of writer, but I used three stories to explore my emotional conflicts with my family: “Lunch With, Daddy,” “The Holes Where Children Lie,” and “Bluebonnets.” I turned to actual personal history with one novel, Cradle of Splendor. Although Cradle relates a few events in my marriage (buy the book and guess which ones), these three stories are not autobiographical in that sense, but are distilled from various guilts1 and angers and regrets made pure in the hot caldron of fiction. In these stories I explore my relationships with my mother, with my children, and finally with my father. He was not abusive, and for many years we appeared close; but in many ways he remains as unknowable and puzzling and autocratic a figure as the stranger in this story.

She expected the house to seem smaller since her psychiatrist said that memory magnified everything.

But the house didn’t seem any tinier to her, really; it simply looked different. The carpet was mauve now and the wallpaper in the foyer had a neat silver stripe. Even the shadows cast by the few familiar things, the Queen Anne chair, the small inlaid table, seemed slightly skewed.

In the foyer the butler took her coat and she reminded herself to stand up straight and throw her shoulders back. Without conscious effort to the contrary, her head would begin to sag into its natural place between her shoulders and her back would hunch up in sympathetic protection.

She waited for the past to come crashing down around her. That didn’t happen, either.

“This way, please, Miss Sargent,” the butler said. He ushered her into the sunlit dining room where her father was waiting.

She halted in the doorway. The butler accidentally bumped against her.

“Thank you so much for corning,” her father said as he stood and whipped the napkin from his lap.

He looked so young. For the house, time had not stood still; but in deference to her father it had paused.

A dark-suited ghost, the butler made his discreet way around her. With white-gloved hands he pulled a chair out, seating her at the side of her father rather than to his front. The windows of the dining room had been planned as the centerpiece.

The butler was the perfect servant, the sort that understood the subtleties of placement; the kind that left no fingerprints, no marks of his passage. After she and her father sat the butler vanished.

Since she could think of nothing to say, she dutifully glanced out the floor-length windows to the denuded winter trees and then down into her plate. The plate was eggshell porcelain with a cobalt and gold edge, the same pattern as the White House dining room.

A footman brought the first course, an asparagus and spinach salad, then disappeared with the same wizardry as the butler had before him.

The dutiful skill of the servants gave her a sense of continuity, a sense of place. Her father had always believed household help, like children and wives, should be seen and not heard.

She toyed with a spear of asparagus. “Your message sounded urgent.” The memo that had been left on her net had had nothing of this man in it at all. Knowing her father as she did, she realized the emotion in the message had come from a well-meaning secretary.

The blue eyes across the table were cool and appraising, lacking both depth and haste. More like a machine, they’d said. Don’t let it surprise you.

But it wasn’t the lack of emotion that surprised her. It was his smooth-faced youth. He didn’t look much older than she did.

There were some differences of course; but only those who knew him intimately would have noticed. Gone were her father’s private, impatient gestures, the finger-tapping, the secret cigarette smoking. There was no ashtray on the table.

“I’m leaving for Geneva next week,” he told her.

With the ornate, heavy fork she chased a bit of egg yolk across the white china, leaving a yellow trail like a shooting star.

“A dispute between Brazil and France over some mining rights on Mars. I’m being made mediator.”

“Yes. So I read. Is that all? Your going to Geneva, I mean. There’s nothing fatally wrong with your implant or anything?”

He had the voice she remembered, not from home but from news interviews, an affectedly cultured baritone “No. There’s nothing wrong that I’m aware of.”

“Your message sounded as if you were trying to get your life in order the way dying people always do. You know, putting an end to unfinished business, and setting everything in its place.”

He turned to her. His face was a blank page. “The president has posted me overseas. For four years, unless he dies and the vice president puts his own choice in as replacement.”

She had met the vice president. She doubted that he was enough of a man to replace her father. “We haven’t seen one another for five years. I don’t get the point of meeting now.”

His smile had an artifice about it. “Five plus four make nine. That seems too long. Besides, I was at Bloomingdale’s the other day and I bought you a little something.”

The arrival of the main course saved her from pretending to be excited about the gift.

“Have you gone to see Mother?” she asked.

The hands, busy in cutting a paper-thin slice of beef, did not falter. The voice had no edge to it at all. “No.”

“I have. Every week.”

He reached for the mustard pot, the sleeve of his suit riding up to expose the gold band of his monitor. The sight made her flinch and look away. She imagined she could hear the buzz of the micro-pump that fed antioxidants and hormones into his aging cells. The thing planted in his skull acted in absolute silence. Synapses couldn’t be replenished. Instead, they were copied onto a plate of ceramic and metal, an abstract sculpture of thought.

“You shouldn’t make an icon of your mother,” he said. “It’s not healthy.”

“My psychiatrist says it is. He says it’s important for me to remember that someone once loved me.”

Neither shame nor annoyance moved in his face. “Well. Remind me to give you some flowers from the greenhouse. Roses. That might be nice.”

“Should I put your name on them? A card with ‘From your loving husband’ in large, easy-to-read letters? Perhaps I could put up a small, tasteful sign at the entrance to the mausoleum for visitors to see: This way to the eulogy of John Brian Sargent to his wife.’”

She kept her head up, her back straight, waiting with defiant, open eyes for a blow that never came. He dropped a dollop of baby-shit-colored mustard at an edge of the plate.

The taut moment dissolved, leaving her as exhausted as if he had struck her. And as confused. “Daddy? Why did you really want to see me?”

For an instant he froze, probably a brief short circuit between his dying brain and the chip. Then he speared a Brussels sprout, brought it to his mouth and ate.

In the dining room the pale sunlight from the windows darkened. A cottony snow began to fall. She put her fork down and suddenly hated him for eating. “How different are you?” she asked.

He shrugged as if the question had nothing but the most trite of meanings. “It’s hard to tell. It happens so gradually.”

“Like standing in a station and watching bits of you leave, piece by piece on a train?”

The footman came, refilled their wine glasses, and then withdrew in silence.

He said, “You always were poetic. I wonder where you got that from. Your mother and I were never very interested in the arts.”

She pushed her plate aside and turned slightly in her chair to look out the window. The edges of the hills were blurred. A line of far trees were gray. The flakes were falling so thickly that it seemed there was a mist in the air.

It was hard presenting the side of her face to her father, to anyone. The fear of a surprise attack was too strong. Her psychiatrist had said the reason she made people uncomfortable was her intense eye-contact. She wasn’t so much interested in people or what they were saying as she needed to watch for the clenching of hands and for the tell-tale signs of rage so she could duck the blow when it came.

Standing up straight. Looking away. She was getting better at both of them. But turning her cheek to her father brought ancient terrors back. She riveted her eyes to the snow and felt her hands tremble in her lap.

Between her eyes and the bright of the snow fell the shadow of the memory of her father. She was very tiny. He was crouching over her, a giant man in white-tie formal dress with fists like boulders and a face crowded with demons.

She asked, “The implant. Does it let you remember the past?”

“Of course,’ he said.

“You used to hit Mother. Do you remember that?”

Her father was slicing beef. Her question didn’t still his knife and fork. He’d always been one who put tasks ahead of family. “Yes.”

“She’d run and hide in a comer and you’d follow. You’d hit her anywhere but on her face where it might show. She lived all her life in quiet terror, afraid to scream because the servants might hear. Don’t you remember?”

“I remember,” he said in a bland voice. He reached for his water glass and took a measured sip.

“When I try to imagine Mother’s face, I always see her crying.”

Her father popped the last of the rice into his mouth. The footman appeared and took both their plates. In a moment he returned, put a slice of chocolate pie in front of each of them and pouted the coffee.

“When I imagine you,” she said when the servant left, “all I remember are your hands.”

Studiously he put cream and sugar into the coffee and stirred. The spoon made an understated tink-tink against the sides of the cup.

“You told me why you invited me. Do you want to know why I came?”

Tink-tink went the silver spoon against the fragile china, when he wanted to be, her father could be quiet, he could be gentle. He’d always been good with inanimate things.

“I wanted to tell you I hated Mother,” she told him, “because appearances were more important to her than I was. After you’d hit me she’d say how much she loved me. And when you’d hit her she’d say you didn’t mean it. She was a liar. It’s taken some time, but now I don’t hate either of you. My psychiatrist says that both hate and love form bonds. I don’t care to have any bonds, I don’t think.”

He placed the spoon carefully on the saucer, picked up the cup and drank.

“Aren’t you going to say anything? Don’t you want to know what you created? I don’t have any friends. I’ve lived my life afraid to ask questions. I’m terrified to say what I think of the weather or if I liked a movie, because I believe the proper response is a beating. Living with you has made me learn to loathe surprises. God, don’t you remember how it was?”

“I remember,” he said. “But I can’t feel guilty.”

“Because job and country come first? Like appearances were first with Mother? So where the hell did I come in?”

“I can’t feel guilty,” he said simply.

She had opened her mouth to shout at him when she finally understood what he was saying. The sound died in her throat. Not wouldn’t—couldn’t. With the implant, regret was beyond him.

The train that she had come to confront had already left the station, and she’d never had the chance to wave goodbye. She wondered which train the last of his demons had taken.

Swallowing hard, she looked out the window again. The day was muffled as if it were wrapped in blankets. The room was warm and much too comfortable in the onslaught of cold from the windows. “So. Do you still have Ribbons? I haven’t seen him.”

A gray eyebrow quirked. “The spaniel? It died.”

“You always loved that dog,” she whispered.

“Did ? I don’t remember. I mean I recall the spaniel, but I don’t remember loving it.”

Outside on the lawn the wind failed. The snow dropped heavily and with a softness that didn’t seem quite real. In an updraft by the windows, flakes danced a vague Brownian waltz. “You remember facts, but the emotional content is gone, Is that it?”

“I can’t be sure anymore, but I believe so.” He finished his chocolate pie, drained his coffee cup, and sat back in the chair, his huge hands inert on the tablecloth, his face at rest.

“You let them kill you,” she said.

He looked at her with those odd blue eyes. There was intelligence in them, but nothing else. In his brain a quiet revolution had taken place, a bloodless coup d’etat.

“I don’t mind, really,” he said. “I don’t miss anything, I suppose. That’s the problem with making yourself important. In the end, they just couldn’t afford to lose me.”

Jack the Giantkiller had come and taken the ambition, the pride, and the impatience away, leaving behind the kindly man she’d always wanted as a father. She swiveled her head quickly to the window, wiping her eyes.

He pulled the napkin from his lap. “I have your present in the other room.”

As soon as her father started to stand, the footman was there, pulling out first his chair and then hers. With a young man’s stride, her father led her to the study. On the polished wood on his desk was a wrapped gift.

She picked it up. The paper was pink with silver bunny rabbits. The bow was white lace with a sprig of baby’s breath. It looked like a gift for the baby shower she had never had. “Birthday or Christmas?’ she asked.

“I don’t know. Whatever you like.”

With a crinkling of paper, she opened it. There was a teddy bear. As if winter had invaded the close, protected room, she began to tremble.

“I tore yours to pieces once,” he said as if he were discussing a game of tennis.

The bear was white and soft. It had anonymous blue button eyes just like her father’s. “I’m forty-three years old, Daddy. It’s a little late to be making restitution for a toy.”

“Sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry. She supposed he would never feel anything much again.

She looked at him closely. “Are you sure you can do this, Daddy? Mediate out-of-planet disputes? Do you think you can really manage?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “That was the part they left me.” He picked up the empty package and crushed it. His hands were still strong. They’d left that with him, too. “Come. I’ll give you some flowers.”

In the sultry heat of the greenhouse he cut red roses and fleshy, yellow orchids. His fingers were deft and tender. “For your mother,” he said when he was finished, and put them in her hands.

An unfinished business, even the roses, had an ending. The world held its breath as everything toppled into place.

The bear cradled in her arms, she stood watching the snow beat small, soft fists against the window. “Daddy,” she said.

He was staring out into the snow beyond the glass, his face in repose. The dying always find a sort of peace.

“Why did you really invite me?” she asked.

For a moment she thought he was not going to turn. His eyes followed the drift of the snow. Finally he blinked as if the chip had told him to act. He pivoted suddenly toward her and, forgetting her training, she ducked her head down between her protective shoulders.

It didn’t seem that he had noticed her automatic, inevitable reaction. The small smile on his face never dimmed.

“Thank you so much for coming,” he said.

Author’s Note: “White Boy” is a very early story, I believe either the second or third story that was accepted for publication. If you’re a determined writer, you don’t much care if you get paid for stuff. Colgate University’s student group who puts out The Mage paid only in contributor copies; but, still, it gave me another story to refer to in my numerous cover letters, and because it was Colgate University, the mention was prestigious. They put out a good-looking magazine, too.

The white boy came out of the woods and stood in the silver noonday winter sunlight, staring towards the house. Leticia first thought he might be an hallucination. Then she figured he might be an angel. Since he didn’t disappear, and since he shifted his weight nervously from one foot to the other—his attitude that of a deer about to run—she felt a squeeze of hope in her chest.

“Hey!” she called, stepping out of her cabin door. His eyes, dark patches of shadow on his face, found hers. They would, she decided before he was even close enough for her to distinguish his features, have to be periwinkle blue. He was that kind of white boy.

