A Flash of Green

Fifteen

“I remember you, Mr. Wing,” Ernest Willihan said. “You interviewed me a long time ago when you were still in school, a reporter for a school paper. You reported the interview accurately and still managed to make me sound like an idiot. I predicted a newspaper career for you at that time. What brings you to St. Pete?”

Willihan was a brown and totally bald man in his forties. The tilt of his eyes and the baldness gave him a slight Oriental flavor. They talked in a small untidy office with a single large window overlooking a long concrete wharf owned by Stormer and Willihan — Marine Research and Development. Willihan’s smile was inverted and his eyes were bright with amusement.

“Maybe I ought to do a feature on this setup, Mr. Willihan. What happens to public-school science teachers.”

“You could get some of your material from your boss down there, Ben Killian. We’ve done some work for him. Tank tests on experimental hull designs. His little boat works there has done some fascinating things. It isn’t commercial, of course. If you are interested in us, we wear two hats. We’re an independent testing outfit for small boats, motors and boating devices. That’s the bread and butter. Also, we are developing a few ideas of our own. That’s feast or famine.”

“What kind of ideas?”

“Right now we’re fiddling with a sonar rig for small boats which can be set to give a warning buzz when the bottom shoals to within X feet of what you need to float the boat, thirty to forty feet off your bow. When the bugs are out of it, we hope to license it to somebody who can knock the unit price down below five hundred bucks.”

“Sounds better than teaching.”

“There’s more money. There’s no politics. But I miss the kids. I tell myself someday I’ll go back into it. You hit me on a good day, Mr. Wing. Want a guided tour?”

“I’d like that, but I’ll have to take a rain check on it. I came to ask you about something else. We’re about to have a bay fill hassle down in Palm County.”

“What do they want to fill now?”

“Grassy Bay again.”

Willihan shook his head sadly. “Every place seems to have to make the same mistake, just as if it had never been made before. The fast buck. It’s an illusion, Wing. Can’t they come and see and understand what’s happened to St. Petersburg Beach and Clearwater? Or what’s happening to Bradenton and Sarasota? This whole coast used to be a shallow-water paradise. Spoiling it is so idiotic. A friend of mine made a very neat analogy about it. Once upon a time there was a mountain peak with a wonderful view, so that people came from all over to stand on top of the mountain and look out. The village at the foot of the mountain charged a dollar a head to all tourists. But so few of them could stand on top of the mountain at the same time, they leveled the top of the mountain to provide more room and increase the take. This seemed to work, so they kept enlarging the area on top of the mountain. Finally they had a place up there that would accommodate ten thousand people, but by then the mountain was only forty feet high, and suddenly everybody stopped coming to see the view. This convinced them people were tired of views, so in the name of Progress and a Tourist Economy, they turned the flattened mountain into a carnival area, and every night you could see the lights and hear the music for miles around. They still attracted customers, but it was the kind of people who like carnivals instead of the kind of people who like beauty.”

“There’s more people who like carnivals,” Jimmy said.

“A fact the beauty-lovers find it hard to stomach.”

“Anyhow, because of the pending battle, we want to be ready to run profiles of the key figures. I ran into some problems on one of them. She’s always in the middle of our conservation battles. Some people told me you might be able to give me the background that she won’t give. Doris Rowell.”

Willihan frowned at the wall over Jimmy’s head. He picked up a slide rule and began to toy with it. “As a newspaperman, Mr. Wing, I’d think you’d have come up against the fact that when people refuse to talk about themselves, there’s generally a reason.”

“As a newspaperman, Mr. Willihan, I resent historical blanks. I can’t leave them alone. It’s a compulsion.”

“You better leave this one alone.”

“I won’t, of course. I’ll keep digging. If you won’t talk about her, it will just take a little more time and effort. And if it’s anything discreditable, I might learn it from... a less sympathetic source than I think you are.”

“If she’s of value to the conservationists down there, Wing, and if you’re opposed to the fill, you’d just hurt your own cause by printing something which happened a long time ago.”

“It’s going to be a rough fight down there. If somebody else comes up with whatever it is you won’t tell me, I ought to be in a position to make it look better than they want it to look. She’s on the committee opposing the fill. Everybody on that committee is going to be under fire.”

