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BOOK TWENTY: DEM BONES (GONNA WALK AROUND)

186. At my apartment, I found a note. . . .

            At my apartment, I found a note from Julia: The cops searched us again. I can’t stay here by myself. Call me as soon as you get home, and Brenda’s phone number. Instead, I picked up the telephone and dialed the Lincoln police. “This is Jonas Smith,” I said when the desk sergeant came on the line. “You people wanted to talk to me. I was going to come in in the morning, but I can come down now if you want.”

            There was rustling and thumping on the other end of the line; someone covered the receiver. Finally a different voice came on the phone. “Smith? Come on down. We’d love to talk to you.”

            “Give me a couple of minutes to change my clothes. I’m dressed for a funeral.” I hung up without further pleasantries, stripped off the uniform, and showered and put on a tee-shirt and jeans; the weekend cold front had passed, and I thought I might as well get comfortable. I grabbed an apple from the refrigerator on my way out the door, to eat during the short walk to the new headquarters. Instead I threw it away after a few bites, my appetite drying up as I approached the white-slab building. My knees were feeling trembly by the time I walked in; I was cheered to see that the young woman at the desk remembered me. “Hi,” she said warily. “You came in the wrong door. They want you around at the west end of the building.”

            “That’s me,” I said, “always trying to backdoor somebody. How’s cop school?”

            “Terrible,” she said. “I’d rather be a nurse, but I can’t pass Chemistry.” She glanced at something on the monitor above her desk.

            “Keep studying,” I said. “You’ll get it. Where do I go from here?” She pointed to her left, to a door at the end of the corridor. “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll be seeing you.”

            “Oh, please,” she said. “Not again. I’ve had nightmares about you.”

            “It’s a figure of speech,” I said soothingly. “I’m not moving in again if I can help it. Anyway, they fixed the cells.”

            “Go,” she said, pointing away from herself. 

            I passed a hallway down which I’d fled earlier—how long had it been? A month? Six weeks?—and went through a door marked NO ADMITTANCE. The department’s offices were on the other side. I found myself looking at the backs of everyone’s heads.

            “Yoo hoo,” I said.

            A half-dozen careful cop faces turned to regard me. “Smith?” one of them asked.

            Inwardly, I shook like a cowed beagle. “That’s right,” I said hoarsely, putting on a brave face. “Where’s the man with the rubber hoses?”

            One of the cops, a roly-poly blond fellow about my own age, stood up. “Thanks for coming over,” he said to me in a friendly voice. “The chief of detectives isn’t in right now, but I can take a deposition for you.”

            I studied this man who stood before me. “OK,” I said. “What do you want me to depose?”

            “We’d like you to describe your activities on Saturday,” he replied. “You can use this desk over here if you want.” He gestured to an ordinary metal office desk, indistinguishable from the one I’d used at Andrews Hall. Its surface was clean except for a row of forms stacked along one edge.

            “I guess I can do that,” I said. “Why not?” I made my way over to the desk , while he brought me a lined tablet and a pen. “What time of day are we talking about here?”

            “The whole day starting at midnight,” he said. “One thing first. I have to read you your Miranda rights. Strictly as a formality.” He produced a three-by-five card, glanced at it, and began reeling off the text in a rapid drone. When he came to You have the right to an attorney, I thought of Bob Warner.

            “Maybe I ought to call somebody,” I interrupted.

            His face took on a bland, disappointed expression. He shrugged. “Sure,” he said. “Whatever you want. Should I bring you the phone book?”

            I thought about it. “Nah,” I said. “I can handle this.”

            “How about a cup of coffee? Ours is not the greatest, but it doesn’t seem to kill us prematurely.”

            “Sure,” I said.

            “Cream or sugar?”

            I looked up at the cop. It was hard to read him. I suspected that he wasn’t from Lincoln originally, but other than that— There were plenty of small-town boys who could beat me at poker. “I drink it black,” I said. “This will take some time. I need to think about this.”

            I picked up the ball-point pen and put it down, then slid open the center drawer and found a Number Two pencil with a good eraser on it. “We’d rather you’d use the pen,” the cop observed when he brought my coffee.

            “I’ll use the pencil,” I said. “I might make a mistake.”

            “Fine,” he said cheerily. He turned his back on me—too deliberately, I thought—and went off into another part of the building, leaving me in the company of his fellow officers, who were grousing and needling one another as they filled out paperwork.

            My problem was that I hadn’t yet talked to Julia. I didn’t believe I’d awakened her when I sneaked out Saturday morning, but I couldn’t be certain. Her bladder seemed to have shrunk recently, so she was always getting up during the night; maybe she’d missed me. But if there was a discrepancy, I could say I was sleepy and hadn’t looked at the clock. I put, 12:00 a.m. to 5:30 a.m.: Asleep, and our address. That left me with one hour less to account for, the hour during which I’d whacked the wino over the head.

            I next put, Fifteen minutes, cup of coffee, breakfast. Depart for Palemon, Nebr., approx. 6 a.m. I sucked the pencil lead, examining my work. Should I mention Lederer’s? Suppose they’d traced my call from there, or the cashier had identified me? I realized I was guessing at how they’d connected me with the bum in the first place. Also, there was the matter of the bloody shirt, which the cashier would definitely have noticed if he hadn’t gone blind with drugs. I erased breakfast and put down leftover pizza. That way I could pass the blood off as pizza sauce. But had we indeed ordered pizza on Friday night, and had there been some left over? I couldn’t remember.

            I put down, Get gas, Lederer’s. I hadn’t bought gas there—the tank had been nearly full—but it would give me a reason for my presence other than to make a phone call. I skipped a line and added, Second breakfast, Cairo, Neb., approx. 8 a.m. I shuddered at the memory of those two congealing eggs, of the nosy waitress who wouldn’t leave me in peace.

            That left only a little straightforward lying to account for the rest of my day; I could leave out items, but I didn’t have to make any up. I put down 12 noon, lunch with George Smith, Milestone Cafe, Palemon, Nebraska; 12:30-2 p.m., asleep at George Smith residence, Palemon; 2 p.m.-midnight, achieving and maintaining intoxication. Various drinking establishments, Palemon. I omitted any mention of Baxter’s Pond. If someone had seen me there, I could say it was not unlikely. Sentimental reasons.

            The friendly cop took my deposition to a back room to be typed. In the meantime I absconded. I hadn’t been arrested, no one was watching me, and I didn’t feel like signing the typed version. It was already past the supper hour, and I hadn’t eaten since before the funeral, so I walked up Tenth Street in the direction of downtown. The campus district offered plenty of fast-food, but a little Mexican cafe on Eleventh Street served food that was at least, well, Mexican. I had to pass up Casey’s to get there, but it wasn’t difficult since my nervous system was still tingling from the drunk I’d thrown on Saturday. Also, I knew I would pass by again on the way home. As I ate, I tried to recall when I’d last enjoyed my life. I decided it was during pilot training in Del Rio, Texas, when the pressure was high but I could slip across the border any night. Stu Miller had been my whorehouse buddy in those days. Tom Tex came with us most times, but it was Stuart I really counted on. Too bad he had to go and get dead on me. Of course, I reflected, I myself had had something to do with that.

            I felt far worse about the bum I’d killed than I felt about Stuart; why? If indeed I’d killed one. The cops’ weird dance around me was an enigma. Either they’d found him or they hadn’t; if they’d found him, either he’d been dead or he’d been alive. Why were they playing it cute with me? Did they think I might lead them to the mastermind of a ring of bum-killers? One thing I’d learned as part of the anti-war movement was that there was no anticipating what the opposition might believe. I’d seen editorials in the Omaha World-Herald that appeared to have been written by paranoid schizophrenics, damning all protesters as atheists and Russian spies. Maybe this Curly the Detective was a right-wing loony. It could be that I’d do well to stay away from my friends.

            “What friends?”

            “Excuse me, sir?” The waitress happened to be standing by.

            “Nothing,” I said. “Just talking things over with myself.” I looked her up and down; a shapely short girl, rounded and pretty, with south-of-the-border eyes as black as Grace’s. I shuddered. “Take care of yourself, OK?” I said. “Don’t get mixed up with assholes. That’s the best tip you’ve had all day.” I left her some change, then thought better of it and put down a dollar. I paid my bill and walked out into the warm evening.

(blank line)

187. I dreaded going back. . . .

            I dreaded going back to my apartment. Our apartment? It was rapidly getting to be Julia’s apartment. I made a right turn and another, ending up where I supposed I’d rather be. Casey’s was not exactly hopping, it being a Tuesday in the off season. The campus’s summer population was mostly high-school teachers from outstate, getting their summer Education courses; many of the student radicals had gone home to summer jobs, from which they’d return in the fall with shorter hair and sunburned necks. I bought a draft from Chris, the owner, and slid into a booth alone; I sat against the wall and nursed my beer, my feet sticking into the aisle. I was staring at nothing, my face turned toward the door, when who but Selva Andersen came walking in.

            I blinked. “Hey,” I said. “Good to see you.” To my surprise, she calmly took a seat. “How was the wedding?”

            “Don’t ask,” she said.

            “OK, but I hope you’ll tell me,” I said. “So, is it Andersen-Fisher or Fisher-Andersen?”

            “Oh, fuck you, Jonas,” she said. “I’m so sick of those dumb remarks. Neither of us is changing our name, if you really want to know.”

            “Actually, I don’t,” I said. “Are you OK, more or less?”

            “More or less,” she said. “Do you want another beer?”

            “Gosh, yes. I always want another beer.”

            Selva went to the bar—old Vi was not in evidence—and brought back a draft for me and a gin-and-tonic for herself. “My summer drink,” she said, sipping. “It is summer, isn’t it?”