He came toward her, his arms swinging easily at his sides, walking something like Jimmy used to walk when he had been alive, only Jimmy had moved looser, more like a cat. The white boy moved like a good horse, all clean lines and bunched muscles. By the time he reached the porch, she could see the pink flush high on his cheeks. “What you doing here, boy?” she asked him sharp-like, not because she meant to scare him away, but because that was the way she always spoke to youngsters. Jimmy and his friends had liked it. She’d speak with that brass in her voice and, because she was so small and frail, Jimmy’s friends would hoot and fall all over themselves, opening up lips to blind her with their smiles.

The white boy, still grinning, shrugged.

“Cain’t you talk?” she asked.

He looked surprised. His eyes, just the color she thought they’d be, opened wide. “Yes.”

“Then what you doing here?”

He shrugged again. He was shy like a lot of boys used to be.

“You got parents, boy?”

“No, ma’m,” he said in a soft, nasal tenor.

Leticia felt a rush of sorrow for him. He must have been wandering the woods a long time. “Then you help me with the chores and I’ll fix you a good, sit-down dinner.”

“Yes, ma’m.” He was eager and clumsy as a young dog. “I’ll help you.”

She looked pointedly from one of his grimy hands to the other. “Ain’t you got no gear?”

“Gear?” he asked, sort of stupid.

“Extry clothes. Things like that.”

“Oh. No, ma’m.”

She nodded slowly. “You about Jimmy’s size. You chop me some kindling and I’ll fix you up.”

“Fix me?”

“Give you some extry clothes. Them’s about worn out.”

He looked so pleased that it nearly brought tears to her eyes. “Thank you, ma’m. Show me what you want me to do.”

She showed him where the axe and the wood were. “Gotta get it in splinters, see,” she said, holding up a precious piece of kindling she’d chopped the day, before. “So it’ll” go in the stove.”

“Yes, ma’m.”

Leticia left him studying the axe. As she walked toward the cabin she played with her menu. Fried chicken. It’d been a long time since she’d fried a chicken.

At the door she turned. Her heart went into palpitations. Her hands flew to her face. “No! God Almighty! Stop that, boy!”

The white boy paused with the axe suspended in the air and looked at her.

“Sweet Jesus,” she said, stalking back across the yard as fast as her arthritic feet could carry her. “Sweet Jesus. Ain’t nobody showed you yet how to chop wood?”

She took the axe from his hands. “Get your legs apart. That’s it. That’s right. Now. Bring the axe up over your head.” She pushed his body into the right stance. “Now bring it down.”

Chips of fragrant wood flew as the axe embedded itself into the trunk.

“Okay. You just go on and get me a kindling pile going, hear? Keep your legs and feet outten the way.” She started to walk off, but stopped. “Hey, boy?”

He glanced up. His face was gold and pink as the inside of a sea shell. “You got a name?”

He grinned. “Bobby.”

While Bobby chopped wood, Leticia rustled around in the tall grass, for the speckled chickens’ eggs. She found six, enough for a pound cake. She didn’t know many white boys, but she never knew a boy that didn’t like sweets.

Going to the hoard of staples Jimmy had put up for her before the war, she measured out her sugar and flour. She started her batter, humming as she went. It had been along time since she’d had company. A long time since she’d had anyone to do for.

When Bobby had chopped enough wood, she showed him how to set the fire. “”Put some water on, and I’ll make us some grits,” she told him.

The boy looked confused.

“Go on. You’ll like grits, boy, if you ain’t never had any.” She turned her back to him.

“Put water on where?” he asked.

“God Almighty! On the stove, boy. You slow, or what?” She was immediately sorry she’ d said it. There was a sort of painful innocence in his face, the kind that spoke of ignorance. She lowered her voice and showed him the pan. “Here. Put it in this. About up to here.”

Ashamed to look at him, afraid she’d hurt his feelings, she turned away. A moment later his voice came quietly to her back. “I’m not slow. Not really. You have to show me the first time. The next time I’ll do it right.”

“That’s all right, son,” she said just as quiet. “I’ll be sure and show you real good.”

When she had dinner on, she showed him where the shower was and how to pump the water out of the well. She gave him some of Jimmy’s clothes and then she stood outside the bathroom for a while, just listening to the water splash and the breathy sound of his private singing. He was singing some old rock and roll number she’d never heard, and when he la-da-dad through some part of the words he didn’t know, he laughed at himself in a sound silver as the day .

Just about the time she was putting dinner on, he came out in a pair of jeans and a Polo shirt she’d given Jimmy for Christmas. A sob stuck itself in her throat. “You look just fine,” she told him.

He glanced down at himself.

“Sit down,” she told him, and he did.

He didn’t eat.

“Eat up, Bobby,” she said a little spitefully. “Black folk’s food ain’t gonna turn your skin dark.”

“Yes, ma’m. I know.”

“Then why don’t you eat?”

“I can’t.”

“You sitting your ass in a black woman’s chair, you in a black folk’s kitchen, and you telling me you cain’t eat black folk’s food?” Leticia felt resentment burning her belly. “I use up some of my sugar, I use up some of my grits. Ain’t like I can go to the store and buy more. So you just close you eyes, pretend you in a white folk’s house, and you eat so’s you don’t die of hunger. I pays you back for chopping my wood. Then, if you ain’t happy here, you can go.”

Bobby stared down into his plate for a long time. “I don’t want to go,” he said.

“Uh-huh. You gonna look real stupid staying here turning into a skeleton on me.”

“’The people I was staying with,” he said without looking up, “they did.”

“Did what?”

“Turn into skeletons. Eventually.”

Leticia’s fork dropped to her plate, making a sound like a nervous bell.

He glanced at her. There was an ache in the blue eyes, a sort of pain she’d never seen before in a white person. To Leticia, all white folk’s grief was like that she used to find in Ann Landers—silly stuff. Nothing like wondering where your next meal was coming from, nothing like having a husband murdered. Bobby’s pain seemed real. A lot of things had changed after the war.

“When the lights went out and we couldn’t get television anymore, they started to get sick,” he said.

Her dark, calloused hand moved unconsciously over his pale one. With his free hand, he covered his face. His broad, brave shoulders shook.

“I wanted to help them,” he said in a voice so thick and soggy she could hardly understand the words.

“Know you must have, son.”

His hand fell, inert, to the table. “And sometimes they’d say, ‘Bobby, fetch water.’ Sometimes they’d say, ‘Bobby, get the aspirin.’ Then they got too sick to ask anything. It made me feel strange. I went to get help, but, everyone else in town was sick, too. Then Tommy’s mother, Elaine, wasn’t moving anymore, so I held Tommy’s hand like Elaine had done with the others. See? I learn by watching. But after a while he stopped moving, too, sort of like all the lights had gone out in him. He wasn’t just asleep, either. I waited a long time to see.”

“They die, son,” she, told him. “After the bombs a lot of people done.”

“Died? Like Cinnamon did when the car hit her?”

“Like Cinnamon done, I reckon.”

“I never realized people could do that. They never told me. I’ve learned something. Thank you.”

“Why ain’t you sick?”

“I don’t know,” he told her.

She got up slowly from the table, something prickling at her mind.

He must have noticed the look on her face. “Ma’m?” he asked.

“Why ain’t you sick?”

He got up quietly and came to her. She could feel his arm, around her, and she could smell Jimmy’s scent trapped in the weave of his shirt.

“I’m not very smart, but I learn quick. The Harrison’s had me for five years, and I learned to cook and clean and take care of the children.”

“You’re a robot.”

He didn’t answer. His arm wasn’t warm like it should have been. There was no smell to him, nothing good, nothing bad. In a moment she shrugged out from underneath his cold arm and went to the back for a good cry. When she wandered into the kitchen a half hour later, the robot had lit the lamps and was washing the dishes. The table had been cleared.

“What you think you’re doing?” she asked in a hard, angry voice.

There was the tender simplicity of a child in his face. “Cleaning for you. I’m a household unit.”

“You get your ass out of my kitchen.” Leticia grabbed a plate out of his hands.

“But I want to help. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt right.”

“You a rich white folk’s play-toy, robot. Don’t need you round a place like this.”

“There’s work to do.” There was a note of pleading in his voice. “I’ll chop wood now that I know how. I’ll cook. I already know how to dust and sweep.”

“Don’t need me no day-help.”

Instead of leaving, the boy sat down in a chair and watched her. “You said you’d fix me.”

“Listen. I been waiting on men all my life. Had me a boy and three husbands, and the husbands was worst than that child for waiting on. Don’t need nobody to do for me. Especially something that ain’t even human.”

Bobby left that night, packing the grip she’d given him. The next morning she woke up and found a waist-high stack of kindling in the yard.

“Hey!” Leticia shouted. Her voice echoed on the dark wall of the woods. “Hey, you! Robot!”

He stepped out of the forest, his thatch of yellow hair aflame in the sun. Walking out to the edge of the old okra field, he stood among the dry, brown stalks. The snow had burned away, leaving little icy drifts at the boles of the trees.

“You get away, hear? You get on, find yourself somebody else to live with.”

“There is no one else!” he shouted back to her, apparently afraid to come to closer. It looked as if the robot had learned something of human anger.

“Must be someone somewhere. You go on and find ’em.”

“I can’t,” he said.

“Yes, you can. You get your metal ass away from this house. Don’t want to see your white face no ways. You hear me?”

“Yes, ma’m,” he said.

The next night it snowed. She found his footsteps that morning in the ground around the porch. He’d cleared the steps of ice and had brought the wood closer so she could reach it easy. That day she didn’t shout anything to him.

Two days later he was back, leading a scruffy dog.

“Thought I told you I didn’t want to see your face,” Leticia said.

He shrugged like a kid would.

“Sure is an ugly dog you got.”

“Yes, ma’m. Thought you might want it.”

Her hands played in the tuck of her apron. “Why’d I want an ugly dog like that?”

“You had a dog once.”

“How’d you know that?”

He pointed toward the ruins of King’s doghouse. “Cinnamon had one, too. Before she was run over.”

“Yeah, well, what in the world I gonna to do with a dog, robot? Don’t want no dog.”

Nodding, he started back into the woods, calling the dog to him. It pranced up to his legs, its tail wagging.

“Hey!” she called.

He turned around.

“Where’d you get that ugly dog?”

“He came up to me when I was in the woods. He must have caught the scent of your son on the clothes. I think he’s lonely. And probably hungry.”

“Huh,” she said. “Well, bring him round back. I’ll give him something to eat. No use having a hungry dog like that round. He’ll eat the chickens.”

“Yes, ma’m,” Bobby said politely.

“They ain’t many houses round here. Dog must have come a long ways.” She watched the animal tear into a plate of bacon rind and potatoes. He’d be a pretty dog, Leticia realized, if he’d get some meat on his bones. He seemed to like the robot, because he even let the robot pet him while he was eating

“Yes.” He must have. His paws are bleeding.” Bobby was sitting on the porch, just like he’d wanted to take the weight off his feet. His blue eyes were bewildered.

“Come a long ways looking for people.”

“Yes, ma’m.”

She grabbed a handful of hair near the dog’s ear and scratched. The dog sniffed her hand and went back to his food. “Seem real glad to see us, that beggar. Been hoping he’d get something to eat without having to chase it any,” she said fondly.

They sat for a while in comfortable silence, just watching the dog eat. It licked the plate and then lay down, its muzzle on its paws. In its moist, brown eyes was an uncomplicated pleasure.

“I’ll keep the dog, robot. You ain’t got nothing to feed him. This dog look like he been a pet. He skinny like he ain’t got the wherewithal to chase them rabbits. Reckon he need me.”

“Yes, ma’m. And what about me?”

“What about you?” she asked.

“Can I stay?”

She scratched the dog on the nappy hair between his eyes. “Dog need me. You don’t.”

Bobby peeled a green stick he held in his hands. “I’m programmed like that dog.”

“Which way is that?”

“To need people.”

“No. It’s me that needs somebody, robot. Been waiting years to hear a human voice. But you, you don’t need nobody. You don’t die, and you don’t really live. Now you go on and find somebody, hear? Ain’t no use your staying round me. I likes to do for myself.”

“Thank you,” he said.

She stared at him hard.

“For taking the dog.”

He was used to leaving by then, she realized. He got up from the porch, dusted his hands off, and ambled back into the woods.

Every day for a month Leticia went out in the yard, Sissy at her heels, and looked toward the blank face of the forest. The woodpile wasn’t touched. The porch got icy.

She wondered if robots could die. She pictured him out in the forest, unmoving, his blue eyes open to the sky, the pink on his cheeks never fading.

* * *

Spring came, and she set out young tomatoes and corn, working the sun-warmed black soil with her hands. She let the eggs go and got a whole new flock of speckled chicks. She kept as busy as she could so she could lose her memories in work—but it only helped a little. Love didn’t die so easy as people.

She caught herself a summer cord and was lazing in bed in the morning. That’s when she noticed the snatches of music. Sitting up with a start, she twisted her hands in the blankets, straining to hear the melody.