Willihan swiveled his chair and looked out at the wharf. “It happened a long time ago and it seemed a lot more important then than it does now. I guess it would still seem important to a lot of people, though. She committed the ultimate academic sin, Wing, and was caught in the act and was thrown out of a world where she probably belonged. I might as well tell you about it. If you’ve traced it to me, you could discover the rest of it. It happened in 1939. I was a senior at Minnesota Polytech. She was on the faculty. She was married to Doctor Harris Rowell, but she used her maiden name for professional purposes. Dr. Doris Hegasohn. She’s Swedish. She’d done her undergraduate work at Stockholm, and gotten her master’s and doctor’s at Polytech. She and Rowell were both instructors on fellowships when they married. She was a damned interesting-looking woman, very dynamic and impatient and intellectually merciless. Rowell was a very frail, rather unearthly man, a brilliant scholar. Doris was a competent translator. By 1939 Rowell had been an invalid for four or five years. She was teaching classes, doing research, writing papers and taking care of her husband. Maybe it was too much of a strain. Maybe she was too ambitious. She was making a name for herself and fighting for a full professorship, which would have eased some of the financial strain on them. Rowell needed special treatment beyond what they could afford. That year a man from Budapest was a guest lecturer. One of his associates was engaged in the same area of research as Doris was. The papers he had published were not available in English. Hungarian was one of the languages in which she was reasonably competent as a translator of scientific documents. Once the guest lecturer got on the trail of what had happened, a special committee was appointed to investigate. They found out she had taken a really enormous amount of the Hungarian’s findings and published them as her own. They backtracked and found a long cribbed section in her doctoral thesis. By the time they were ready for a confrontation, Rowell was dying. There was a flurry in the newspapers. They rescinded her two graduate degrees, fired her out of the profession. It is the final crime in learned circles, stealing a man’s work and publishing it as your own. She made no attempt to defend herself. She immediately became a pariah. No one in university circles would care to have anything to do with the woman. Rowell died. There was insurance, and, I believe, a small income from her people. She ‘retired’ to Palm County. I saw her on the street and recognized her. It would have been strange if she had gone anywhere in the country and not have been recognized by one of us who were there at the time. It was one hell of a scandal, Wing. When I saw her she was becoming very fat, but I knew her.”

“Could she have friends in academic circles, people who would know about what she did at Minnesota, and not have it make any difference?”

“No. It’s a small, careful world. An insurance executive would not risk being friendly with a convicted arsonist. The relationship would be too open to misinterpretation. And there wasn’t any two sides to the case. She was nailed. Also, I guess you’ll have to admit she isn’t the sort of person to inspire loyal friendship. She has all the personality of a snapping turtle. But she’s got a fine mind. I used to go out there and talk to her. We got along. She was at ease with me because I knew what had happened to her, and nobody else in town did. She’s made her own kind of adjustment, Wing. It would be very nice if she could be left alone.”

“I can understand why she doesn’t talk about the past.”

“People still wonder about her. I was at a conference in Atlanta last year. When a biologist from Johns Hopkins heard where I went to school he asked me if I was there when they trapped the Hegasohn woman, and then he wondered out loud what had become of her. I didn’t tell him. You could make a story of it, Wing. It would be, in a different sense, like those reviews of famous crimes of the century. But it wouldn’t be a decent thing to do.”

“Thank you for being so cooperative, Mr. Willihan.”

“Remember one thing, please. She’s a clever woman. She’s clever enough to have been able to fake her way back into the profession with a new identity. But she didn’t. She accepted banishment. She made a moral decision to live with it. I have to respect that.”

“She’s been doing odd jobs for marine biology groups working in the area.”

Willihan frowned. “They’d be upset to find out who has been helping them. Even though it might be a perfectly straightforward relationship, if it came out it would cast a shadow on whatever they’re publishing. I know how ridiculous that sounds, Wing, but every profession has its own stupidities. Research programs are conducted with the assistance of grants from foundations and institutions. Boards of directors are too easily alarmed. They’d be dubious about backing any further work on a project where Doris Hegasohn had been involved, even if the only employment they gave her was brewing tea for the field workers. I suppose they think of her and use her as a trustworthy layman.”

“I guess that’s the relationship.”

“Can you stay and have lunch with me?”

“Thanks, no. I have to be getting back.”

Willihan smiled as he stood up and held his hand out. “I don’t know why I have to feel so protective about that fat old harridan. I think she liked me. You usually like the people who like you. And that, I suppose, is just one of the general forms of stupidity.”

Jimmy Wing went from the waterfront offices of Stormer and Willihan to the St. Petersburg Times offices. He checked the annual index for 1939, and then viewed the microfilm projections of the pertinent dates. He jotted down the dates and page numbers involved, and left an order with the library girl for photocopies, paying in advance for reproduction and mailing charges.