            “Saturday was indeed the first day of summer,” I said. “Was it cold at your wedding? To tell the truth, I was hoping you’d all freeze your butts.”

            “It was cold,” she said. “We were drunk. I don’t want to talk about it.” She sipped again. “Thanks for not coming,” she added.

            “De nada. I drove up to Palemon. I think I might’ve gotten a little blitzoed myself.”

            “Julia told me the cops came looking for you,” Selva Andersen said.

            “Yeah, I was just over there. I had to write out a list of what I did on Saturday. It wasn’t much of a list. They haven’t told me what it’s about.” I took a gulp of beer. “There haven’t been any unsolved murders or anything?”

            “Nothing in the newspaper.”

            “Well,” I said.

            I got tangled in my own thoughts, so I don’t know how long it was before I looked up and saw that Selva was crying. “What’s the matter?” I asked.

            “I’m bad,” she said through pressed-together lips.

            “Nah,” I said. “I don’t believe it. An angry woman, maybe.” I watched a tear roll down her parchment cheek. “Not bad.” I waited. The tear fell onto her blouse.

            “I’m bad to my mother,” she said.

            “Oh, that,” I said. “Hell, everyone on earth is bad to his mother.” I sipped my beer; she continued to be upset. “Do you want to be more specific?” I asked finally. She shook her head.

            I went to the bar and paid for a beer and a gin-and-tonic. By the time I brought back the drinks, Selva had calmed herself. “Thanks,” she said unsmilingly. “Well, Jonas, you’ve seen me weep. Why not? I’m not carved out of soap.”

            “I never thought you were,” I said. “Out of a whale’s tooth, maybe. Did you cry at your wedding?”

            “Stop trying to get me to tell you about my wedding.”

            “Fine; I’ll ask Julia how it was,” I said. “It’ll give us something to talk about.”

            “When are you two getting married?”

            I looked at her. “Me and Julia? Who told you that?”

            “Nobody,” Selva said. “Everyone thinks you will. I mean, you’ve sort of taken her in, haven’t you?”

            “Listen, girl,” I said. “I can barely stand old Julia, if you want to know. She seems to be sort of stuck on me, and her body is, uh, well, handy, but—”

            “So you’re leading her on, then,” Selva said.

            “Honey, I’m not leading her because I’m not going anywhere. Unless I go to prison.” Oops. I put the glass to my mouth before anything else could blurt.

            “Prison? What have you done recently?”

            “Well,” I said, backpedaling rapidly, “you know, they found marijuana flakes in our carpet.”

            “They won’t put you in prison for that,” Selva said. “Besides, you’ve got the best attorney in Lincoln.” She finished her first gin-and-tonic and started on the one I’d brought her. “What about the baby?” she asked.

            “It’s Jerome’s baby,” I said. “She can still get an abortion. If she doesn’t want to, then it’s her problem.”

            “Have you told her that? She might be counting on you.”

            “She ought to learn to count better,” I said. “I said I would help pay for the abortion; I’ve promised nothing further.”

            “I feel guilty about my family,” Selva offered after a short pause. “About my mother, specifically. I’m abandoning her.”

            “This thing women have about their mothers,” I said. “I don’t get it.”

            “Jonas, you know nothing about my family,” Selva said. “Don’t assume I’m a nice, normal girl from across the street. It wasn’t like that at all.”

            “Hey, I’m not assuming, I’m not assuming,” I said. “So. Who in your immediate family do you hate most?”

            “That’s easy,” she said. “My brothers.”

            “How many?”

            “Two. One is about your age; one’s older.”

            “And what did these horrible brothers do to you?”

            “Everything, Jonas. They did everything to me.”

            I blinked. “Ah.” Everything. I couldn’t prevent myself from glancing downward.

            “Yes,” she said. “As I talk with other women, other feminists, I’m finding that this is not uncommon.”

            I sighed. “Every time I decide the world really sucks,” I said, “I discover some new way it sucks that I didn’t know about.” I finished my second beer. “Does Adrian know?”

            She nodded soberly. “He knows,” she said. “I don’t keep secrets from Adrian.”

            “None?”

            Selva gave me a direct, green-eyed look. “None at all. Not one that I know of.”

            I put down the glass with a slap and wiped my lips. “Fuck.” I blushed and looked away. “No wonder Adrian doesn’t like me.”

            “Jonas,” Selva said, “Adrian wouldn’t like you if you were a cute, furry, hermaphroditic chipmunk from Andromeda and only had sex with pecan trees.”

            I had to chuckle at that. “Adrian,” I said. “Hey. Do you want to see where I work?”

            She shrugged and finished her drink. “Why not?” she said.

            “Are you driving?”

            “I have the Volvo, if that’s what you mean,” she said.

            “Let’s go.”

(blank line)

188. The soybean factory steamed. . . .

            The soybean factory steamed in its monochrome yellow glow, the columnar bean tanks ascending past the lamps’ reflectors and on up into blackness; red lights winked at the top to warn passing planes. I had Selva park at a distance from the office, among the rusted pickups and formerly-souped-up Chevies of the factory hands. A man unloading a truck glanced at us as I led her toward the head of the covered staircase. The humid breath of the place rushed up from below. “Phew!” she said. “This stinks. Do you really work here?”

            “My personal headquarters,” I said proudly. “I’m chairman of the mold-and-rot division.” I felt my way down the concrete steps, pushed open the unlocked door, and turned on the switch. “Actually, it’s how my apartment smelled pre-Julia.” The sharp light, stunning after our passage down the dark tunnel, revealed drab pyramids of bean dust that stretched off into the murk. New stalagmites of grit had already begun to accumulate in the center of each bare circle that I’d cleared. “My work’s been piling up,” I quipped. “I need to get busy.”

            “What do you do with this stuff?” Selva asked.

            “I shovel it down a hole. Watch this.” I threw the switch that started the big conveyor; its grinding rattle seemed to shake the foundation. Next I turned on the auger, took a shovel, and pushed a swath of crud into its maw. Grit duly came out the upper end, dropped through the grate in the floor, and vanished forever. I shut the small auger off and leaned the shovel against the wall, and bent and kissed Selva lightly on the lips. “I love you,” I said.

            “I’m married. Turn that noise off,” she said.

            I took her left hand and examined the wedding ring; I had a quick and powerful urge to rip it from the joint, finger and all, and fling it down the grate. Instead I reached over and threw the lever that shut down the invisible conveyor. “I keep having these violent impulses,” I said. “I don’t want to have them, but I have them just the same. Be warned.”

            “It’s hormones,” Selva said. “You’ll be fine once you jump poor Julia’s bones and let off steam. Whether Julia’s fine is not a concern of yours, apparently.”

            I turned away from her. “I can’t make you understand,” I said. “I’m in love with you.”

            “You’re right,” she said. “I don’t understand that.”

            “Have you never been in love?”

            She paused. “I love Adrian, but I’m not in love with him. That’s different and, as I see it, immature and inferior.”

            “Well.” I sighed and turned toward her again. “I suppose I could lay you on one of these bean heaps. Since Adrian already knows about us anyway.”

            “I suppose you could,” she said coldly, looking up at me. I kissed her again, my tongue forcing her cool lips. After a time I desisted.

            “Fuck.”

            “I can’t help it, Jonas,” she said. “I honestly would return your affection if I were able.”

            “Fuck.” I took her hand—I was in a sweat by this time—and tremblingly held it, my cold fingertips to hers. “I just—” I bent to kiss the backs of her fingers, then turned her small hand over to taste her fingertips. A seam no bigger than a thread ran upward in the tender skin of her wrist, disappearing under her cuff. “What’s that?” I touched the delicate pucker with my fingernail.

            “Jonas!” Wide-eyed, she snatched her hand away as if I’d branded her with a hot iron. “Don’t ever do that!”

            “Do what? What is it?” I gripped her shoulders; she seemed to have turned to stone. “Did you slash your wrist? Have you tried to commit suicide?”

            “No,” she said. “Shut up. No one is supposed to see that.”

            “I’m sorry,” I said. “Sorry I touched you inappropriately.” Then the ludicrousness of it hit me and I grinned. “Touched you inappropriately,” I repeated, and bent to kiss her, to take her slender body by the waist.

            “NO! Jonas, GET AWAY from me!” There was no mistaking her this time. She meant it.

            “Yes, ma’am.” I released her; she backed up as far as the wall, still holding her wrist as if I’d broken it. “I see that I’ve upset you,” I said formally. “I apologize.”

            “Oh, do go to hell,” she said furiously. “Where’s the door? How do I get out of here?”

            “Six feet to your left,” I said. “Be careful going up the steps; there’s no light in the passageway. You’ll be able to find your way once you reach the top.”

            I could see her working to calm herself. “I don’t feel comfortable with you, Jonas,” she said after a few deep breaths. “I can’t give you a ride home. Are you OK with that?”

            “I’ll be fine,” I said. “In fact, I might stay and shovel beans. As I said, I can see that I’ve been getting behind in my work. Do you want me to escort you to your car?”

            “Please don’t,” she said. “I’ll feel safer if I go alone. I’m sorry I— Well, I don’t know what. Goodbye, Jonas.”

            “I’ll be seeing you,” I said grimly. “It’s sure to be a long, hot summer.”

(blank line)

189. A long, hot night in the bean garden. . . .

            A long, hot night in the bean garden passed away. Who can say what I thought about? I’d killed a man—probably. I’d touched the woman I loved in a way that made her jump. I had a child, or Jerome had one, at the halfway point toward taking its first breath. Ed Keogh was dead, marched straight to his grave by an accompanying squad of uniformed U. S. goons. Meanwhile the President, in my sorry name, was bombing illiterate farmers in Cambodia.