Slapping on her slippers, she went out to the porch and found the robot. There was a stereo player in Bobby’s hands. Sissy was at his feet.

He lifted his head to regard her. His eyes were as blue as she had remembered; his face was as gold and as pink. “Hello,” he said.

“Where’d you get that?”

“Atlanta.”

“Jesus God,” she said. “Atlanta? But Atlanta’s so far . . .”

He avoided her direct gaze. “You said you wanted to hear a human voice. Besides, I can walk all day and all night. I found the stereo. That was the easy part. The batteries were harder.”

She sat down heavily on the stoop next to him. “A radio? Where they got a radio station, Bobby?” She gripped the robot’s arm. It looked soft, but felt like steel.

“It’s a tape,” he said. “I got you a bunch of tapes.” He zipped open the bag Leticia had given him and showed her.

“Oh. Tapes. I thought . . .” The silent tears on her cheeks were warm. When they hit her lips they were salty. She shivered, pulling her shawl tighter.

“You’re sick!” he blurted.

“I got a cold, boy. Just a cold.”

He stood quickly, his hands out to help her rise. His words tumbled over themselves in his rush. “I need to get you inside. I need . . .”

She pushed his hands away roughly. “Leave me be. Just got a cold, robot. I ain’t dying.”

“Yes, ma’m.”

“Now you tell me ’bout these tapes.”

“I didn’t know what you liked. Tommy liked tapes. I picked the ones he used to play for me. I hope I did all ‘right. You promise? You cross your heart?” he asked anxiously.

“Cross my heart, what?”

“That you’re all right? I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t all right.”

“Stop hovering at me, boy. You like some vulture or something. People get colds all the time.”

“You promise?” he asked again.

“I promise.” That seemed to satisfy him.

She looked away from his concerned face and back down at the tapes, swallowing her disappointment. It tasted bitter and pungent as mustard. When she could speak, she said, “You done just fine, Bobby. Just fine.”

“I like it when I do things right.”

She got up, cradling the tapes and the stereo in her hands, and walked into the kitchen, letting the screen door bang closed behind her. When she turned, around a while later, Bobby was still there, a bright golden figure on the porch.

“Just . . .” she said, her voice breaking, “I just thought for a while it might be a radio, understand?”

His face fell. “I’m sorry to have let you down. It’s hard. I’m programmed to learn by myself, but I’m so young I’m stupid sometimes.”

“Like a kid.”

“Yes, ma’m. Like a kid.”

“Well, you ain’t done this wrong, Bobby. It’s really fine to hear a voice, even if that voice ain’t really human. Thank you. It’s just so fine.”

“Yes, ma’m,” he said from behind the mist of the screen.

His voice was so quiet and so gentle that it made the flesh of her arms go goose-bumpy. Her eyes filled up again. He was a good boy, Bobby was. A good boy.

Author’s Note: I’ve always been a sucker for Victorian knock-offs, primarily Anne Perry’s mysteries. I enjoyed writing “Dear Froggy” so much that I wrote this horror short story, the idea for which was sparked by the non-fiction book, Vampires, Burial and Death. Read it only if you have a strong stomach; but if you’re as fascinated by the macabre as I am, put this book on your must-read list.

He had feared her day’s imprisonment in the cold earth might leach her beauty, but she had not much changed. She was more wan, of course, and one eye had opened a crack, exposing what looked like stale boiled egg.

The hair was as it should be, though: a tangle of rich gold spilling across the white satin pillow. Before he dared pull the cloth from her jaw, he wiped his hands clean on his shirt. His Charlotte had always been one for neatness.

During the night she had moved. The coin which had weighted the partially-open eye was lost in the graveclothes. He thought it was possible she had readjusted the other, for her hands were folded in a different position than he remembered, and the roses he had placed in them were awry.

Because he was no longer young, and the digging had winded him, he took a moment to get his breath.

The blue light of dusk trickled like water from the opening above his head. The air in the grave was dose and cold, and it smelled of damp loam, like a field during planting. He fondled Charlotte’s heavy silken tresses, perching at the edge of her coffin with the same silent patience he had shown when sitting by her bed during her illness.

When at last he was rested, he closed the coffin and wrestled the first strap under the wedge-shaped shoulders of it. He had worked his way down the grave to the tapered foot and was setting the second strap when he heard above him the quick jingle of his trap’s harness.

Drifting down came Father Drayble’s querulous “Hallo?”

Odd, Morrisy thought, how frightened the man of God sounded, as though the expanse of graveyard had stretched his faith thin.

Morrisy craned his neck upward. In the pewter light above him stood the priest, caught in the hasty act of crossing himself. Drayble had put aside his vestments and was dressed for the chill of the evening in a black frock coat—a sensible sort of coat. A fretful wind fingered the ends of the priest’s muffler as though counting a rosary.

“Oh,” the cleric said, laying a hand on his bosom. “It’s you, Mr. Morrisy.”

“Get out of my way,” Morrisy said. “I mean to bring her up.”

“Oh, dear. It seems you’ve—Yes, I suppose you have. Disinterred her, I mean.”

In the close confines of the grave, Morrisy fought with the coffin. Arms trembling with strain, he worried the leather strap underneath the box until he had cinched the clasp. When he was finished, he glanced up to see that Drayble had left.

In the last of the daylight he fumbled for the end of the heavy gauge chain, and he pulled down until the links rattled on the coffin lid. Carefully, so as not to disturb Charlotte, he boosted himself onto the edge of the ornate oak box, tugged on the chain with his right hand, and reached toward the moist sod with his left.

Too weak to pull himself up, he fell back against the opposite wall of the grave, tumbling from his perch, and falling to a heap onto the coffin.

Above him day failed. The first stars winked on in the purple gloom. With the last of his energy Morrisy uncinched the straps in case she would want to feed, then sat as best he could at her feet, waiting for her to rise.

Dr. Sanders came first, the bobbing glow of his lantern reaching Morrisy the same moment the doctor’s voice did.

Like the priest, he must have been startled beyond civility and sense to spy a horse and trap that late in the cemetery, for the doctor was singing a bargeman’s ditty whose words were altogether too coarse for the surroundings.

The grave filled with ruddy light. The song stopped mid-verse. Morrisy craned his neck and saw the fat, bearded Sanders staring down at him, his lantern held high.

“Dear God,” the doctor said. “For once Father Drayble was right. What have you done to yourself, man?”

Morrisy brushed the black grave dirt from his clothes then studied his blistered hands with absent curiosity. “I must free her from the coffin. The dead are not strong you know. You may go home. I would think that, even with age on me, I should have blood enough to spare for her dinner.”

Sanders put the lantern down, took a seat on the grass, and dangled his legs in the grave. “Foolishness, Morrisy. Charlotte is dead, and there is no bringing her back.”

“She was restless during the night. When I opened her coffin I saw she had put her graveclothes all in disarray.”

“Come up, sir,” Sanders said. “I have some laudanum in my bag.”

“She moved!” Morrisy shouted. “Do you not hear me! She tossed and turned all alone In her coffin last night. How can I leave her?”

“”Oh, Morrisy. The dead move. There is nothing supernatural about that. I saw the phenomenon when there was a fever in Devonshire and too many bodies to bury in a decent interval. Why do you think we put pennies on corpses’ eyes and tie scarfs about their jaws?”

Morrisy picked at a blister on the heel of his hand until it opened with a match-flare of pain.

“This is school-miss stuff, sir,” Sanders chided. “Throwing yourself into her grave. You make yourself as morbid as one of Mr. Keats’ or Mr. Byron’s poems. Come. I’ll give you a hand up.”

“Is he out yet’” Father Drayble appeared at the doctor’s side like a specter from the gloom.

“No, he is not. For there you see him, still astride the coffin lid.”

The cleric’s pallid round face peered down at Morrisy, “Oh. Oh, yes. I see. Well, I’ve brought the men to get him out.”

“In a moment, Father. Morrisy! As you see we are prepared to get you out of there any way we can. Don’t make a scene, man.”

Quickly, for he knew the game was up and that he would have to hurry, Morrisy again unhinged the coffin lid. Pulling his pocketknife from his vest, he opened his vein over her mouth.

Blood splattered over her calm face and the bulge of satin pillow with a sound like sullen rain. Above him, men were shouting.

Strong arms grasped him. “Leave me be!”

He screamed her name as they carried him away.

* * *

A clatter of silver upon china awoke him. Across the shadowed bedroom Morrisy saw that his porridge-faced chambermaid was setting a breakfast tray beside Sanders. Behind the doctor’s chair the curtains had been pulled to, but for a brilliant fissure of light in the gap.

“How do you feel?” the doctor asked as the maid quit the room.

Morrisy pulled his stiff, blistered hands from out the covers and studied them with dismay. A bandage was wrapped around his left wrist and a solitary, auburn dot of dried blood was crusted upon it. “Not particularly well,” he replied. His back ached unmercifully and the laudanum had left him with a dulled head.

“Tea?” Sanders asked, pouring himself a cup. When Morrisy failed to answer, the doctor, with a critical eye, peered under the salvers, and said., “The eggs and toast seems passable, but you have a lazy cook, man. She’s not cleaned the kidneys properly and they still stink of piss.”

Morrisy cast his gaze to the slash of light between the damask curtains. “Have they buried Charlotte again?’

The doctor was busy filling two plates. At the question he glanced up sharply. “Marmalade or strawberry jam, Morrisy? Quick now with your decision. I lack the temperament of a servant.”

“I haven’t an appetite.”

“You will eat when I say you will eat. Do not require me, please, to lose another patient so soon after the other.”

Plate filled, the doctor rose and walked across the room to the bed.

“Sit up.”

Morrisy turned on his side, away from Sanders.

“Sit up and take your sustenance. You see I’ve given you both the marmalade and jam since you were so churlish as to refuse to decide.”

Sorrow welled in Morrisy’s heart like blood coming up from a wound. “Charlotte,” he whispered.

Behind him he could hear the doctor’s put-upon sigh. “Such it is, I suppose, for old men to act the fools to their young wives. And it is in your Irish nature to brood. But come now, Morrisy. Free yourself from the ghosts and goblins of your race and gird your loins with good English common sense. See? I’ve adulterated your tea with milk and sugar, just as you like it.”

Tears quivered against his lashes. “She will think I have abandoned her. She never liked to sleep alone, you know. First she slept with her sister and then, when married, she slept with me. She was frightened when there was no one in her bed. Sweet Jesus, I don’t know how she will bear it alone in the coffin.”

The plate rang against the night table: the doctor clapping it churlishly and most heedlessly down. “I’ve buried a wife myself, damn you! I’ve buried two children, one but an infant. Death is never easy; but it is morbid not to let her go.”

Morrisy rolled over to meet the doctor’s irate gaze. “I told you it would happen. She wasted away. You saw. And there was nothing your good, sensible English medicine could do. You may think what you wish, but I know what killed her. She dreamed they were coming, you know. Upon retiring, she always had me peer under the bed and in the closet before snuffing the candle out.”

“Your fault. She was but a child, and still heir to the fears of children. Yet you allowed her to read things which excited her senses. You never objected to her perusing newspapers and such poetry that was not meant for women’s imaginings. No doubt she did fear, her mind overheated as it was.”

“She knew they were coming,” Morrisy said. “And yet I could not stop them, no matter how avidly I peered under the bed or behind the curtains, no matter how much I prayed them away.”

“Bedtime stories from her Slavic grandmother, too, I suppose. Plagues of vampyres, and every bridge with its troll.”

“Leave me,” Morrisy said.

The doctor’s face fell into lines of exhausted consternation. “Will you not eat?”

The tears overbalanced and fell, leaving molten trails down Morrisy’s cheeks. “Leave me.”

* * *

Late that night Morrisy went out to finish the work he had started. The grave dirt was loose, and the dig was not arduous, yet soon enough his hands were stiff and useless claws about the shovel.

Sunrise was threatening when he pulled the coffin free of its prison. The box and its contents were too heavy to lift together to the trap’s boards, so he unthreaded the eight pewter screws, each fashioned in the image of a kneeling angel. Then he took his wife’s body from its box. Charlotte was soft as sponge in his arms.

By the time he had hidden her and the coffin in a stand of woods hard by the house, the sky was turning pink. He put her back in her coffin and laid the coffin screws aside. For the first time that evening he dared study her face. Around her cheeks his blood had dried to a crust and her mouth hung hungrily agape. He pried open his pocketknife, pricked his vein and allowed a cupful or so of blood to flow past her slack jaws and into her throat.

“I have thought a great deal about our predicament,” he said as he rebound his wound. “As you lay dying I made plans for us both. You’ll see.”

It did not seem that she was listening. Her right eye had opened more, exposing an area of marbled white. He wiped the splattered blood from her mouth: both the new and the old. Then he closed her coffin and left her sleeping.

* * *

The doctor’s shouts awoke him. “Fool! This conceit of yours will be your death! And how many then shall have died for a flight of East European fancy?”

Bit by painful, bruised bit, Morrisy turned over in bed. Sanders was livid. His hair was unkempt, his coat unbrushed, and his waistcoat was buttoned awry.

“How terrible you look,” Morrisy said with sleepy wonder.