When I put away my shovel, the new little piles were gone; the biggest and rottenest pile of all was undermined like a diseased tooth, at the point of collapsing. I ascended the steps, to emerge blinking in the morning light, covered with sweat and filth. I’d gone without water; I’d gone without food or rest. I’d shoveled all night like a machine, and now I felt too tired to take a step. Finally I limped across the parking lot to the office, where I found Augie Stables settling down to his papers and morning coffee. “I put myself on the night shift,” I announced hoarsely.

            He looked up to where I leaned in the doorway, dripping crud. “If you say so,” he said. He opened a drawer and pulled out a little notebook. “That’s eight hours for the week so far. Am I right?” I nodded. “Did you punch in?”

            “No.”

            “No point in your punching out, then. We’ll get you a new time card. Are you sure you want to do night work?”

            “I’m sure.”

            “All right, mister. It’s official. You’re on graveyard.”

            “Thanks.” I left the office, walked out to Cornhusker Highway, put out my thumb, and got a ride downtown within five minutes. The man who stopped for me happened to be driving a pickup, and when he saw the state of my clothes he made me ride in back. He let me off at O Street—he was turning west, in the direction of Lederer’s—and I walked the rest of the way home, so hungry and thirsty that the coffee aroma floating on the morning air made my head spin.

            When I crossed F Street, I looked up and saw that an L. P. D. squad car was parked half a block ahead, just behind my truck. “Jesus Christ,” I snarled, feeling my weariness. “What now?” I turned up the walkway and stomped down the steps to my apartment, ready to take a bite out of anybody I met.

            The first person I saw was Julia, large and sleepy in her Hinky-Dinky uniform. “Hi, Jonas,” she said anxiously. “Where’ve you been?”

            “Shoveling,” I said. “Where are they?” As if in reply, a cop emerged from the bedroom, carrying an armful of long-sleeved shirts. We looked each other over. “Here I am,” I said to him. “What do you want with me?”

            Julia responded for him. “They’re taking away your clothes, Jonas. They won’t tell me a thing. What have you done?”

            “Nothing,” I said. “This is plain and simple harassment. Tell your friend Bob Warner that I want to sue these bastards. There’s such a thing as malicious prosecution.”

            “Do you want me to call him, darling?” Julia studied me, while I met her worried gaze as best I could. “I will if you need me to.”

            I flushed and lowered my eyes. “We can’t afford it,” I said. “Don’t call just yet. If I do need him, I’ll find a way to let you know.”

            Julia left for work. I stood in my reeking clothes—the cops wouldn’t let me shower—while they loaded my stuff in their squad car. Then I rode with them to the brand-new jail and police station. The white cube building looked as bleak in the morning sun as it had looked the previous evening, twelve hours earlier; its architecture had less character than a block of cattle salt. The only human figure in the concrete landscape was a wino in a woman’s trench coat, rummaging the trash for aluminum cans. We entered on the south side of the building, ending up in the office where I’d written out a statement the night before. They marched me into a back room and stood me before a desk. Behind it sat the curly-headed detective.

            He didn’t waste any time. “This,” he said, rising and showing me my statement, “is a crock of shit.” He shook it in my face. “You didn’t even sign it, for Christ’s sake! Then you left. Did my man tell you you could leave? Where did you go last night?” He glared at me. “Sit down and talk to me, you smelly son of a bitch.”

            I sat. “I went to eat,” I said. “After that I went to Casey’s. After that I worked all night; I got a ride out there with a friend and hitchhiked back. What’s wrong with my statement?”

            “You know what’s wrong with it,” the detective growled.

            “Nothing’s wrong with it.”

            “Sign it, then.”

            “Not till you tell me what all this shit is about.”

            “Don’t swear at me, son,” the detective said. “I don’t like it.” He flexed his shoulders. “Did they read you your rights? Do you understand you’re under suspicion here?”

            “Yeah, they read ‘em to me,” I said. “Suspicion of what, though? Surely I’m permitted to know.” I watched him guardedly, certain now that I’d find out whether the hobo I’d struck was dead or alive.

            Instead he turned away from me, covering his mouth, and began to pace the room like a confined tiger. He looked angry but genuinely perplexed. “I’m not telling you a God-damned thing,” he said. He turned back. “Don’t think you’ll just get up and walk away again. There’s no one here to see what we do; if I decide to pound the crap out of you, I’ll say you tried to run.”

            “But I haven’t been arrested,” I pointed out.

            “Well, bucko,” he said, stopping to squint down at me. “You’re here for questioning. That means you haven’t exactly not been arrested.” He strode to the door of his cubicle and jerked it open. “Carl!” he bawled out into the office. “Bring the tape!” He turned to glare at me. “I want you to listen to something,” he said. “I want you to see if a certain voice sounds familiar to you.” He removed a penknife from the desk drawer and began cleaning his nails, even though his fingernails were not dirty. Something about the shape of the penknife made my back hair prickle.

            Soon a young cop whom I recognized as Rip Van Winkle, the sleepy cadet, came in pushing a tape recorder on a cart. It was a reel-to-reel machine, the twin of the one I’d once hoped to use in my presentation in Leonard Strange’s seminar. The young cop plugged it in, and the curly-headed detective turned the switch, letting the tubes warm up; a tape had already been wound between the reels. “This tape is a copy,” he said. “Just in case you get any wise ideas. The original is elsewhere.” He punched a button, and a voice said, Caller Number One: June— He stopped it and twirled it back a bit. “OK, listen up,” he said, punching a button. The same voice came out of the machine, repeating in a monotone: This is Caller Number One: June 20, 1970, 5:16 a.m. There was a pause and a hissing of the tape. Then a second voice, one with a familiar, hated slushing defect in the “s”, said, Get a pencil. I’m only going to say this once. There’s a man lying in a blue Falcon in your abandoned-car lot down on Sixth. He needs taken to the hospital right away.

            The detective pointed the penknife at me. “Sit still,” he ordered. The monotone spoke again. This is Caller Number Two: June 23, 1970, 8:07 p.m. Another twenty seconds of hissing, then the same voice with the same defect: This is Jonas Smith. You people wanted to talk to me. I was going to come in in the morning, but I can come down now if you want.

            The detective switched off the tape. “Well?”

            I was sweating. “The second caller is obviously me,” I said. “The first one’s somebody else’s voice. I don’t recognize it.”

            “You lie like a fucking rug,” he said. “Those voices are the same.” He replayed the tape; the only difference was in the quality of the two telephones. He waited, glaring down at me.

            “Nope,” I said. “That first one isn’t me.”

            The detective thumped the tape machine. “Look, you,” he said. “We’ll send this off to the F.B.I. crime lab in Kansas City. They’ll do a spectrograph that’ll prove the voices are identical. Then we’ll put your ass in prison on Murder One. What do you say to that?”

            I reeled. “Murder,” I croaked. I blinked up piteously at the detective, who loomed above me, blocking out the light. “So tell me who he was,” I said, “if a man is dead.”

            “GOD DAMN IT!” the detective screamed, “YOU TELL ME!” He put down the penknife and grabbed an ash tray from his desk; he hurled it against the wall, smashing it in a hundred pieces. I glanced up at the young cop who’d brought the tape machine; he looked wide awake for once. A ringing silence followed, broken only by the detective’s breathing. “You tell me,” he repeated huskily. “Since you killed him.” He calmly took up the little knife again.

            His loss of composure helped me regain mine; I swallowed hard, licking my dry lips. “I don’t follow what you’re talking about,” I insisted shakily. “Are you asking me to help identify a body?”

            “I’m asking you to confess to a murder,” he replied. “Then I’m asking you to show us where the fucking body is.”

            I stared at him in amazement. “You have no corpse?” I asked, hope creeping into my voice. “What did you do with it?”

            The detective’s head, which sat like a turret on his buffalo shoulders, twitched; his cheeks paled even as his ears turned red. “No,” he said softly, “what did you do with it?”

            We looked at one another. My mouth hung open; his jaw remained clenched. “Nothing,” I said at last. “I didn’t touch it.” Then I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

            A look of bafflement crossed the detective’s face. “Damned if I don’t one-and-a-half per cent believe you,” he said. “If you know nothing about it, what was that phone call?”

            “I didn’t call you,” I said. “It must’ve been someone else.”

            He slapped the desk. “Now, that,” he said, “that is horse puckey.” He turned to Rip Van Winkle. “Bring that envelope,” he said. “The surveillance photographs. While you’re at it, find a broom and a dustpan and get rid of this glass.”

            Carl the sleepy cop wheeled the tape recorder out the door and returned with a manila envelope. Then the detective drank coffee—he didn’t offer me any—while his trainee knelt like a lackey to clean up after him. I kept glancing at the envelope, waiting for the interview to resume. Surveillance photographs? If the police had been taking snapshots of my comings and goings, I must be more political than I thought.

            “Let me set this up for you,” the detective said at last. “They see a lot of shoplifting out at Lederer’s. College kids come out there drunk, and they think it’s funny to take a pack of cigars or something. Also, people show up there who like to write bad checks. It’s the same set of problems any late-night place has.” He finished his coffee and threw away the Styrofoam cup. “So, they put in a camera,” he said. “In fact, they put in two. Each unit takes a frame every thirty seconds. The resolution’s not perfect, but it shows what it shows.” He unfastened the brass clasp on the envelope. “Check this out,” he said, removing an enlargement. “See if you can identify this man.” He slid the photograph across to me, and my heart sank.

            The fish-eye lens had warped the room into curving lines, with everything close to the camera taking on giant proportions as if I were looking at the service station reflected in a glass ball. In a phone booth in the middle distance, a bearded man stood dialing a pay telephone; a tiny clock on a distant wall said 5:15. “Is that you?” the detective asked.

            I slid the photograph back. “Might be,” I said. “Maybe I called Julia.”

            “Funny Julia doesn’t mention it,” he said. “Your statement of activities doesn’t include it, either.” He slid another enlargement across; this time I was standing at the cash register, gathering my change and chips. “What’s on your shirt, Bubba?” he asked.

            “Don’t know,” I said. “Maybe pizza sauce?”

            “The cashier thought it was blood,” he said. “He remembers you coming in,” he added. “You’re, uh—” He passed his hand over his upper lip. “Sort of distinctive.”

            “I suppose that’s why your guys were hauling off my shirts,” I said. “Good luck finding anything. I’m pretty sure I washed that shirt. Anyway, I would’ve left it in Palemon. Did you call up there?”

            “We did more than that.” He held out his hand for the photograph, and I slid it back. “What do you think?” he asked. “Want to change your story?”

            “What story?”

            “What time did you leave Lincoln on Saturday?”

            “Right after that,” I said. “After I called Julia.”

            “Suppose you left later,” he said. “If you got to Palemon at noon—” He put down the photograph and picked up my statement— “you could’ve left here as late as seven o’clock. Maybe later if you drove hard.”

            “I couldn’t,” I said. “My truck is not that fast. It’s got a big engine in it, but the gearing is wrong.”

            “It says here you stopped at Cairo at eight a.m. for breakfast. Got any proof?”

            “Not unless the waitress remembers me,” I said glumly. “Other than that— No, wait! I got a warning ticket at Cairo.”

            The detective put down the sheet of paper. “You’re lying,” he said angrily. He took up the penknife and began pushing back his cuticles.

            “It’s in the glove compartment of my pickup,” I said. “A taillight bulb is out. I haven’t fixed it yet.”

            He glowered at me. “It better not be,” he whispered. He picked up the telephone. “Sergeant,” he said. “Sergeant, on that Smith case. Did we tow his pickup yet?” He glanced at me. “Good,” he said. “Be sure they check the glove box for a warning ticket issued in Hall County. If there is one, I need to know the time and date and the name of the officer.” He put the phone down. “Damn you,” he said to me. “You think you’ve got an alibi.”

            “Let me get this straight,” I said. “Supposing there was a fight or something at five a.m. and someone got hurt. What kind of alibi would it be for someone else to be in Cairo at eight? That doesn’t make sense.”

            “You sound anxious,” the detective observed, “for a man who claims he don’t know nothin’ about nothin’.”

            “Well, hell,” I said. “You tell me I’m under suspicion for murder, and then you tell me you haven’t got a body. What is going on here?”

            “The body,” the detective said, “has disappeared.” He glanced at Carl, who was blushing. “It got up and walked away. It fell to earth we know not where. All we found was a bloody car seat, and this.” He threw the little knife onto the desk so that it rattled. “Seen it before?”

            I stared at the hobo’s penknife. “You’re shitting me.”

            “No, son, I’m not shitting you,” he said. “Your partner—whoever was working with you—took the body somewhere and dumped it after you left town. Either you didn’t know about this, or else you’re one of the top 20 liars who’ve come through my office. That doesn’t mean there never was a body, though. Carl, here, saw it.”

            I looked at Rip Van Winkle with renewed interest. He was just a soft kid with big uncertain hands, nineteen or so, maybe not quite smart enough for college. He was someone you’d see at a high-school basketball tournament, warming the bench or else passing the ball out of bounds. Or someone you’d see in green fatigues on the crowded streets of Ba Rang, taking in the hive-life of the ancient city with round blue eyes and an amazed, half-open mouth.

            “Do I get to hear his version of the story?” I asked. “I need to find out what I’m up against here.”

            “I don’t owe you any favors, Smith,” the detective said. “What are you offering me?”

            “Nothing. You have my statement.”

            “That’s what I thought.” The detective drummed his fingers on the desk. “Fuck it,” he said. “Tell him, Carl.”

            “How long has Carl been on the force?” I asked skeptically.

            “Hey,” the detective said. “We thought it was some drunk passed out, OK? We sent the kid. Our fuckup. Carl, go ahead and tell him. You don’t need your notes.”

            The sleepy cop kid, painfully embarrassed, cleared his throat. “I was doing some filing for the sergeant when the call came in,” he said. “I don’t enjoy paperwork, so I asked if I could take it. He gave me the keys to Car 35, and I got my revolver and baton from the locker. Car 35 is one of the plainclothes cars; it hadn’t been used in a while, and when I went to the back of the parking lot to get it, it wouldn’t start.” He blushed even deeper, as if the dead battery had been his fault, too.

            “It had enough voltage left to operate the radio, so I called in—it was just across the parking lot—and said I’d go over there on foot. The sergeant ordered me to wait; he said he’d have a regular patrol car come by and give me a jump-start. So I waited about fifteen minutes for Douglas and McNeil.”

            “This is how you people normally handle a call?”

            “Shut up, Smith,” the detective said. “Keep talking, Carl.”

            “I arrived at 6th and K Streets, reporting in at 5:55 a.m.,” Carl said. “There was no activity at the impoundment lot; an inspection revealed that the hurricane fence was detached. I opened the gate with the padlock key and drove inside. It took three or four minutes to locate the blue Ford Falcon. I called in a second time before I got out, leaving the car running with the lights on like we’re supposed to. When I approached the Falcon, I saw a man lying in the front seat who appeared to be unconscious. I shouted and pounded on the window, but he didn’t respond. I opened the car door on the passenger’s side and shined my flashlight on him, and that’s when I saw blood.”

            “What time was it by then?” I asked. The detective glared at me.

            “I took hold of his leg and shook him,” the sleepy one continued. “No response. I went to the driver’s side of the car and shined my light on him again, and that’s when I could see better how he was injured. The skin was broken along the right side of his head, and I thought I could see a little piece of bone sticking up. There was a lot of blood around, and it was dark—”

            “Why didn’t you open the door on the driver’s side?” I interrupted.

            “I was afraid I might jostle him,” the kid said. “I didn’t know if he was dead or not. If they’re alive and they have a head injury, you’re not supposed to move them unless there’s a threat, like for instance if the car’s on fire. There was no fire, so I didn’t open the door. Instead, I went back to the unmarked car and took the key out of the ignition so I could get an emergency blanket from the trunk.”

            “Mistake number one,” the detective said. “You shut off the engine. You should’ve removed the trunk key from the ring and left it running.”

            “Yes, sir,” Carl said. “I should’ve called in again, too, but I thought the blanket was more important. I got it out of the trunk and went and crawled into the Falcon from the passenger side so I could tuck the blanket around this guy. I was trying not to jostle him, and trying not to get blood on my clothes—” I glanced at Carl’s left hand; he was wearing a wedding band as wide as a cigar wrapper— “so it took a couple of minutes. All this time the lights of the patrol car were on.”

            “Mistake number two,” the detective said. “You should’ve restarted it right away.”

            “Yes, sir,” the young cop said. “Mistake number two.” He flushed. “Do you want me to go ahead?”

            “Of course,” the detective said. “I love for our customers to smile and be amused at the way we run things.”

            “Then I went back to the patrol car,” the kid continued. “The engine wouldn’t start, and now the radio wouldn’t work.”

            “You want to know why the radio wouldn’t work, Smith?” the detective interrupted. “It wasn’t because the battery was down. Some asshole had cut the antenna wire, that’s why. That’s what we found when we got it back in the shop.”

            “But it worked earlier,” I said.

            “Yeah,” the detective said. “That tells me somebody was there inside the fence. Whoever it was had a knife, and he was watching my little patrolman. What do you think of that?”

            “I know nothing about all this,” I said. “That call came from someone with a voice like mine. I was on my way to Palemon.”

            “The hell with that; it was you,” he said. “Go on, Carl.”

            “I didn’t know what to do,” the young cop said. “I thought that if I didn’t report back in, they would send someone to come and look for me. I guess I must’ve waited about an hour.”

            “What about the man lying in the Ford Falcon?” I asked.

            “I don’t know,” the young cop said. “I think I got scared. I think I must’ve locked myself inside the patrol car.”

            “He stayed with the body until the sun came up,” the detective said. “He came walking in here about a quarter to eight. The sergeant gave him hell for going to sleep over there. Then we got this story out of him.”

            “What did you do?” I asked.

            “We sent a couple of grownups. The body was gone.”

            I blinked at him. “Gone,” I said.

            “Whshht,” the detective said, gesturing. “Gone. Just like that.”

            “Maybe he was still alive,” I said. “Maybe he woke up. Those old bums are tough.”

            “Who said it was a bum, Smith?” The detective leaned forward. “I don’t remember Carl, here, using the word ‘bum.’“

            I turned to Carl. He blushed. “He told me not to say it,” he explained.

            “I couldn’t have imagined it,” I said. “I’m sure you said he was a bum.”

            “Give it up, Smith,” the detective said. “You were there.”

            “I was halfway to Cairo,” I protested. “I had no part in all this.” I looked from one to the other. “Believe me,” I added.

            “Kiss my ass,” the detective said. The phone rang; he picked it up. “Yeah?” He looked at me. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “Get hold of the officer that wrote it; I want to talk to him.” He replaced the receiver. “Your warning-ticket pile of crap checks out, Smith,” he said. “You might walk out of here yet this morning. I don’t want you leaving town, though.”

            “You have my truck, evidently.”

            “We’ll be keeping it for a while, too. We’re going to pull that clunker apart one rust flake at a time.” He looked at Carl. “You did good,” he said. “Make sure the sergeant got all this; then you can go.”

            “Got all this?” I looked around the room. “On tape, you mean? But you took the machine away.”

            “We showed it to you, didn’t we?” The detective grinned. “I think he might’ve forgot a piece.” He held up the microphone, dangling from its cord, which trailed away beneath the door. “Sorry, Smith. We needed a better voice print to do the analysis.”