“Not near as had as yourself.” The doctor noticed his vest and furiously began to set it aright. “Perhaps I need ask myself why I count such a fool as friend. When I heard the grave had been reopened, I came in haste. Had to give a sedative to the boy who nearly fell in the hole. Now,” he said when his waistcoat was secure, “let me see your wrist.”

Morrisy brought his arm out from the covers. Sanders unwrapped and clucked over it. “Shouldn’t be surprised if you get blood poisoning from this. Quick,” he said, turning. “Get me hot water.”

Morrisy peered around Sanders’ bulk and saw that Holbrook, his young butler, was standing near the door wringing his hands. “Yes, sir,” Holbrook said.

“And have cook prepare a broth. Some toast with it and perhaps a coddled egg.”

“Right away, sir. Sorry, sir. No one saw him leave.” Red roses of embarrassment bloomed on the butler’s cheeks. Holbrook, in his haste, had put coat on over nightshirt.

“What o’clock?” Morrisy asked.

“Half past seven.” The doctor seized Morrisy’s wrist between his strong fingers and took a pulse. “The hour when all decent people should be abed.”

“Leave me sleep, then.”

“Where did you hide her, Morrisy?” Sanders asked. “We must get her in the ground. She’s certainly begun to decompose.”

Morrisy pulled free of the doctor’s grasp. “If you chance find her, I will dig her up again, for such was my promise as she lay dying.”

With a great bustling, Holbrook and the chambermaid brought fresh linens and water. Sanders grasped Morrisy’s hand again; and this time Morrisy had not the strength to pull away. He felt soothing warmth of water and then sharp pain as Sanders began to scrub the wound.

Talk went on between Holbrook and the doctor, but Morrisy had stopped listening. His eyelids closed, sleep weighing them down like dark, insensate earth.

When he woke the doctor was gone. The lamp was lit and the gap at the window was black. Sitting up, he caught a glimpse of a pale form in a coiner. Charlotte stepped from the gloom.

Her eyes were wide and blue, the color of a deep summer ocean. Her skin was smooth and moist, her cheeks the tender hue of ripe peaches. He lay back, loosed the collar of his nightshirt.

“Come,’ he said, and held out his arms.

She came to him soundlessly. The bed creaked as she lay at his side. He felt the tickle of her hair at his chin, and the wet nuzzle of her lips, and at last the nip of her teeth.

Her skin was as cold as the bitter spring weather, but that was no hardship. The weight of her body was less substantial, more, like air than flesh. Her dimensions were right, though, and so he found her again in the roundness of her breast and in the swell of her hip.

She suckled as he lay there. Blood trickled down his lowered arm to drip with a slow and stately rhythm onto the polished boards. Dreamily, he turned his head to watch the stream of crimson flow down his curled hands, his fingers. The cat came and licked it from the floor like cream.

He listened to the gentle lapping of the cat, of Charlotte. There was hardly any pain to the feeding but rather the touch of her mouth against his neck held a great deal of pleasure. He fought the urge to hold her to him, fearing that he would unintentionally stay her when she needed to leave. Besides, he knew, the dead were shy in their own way.

Wakefulness led at last to sleep, the two mixing as delicately as milk feathering into water. When Morrisy opened his eyes again it was full daylight and Charlotte had gone.

Holbrook brought his breakfast; and then, mid-morning, the doctor arrived. Sanders came in the room, thieving a piece of toast from Morrisy’s platter.

“She came to me last night.”

Sanders stopped chewing. “Oh?”

“She lay in my arms. I fed her my blood as a wet nurse suckles a babe.”

Sanders’ face darkened. He shoved Morrisy’s head hard to the side. “I see no blood. No puncture wounds. Stuff and nonsense, sir. You dream the chaotic dreams of laudanum. Let me see your wrist.”

When the bandage was unwrapped, Sanders sucked in a breath. “Holbrook!” he shouted. “Quick!”

The butler hastened in. Sanders said to Morrisy, his tone fearful. “I know not whether your dreams sprang from the laudanum or from your incipient fever, but you may yet have your wish to join her in the grave. Blood poisoning, sir. Look there. Already you can see the streaks up your arm.”

The angry stripes began at the wrist and stretched halfway to the elbow, taking the same roads as the streams of blood the night before.

“My bag.” Sanders snapped a finger toward Holbrook. “I have a drawing salve in it. And set him up on pillows so that his wrist will lie lower than his heart.”

Holbrook lay a new bed of pillows atop the old. Morrisy found himself flung upon it by the butler’s strong arms.

“Apply heat,” the doctor instructed the alarmed and wide-eyed Holbrook, “so as to increase the drawing power of the poultice. And mind you change the dressings thrice a day. He must not move from this place. Heed what I say, for only if we keep him, quiet can we stay the poison.”

“Will you let go your folly long enough to obey my orders?” Sanders then asked, catching Morrisy’s eye. “For I warrant you it means your life.”

“I will as I must.”

Sanders gave him a keen glance. “I’ll be back in the morning to see how the poison has drained.” Taking another slice of toast, the doctor left the room, the butler trailing after.

All that morning Holbrook sat with Morrisy; and in the afternoon the chambermaid came to spell him, working on some mending as she sat in the chair by the hearth.

Morrisy knew that the warmth of the room would soon lull her and that she could not help but doze. Around three o’clock his predictions proved true; and the mending felt, forgotten, to her lap.

Quietly, so as not to awaken her, Morrisy arose. In the stables, the boy gave him an argument about saddling the horse; but the boy was young and Morrisy, after all, was his employer. It took only a raised voice for the lad’s will to crumble.

And so Morrisy rode out in the cool of the afternoon. When he was well hidden in the forest on the other side of the pasture, he dismounted and led his horse into the copse where he had Charlotte hidden.

Upon lifting the coffin lid he found that her face had puffed out untidily, and that her eyes were sunk into her skull. Ambitious ants had found her. A line of them led into her nostrils and mouth like a living suture. He wiped them away with a kerchief as best he could.

There was so much to do; so much to make presentable. “How pretty you look,” he told her gaily, glad that she hadn’t a glass to see her ruination. Deftly he plucked a small boutonniere of maggots from her breast and stroked some rose water about her cheeks.

Her belly had distended, and it bulged in twin, tight lumps to either side of the sash of her burial dress, as though Death himself had quickened her womb.

He went to the edge of the pasture and plucked marjoram and .lavender for her bed. He tucked the sprigs around her, singing to her all the while.

By the close of day his wrist had begun to throb; and he was dull-headed with lack of sleep and his skin felt flushed. He shut Charlotte’s coffin lid against any coming rain, and then rode back to the house.

Lamps were lit in the windows. Holbrook and the doctor were awaiting him by the door.

“Holbrook’s given the chambermaid and stableboy the sack,” the doctor announced as Morrisy walked up the steps to the entrance. “And good riddance.”

Sanders pulled up Morrisy’s sleeve. The red streaks lay a trail directly toward Morrisy’s heart.

“Nearly to the elbow,” the doctor said. “But I’ve saved patients worse than this. The question seems to be whether you will aid me in healing you or oppose me and die.”

Morrisy swayed on his feet, caught in a sudden bout of light-headedness. With a cry, Holbrook caught him.

Each taking an arm, the two helped him to his room.

* * *

Morrisy slept fitfully. Towards the dead of night he awoke to see that Holbrook had fallen fast asleep and that Charlotte had come. She stood in the corner all lost and alone and reticent until he called her to him.

How beautiful she is, he thought as he stared at the smooth, round tautness of her cheek. And how lightly she lay atop him. Her moist lips parted, exposing tiny, perfect teeth.

“Drink your fill, for I may not have long to live. And, as you drink from me,” he whispered, contending with the bitter jealousy the suggestion cost him, “have your way with Holbrook, as well, for he is stuffed with a youth’s rich blood.”

When he met her gaze he found her blue eyes blank and empty of thought; more the eyes of an insect than a warm-blooded creature. A thrill of revulsion ran through him as he wondered how much of her the ants had conquered and whether the feeding insects might have eaten their way to her soul. Then he remembered that the blue eyes, however blank, belonged to his Charlotte; and with, a pang of guilt, he wrapped his good arm about her delicate waist and held her fast, her cloud of blond hair tickling at his cheek.

A moment later he felt the delicious nibbling at his neck and the warm flow of his own blood against his skin. Her cool tongue licked.

“As you need your strength,” he told her again. “Go to Holbrook.”

The greedy, lapping sounds at his neck were her only reply.

* * *

The morning found Morrisy ill-rested and feverish. Holbrook had awakened from his doze and seemed tired and overly pale.

While the butler yawned, Morrisy drank tea and ate a bite of egg the cook had sent up; wondering whether Charlotte had sought her refreshment of the younger man, and if she had found Holbrook’s young juices more satisfying.

The doctor came an hour later, disturbing Morrisy’s brown study. He studied the bandaged arm with dismay. “I caution you not to bestir yourself,” Sanders said. “You are in dire peril.”

“She came to me again,” Morrisy told him. “She slept in my arms.”

“Yes,” the doctor said, lifting an ironic eyebrow. “Of course. You spoke of the new fashions for the season, most likely, and who is to have a coming-out-of-the-grave soiree.”

Morrisy watched Sanders clean and wrap his wrist. The wound was suppurating, weeping a thick, yellow fluid that crusted the bandages. “We do not speak,” he said. “Speech is a skill that is beyond her. She is dead, you know.”

Sanders glanced up from his work. “Yes. Dead as clay and I wish you realized it. What a merry time you must have of it in your imaginings. What? She never asks after your own health? Does she not ask to the running of the house? My God, man. In your fantasy she becomes a stingy ghost.”

Morrisy smiled at the ceiling. His entire arm felt hot and swollen; the wrist throbbed and ached. “Oh, Sanders. Are we so callow as to disdain the dog’s dumb affection?” he asked quietly. “Or despise the cat because she comes to us for food?”

There was a beat of stupefied silence and then the doctor exclaimed, “What a pair of questions!”

“Do not misunderstand me.” Morrisy ran his tongue over the sticky, thick matter that sleep and fever had left on his lips. “I only meant that she is a helpless thing; and l love her the more for it. I love her,” he said, voice failing him and tears springing to his eyes. “Oh Christ help me, I love her desperately.”

* * *

When the doctor’s carriage had disappeared down the road, Morrisy snatched his covers off. “Let there be no more pretensions between us, Holbrook. I mean to tend to my wife. Get my riding clothes, please.”

The butler stood unmoving, apparently caught by surprise.

“Are you deaf, man?” Morrisy intended to shout, but his voice was too feeble. He tried to gain his feet, bur weakness toppled him to the bed.

“The doctor—”

“Blast and damn the doctor. Charlotte needs me and time is wasting.” Morrisy’s teeth chattered. He made another vain attempt to rise. “Help me up.”

“Mr. Morrisy, sir, I cannot allow you—”

“Allow me? Allow me? You forget, man, who is the master and who is the servant. You’ve forgotten who took you as a stableboy and brought you in the house to dress and act the gentleman. I’ll not bear sneaking around as I’ve done. There is no time for that. No time.”

The butler, all downcast, was standing on the carpet, tears coursing down his cheeks. “Please, sir. Do not force me into this thing, else I will feel I have killed you by my own hand.”

“Come, Holbrook.” Morrisy spoke as gently as he might have spoken to Charlotte. “If I set a gun to my temple and blew my brains out, as I have wanted to do these past days, the gun would be held blameless, would it not? It would only have done as it was bidden, as the perfect servant should. Please. Please help me.”

The butler went forward to pull Morrisy upright. Morrisy seized his arm. “She is comely again, Holbrook. Just as she was before her illness. She needs the rich blood of youth, so I’ve told her to come to you. Overlook my jealousy. Forget that she is my wife and take her.”

Holbrook’s eyes rose from their contemplation of the carpet. His face was even more leached of color. “Sir—”

“They will find her again. She lies not three miles distant, in the thicket of St. Albans woods. If you value me, you will dig us up and place both our coffins together. As I have no heirs, I have deeded you my house and lands to see after our upkeep, Charlotte’s and mine. Promise you will do as I ask.”

Why does he stare at me so? Morrisy wondered. And was that the flush of ambition or of resentment which burned on his cheek? “Promise,” he snapped. “On all that I have done for you, and on all that I give you now, promise!”

“Yes, sir,” the butler said.

“Now, get me my clothes and her hairbrush and rosewater. See that my horse is saddled.”

“As you wish, sir,” Holbrook said.

The horse, catching the strong scent of death, entered the edge of the copse but would go no further. Morrisy left him tethered and made his way inside.

He had made a poor choice for her resting place, he saw. The damp had gotten to her as assiduously as the insects had. No rosewater or lavender could mask the stench. Charlotte’s bloated flesh was a mottled mushroom color; and furred, black islets of mold blemished her cheek.

Careful not to pull her loose scalp from her skull, he brushed her matted hair. A single white maggot, he noticed, was lying like a tear at the corner of her eye. Her mouth, still standing ajar, vented a thick stream of black ants. Cooing to her all the while, he plucked what bodies he could from her face.