            “You bastard,” I said. “Next time I get a lawyer.”

            “Funny the way you assume there’ll be a next time,” he said. “I personally think you’re in this up to your crotch. If I had a corpse I’d charge you. Murder One.”

            “There’s no way,” I said. “For that you’d need a motive; you’d need a history. I didn’t know the man.”

            “Drugs,” he said. “He witnessed a transaction; you killed him in the course of committing a felony.” He watched me speculatively. “Don Stinns thinks you were dealing. He says you had the fat girl buying for you and a black woman selling.”

            “Don Stinns,” I said bitterly. “If I had to go to prison for murder, there’s the man I’d want to see dead, not some poor wino sleeping in a parked car. Is Stinns out of the hospital?”

            “He’s staying with his mother. While we’re on that subject,” the detective said, “where is Matilda Halliday? We’ve lost sight of her.”

            “You never should’ve let Mattie out on bail,” I said. “She’s crazy as a pet raccoon.”

            “It was the judge and the prosecutor, not me. We didn’t think she’d come up with the ten per cent.”

            “Her Unitarian friends came up with it. Better find her before she shoots another professor.”

            “Not to worry, Smith,” he said. “We’ll find her.” He winked. “Maybe you’ll get lucky. Maybe Matilda Halliday will find you. She’s got nice tits, and we took away her revolver. You like screwing a lot of different women, don’t you?”

            “She’ll get another revolver,” I said. “She’s no joke, that girl.” I stood up; apparently I was free to go.

            “Let us know if you think of anything you forgot to tell us.” The detective smiled sweetly. He nodded toward the door. “Have a nice day.”

(blank line)

190. Exhausted by the grilling. . . .

            Exhausted by the grilling I’d received, I stumbled to the nearest exit, confident at least that I’d be allowed to sleep. Sunlight blared white and hot off the slab-sided building, painfully penetrating my half-closed eyelids. I passed the bum, still rummaging the trash receptacle, and was thinking of home and breakfast when a rough voice said, “Hey!”

            I turned. The wino gestured for me to approach. Then I saw it was Mattie. “Hold this.” She held out an aluminum can. I took it, and found a note attached with a rubber band; I pulled the note free while she pretended to look in the trash, then gave the can back. “Don’t open it now,” she cautioned. “Go directly to the Greyhound station and read it in the rest room.”

            “What if I don’t want to?”

            “It’s your funeral.”

            I walked north up Ninth Street to make it harder for the cops to follow me—Ninth is a one-way heading south—and entered the front door of the Lincoln Journal-Star, half a block from the bus terminal. I was planning to cut through the building, come out on the loading dock, and cross to the bus station the back way. As I slunk down the corridor, dropping soybean rot, I heard light footsteps running after me. “Jonas Smith! Jonas Smith,” an unfamiliar voice called. I stopped reluctantly and turned; a sleek-looking woman in a business suit and heels rushed up to me like a girl in love. She stopped at a safe distance, fidgeting. “I, uh, I— Were you— Did you want to see me?”

            “No,” I said. It was the female reporter I’d used to try to find out whether I’d killed the bum.

            “But, uh,” she whispered breathlessly, leaning closer, “didn’t you, you know, call me a couple of days ago?”

            “Lady,” I said, “I’m covered with rat droppings, I’ve been up for twenty-four hours, and I’m looking for a public rest room because I have to pee. I did not call you, nor do I have time for this.” I turned and moved off down the hall; she followed.

            “Wait,” she said in a disappointed tone. “We could go for coffee.”

            She had the hots for a news story, not a love tryst. “I already sleep with someone,” I said over my shoulder. “She’s better-looking and she’s got more money than you.”

            “Well,” she said behind me, “you’re not very nice.”

            I came to a pair of stainless-steel doors and pushed through them into a warehouse area, where I could see out past the loading dock to the Greyhound terminal. The bus for Omaha, run by the Fremont Bus Company, waited in the bay, its motor running, while the driver loaded suitcases. I pulled Mattie’s note from my pocket, unfolding a piece of lined notebook paper wrapped around a twenty-dollar bill. Take the Fremont bus to Omaha, the note said. Get off at Wahoo. I jumped down from the dock, ran across and into the station, and went up to the counter. The agent was in back, sliding luggage out onto the ramp. I rang the bell. He ignored it. I rang it again. Outside, people were already getting in line to board. At last he finished with the suitcases; the bus driver slammed down the door to the luggage compartment. “Keep your shirt on, pal,” the agent said, coming up to the counter. “Omaha?”

            “That’s right.”

            “That’ll be eighteen seventy-five.”

            I slid Mattie’s twenty across and he hunted for change: outside, the Fremont Bus Lines driver was punching tickets. “I don’t seem to have a quarter,” the agent said. “Just a minute.” He disappeared into the back room while I ground my teeth.

            “Here you go, pal,” the agent said, reappearing. “He won’t leave without you.” He got out his ticket book and stamps and began thumping ink onto triplicate sets of perforated tickets.

            “You were in the military,” I said. “Personnel?”

            “Supply,” he said. He finished stamping and handed me the tickets. “Like my attitude, do you?” I shrugged. He glanced at my filthy shirt. “Don’t miss your bus.”

            I ran out onto the ramp; the driver had already shut the door and was standing in the aisle, counting passengers. I slapped the glass, but he kept on moving farther back. When he’d finished counting, he returned to the front and opened the door. I climbed the step and handed him the tickets. “Take it easy, friend,” he said. “We’ll get there. You’ll change buses when we get to Fremont.” I sat down next to an empty seat and settled in for the short ride to Wahoo. As we left the terminal, a police cruiser rounded the block; it passed the station and turned into the parking lot for Denny’s.

            The bus skirted the northern suburbs of Lincoln, then turned off I-80 onto Highway 77 and headed north through rolling farm country. As we jounced over the broken two-lane, I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep. I was worried as to what new weirdness Mattie Halliday had dreamed up. Maybe she wanted us to roam America’s heartland like Bonnie and Clyde, using her Volkswagen Microbus as a getaway car. Any flight with Mattie would involve concealment, but trying to control her when she was in one of her moods would be like trying to keep people from noticing a volcano. I might as well go underground leading a lioness on a kite string. It’s your funeral, she’d said. I pondered what the devil she’d meant by that. It was probably a mistake for me to be on that bus at all. My dodging the cops wouldn’t make them less suspicious, that much was certain.

            Suspicious of what, though? What in the world had happened to that bum? Maybe Mattie knew something; maybe I’d get it out of her. If he was alive somewhere I wanted to know it. I wanted to make sure he took his broken head to the hospital.

(blank line)

191. The bus rumbled. . . .

            The bus rumbled over the brick-cobbled streets of Wahoo, turning into a side street and pulling up behind a tiny station. The driver set the brake and kicked the engine up into a high idle, and I followed him down the steps. “Hey, I changed my mind about Omaha,” I called to him. “Don’t wait.” I went inside to the rest room and read Mattie’s note again: Get off at Wahoo. Not much there in the way of instructions. I waited until I heard the bus leave, then came out into the lobby and peered out the door. I stepped outside, got a can of Coca-Cola from the machine, and turned around just in time to see Mattie’s van coming up the street. I stuck out my thumb as if I were hitchhiking; she stopped and I got in without a word. In two minutes we were on our way back to Lincoln.

            “Hey, Mattie,” I said at last. “Nice to see you.”

            “You might offer me a sip of that,” she said, “after I stood in the sun all morning waiting for you.” I handed over the cola. “What did they do to you?”

            “The cops? They asked me some questions. Wanted to know what I did all day Saturday.”

            “I thought they might have beaten you,” she said. “They have no compunctions about beating people, you know.”

            “Nope,” I said. “No beating.” She handed back the soda. “How is it,” I asked, “that you knew I would be questioned?”

            “I have my sources,” she said. “I watch over my friends. I also watch over my enemies. It makes it easy when they happen to be sharing an apartment.”

            “Julia’s no enemy of yours,” I said. “The only thing she wants is to stay out of your way.”

            “I will decide,” Mattie said, “who is my enemy. Give me more to drink.” I complied, though I was sorry to do it; I hadn’t had any nourishment since the night before. “How do you propose to spend the day?” she asked, handing the can back empty.

            “I hadn’t thought it out,” I said. “If you hadn’t passed me that note, I’d have gone home and gone to bed. I guess you have something in mind?”

            “I do have,” she said darkly. “Something in mind,” she added. She drove on in moody silence. The little van rode worse than the Fremont bus. I glanced into the back, which had been emptied of debris; if Mattie was camping out, it wasn’t in the van. Also, I was glad to see that she had not packed for a trip. I thought with affection of my bed, my dank apartment.

            I must’ve nodded. “There it is,” she said, startling me awake. “Penis of the Plains.”

            “There it is,” I agreed. We were topping the last rise north of Lincoln; the Capitol Building stood in full sun, tall at this distance compared to the downtown high-rises. Nearer and to our left, the soybean factory loomed with its grain tanks and smoke. “Mattie, where are you taking me?” I asked. “What do you know about all this, anyway?”

            “I know more than you,” she said. She gave me a shrewd look. “I know where to find Memphis Billy, for instance.”

            “Memphis Billy?” My heart thumped; I sat up straight, now fully awake. “Is that the name of the man I hit? Memphis Billy?”

            “Didn’t you know him?”

            “No.”

            “Why’d you hit him so hard, then?”

            “I don’t know. He hassled me. It was kind of an accident.” Mattie drove in purposeful silence; we passed beneath I-80 and turned west on Cornhusker. I glanced at the empty parking lot of the Skylane Bar. “I almost got beat up there once,” I said. “The bartender hates me. Seems like a lifetime ago.”

            “You should stop drinking,” Mattie said. “Too much alcohol depletes your vitamin E.”

            Mattie turned south on 27th; the engine in the back whirred noisily. “Where are you taking me?” I asked again. She drove on, passing O Street, N Street, M. She turned right on F. “Mattie,” I said, “the cops will be watching my apartment.”

            “We’re not going there.” We approached the big duplex where Selva and Adrian lived; she pulled over and stopped. “Remember that tree?” she said, gesturing toward the maple that stood beside their driveway.

            “I remember it,” I said. “It turns red in the fall.”

            “We made love under that tree. You and I. You were enthusiastic, not to say crazed.”

            “I was ‘way past drunk that night. I don’t remember it at all.”

            “From there we went to your apartment. You were on top of me all night.”

            “If you say so.”

            She roared the engine and ground the transmission into gear. “You were,” she insisted. The Microbus lunged forward. “Then you got distracted by all those other women,” she said. “I don’t hold it against you.”

            “That’s good,” I said.

            Mattie turned north again, then turned left onto O Street. I slouched low in the seat as she drove straight through the middle of downtown Lincoln. “I wish I didn’t have this beard,” I said. “It’s pretty noticeable.”

            “Don’t shave it,” she said. “It covers up your lack of chin.” I remembered poor Ted Kemp and his snowplow jaw. Mattie’s face was set. “I want you to do something for me,” she said.

            “What’s that?” She drove on in silence, past 10th and 9th, and continued west. We passed a scrapyard and the western-clothing store where Julia and I had tried to buy a vest; we passed the big Army-Navy store west of town. I thought our next stop might be Lederer’s, but instead of continuing west, Mattie turned south onto a little-used street that I knew well. The skeletal black viaduct that crossed the trainyards rose steeply before us.

            The bridge-planks of the roadway bopped and whanged against the girders as the VW slowly labored to the top; there Mattie stopped the van and shut off the engine. “This isn’t going to be pretty,” she warned. “You might want to close your eyes.” She twisted and rummaged for something behind the seat, then opened her door and got out quickly. “Come on,” she said.

            A freight crawled slowly beneath our feet; the drop was considerable. When I looked up again, Mattie was unbuttoning her blouse. She held a knife between her teeth, one of those ugly combat knives with a ribbed aluminum handle and a matte-black finish. In a moment she was bare to the waist, her speckled breasts magnificent in the wind. “Here,” she said, shouting above the noise of the train. She took the knife in her right hand and pressed the point of the blade against her flesh. “I want you to cut off my left breast. I can’t quite bring myself to do it.” She extended the knife to me, handle first.

            “Mattie!” I stared at her in shock. “Like the Amazon women, right?” She nodded. “I can’t do that. I’m sorry. Your breasts are too lovely; besides, you’d bleed to death. You’d die before I could get you to the hospital.”

            “I wouldn’t,” she said. “I’d control the blood by concentrating my mental powers. Never mind; I can do this.” She raised her left arm, exposing a nice thatch of under-arm hair, and held the blade beneath her tender breast; she tensed, took a deep, shuddering breath, and then relaxed. “Well, no, I can’t,” she said. “There must be something wrong with me.” She offered me the knife again. “Please, Jonas? Help me.”

            “I will not,” I said, backing away and putting my hands behind me. “Mattie, this isn’t rational. You’re not the fucking queen of the Amazons, OK?”

            “I never said I was,” she replied sullenly. “Jonas, I can jump off this bridge onto the track. If I do, you’ll never find the man you’re looking for. Not until you read about him in the newspaper.”

            “I’d hold you, Mattie. You’re a strong woman, but I can prevent you. Anyway, I can’t cut one of your tits off, even if my only other choice is prison.” We looked at one another. “Where is he?” I asked.

            “Make love to me,” she said.

            “Then you’ll tell me?” She nodded. “Promise?” She shrugged.

            “OK,” I said.

(blank line)

192. “The boys on Guam,” she said. . . .

            “The boys on Guam,” she said, “used to call me Mattie Fifty Oh.” I kept silent; I was having a flash of deja` vu. “That’s because I like to have fifty orgasms. I guess I’m unusual in that respect. Though I have an aunt who confessed to me once that she’s the same.”

            “Fifty orgasms,” I said dully. “You mean, fifty at one time?” We turned off A Street onto the dirt road leading to Grace’s trailer.

            “That’s right,” she said cheerfully. Her somber craziness had passed like the shadow of a cloud. “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it. You can go out for coffee and come back later if you like.” She pulled up in front of the trailer, set the brake, and shut off the noisy engine. “What’s the matter, Jonas? Does this bring back memories?” I stared at her blankly. “I didn’t mind your little affair with Grace Kuzak,” she said. “Grace was all right. It’s that Julia bitch I could kill you for.”

            “I wouldn’t have thought you’d ever want to come here again, after our night with Stinns and Kroger,” I said. “Don Stinns could find us here.”

            “He’s incapacitated,” she said blithely. “It’s a roof over my head. They even left the electricity turned on for me.” She got down from the van and ascended the steps; she pulled open the door of the trailer. “Come on, you frightened baby,” she said. “A bargain is a bargain.” Mattie gathered the front of her unbuttoned blouse and went inside, while I slid down warily from the passenger seat. Horseweeds five feet tall had taken all the less-used ground, so that, except for a little grass in front, the trailer sat window-deep in soft dismal greenery; the broad, tongue-shaped leaves drooped lazily, tender as toilet paper. The low shed with the hay bales was nearly hidden among the weeds.

            “Ah, well.” I sighed like someone going to face punishment, and ascended the narrow steps. Inside the trailer, Mattie had disappeared, I supposed into the bedroom at the end of the hall. I glanced around the transformed living room. The folding chairs that Kroger had imported were stacked along one wall, leaving the space bare except for a plywood pulpit and for a good-sized bandsaw that stood incongruously in the middle of the floor. It was the kind of saw butchers use. Deer were plentiful in that neighborhood, and I wondered idly if Mattie had taken up poaching. In the kitchen, the refrigerator whirred noisily; refrigerator trays were piled up in the sink. Although there were no longer any green draperies, the light was greenish from the weeds outside. I looked at the ugly paneling where Grace’s jungle wallpaper had been; I had no sense of her presence there at all. Her perfume and wobbly earrings had fled to Wisconsin with the chess-loving salesman. I moved farther into the trailer, stopping in the bathroom where I’d fought so hard to avoid Kroger’s baptism. Someone had reattached the sink to the wall; when I flushed the toilet, I felt the lightbulb dim a little as the pump kicked in. The place had water as well as lights, then; a find for Mattie. Still, I wouldn’t have stayed there thirty seconds. I stripped off my bean-filthy tee shirt and pants and ran water in the tub for them to soak. Then I went on back to see about Mattie Fifty Oh.

            Grace’s former bedroom was dark and bare of furniture; the carpeted floor was littered with dim objects—clothes, camping gear—and I at first failed to see the woman, until she cleared her throat and I made out her face and one pale elbow. She was lying in a sleeping bag in a corner of the room. I removed my shorts and folded them, leaving them near the door. Then I crossed the little room in two steps, and knelt and opened the bag and slid in alongside her.

            “Ted Kemp had very little hair on his body,” she said. “You’re the opposite.”

            “That’s me,” I said, unable to stifle a yawn. “All hair, no body. This sleeping bag feels good.”

            “Don’t you dare go to sleep,” she said. “Don’t even think about it.” She rolled toward me and slid her hand along my thigh, her fingers seeking my balls; I experienced a thrill of risk as she found them. “I want you wide awake,” she said. “I like an audience for my experiments.”

            “I’m awake now. Don’t worry.” I passed my palm along her ribs, along the muscles of her back. “I wish I could see your freckles,” I said. “You have the prettiest-shaped breasts of any woman I know.”

            “There’s more to me than my breasts,” Mattie said. “As you of all people should understand.” She manipulated my balls gently; I felt the inner stirring, the first motion of sperm. “Why is it that what a man sees about a woman first is what matters to her least?”

            “It’s because we’re basically animals,” I said. “All of this cultural-intellectual shit is a veneer.” I touched the shapely breast to which she’d recently held a knife; her breathing quickened. “What’s really best about us is the blood and bones. No civilization, no war. No language, no politics.” As I kissed her, she left off massaging my scrotum and slid her fingers upward along my penis. “Sex is no bad thing,” I wheezed, “taken by itself.”

            “It’s never taken by itself, though, is it,” Mattie panted. “Look at you. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t want something from me. You think I’m a madwoman.” We were pressing and slithering against one another; I kissed her hot neck. “You don’t love me; I’m not so insane as to think that.”

            I thrust a knee between hers and lifted her leg so that I could touch her vagina; my fingertips informed me that her pubis was completely shaved. “It’s only that I’m afraid you might murder me,” I said. “Spiders have the same problem.”

            “Killing Ted wasn’t the right solution,” she said. “It didn’t make me feel better about myself. You’re safe for today.”

(blank line)

193. Making love to Mattie. . . .

            Making love to Mattie could not be called routine, but it was not so far from the usual experience of sex, at least not initially. She was a well-built woman, strong and fit, about midway between Grace Kuzak’s age and my own, and she did nothing to hide her desire. Her shaven pussy was an oddity, but it made no difference in my own response. I humped and fondled her, held off as long as I could, then fountained liberally. I creamed her puff, I jellied her roll, I mayonnaised her bun. Mattie came a second later, crying out and pressing against me, gripping my buttocks and grinding my pelvis into hers. She thrust and held, thrust and held, holding her breath at first and then gasping with friendly pleasure. “Well,” she said at last, releasing her grip on my butt, “we’re off to a good start.”

            “Uff da,” I said. “I don’t think I can do that forty-nine more times.”