When he finished he noticed that his left arm was swollen to twice its size and had become useless as wood. His boots were pinching dreadfully and the skin above the leather tops was bloated and tight. Alarmed, he tried to rise from his crouch, but vertigo overcame him and he collapsed sideways into the bracken. For a long while he struggled, trembling and sweating in starts, attempting to pull off his boots.

He gave up finally, and, screwing up his courage, began to crawl towards his horse. The bay hunter saw him coming and rolled an anxious eye, but did not bolt. Morrisy loosed the reins from the branch and pulled himself up one-handed by the stirrup. One foot braced in the stirrup, belly astride the saddle, he urged the bay home. All unwillingly, and with many a curious look backwards, the horse began walking toward the stables.

When he was but a little ways into the meadow, Morrisy heard a wild clatter. He raised his head. His carriage was hastening toward him, his footman whipping the horses and Holbrook leaning out the door.

The butler sprang from the carriage and the young man’s strong arms gathered Morrisy in. “I’ve brought the doctor,” Holbrook said as he bore him to the carriage. “Rest your mind now, sir. I’ve brought help.”

Sanders was inside, waiting on the seat.

“He is horribly fevered,” Holbrook told Sanders in a hushed and fearful tone.

Morrisy lay in Holbrook’s lap, feeling the jerk and sway as the liveryman turned the team towards home. The doctor’s bearded face peered down at him. A meaty, cool hand cupped his cheek with a touch as welcome as the nearly-forgot touch of his mother.

“Morrisy,” the doctor said with a heavy sigh. “Dear God, Morrisy. I fear you have done yourself in.”

Morrisy fought to hang onto that caress, for it reminded him of childhood fevers, the sort which were a cause for great pampering and only of minor concern; the sort of fevers that brought toasted cheese and hot chocolate and his mother’s tender kisses. He closed his eyes, and even in the jolting of the wagon, felt a helpless sense of security.

* * *

Morrisy awoke with his arm in flames. He moaned and opened his eyes to find himself abed in his room. His staff and the doctor were working furiously about him, the doctor shouting orders at the butler and cook.

Morrisy reached out to tear the wrappings from the left arm and beat out the fire; but Holbrook jerked his good right arm down to the bed.

“Burning,” Morrisy rasped to Holbrook. “All aflame.”

The butler did not seem to understand. He peered at the doctor. “Has he dreams of Hell, then?”

“Most probably feels the mustard plaster,” the doctor answered distractedly.

“Burning,” Morrisy told them, but no one cared to extinguish the blaze. He would burn, all unnoticed it seemed, to an ember.

“His groans are piteous.” Holbrook was holding Morrisy down, seemingly oblivious that his master was about to be consumed.

“The fire,” Morrisy whispered. “See to the fire in my arm.”

Holbrook’s face contorted. “Oh, please, Dr. Sanders. Can you do nothing to ease his pain?”

“The pain is secondary now,” Sanders retorted. “It is merely a nuisance. Cook! Keep those linens hot. I want them scalding.”

Morrisy wished for the fire to be out. He wanted them all out, in fact. All out of the room. Charlotte was too shy to come with them there.

“What o’clock?” he asked.

Holbrook seemed startled but answered, “Quarter past seven, sir.”

Unbidden, Morrisy’s eyes were shutting again. He thought to ask Holbrook whether it were morn or night; but before he could part his fever-gummed lips, he had fallen asleep.

* * *

The clang of a steel instrument into a metal basin awoke him. The fire in his arm was out and the doctor was turning away from the bed, heavy shoulders hunched. “His kidneys have failed utterly. Call the priest and be quick.”

In a chair Holbrook was woeful and sobbing. “For all his kindnesses to me, I have betrayed him.”

Morrisy longed to tell Holbrook not to brood, that he was fit and very much alive, albeit dull-headed. He opened his mouth but had not the strength to fashion the words.

Sanders clapped Holbrook on the shoulder. “No fault of yours, my boy. He was strong-headed and would have died trying to bring her back whatever you’d done.”

Morrisy tried to raise his head and announce it was too early for eulogies. He meant only to blink, but fell asleep instead.

* * *

His shoulder was being shaken. Morrisy opened his eyes. Father Drayble had his purple stole astride his shoulders and was asking a question.

“Sins?” the priest repeated in a voice loud enough to raise the dead. “Have you any sins, Mr. Morrisy, you wish to confess?”

Oh sins, Morrisy thought. There were thousands of them, it seemed. He had loved his wife, whom he could embrace, more richly than the God whom he could not; but that was not a sin for the confessing, for Morrisy had no regrets of it. Heaven was an ephemeral commodity to Morrisy; and the fires of Hell a faint punishment for the inferno Charlotte had ignited in his loins. Had he wished for salvation he should have struck her head from her body and filled her mouth with garlic; but in loosing the collar of his dressing gown, he had willingly opened himself to the forces of the night, and had found, to his enchantment, they were sweet.

No. Morrisy had little fear of God or His wrath. He had already experienced all that could be known about damnation, and had discovered that its hidden name was grief.

“Leave him be,” Sanders snapped. “For he is not in his right mind, and I doubt he has strength for speech. Get on with it, then.”

Morrisy felt Drayble’s oiled finger press against his forehead, and so fell into a slumber again.

* * *

His eyes sprang open to treacly, loam-scented dark. Flat bits of metal slid down either side of his face like chill tears. Something was tied around his jaw. He meant to tear it furiously off, but his knuckles struck hard against the close ceiling, and his elbow knocked against the near wall.

Realizing where he was he panicked, tearing at the wood of the coffin with feeble hands. Soon exhausted, he quit his labors and lay listening to the silence. From out his lungs came no sound of air. His shuddering fingers could find no throbbing beat in his neck.

He was aware of the imminent crush of earth above the coffin, the weighty, terrible tonnage of it. Horrified, he tried calling for someone to bring him out; but he had no breath left and there was none about him to hear.

Holbrook. Holbrook would come. After a few moments of hopeful quiet, he became aware that something sharp and hard was digging into his back, as though he lay on stones. Inching his arm around, he drew one bauble out. Not a stone, he felt. Something heavier, something more ornate, its shape a kneeling angel.

Charlotte’s coffin screws. But how had they come there? he wondered. And what could their presence mean? He smiled in relief as he realized that it was Holbrook’s way of telling him he had found Charlotte and set her lid aside.

Above him in the world, Charlotte would be feeding on young Holbrook, stealing the roses from his cheeks. Morrisy waited patiently to hear the chuck-chuck of a spade into earth.

He waited.

Alone with his questions, he wondered if something had delayed Holbrook. Had the man forgotten? Had he become overly enchanted with the sweetness of Charlotte’s feeding and to the unaccustomed richness which had been bequeathed him?

Morrisy waited.

Memories leeched from his mind as the torpid drip of water draws minerals through a rock. Morrisy struggled, but soon forgot the manor house that he’d deeded to Holbrook. He forgot the acid-sweet taste of berries, and the warmth of the sun on his back.

Finally, and with only a whimper of regret, the memories of Charlotte faded, as well.

He waited, forgetting even what it was that he anticipated. Slow as rain seeping into earth, Morrisy became a changed man, one stripped of love, of waning hope, and last and most blessedly, of heartache, until all that was left him was his thirst.

Author’s Note: I’ve worked for a number of years with African Americans, long enough for me to have learned to recognize the Stupid White People Tricks folks often play. I dedicate this, in fact, to our collective white ignorance.

In the ‘80s, The Dallas Morning News was picketed by John Wylie Price’s group of stalwart (and often annoying) protesters. The Dallas Police Department had gone into overkill. Picture it. The African-American protesters. The sun just starting to chase the blue shadows. The mist rising from the river behind us. Across the street, in the park, a line of mounted cops with nightsticks waiting silent in front of the fountain. I tell you, I’d been at my share of protests in the ’60s, but this was the most intimidating scene I’d ever witnessed.

I was standing there at the first floor plate glass windows with a black friend. We were both pretty solemn (I was thinking of the Cossacks who had run down the Russian peasants, in fact), when a white woman of my acquaintance, a well-known bigot, came up to us and said, “Why, look at them out there, waiting to cause trouble! Martin Luther King must just be rolling over in his grave.”

That said, she walked away. The friend and I exchanged glances, then we both collapsed into laughter.

Well, nobody got hurt, even though old John Wylie picketed us for several months. The employees got to know the protesters. I’d walk through the picket line every day and say “Hi.” John Wylie helped an elderly white woman of my acquaintance to cross the street every afternoon. We made if through.

And bigotry’s getting better here. We even have an African-American mayor, a great one, a guy who’s talking about making the Trinity River into a park. Whoo-doggies! Can you believe it?

Peace at last.

The cab deposited them at the end of the Jefferson Street Bridge as casually as a pigeon dropping guano on a statue. Garbell and Woods clambered out, leaving Boyer to pay. He put his company Visa through the cab’s reader and from deep inside the robotic viscera of the machinery came a satisfied sigh: the sound of a fiscal-mechanical orgasm.

As soon as Boyer’s legs were free, the door slid shut and the metal box slammed itself into reverse, speeding north towards the bubble towers of Dallas. It looked as though the cab thought all of Hell were at its heels.

When Boyer hiked his rifle and backpack to his shoulder he noted with pleasure that his new fatigues made a crisp, arrogant crackle. Twelve hundred bucks at Abercrombie and Fitch, twelve hundred bucks that he hadn’t been able to write off on his company account.

Glancing up at the sky, he had the sudden, riveting fear that it might rain. Somewhere in that backpack was a canny little rain slicker, folded to a size no bigger than a wallet, only he wasn’t sure he would be able to find it in time. While he was searching and unfolding, his hunting fatigues would get soaked beyond repair; his sparkling new rifle would grow an incipient layer of rust.

“What’s that smell?” Woods asked in his prissy tenor voice. From where he stood, well to the rear of the Purchasing Director, Boyer imagined he could see the disgusted curl of Woods’ effeminate lips.

Boyer and his company were spending a pile of money to tame that mouth. After this weekend, he expected Woods’ lips to purse in budgetary thought when catalogues were shoved up to his face.

“The river,” Garbell, the rotund Controller, answered. “The fucking river always stinks like this. It’s from the dead bodies they throw in it.” He whinnied a laugh.

Boyer glanced around the bridge worriedly. Their guide was late. Maybe he wouldn’t show up and it would rain and the three of them would have to trudge back to Dallas in a downpour. Now that should make an impression.

Then Boyer caught sight of a man making his way slowly towards them, and he froze. Well, they had black men in Dallas, of course. But Dallas had presentable blacks, men you wouldn’t be ashamed to introduce as members of your country club.

The man approaching was definitely not presentable. He was short and broad. His tee shirt, two sizes too small for his pectorals, was so begrimed that it appeared to have clawed its way out of a shallow grave. The material was cut short above the waist, giving whomever cared to look an assertive vista of the man’s washboard abs. Where had he gotten that physique? Prison?

Standing a little straighter, Boyer watched the black enter the bridge and saunter towards them. At the guardrail Woods and Garbell turned, their faces cautious.

The man halted. Boyer glanced down to the incredibly dirty Nikes. Two brown toes were peeking out from a rent in the left shoe’s side.

“You the mo’fucks want to go hunting?”

It was a question with a double-blind. Instead of answering, Boyer asked, “You our guide?”

The man spun on his worn soles and headed down the bridge toward Oak Cliff. “You come on, you comin’,” he called, leaving the three to tag after.

Just over the bridge, the guide turned left and entered a maze of sagging, burned-out warehouses. Boyer found himself, despite misgivings, admiring the set of the black’s shoulders and the belligerence of his swagger.

As though charisma were something one could catch, like athlete’s foot, the proximity of the guide made Boyer feel like a real man, too—someone on the heady verge of adventure. Two weeks earlier, while making their arrangements, Boyer had tried, with limited success, to explain the thrill to his wife.

“Sport?” Carolyn had asked dryly. “Sport’s not when you go out and kill things at a distance. Sport’s when big men hit and bump and throw each other down on Sunday afternoon TV.”

Carolyn simply failed to understand the machismo of hunting.

“What’s your name?” Boyer asked.

The guide gave Boyer a suspicious frown. “Russell,” he told him after a hesitation.

Not a real man’s name, but there it was. “Russell,” Boyer said thoughtfully. “Well, call me Dak.”

“Dak,” the guide said. “That supposed to be your name or what?”

“Right!” Boyer quick-stepped closer to the man’s side. “And that’s Alton,” he said, pointing to an obviously annoyed Woods. “And Chaz.” Boyer put his hand down quickly as Garbell shot him a dark, warning look. The two executives were obviously of the old school, the one which didn’t believe in getting too friendly with the help.

Boyer cooled his new ardor for Russell, put his head down, and walked on in silence.

“You three got the stupidest damn names of any white people I ever met.”

Woods leveled another drop-dead look at Boyer.

Quickly Boyer snapped his head forward and drank .in the scenery. The central decorating hue of Oak Cliff appeared to be a drear, post-disaster gray; yet where the asphalt had cracked, hardy grass grew. As he passed by, Boyer looked down at it incredulously. It wasn’t good-looking grass, to be sure, but it was wild and untamed, much like Russell himself.