            “Oh, I won’t need you,” she said. “I’m used to doing it by myself. I hope you’ll stay and watch for a while, though.”

            I pulled out from her and got up to open the window shade. “It’ll be my pleasure,” I said. “I’ve never seen a naked one before.” She lay exposed, the sleeping bag thrown back, her right hand touching the lips of her vagina. “Hmm,” I said.

            “Mmm hmm,” she said.

            “You don’t shave your armpits,” I observed, “or your legs. How come—?”

            “Zenobia, queen of Palmyra, who conquered half of western Asia, who drank wine from Cleopatra’s jeweled cup and died a prostitute on the streets of Rome, depilated herself for her pleasure; and why should I not?”

            “So, does it make a difference?”

            “Mmm hmm.” Her fingers moved upon her flesh; she was stimulating herself.

            “Mind if I help?”

            “You’ll get your beard messy.”

            “It’s my own juice,” I said. “I’m not afraid of it.”

            I got down creakily onto my knees—the weight of fatigue made me older than my twenty-six years—and watched her for a while as she did herself. Whenever my gaze happened to stray to her face, she met my look with an absent smile, but it was clear she was losing interest in my presence. Using my come as lubricant, she danced her fingers in and out of her hole, up the open boat of her cunt and around the little jockey at the head of it. At a certain abrupt moment I became aroused, and pitched headlong at her, my tongue dripping; I held her buttocks off the floor and nuzzled her soft giblets as violently as my face would tolerate. She came again, and a rhythm was established. After her throes, she would push me away, maintaining contact through her fingers; then, in a couple of minutes, she’d begin caressing herself, a signal that she would accept more stimulation. I ate her, then fucked her. As the interval between her climaxes grew less, she receded into an ecstatic trance, while for my part I soon lost all my semen and interest. I fell asleep lying crosswise between her calves, so that, when I woke again, the very first thing I saw was her twitching cunt, pink like two diminutive fillets of salmon.

            Except for her moving fingers, she also could have been asleep. I shoved her hand aside, mounted her violently, and came in a quick sharp shudder; she moaned a little in protest, pushed me off her, and returned to her refined slight stroking. My cock, half-erect and purple in defeat, seemed to watch her pussy sourly, its nose dripping; my balls hung in their sack like lumps of cold paté. I watched her eyelids flutter as she stopped her hand, her lips pressed together in an expression that was almost prim.

I felt thirsty. After a time, I stood up and looked out the window. I could see the field that Julia and I had crossed, now green with rows of thigh-high corn; I could see the log we had hidden ourselves behind, first to watch the fight between Stinns and Kroger and then to screw. I shook my head to clear it. I’d felt comfortably warm lying down, but the sun had heated the roof of the trailer and the air near the ceiling was hot and had a dusty smell. I was bone-weary and bruised from sleeping on the floor. I looked down at Mattie, at her full and freckled breasts, her strongly feminine face now peaceful and relaxed. Her fingers at last lay still; she emitted a ladylike snore. I left the room on tiptoe, careful not to wake her.

            In the bathtub, I tromped the bean-filth out of my clothes and rinsed them under the shower, then hung them dripping over the shower rod. Then it was my turn. As I toweled myself at the bathroom sink—I was shocked to see how thick and matted my body hair had become—I remembered Stuart Miller, and smiled at my reflection to think how he would’ve laughed at my story of Mattie and her fifty orgasms. I resolved to locate Tom Tex down in San Antonio and telephone to find out whether he’d stopped crying. Knowing Tom, I decided, he’d probably bought a used-car lot by now. I thought my way back into the timelessness of the war, and calculated that it had been about a year since—

            “All that stuff.” I said it aloud. “All that stuff.” As I toweled myself, my hair felt springy and exuberant, sure evidence of the abundant life within. All I had to do was find Memphis Billy and make sure his head was properly bandaged; then I could get the dumping of Julia Stein over with and hit the road. I could have myself a life somewhere other than Lincoln. Maybe Selva would be disillusioned with marriage soon enough to run away with me. It would be worth a try. Maybe we’d go to Alaska; there were sure to be flying jobs in Alaska. Surely Selva would like Alaska better than Boston. Anyone would.

            I drank my fill of water at the bathroom sink—it was colder than city tap water, and tasted of iron—but what I really wanted was an iced beer. I went out into the kitchen and found a tumbler, and opened the freezer and put it in to chill. Then, thinking to discover what Mattie had on hand in the way of beverages, I took hold of the handle and opened the refrigerator.

            What I saw there knocked the wind out of me. Memphis Billy sat folded up, his skinny old butt where the vegetable crisper should have been; the yellow soles of his feet were level with his forehead. He was the color of a day-old boiled potato except for his tattoos and for the inside of his rib cage, which was the bright blue-pink of Mattie’s inflamed vagina. He had been gutted cleanly as a pig carcass; even his eyeballs had been removed, so that red and empty sockets glared from his brows. His butcher had arranged the tilt of his head so that he appeared to be looking up and out into the kitchen.

            “Uh— Uh—” I gasped for air. “I, uh— Mattie. Mattie!” I inhaled a deep, shaking breath. “Mattie!” I closed the refrigerator and sat down, my back against it; even so, I had the feeling I would faint. My world squeezed down to a porthole a foot across, the blackness around it full of flying sparks. In a little while the darkness faded to red, and the porthole expanded to include the bare living room. The thing my shocked gaze rested on was the bandsaw.

            “Mat-tee!” I was getting angry now. She had no right to pull such a prank on me. I rested my palm on the carpet to help myself up, but the room spun. “Fuck,” I said.

            Mattie emerged from the bedroom pouting and rubbing her eyes. “I was having such a pleasant dream,” she complained. “Oh, you found him.” She sleepily scratched herself and patted down her tousled, gingery hair. “Well, say something. I did a good job, don’t you think?”

            I swear she looked angelic standing there, but the freckles on her skin were like spots of blood. “A good job? How do I know? Do you think I’ve been to mortician’s college?” I was still short of breath, and the goose-bumps stood up on my wrists.

            “Jonas, please don’t be put out with me,” she said. “Not after all I’ve done for you.”

            “Done for me?” I turned up my hands. “You’ve done for me, all right.”

            “Well, I don’t understand you at all,” she said. “I’m going back to bed.”

            “Wait, Mattie,” I pleaded. “Tell me one thing. Was he still breathing when you found him?”

            “I don’t know,” she said. “What difference does it make?”

            “It could make years of difference, when I go to trial.”

            “Don’t be a weenie,” she said contemptuously. “I stole him from under their noses so you won’t go to trial. Now all we have to do is cut him up and get rid of him, and you can relax.” She smiled. “You can take Ted’s place and be my lover man. You’re a patient fellow.”

            “I don’t want Ted’s place,” I said. “I don’t want to be your lover man. You’re forgetting what you’ve done, Mattie.”

            “I haven’t forgotten,” she said crossly. “Why do you always make a big deal of that?” She went back into the bedroom; I could hear her rummaging around in there, getting dressed. I gripped the handle of the refrigerator and hauled myself to my feet, then held on while the room settled. My day was clearly not yet over. I removed the tumbler I’d so hopefully placed in the freezer and set it among the trays that crowded the sink.

            “In heaven there is no beer, that’s why we drink it here—” I hummed distractedly as my brain dug for traction. I glanced at the bandsaw. Why not? I hadn’t much to lose; another decade, or two, added onto my sentence. Mattie had done some planning, in her way. I only hoped that when she rented the bandsaw she hadn’t told the agent what it was for.

(blank line)

194. We used the refrigerator trays. . . .

            We used the refrigerator trays to hold chunks of Billy. It was highly unpleasant work—the air in the trailer stank with the smell of meat, and the bandsaw kept plugging with marrow and bone and hair—but it went more quickly than I would have imagined. Mattie had been thorough in her preparations; she’d gotten us each white coveralls and cotton gloves, and she’d already removed all soft tissue from the corpse. She’d even hacked open the skull and pulled out the brains. She’d buried the entrails, along with Billy’s clothes, in a trash pit she’d located behind the shed. “By the way,” she told me, “did you know there’s a brand-new Corvette out there? It’s in the shed, surrounded by a wall of bales.”

            “No!” I stopped cutting—I was removing Billy’s hand from his wrist—and looked at her. “That means one of two things. Either Stinns is still active, or—”

            “—Someone else is using the shed,” she finished. “I didn’t think of that.”

            “You haven’t seen anybody?”

            “No.”

            “Fuck. I bet it’s the Lincoln cops. That’s why they never busted Stinns.”

            The saw yowled twice as I shoved Billy’s forearm through. He had a tattoo there—”W. Stark, U. S. S. Wasp, 1944” on a banner that wrapped around a ship’s anchor—and I cut on either side, leaving the emblem intact. “That’s a nice one,” I said, tossing it in a tray. “Did you ever want a tattoo, Mattie?”

            “My father would’ve killed me,” she replied. “He always said tattoos were for enlisted men.”

            “I once saw a topless dancer who had a rose tattooed around her nipple,” I said. “It must’ve hurt like fire.”

            “I’ll get one,” Mattie said, “if that’s what you want.” She helped me roll Billy over, and I began to shorten his other arm.

            “Mattie,” I said, “don’t do me any more favors, OK? I know you mean well, but—”

            “Fine,” she said. “Then I won’t tell you the name of the man who saw your fight last Saturday.”

            I felt too sick to continue cutting. “Someone saw me?” I stared at her. “I thought it was you.”

            “It was another transient,” she said. “He came and woke me up. I was sleeping in my van. I can’t watch you all the time.”

            I rested my head against the bloody housing; the blade sang within. “Then there’s a witness,” I said. “So there’s no point in—” I gestured to our stack of body parts. “Mattie, why didn’t you tell me?”

            “He won’t talk,” Mattie said. “I asked him not to.”

            “Who are you, protectress of the hoboes?”

            “I’m on friendly terms with a number of them,” she said. She placed a slice of Billy on a plate and offered it to me. “Take, eat,” she mimicked. “This is my buddy.”

            After we got him whittled to a torso, we ran Memphis Billy head-first through the saw, splitting him in two right down the spine. The corpse, though slippery and awkward, was light to handle, making me think of the nearly-empty coffin I’d helped carry. Billy’s genitals had disappeared along with his lungs and intestines—Mattie’d divided his sternum and broken his jaw, unzipping him from anus to palate—so I didn’t have to fret over sawing his penis.

            “Did you see that James Bond movie?” I asked Mattie. “Goldfinger?”

            “I did,” she said. “I was hoping the laser would cook Sean Connery’s testicles. What I can’t understand,” she added, “is why the bad guys didn’t stay around to watch.”

            “He had to escape,” I said. “He couldn’t do it if they were watching.”

            “Anyway, it was stupid,” she said. “I wouldn’t be that stupid. I’d watch.”

            “What did this guy’s liver look like? I bet it was a mess.”

            “I don’t know,” Mattie said. “It looked like liver.”

            As we quartered the torso, I studied its structure, trying to find the best places to make further cuts. “What are we going to do with all this once it’s wrapped?” I asked. Mattie had bought a roll of butcher paper, mint green, the color of the saw.

            “We’re going to rent a cold-storage locker,” Mattie said. “I haven’t gotten any farther than that.”

            “Once it’s frozen, we could leave it in a dumpster behind a supermarket,” I said. “They throw outdated meat away all the time.”

            “I wouldn’t do that,” Mattie advised. “People retrieve that stuff and eat it.”

            “They wouldn’t eat this. It’s got skin and hair on it.”

            “That’s what I’m telling you. It doesn’t look like cow meat,” she said. “Deer meat, maybe.”

            “Venison,” I said. “Deer meat is venison.”

            “I know,” she said. “D’you think I’m stupid? I learned how to gut a deer before I was twelve, even though I wasn’t allowed to shoot one.”

            “Your father must have wanted a boy.”

            “All my father ever wanted was his own regiment.”

            I cut the quarters into chunks the size of a boot; some weighed four or five pounds, some less. I also sawed up the skull to make it unrecognizable. Billy had seven teeth in his upper jaw, four in his lower; before I cut the skull apart, we pulled them all with pliers and put them in a paper sack, along with the ends of his fingers, to be dropped into Salt Creek for the carp and catfish. Wrapping the bloody chunks took longer than cutting them, and our attempt to clean up the saw took longer still. It was a Hobart meat saw, made for commercial use, and should’ve been easy to clean, but we lacked wrenches to remove the shield and blade. We made the best of it and decided we could take it to a car wash and finish the job.

            The trailer interior by now was ineradicably bloody; I think there was never a question but that we would burn it. After we loaded the saw in the van—I was amazed that Mattie had wrestled it into the trailer, the thing must have weighed 200 pounds—we rinsed off and changed back into our regular clothes, leaving the white coveralls and gloves. Mattie removed her gear from the bedroom, leaving behind her Oreo wrappers and empty cans, while I wiped down all the metal surfaces and rooted under the sink for the means of arson. I found a heavy skillet and a can of shortening, better than gasoline and matches; I opened some windows and switched on the fan above the kitchen stove. “Ventilation,” I explained to Mattie, who’d started the VW and was watching me from the door. “A fire needs air.”

            “Why don’t we just pour gasoline and set a match to it?”

            “By law, if there’s evidence of arson, the State Fire Marshal has to look into it,” I told her. “They’ll do lab tests on the ashes if they’re suspicious. I want to make it look like something that might have been an accident.” I spooned the shortening into the skillet and lit the burner. Then I lit a second burner—a second source of flame, in case the boiling shortening doused the first—and placed an empty saucepan on it. I gathered the two plastic garbage bags holding William Stark, formerly of the U. S. S. Wasp, and departed the trailer, tossing the last glove behind me; I loaded the sacks and climbed into the van while Mattie revved the engine. Still, we waited.

            “We should stay to make sure it catches,” Mattie explained. “Remember how the director let James Bond keep his jewels.”

            “I’m 98 per cent certain it’ll burn,” I said. “If it doesn’t, we’ll try again later. I don’t want some farmer to see us hanging around here.” I glanced in the back. “We need to get rid of this saw and these packages, Mattie. Let’s go now.”

            “I’ll have to find a new place to sleep,” Mattie said. “Jonas, do you have any regrets?”

            I stared at her. “Me? Yes; thousands.” I looked at the trailer. “This place was a prison for Grace Kuzak,” I said. “It probably still belongs to Kroger. I don’t mind burning it down, if that’s what you mean.”

            “I mean about me. You know, I really am kind of crazy. Maybe you took advantage of me.” She lowered her lashes.

            I studied her. In spite of the cropped hair, now coming in to gray, she was a handsome, well-filled-out, intelligent-looking woman. “No regrets,” I said finally, giving an honest answer. “I did what I did. You were more than willing.”

            “That’s good,” she said. She brought up her left hand, which had been concealed by the seat; it held a twin to the revolver she’d used on Kemp. “If you’d said you regretted making love to me, I would’ve shot you and left you here.”

            “I don’t regret it,” I said angrily. “I wouldn’t want to do it again. Now, get this bus in gear.” She put away the pistol and complied. The engine purred tinnily as we left the compound; Mattie drove back up the dirt road, and headed into the rush-hour traffic coming west on A Street.

(blank line)

195. We made a quick trip. . . .

            We made a quick trip through a car wash and were unloading the saw at the United Rent-Alls on West O Street when we heard the sirens. The fire trucks made slow headway through the jam of cars and pickups, stopping at every intersection to wait for traffic to clear. I shaded my eyes and looked to the west, where a column of black smoke rose above the tree line.

            “Looks like a bad one,” one of the farmers said. Two men had been waiting when we pulled into the driveway; they needed the saw, they said, to butcher a hog. We unloaded it directly into their pickup from the van, while the agent scurried back and forth with the invoices.

            “Anyway, it ain’t near our place,” the older farmer said. They slid the saw to the front of the box and tied it upright with an excessive length of rope. The rental agent came out and handed Mattie her deposit.

            “Work all right for you?” he asked. Mattie nodded. “It’s a powerful ‘ol booger,” he said. “Next time you want it, come in on a Saturday. You get a weekend discount.”

            Mattie gave me a hard look. “I’ll remember that,” she said. “There’s plenty of room in the locker.”

            The rental agent lowered his voice. “You know,” he said, “Fish and Game goes around every fall and inspects those lockers. You wouldn’t want any deer meat left in October. I’m not sayin’, you know—” His voice trailed off; he looked up to the farmers in their pickup box and winked. “Of course,” he added, “that’s none of my affair. So long’s you clean up the saw.”

            “We cleaned it good,” Mattie said.

            “I see that,” he said. “Well, thanks for the business. See you next time.”

            “See you next time,” Mattie repeated under her breath. She got into the microbus; I shut the door on the plastic bags of Billy and got in on the passenger side. In the distance, silhouetted against storm clouds, we could see the yellow fire trucks backed up on the narrow trestle; a slow-moving farm tractor led the way across. “It looks like our fire is a success,” she said as we drove away.

            “House trailers burn hot,” I said.

            “So far you’ve been very lucky,” she observed. “I haven’t forgotten what you said to me, though.”

            “What’s that?”

            “That you wouldn’t want to do it again.”

            “I’m tired,” I groaned. “Mattie, I’ve been up since yesterday.”

            “That wasn’t what you meant, though, was it.”

            I glanced at her face, where the familiar changes were beginning. “Hold yourself together,” I said. “We’ve only got to lose these packages. Where’s the locker plant?”

            “It’s on Cornhusker,” she said. “Don’t worry, I’ve got some pills now. They kind of, you know, put a bottom under me. Do you want one?”

            “No,” I said. “I’m not depressed. I’m scared.”

            “I’m scared, too, Jonas. I didn’t use to be like this, all ups and downs. Plus, there’s that Ted thing hanging over me. Do you think they’ll put me in prison?”

            “I can’t tell,” I said. “Probably they will. Realistically, I have to say that they’re probably going to catch us for this one, too.”

            “Will you do something for me if they do, Jonas? Will you kill me? I don’t think I could kill myself; it would be like the breast thing.”

            “I couldn’t cut your tit off, Mattie. What makes you think I’d shoot you?”

            “I’d shoot you,” she said. “Why not do it for me?”

            “It’s not the kind of thing where you take turns.”

            “Well, think about it, anyway,” she said. “I’m not joking. I don’t want to live like this. A crazy person. It’s painful.”

            We drove to the locker plant—it was in a low building that resembled a motel, next door to a defunct cafe called Jacob’s—and deposited William Stark, in pieces, wrapped neatly in green waxed paper. By then it was after six, so I took Mattie out for dinner to a seedy lounge in Havelock where they’d hung blue bulbs over the dance floor and called it a supper club. We had several drinks apiece and ordered steak; when they brought the bloody meat, we couldn’t eat it. We had more drinks and tried to dance together, but it was an evening from hell. After midnight, I had Mattie drop me off at the soybean plant. When I descended to my place of employment, I saw that the cops had been through the room with dogs. Every mound was flattened, and there was dog crap in the bean dust.

            I lay down on a rotting pile of bean guano and composed myself for sleep. Something my Grandma Smith used to say passed through my head: Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Then I thought of the three plaster monkeys that used to sit on my bookshelf up in Palemon. Their names were See No Evil, Hear No Evil, and Speak No Evil.

If I hadn’t seen enough evil for one day, I couldn’t think what would satisfy me.