“So, good hunting around here?” Boyer asked.

“What you pays me for.” Russell put his hand, palm out, towards Boyer.

Translating the gesture, Boyer dug the credit card from a flap in his backpack, and then watched in amazement as Russell drew a mag reader from a faded, torn pocket. With a quick, efficient zip, the guide slipped the card through.

Boyer experienced a moment of dizzy fear. How much money was the reader syphoning off the company bank account? Was it the amount earlier agreed upon, or not? Would Boyer’s boss, Minski the Sales Monster, call him into his office next month and wave large invoices in Boyer’s face?

Boyer wanted to ask Russell to see the reader, but he wasn’t at all sure how the guide would take the request. When Russell handed back the card he took it and slipped it into his pack without a murmur.

“Gonna be great hunting today. Got feeders set up,” Russell said.

The emptiness of the streets was disturbing; the pregnant gray sky added a dollop more peril to the ambiance. As he walked, Boyer found himself matching Russell’s march, step for step, cleaving to him, actually, as though they might be striding down the wedding aisle together.

“We need to keep close to each other, hear?” Russell’s irises were a startlingly soft red-brown, like the auburn of fox fur. “I paid off the gangs, but still, it’s smarter to stick close.”

Russell and Boyer turned in tandem to see the pair of executives trailing by nearly half a block. Garbell had taken a pint bottle from somewhere and he and Woods were passing it back and forth, their faces pink with merriment and liquor.

Russell stopped dead in the street, a scowl on his face. “Get ’em up here. Try to keep them sober.”

Trotting back down the street, his rifle and backpack beating a tattoo against his rump, Boyer met the executives’ grinning faces with a somber frown of his own. “He says we need to stay together.”

Woods curled his lip. Garbell gave a fat sigh of agreement as he put his pint bottle away.

Three blocks later Russell paused by a flaking stucco building. “Get them rifles ready, hear? We go inside, I flick on the light, and you got yourselves a field day.”

Boyer slid the gun from his shoulder and checked out his Target Lockon. Next to him Garbell, who had evidently done some pre-hunt target practice, was calibrating his new Remington model 4010’s KillCount down to zero. Enviously, Boyer studied Woods’ gun, a Belgian-made beauty whose price tag had to have been nearly twice that of his own.

“Ready?” Russell asked.

The three nodded. The guide ushered them into the building, into the fetid, musty darkness, a darkness that grew even more frightening as Russell shut the door.

“Shoulder to shoulder,” Russell said from the impenetrable shadows somewhere to Boyer’s left. “Don’t want you shooting your asses off.”

Boyer groped a hand to the side, and collided with something pillowy: Garbell’s stomach.

“You set?” Russell whispered.

Boyer answered in a hoarse, excited rasp, “Yeah.”

Then the lights came on.

Boyer squinted into the florescent blaze. In front of him a tray of rotting food squatted in the center of the raw concrete. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of cockroaches made a brown, gleaming chevron over the tray. A few began to flee. More froze, seemingly tom between the seduction of dinner and the peril of the light. Boyer raised his rifle and began to fire, the hysterical beep-beep of his Lockon screaming in his ear.

Through the dusty atmosphere of the warehouse blatted the clean red beacons of his pulse laser, the green of Garbell’s and Woods’. Cockroaches spun, smoking, on the floor.

He shot. Ten, twenty, sixty roaches, fell. He was vaguely aware of Garbell’s rasping litany of, “Oh, boy. Oh, boy,” and Woods’ dark and sinister chuckle.

“That’s it.”

Russell’s voice broke through the sound of drumming blood in Boyer’s head. He lifted his gaze from his Leopould scope and noticed that the floor was a veritable battlefield of dead and dying bugs. The tray of food sat, nothing moving atop it.

“All right!” Garbell shouted and slapped Woods’ and then Boyer’s open, offered palm. “All right!”

They furiously checked their KillCounters. One hundred and twelve kills for Boyer, eighty two for Garbell, and Woods with a poor showing of fifty eight, despite the superiority of his gun. Boyer felt a moment of apprehension. He’d shot better than the men he had wanted to entertain. But then Russell’s huge paw slammed his palm with a large, satisfying, stinging smack.

“My man!” Russell said. “My man! You one mean cockroach killer!”

Aglow with the complement, Boyer flicked a glance to the side arid noticed that Garbell didn’t seem injured by his second-place showing. “Let’s kill more,” the Controller said, his round cheeks aflame with excitement.

Herding them outside, Russell took them to another hunting ground. Much to his delight, Boyer beat the both of them again, Garbell retaining his solid runner-up position. Woods began truculently complaining that his gun’s scope was off. He was still muttering about his gun when Russell announced lunch.

The announcement arrived jointly with the rain. The three hunters diligently took their slickers from their backpacks and slipped them on, Boyer finding his even more easily than he had hoped.

Russell, unraincoated, took shelter under the eaves of a building. “I take you up to Maxie’s,” Russell said. “We can eat lunch there.”

He darted out into the cloudburst, his head down, his arms tucked to his sides against the sudden chill. They followed. Boyer had expected a restaurant, but Russell’s destination was a flower-bordered house, three blocks down: a tiny, green-landscaped jewel among the crumbling ruins.

At Russell’s impatient knock, the door opened. Maxie was a thin, taut man who seemed to be fashioned of rope and wire. His skin, the only soft thing about him, was the texture of good glove leather.

Russell and Maxie exchanged a few whispered words—Maxie’s dark eyes shifting skeptically in Boyer’s direction—then the guide ushered them in.

Maxie’s kids were eating lunch on the threadbare rug of the living room. Three grade-school girls sat primly around a foot-high table while a boy of about two stumped bow-Ieggedly around, torn sandwich in hand, his diaper sagging.

On a swaybacked sofa three men sat two Neanderthalish whites and a brown man who might have been Hispanic.

“You come on in here,” Russell said, leading them from the brooding atmosphere of the living room into a kitchen at the back of the house.

Mrs. Maxie was an anemic-looking strawberry blond with milky Irish skin and a splatter of freckles. Suspicion burning in her eyes, she took a pot of beans from the stove and carried it through the opening into the other part of the house, apparently to safety. A few moments later Boyer could hear Russell laughing with the other adults. The children’s giggles chimed like bells.

Pensively Boyer rubbed the Passport implanted in his left wrist and then, on guilt-ridden impulse, drew a wafer of beef stew from his backpack and laid it on a warped counter. When he turned around he noticed Garbell had already taken out his steamer and had put a packet inside, chicken a la king, by the smell of it. The Controller had taken an AutoMemo from his backpack and was avidly recording their scores.

Boyer sat and ate. Garbell offered his pint of brandy around. When that pint was empty, Garbell dug in his backpack and took out another.

The day took on a happy glow despite the rain. A maudlin sense of camaraderie crept over Boyer; and he huddled next to the two executives as though their company were a cozy fire lit against a winter’s day.

“Mouse at two o’clock,” Woods whispered.

Quietly Garbell lifted his gun from the faded linoleum floor. Fuzzy-headed but curious, Boyer glanced to the side and noticed a small gray ball of fur cowering at the edge of the refrigerator.

Woods and Garbell fired simultaneously. There were two threads of green light, two blats of sound. The mouse leapt into the air with a terrified squeak.

“Wounded him!” Garbell cried, lurching his bulk to a standing position. The mouse was running in circles now, apparently searching for a way out, apparently blinded.

Blat. Blat.

The two execs fired in unison. The mouse convulsed and then lay still, its tiny mouth open to expose rice-grain teeth.

At a noise at the door, Boyer instinctively brought his gun to bear; and found that he was aiming right at Russell. Quickly he jerked the barrel down.

“You stupid fucks!” Russell screamed. “You fucks! You don’t go shooting them candy-ass guns in here! There’s kids in the house!”

“Russell, I—” Boyer began, searching for the glue with which to cement his shattered new friendship together.

Russell aimed the auburn laser of his eyes right at Boyer. “You’re fucking drunk on your butts, all three of you. Get out.”

Obediently, Garbell and Boyer started putting their food away. With begrudging slowness, Woods followed suit. They rose and ran the gauntlet of the men’s stares out to the manicured lawn.

Outside the rain had ended, leaving the streets sodden. Russell herded them into a nearby alley and told them to stay put. “Leave you here a minute. Gotta go back and make things straight with Maxie.”

Leave them? Boyer wondered with alarm. Russell was going to leave them? There were gangs about, he knew, although from the barrenness of the rain-drowned, wet-dog smelling streets, one would never guess.

He opened his mouth to protest his innocence, but it was too late. Russell trotted around the peeling wall of an apartment house and disappeared.

“You’d think we’d shot one of the brats,” Woods said.

All sense of inebriated camaraderie left Boyer. “Maybe Russell’s right. There were children in there. We shouldn’t have been fooling around with the guns.”

“The voltage is too low to hurt anything large,” Garbell said in a way that might have meant to be soothing. “They’d cause a little sting, that’s all. A minor burn.”

“Maybe this man Maxie didn’t want minor burns on his children,” Boyer said.

Garbell dropped his eyes in shame. Woods, well-fed proof of the survival of the fittest, glanced around the alley with contempt. “God. This is what the ads mean by ‘roughing it?’ It sucks,” he said with a shockingly hard sibilant, the sound a snake might make. “These people are dangerous. Let’s finish up and go back home. I need a shower.”

Woods’ scorn threw a chill pall over the day. One part of Boyer hated Woods; another part realized the man was right. Boyer was a rich, pale slug ripe for the plucking, surrounded by hardscrabble hands.

He caught Garbell’s gaze and was startled by the terror he saw there.

“I think we’d better—” Boyer whispered.

A scampering sound at the mouth of the alley freeze-dried the words in his throat. He whirled. At the comer of his eye he saw Garbell and Woods bring their rifles up—ineffectual, bug-killing rifles. A brownish-red form raced around the sooted bricks, stubby legs a blur of motion, pink tongue lolling from a sharp-toothed mouth. The dachshund, tail wagging furiously, lunged right at Garbell.

Garbell’s rifle went off with a soft blat. Woods’ shot went wild, eliciting a puff of steam from the damp asphalt.

Just before the dog reached his ankle, Garbell shot again. The dog whimpered with what seemed to be injured curiosity. Its tail paused its frantic, metronomic motion. And then Boyer noticed that Woods’ gun was the wrong way around.

The butt rose into the air and slammed down, right on the dome of the dachshund’s head. Blood and brain tissue splattered onto Garbell’s fatigues.

“I got him.” Woods gave the small body an experimental kick. “Remember that when you record the scores, Chaz.”

Garbell stared down at his bloodied pants in horror and upchucked his chicken a la king.

When Russell found them a few minutes later, Garbell was leaning against the wall of the building, his hand a small comfort over his huge stomach. Woods had kicked the corpse to the side with his thick-soled boots, and was still basking in the glow of success.

Boyer looked up at Russell sheepishly. It was a while before Russell said anything. “That Buster,” he told them at last. “That Maxie’s dog.”

Woods’ challenging gaze met Russell’s troubled one. “He attacked Chaz. Ran right up. I saw him.”

Russell’s sad, fox-colored eyes rose to Boyer’s as though in a disillusioned search for motives. “Buster always was a friendly pooch.”

“Could have had rabies for all we knew,” Woods said.

A form blocked the spill of dirty, late-afternoon light into the alley. Maxie stood there, his glove-leather face ashen, staring quizzically at the remains of his dog.

And Russell gulped. From where Boyer stood he could see the gulp. It was a huge, portentous swallow, one in which Russell’s prominent adam’s apple elevatored up and then plummeted down. “Maxie—” he began.

Boyer was astonished to see, in Maxie’s hard eyes, tears brim and then overflow, wetting the chamois-soft cheeks. “That Buster!” Maxie thundered.

Possibly stricken with an attack of good sense, Woods stepped away from the corpse. “It attacked us,” he said.

Maxie’s chest swelled until it seemed it would burst the seams of his tee-shirt. He exploded, a volcano of fury and grief. “He was just a WEENIE dog! A dumb, sweet, little WEENIE dog!”

The man’s voice was so loud that Boyer imagined that people in downtown Dallas might hear the shouts right through all the protective plastic and the steel. A part of him wished they would hear it, and that somebody, somewhere might call the police.

Suddenly Maxie’s voice became disquietingly soft. “Let’s have us a real hunt,” he said. Tendons were standing out in his neck; and his dark eyes had taken on a predatorial gleam. “Give you a ten second head start.”

In a gesture of unbelievable stupidity, Woods raised his gun and sighted at Maxie’s midriff.

“One,” Maxie said.

Garbell was waving frantically at Woods. “Let’s just get out of here, okay? Let’s just—”

“Two.”

There was a blat and a flash of green light. Woods had shot Maxie, but the reaction of the man was a mere fleeting wince. There was a smoking, pinhead-sized hole in the front of Maxie’s T-shirt.

“Three,” he said in a voice as soft as the uneasy shifting of the wind.

“Jesus, Woods!” Boyer cried. “Are you crazy? Put the gun down! Listen, Russell, Mr. Maxie, God, I’m so sorry. What an overreaction on our part.” Our part, his mind echoed. Cordial to the end, he’d accepted part of the blame.

Russell turned around to Boyer, his face so drained of blood that his color was a sickly brown-gray. “Go on,” he hissed. “Get!”

“Four,” came the implacable voice.

Russell whipped his arm through the air, shooing them away. Without further encouragement, Boyer took to his heels, Garbell and Woods after him. Their hard-soled boots made frantic tapping noises on the pavement.

“Where’s the bridge?” Garbell was shouting. “Where’s the goddamned bridge?”

Boyer ran headlong down the street towards where he thought, where he hoped, the bridge might be. After a block he flung off his backpack. A block later he considered the expense, wondered if insurance would cover the loss, and tossed his rifle.

Glancing to the side, Boyer could see doom in Garbell’s tomato-red cheeks. The fat man slacked his pace, slowed to a whooping, strangled walk, and then stopped.

Boyer stopped beside him. “Come on, Chaz. Just a little farther,” he told him, although there was no telling how far away the bridge was, or even if they were heading toward it.

Garbell shook his lowered head. “Winded,” he wheezed. A rock flew from the shadows of a nearby alley and clattered to the concrete by Boyer’s foot. He shied back in amazement, for a moment wondering how the piece of concrete had managed to move by itself. Then he caught a glimpse of men perilously near. One man raised his arm and threw. Another stone, large as a fist, whizzed by inches from Woods.

“Run!” Woods screamed.

Electrified into action, Garbell limped and panted his way up the street. “Lose the backpack!” Boyer shouted encouragingly. “That’s what’s slowing you down!”

Without pausing his elephantine gallop, Garbell jerked the straps from his shoulders. Rocks were falling all around them now: huge serious-minded things. When they hit the pavement they made an incredible racket, like the thudding of mortar rounds.

Hot red pain flared in Boyer’s wrist; a heartbeat later his whole arm went numb. He didn’t slack his pace. He didn’t bother to turn around to check on the others or to see how close their assailants were. In fact, he didn’t even cast a curious glance over his shoulder when he heard the whoof of Garbell’s fall. He ran, leaving the Controller behind.

“Here! Here!” Woods shouted, darting off into a side street. Without pause for debate, Boyer followed. The road was narrow, a rutted lane bordered by overgrown shrubs; and as they sped down it, the thunderstorm of rocks became a sprinkle, and then it finally stopped.

Boyer darted a queasy look at his numb wrist. Where the rock had hit, the skin was flayed open. The spot the Passport should have been was now a bleeding, gaping hole.

“Through here,” Woods ordered and darted into a backyard, taking the lead as though management of anything, even flights of retreat, were his birthright.

They bolted between two burned out homes and came to a panting halt before a chain link fence. Woods looked puzzled, as though trying to comprehend that even sound management and good planning can fail.

At a sound, Boyer swiveled. Behind them, in the overgrown jungle of wisteria and persimmon, man-shaped shadows were moving. Flinging himself onto the fence, Boyer pulled himself up it one-handed. The chain link made a crazed tambourine jingle. Woods, shorter and obviously not much of a climber, was clawing at Boyer’s shirt.

“Get off me!” Boyer screamed, but Woods’ small, fingers clutched at him, nearly throwing him backwards off the fence. Boyer brought his foot up high and then slammed it down hard into Woods’ nose. There was a sharp, broken-pencil snap. Woods hung on with drowning-man desperation.

Kicking downward frantically again and again, Boyer saw blood flood from Woods’ broken nose, heard the crunch of small bones shattering. Woods’ upturned face lost its rigidity and, even through the thick soles of the boots, took on a pulpy feel.

Woods fell away. Boyer clambered higher and then he was over, over the fence and tumbling, the blouse of his fatigues catching in the tarnished steel points and tearing a new sleeve hole.

He hit the ground at an angle, shoulder first. The fall knocked the breath out of him. The hail storm of rocks had stopped, and in the stunning and ominous silence, Woods lay against the fence like a forgotten pile of laundry.

Boyer clambered to his feet and ran.

The sun was setting over the warehouse roofs when Boyer found shelter in an abandoned apartment building. He climbed a flight of precipitously-inclined stairs and emerged on a second floor balcony. Through the haze of dusk he could see the bombed ruins of the four other bridges and, a mere five blocks down, the pale arm of the Jefferson Street Viaduct where it spanned the Trinity.

He sat down on the soiled concrete and grimly dug into his wound, searching, without success, for his Passport. Surely it would be there. It had to be there, shoved somewhere under the bone and raw tissue.

He didn’t find the Passport, but he found the pain where it had been lurking in the numbed trauma of his mutilated wrist. By the time he’d given up the search he was crying quietly, too afraid to draw attention to himself to scream.

Dark fell. Boyer watched lights come on in Dallas and marveled how the environmental globes lit up like festive lanterns as though the city were a party to which he had not been invited. Above, wheeling free in the bruised and purple sky, airplanes circled, forming bright new constellations. He sat and watched them sink towards the Northwest to disappear below the fifty foot wall of the airport.

Night deepened. The moon rose. Finally, because there was nowhere else to go, he got up and trudged back to the burned houses and the fence.

Woods still lay in an abandoned, sad heap by the chain link. Boyer located the gate and, cradling his arm, walked into the silence of the backyard. By the light of the full moon he could see that Woods’ snide lips had been battered into loose unfamiliarity by the force of Boyer’s shoes.

Fighting his repulsion, Boyer knelt down beside the corpse. Woods was already stiffening. His right arm was lifted as though to ward off a final blow; his left rested at his side, defeated. Boyer forced open those cold, curled fingers and saw that Woods’ Passport had not been touched.

Should he dig the Passport out of the flesh? Boyer wondered. He didn’t know if he had the courage; and he certainly didn’t have the means. With his one good arm, he hoisted the inert body to his shoulder and, steadying himself on the fence, got to his feet.

Boyer’s fatigues weren’t making a crisp sound any more. In the humid night air sweat gathered in his armpits and rolled down his sides.

He hurt all over, not just in his wrist, although that contained the piano riffs of his agony. His left rib cage was a hot sax of an ache; the bruise on his thigh was a periodic, throbbing bass. From the pressure of Woods’ belt, the weary fingers of his right hand strummed a minor seventh of pain.

This was high adventure, all right, Boyer thought with an hysterical, verge-of-insanity grin. What would he say to the police, assuming that the presence of Woods’ Passport would Abracadabra the gates apart?

You got trouble on the south, side, sheriff.

But Dallas already knew that. That’s why, years ago, they’d erected the security system across the moat that was the Trinity.

Dallas hated the poor. And now Boyer, his ID gone, his credit card discarded with his backpack, was trying to go back home without so much as a penny in his pocket.

“Sssst.”

The urgent hiss sliced through the quiet night. Boyer almost dropped his burden.

“Hey, Dak,” Russell said, creeping around the comer of a nearby house.

Boyer nearly wept with relief. Russell had come to save him.

“Hey, you all right?” The moonlight cast Russell’s strong, high cheekboned face in silver and shadow. His eyes shifted towards Woods’ inert form. “Hate to tell you, man, but I think he dead.”

Boyer nodded vaguely.

“Shit, man. That real nice of you,” Russell said, obviously overwhelmed. “Carrying your friend back like that and all.”

“I . . . I just . . . “ Boyer began and then, to his embarrassment, began to cry.

“Look,” Russell said. “Come to tell you I ain’t charging you nothing for this hunt.”

Boyer blinked away his tears. “I think my wrist is broken, Russell. I’ve lost my Passport somewhere, back there. Can you hide me for a while? It’s late, and I’m hungry.” Suddenly he was sobbing again.

“Wish I could, man. You ain’t so bad, Dak. But you see the way it is.”

Boyer didn’t quite understand what Russell was telling him. Was this all about a business deal, then? And like an honest contractor, the guide was offering a refund? “I thought—back there— you know, we might have something between us.”

Russell gave him a sharp, startled look.

“Friendship,” Boyer said quickly. “I thought maybe we understood each other despite—well, despite our differences.”

“Oh, sure.” Russell replied with too much alacrity for the agreement to be sincere. “But Maxie, he a brother. You just a rich whitebread, Dak.”

The guide must have seen the disillusionment on Boyer’s face, because he added quickly, “But you okay for a whitebread. You really almost a gentlemen.” He reached out to shake hands, but saw that Boyer was hampered by a bandaged wrist and the fact that the other hand was engaged in balancing a corpse.

“Anyway.” Russell let his arm drop. “Just want you to know I taking the charge off your Visa. They bill you for it, you let me know.”

He gave Woods’ body one last glance before he turned and jogged away. Boyer listened to the pit-pat of the guide’s old Nikes as he disappeared into the night.

Boyer stood there a moment, Woods a dead weight on his shoulder. Almost a gentlemen? Russell had utterly forgotten that Boyer was one mean cockroach killer. Hefting his burden, Boyer walked on dejectedly towards the Jefferson Street Bridge.

The moon had set by the time he reached it; and his legs had begun to fail. He shuffled down the bridge, wading through odd snowdrifts of paper; and at the glow of the gate he stopped.

The egg-sized camera shifted its gaze towards him. The green activated light came on. “Hello, Mr. Woods,” the computer said with artificially-intelligent, if dimwitted, gaiety.

Boyer trembled before it, waiting for the gate to open. The night air was seeping up from the river, carrying with it an odor of silt and dead fish.

“Oh,” the gate said happily. “But then I see you’re deceased.”

The green light went out. Disinterested, the camera swung away.

Boyer let Woods fall to the asphalt. “Goddamn it, let me in! I’m Dak Boyer! Salesman for Echo Electronics! I live on Lombardy Lane!”

The keen gaze of the camera was focused at the air above Boyer’s head. If the security gate were listening, it was listening for the mutterings and shufflings of insurrection and not Boyer’s hysterical shouts.

He beat on the door with his good hand, his fist sliding on the surface. The skin of Dallas was glossy, designed to resist graffiti and all other vulgar dirt. “Please.”

The gate wasn’t listening to entreaties, either. It hadn’t listened to them when it was constructed; and it certainly wouldn’t bother to listen to them now. The camera eye had watched a town burn. There wasn’t much that could shock it anymore.

As Boyer dropped wearily to his knees, his gaze fell to one of the white bits of paper and riveted on it in bewilderment and dawning alarm.

AUTOMEMO

FROM THE DESK OF CHAZ GARBELL, it said.

And below that was printed the message:

WARNING. DON’T GO ON A HUNTING TRIP WITH THAT ASSHOLE DAK BOYER. HE’LL PANIC AND LEAVE YOU BEHIND.

My God, Boyer thought in shock. Garbell was decidedly still alive—the AutoMemo logged on to no other voice but its owner’s.

When his surprise ebbed, Boyer began to consider the message. That asshole Dak Boyer? He was as injured by Garbell’s written attack as he had been by Maxie’s physical one. He picked up one of the scattered bits of paper and read it carefully, word by slow, stunned word.

Panic? What did Garbell mean by “panic?” Maxie and his gang had been following at their heels, mayhem in mind.

Hadn’t they?

Perhaps Garbell had escaped. That idea was soothing, but it also rang with hollow hope. No. Garbell was too out of shape to run from his athletic attackers. Maxie had let him go.

Oh, shit.

Maxie had let Garbell go. And now the revelation of Boyer’s cowardice was scattered all over the Jefferson Street Bridge and possibly onto the immaculate streets of Dallas. Boyer glanced around. The bits of paper, conjured into being by Garbell’s indignant thumb on the REPEAT, spread around him like a messy, isolating sea.

His gaze snagged on the sight of Woods’ faceless body. Woods was no longer simply the prick from Victa. He was evidence.

Boyer lunged up, grabbed the dead Purchasing Manager by the back of his shirt and wrestled him one-handedly over the guardrail. The body dropped into the night.

Gasping, Boyer swiveled around to see the camera eyeing him curiously. The gate was evidently too polite to enquire about Boyer’s strange actions.

No. It would wait for the police.

Boyer whirled to face the dark, misshapen skyline of Oak Cliff on the horizon. Even though he was barefooted, he could run. He could hide. But that was a ridiculous choice. If he were found guilty of murder, Boyer would merely be sent south, anyway.

Behind him Dallas rose, a glowing, domed bastion. Caught between a salesman’s fear of rejection and tremulous hope of’ victory, Boyer sank to the concrete, his back to the fantasy castle walls, and sat in wait for the dawn.

Author’s Note: Once for a con I was asked to write a short-short for inclusion in the book. This was my submission. Needless to say, they gulped hard, considered the language and subject matter, and very nicely asked for another.

He’d been running flat out in the darkness when his toe came to a jarring halt against some immovable object. The irresistible force of momentum kept him going; but only for a millisecond. Then—splat—his face collided with the ground.

The pratfall was of the Laurel and Hardy variety, a real train wreck topple with a lot of noise to it. Had it happened in the courtroom rather than in the dark of the woods, it would have been a thing of hilarity. The judge would have laughed. The other counsel would have laughed. And everyone would have had a grand old time.

As it was, Gary was a long way from the courtroom; a long way, in fact, from civilization.

The impact had knocked the air out of him; it was a moment before he could breathe. High up in his chest was an ache where an unfortunately placed rock had gouged a rib. Where the skin abraded through the weave of his virgin wool pants, an exquisite, raw pain flared.

Just a funny old pratfall.

Only maybe She had heard it. Maybe She knew where he was.

Somewhere in the back of the forest an owl hooted: soft, low laughter. Nearby came the sound of an acorn’s long, clattering plunge to the ground.

The fall had left him disoriented; stress had left him on a jittery, pseudo-cocaine high. It would have been good to rest a while, but he felt Her eyes around him. The cold breath of the wind lifted the hairs at the base of his neck. He got up and limped on. After a few yards he was jogging. A few more and he was running. Running again for his life.

He was making good time, keeping his arms tucked in, breathing through his nose. The Florsheims weren’t ideal for sprinting, but the forest floor was spongy. A sliver of moon rode high over the treetops, and by its glow he dodged the dark trunks that studded the pale, leaf-littered ground.

Three miles a day. Rain or shine. Three miles of jogging a day, kept up religiously. Other men would have sat down and taken a breather long ago, but Gary, old Gary kept going, his legs pumping, his nostrils syphoning in the moist, pine-scented air.

Other guys just didn’t have the stamina he had. That’s because Gary had control. In fact Gary had so much control that he disdained people who lacked it: guys with sloppy minds and beer bellies to match; women who didn’t keep themselves up.

He should have had control over Her, the bitch, if the instructions had been written correctly. It was the goddamned book’s fault, that’s what it was.

There wasn’t any trick to calling up old gods. Gary’d done it enough. Conjuring had started off as a parlor game in the frat house and later he’d used a little spell to help him pass the Bar. He’d kept his hand in, of course, once he knew magic worked; and habitually used it to make double sure he won an important case. Winning always came first with Gary.

“Kiss my rosy red one,” he muttered as he ran. Gary had played hardball with powerful studs; and no fat, ugly cunt was going to push him around.

A cloud passed over the moon, casting a shadow-blanket over the forest. Purblind, he slowed. When a branch slapped him in the face a moment later, he eased up again on his speed, dropping from a slow run to a cautious jog, and squinting myopically into the darkness.

He listened hard; but sounds in the forest were misleading. From somewhere nearby came the trickling music of water. Far away, in the underbrush, he could hear a huge body moving.

Big, yeah, he thought, cocking his head toward the sound.

That might be Her. Before She’d broken through the ring he’d cast in the secrecy of the forest, he’d seen Her for a moment—not the snake Goddess he’d been expecting, but something else. Something older.

There’d been a mere suggestion of spreading thighs, grotesque stomach and bloated breasts, a form more like the ancient Neolithic Goddess than the Goddess Crete had known. He had smelled Her, too: the low-tide reek of Her sex and the stench of sour milk. No. Mama Astarte hadn’t been keeping Her health spa membership up, and she hadn’t bathed in, oh, maybe millennia.

Astarte, Hecate, whatever the hell they later wanted to call her, she’d come from that old nightmare, the statues without heads and hands. Neolithic man’s Goddess was a two-bagger, but you had to hand him one thing: he believed in getting down to the essentials. He’d sculpted only the important parts: the tits, the crotch, the non-throw-away pieces of a woman.

The Minoans had cleaned Her up, made Her presentable, made Her nice. They’d given Her a wasp waist, a couple of bazooma hooters and a passable face; but what Gary had conjured had been the thing behind the snake Goddess.

He’d conjured a thing without a face.

Abruptly, terrifyingly, the ground disappeared under his feet. He flailed, then smacked the rocky stream in a real boomer of a fall. There was an enormous, whoopsie splash. Rocks punched him in the side, eliciting a splintering, bone-cracking ache.

He was hurt bad, he realized with some disbelief. Every breath he took exacted its attorney’s fee in pain.

Very slowly, very carefully, he crawled out of the stream and dropped, shivering, to the grassy-bank. Control wasn’t much on Gary’s mind anymore. In fact he had the primitive sort of animalistic urge to lay quiet so he could think about his wounds a while.

On the other side of the creek, in the darkness, he heard something quietly brush branches aside. An immense creature was breathing, there in sort of a low, snuffle-snuffle query.

What sort of feet and hands could She have? he wondered. What sort of head rested on those rounded shoulders? Was the rest of the being behind him so toss-your-cookies horrible that the ancients had been afraid to cast it in stone?

When he heard the splash of a heavy foot in the stream, he blundered up, the agony in his side coming in second place to the shrieks of terror in his mind.

He got up and ran. Not too well, of course. His form wouldn’t win any 10Ks. But the fast limp was serviceable.

Stupid. Stupid. She shouldn’t even exist any more. The bitch’s religion was dumb, something based on the biological misunderstanding that women got knocked up by themselves, by some sort of female magic.

Astarte’s religion got started because Neolithic man failed Biology 101.

As he ran, Gary started reviewing his options. Every situation had alternatives, law had taught him that. Hand the other guy a sliver of pie so you could keep the rest yourself. Give a little; take a lot. Those were the sort of odds Gary liked.

Gods liked sacrifices, so he just had to figure out what would make this one happy. Legend was that the ancient Astarte took her son as a lover and then, pissed off by God-knows-what, She’d killed him. In Crete the Goddess was depicted with snakes in her hands, and Gary knew why. Astarte wanted, what every ball-breaking, penis-envying bitch wanted. And he wasn’t about to sacrifice that.

Death or dick, huh, guy? he asked himself. Christ, what a no-win situation.

The pain in his side felt like someone had slid a hot knife into his ribs. As he ran he could feel the bones grind. He was grunting as he moved now, uttering small, feral sounds of agony, and searching the forest for friendly lights.

He was only an hour and a half’s drive out or Portland. Surely there’d be a cabin around. There’d be a fire in the hearth and some hot soup. A blanket and a quick ride to the hospital. She wouldn’t dare come after him, then. Her magic was outdated, completely illogical. Just like something a woman would cook up.

Had a bad fall, fellah, the guy in the cabin would say.

And Gary would chuckle a little, being careful not to jar his ribs, and then he’d say, Yeah, well. You know how hard it is to please some women.

When he got back home he’d find a spell to, get rid of Her. The old Neolithic Queen of Heaven wouldn’t do to him what She’d done to Her own son. And she wouldn’t be getting Her hands on his dick. Oh, no. Not unless he decided to be gracious enough to let, her suck it.

He imagined the blow job: that dry; lipless mouth, the needle-sharp fangs, the caress of a dry: forked tongue. Maybe not.

“I’ll roll over you like a fucking steamroller,” he wheezed with bravado the moment before his legs rejected the call to battle. He dropped into the ferns on his injured side.

“Jeezus,” he whimpered.

Right behind him he could hear Her wide, fleshy feet crackling fallen twigs, Her swollen body shoving branches aside. He lifted his head and caught a whiff of Her yeasty, cheesy stench.

He scrabbled out of the bracken on his hands and knees. She was close now, so close that he could feel the sour warmth from her body. Something tugged at the tip of a Florsheim and he wriggled his foot out of it.

He shoved his hand frantically into his pocket and opened the ivory handled penknife, tearing his thumbnail in his haste. Slashing backward to where the sound and the smell had been, he encountered empty, warm air.

Then, clear-headed even in his panic, he saw his way out. He’d just compromise here. Give Her a relatively minor offering so the self-indulgent slut wouldn’t take the whole ball of wax.

“Here, bitch!” he screamed, and brought the penknife down on his own outstretched hand. The honed blade sliced through the flesh of his little finger, snapping the bone. The knife was an expensive Swedish model and Gary had cut fast. The finger was off before he even felt the pain. Blood spewed, hot and thick, down his hand. “Choke on it!” he shouted and threw the finger over his shoulder.

He never heard the sound of the finger hitting the brittle fern. What he did hear, and what he knew he would never forget, was the wet, crunching noise of teeth on bone and the large sound of the swallow.

Then She was after him again. She caught at his other shoe and he clambered up and ran on in stockinged feet.

The night air was cold, and his damp suit flapped about him. After a few yards he put the penknife in his trouser pocket, shimmied out of his imported French jacket and left it behind in the dirt. A glassy pain had worked its way into the stub of his finger and settled down as though it were planning to stay awhile. Warm blood trickled down his hand to soak the cuff of his silk shirt.

A body too heavy for running, too fleshy for heavy exertion, kept pace with him through the underbrush.

Oh, fuck. He’d never make it. She’d capture him and everything he’d worked for would be gone: his Beamer, his condo, his seven-hundred-thousand-dollar-a-year practice. Once it came right down to it, death wasn’t so much a terrifying thing as it was incomprehensible and infuriating.

The torment in his side slowed him to a dizzy, infirm walk. He ran face-first into a tree and bounced back, confused. The next tree he blundered into sent him reeling to the ground where he hit his broken ribs again.

“Give me a fucking break!” he wailed. But he knew She wouldn’t be happy until She had more. And sometimes, of course, you had to cut your losses. Taking the penknife from his pocket, he slapped his hand against the rough bole of the oak and carved into his left ring finger.

The second amputation was harder. His strength was fading, his aim a little off. He had to hack at it five fumbling times to get the damned thing off.

He didn’t throw the finger at Her this time. When it dropped with a sad rustle into the dead leaves he simply left it there. He walked on, bleeding and dazed, cradling his maimed hand to his chest.

That had to appease Her, didn’t it? Wouldn’t She get the idea now and leave him the hell alone? That was fair, wasn’t it? People would stare at that hand now. In court they’d look at it in disgust, or even worse, pity. They’d talk about him behind his back.

Poor, old Gary, they’d say. What do you imagine happened to his hand?

She’d happened. She’d emasculated him. Men would treat him like a worthless gimp. Women would catch a glimpse of that hand and turn away. No more harvesting his crop of one night stands in the rich fields of the singles bars.

He started to cry, the tears leaking as sluggishly as the blood from his stumps.

Behind him, he heard Her approach the tree and root in the leaves like a pig after a truffle. A moment later he heard a greedy crunch and then heard Her walk on.

She wasn’t hurrying now. She was biding her time. Enjoying her conquest like he enjoyed his heady courtroom victories.

“Please,” he whispered. It wasn’t a word which came easily to Gary, but he said it with the correct amount of entreaty all the same. “Oh, shit. Oh, please,”

She was still stalking him. And he knew why.

The first two sacrifices had been easy. She wanted to totally cripple him. He couldn’t give her the whole hand—that would be stupid—but he could give Her the hand’s usefulness. He’d give Her his golf game, offer up his grip on the tennis racquet, his mastery of his ski poles.

Blundering around in the darkness, he found a sturdy trunk, took out his penknife again and cut deep into the webbing at his thumb.

Suddenly there were lots of blood. Beaucoups of blood. It spurted out of the incision like water under unexpected pressure, hosing him with sticky heat.

Shit, he thought in wild, helpless panic. Oh, oh, oh shit. He dropped the penknife and clutched his wrist with the doomed, mesmerized horror of a man who sees water rising in a clogged toilet. There was no way to stop the gush, no simple overflow valve. Incredulous, he limped on, holding his hemorrhaging thumb to his chest. Thick, hot liquid drenched the front of his shirt, his trousers.

Jesus. Jesus. He’d hit a goddamned artery.

His face still wore its astonishment when he fell to the ground a few yards later. He floundered in the dirt, too weak to rise. Indolence settled in like the first achy stages of the flu. A large part of him, the majority shareholder part, voted to close his heavy eyelids and catch a few Zs. Oh, yeah, he told himself wryly, forcing his eyes wide open. Death. That’s going to be a nice breather.

The time for the Great Closing Argument had come, and Gary knew he was going to die. No more Beamer, no more condo. Simple things would go as well: the morning feel of his sixty dollar aftershave against his face; the taste of poached salmon at his favorite high-end restaurant. For the first time in his gently-lived thirty five years, Gary came face-to-face with the featureless visage of oblivion.

It dismayed the crap out of him.

Control, though. He still had that. So what if he were dying.

He could handle that, he thought. Gary Morrow was one of the big boys, the earth-shakers. And a big boy could handle anything, even the ultimate game of hardball. What was important was that he’d chosen how and when to go. The thing to remember was that She’d won the battle but not the war. There were worse ways to die than bleeding to death. If he had to check out of life’s luxury hotel, then he’d go courageously and in style, not blubbering like some spineless wuss.

He wouldn’t give Her the satisfaction.

He lay in the moss and leaves, eyes to the lightless sky, feeling the hot life pump out of him. Teetering there on the narrow wall between existence and the Void, he heard Her approach. She snuffled questioningly as though She had again seen Her lover-son die at own Her hand, and again didn’t understand why. She was so close that he could smell the lush, fecund scent of Her, an odor of fruiting life and sweated, sated bodies. He even thought he could see Her, a darker lump in the shadows.

Watch, bitch, he thought. Watch and take notes. This is the way a real man dies.

Something tugged gently on his belt. He tried to bat it away, and discovered that he didn’t have the strength. He babbled a faint but sincere plea for mercy as he felt something touch his lower belly, and the caress of a cool, scaly hand moving possessively and inexorably down.

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