As he drove south in the heat of midday, he found himself remembering a flight down the coast in a private airplane three years back. He often remembered it as he drove the Tamiami Trail. Jimmy had been on the port side of the four-passenger aircraft, directly behind the pilot. The sun had been setting as they left Tampa International. The pilot flew at five thousand feet about a mile offshore, following the contour of the coast. The great dark mass of the silent land stretched off toward the east, toward an invisible horizon. The Gulf was a silvery gray and the land was blue-gray. Stretching all the way down the coast, almost without interruption, was the raw garish night work of man, the crawl of headlights, bouquets of neon, sugar-cube motels, blue dots of lighted pools. When the trip was almost over, just before the plane turned inland to land at Palm County Airport, Jimmy Wing had seen it all in a fanciful way which he had never been able to get out of his mind. The land was some great fallen animal. And all the night lights marked the long angry sore in its hide, a noisome, festering wound, maggoty and moving, draining blood and serum into the silent Gulf. Now Doris Hegasohn Rowell had given him a name for it. The plague of man. The sore was spreading. The dark earth endured this mortal affliction. Dead bright junk circled the moon, orbited the planet, hundreds of bits of it. Every living vertebrate, from a newborn rhino to a white-muzzled chipmunk, carried radioactive material in its bone marrow. Men were digging burrows in the ground, hiding away food and water, waiting for the skies to scream, for the earth itself to shudder, die and begin to rot.

In all this, he thought, in all this which diminishes me, no act of mine, or of anyone else, has consequence. Morality is a self-conscious posture. Dedication is delusion, based on a fraudulent interpretation of fact, a wishful projection of our present velocity. The only valid role is that of observer. Soon we will all eat stones.

He turned into the parking lot at the bank just as Kat was walking toward her little car. The lot was almost empty. He touched the horn ring. She turned and stared, then came swiftly toward him, such a smiling welcome on her face his heart seemed to move higher in his chest.

She looked in the car window at him. “Golly, Jimmy, I’ve been saving up so many things to talk to you about, I know I’m going to forget half of them.”

“How was yesterday? You have a very red nose.”

“And my forehead is getting crusty, and I have ten billion little pinhead blisters on my back and shoulders. Yesterday was okay. It got bad a couple of times. When it did, I’d run into the water and swim as hard as I could as far as I could. So along with the blisters, I’m lame. Where were you today?”

“Working on that feature I told you about.”

“Are you busy now?”

“Later would be better.”

“I promised Jackie I’d do two hours on the phone as soon as I get home. Can you come out about six and have a drink and stay to dinner?”

“Sure. What’s going on?”

“Dozens of things, most of them bad. I want to tell you all of it, not just bits and pieces.”

He arrived at her house at a little after six. She was in shorts and a halter, her sore back and shoulders greased. “Excuse how I look,” she said. “Clothes hurt. And excuse how I sound. I’m hoarse from arguing and arguing over the phone. Jackie and Ross are coming to dinner too, but they won’t be here until after seven. Now, sit down and I’ll get your drink and I’m going to talk you blind.”

She told him about Dial Sinnat quitting. She told him somebody had gotten at Dial through Natalie. It surprised him that Elmo had been able to move so quickly and effectively. It puzzled him that it had worked at all. Kat gave no details about Natalie. She merely said, “The girl did something that could be made to look pretty awful.”

For a few moments his mind wandered. He did not hear what she was saying. He realized she was looking at him expectantly.

“I know it’s a lot to ask of you, Jimmy.”

“Sorry, dear. I wasn’t tracking. What are you asking me to do?”

“Find out who is being so ugly about all this! Somebody spied on Nat, Jimmy. And two men talked to Di on the phone and scared him right off the committee, and he didn’t recognize the voices of either of them. You know everybody, Jimmy. If you could find out who is being so terribly rough, maybe we could do something about it. Couldn’t you sort of ask around, in a quiet way?”

“But people know I was on your side last time, and they know it will be the same again. If I start asking questions, why should anybody answer me?”

She sat on a foot stool, glowering into her drink. “Buck Flake, Leroy Shannard, Doc Aigan, Bill Gormin, Burt Lesser. Jimmy, maybe one of them is in real bad financial condition. You could find that out, couldn’t you? If a man was worried, he might do terrible things. I saw that Buckland Flake with a very spectacular girl.”

“I suppose I can ask around.”

She stared at him. “Well, don’t be overcome with enthusiasm.”

“I don’t know exactly where to start, Kat. But... I’ll see if I can figure out something.”

“When are they going to petition for a change in the bulkhead line?”

“At the County Commission meeting tomorrow morning at ten o’clock.”

“So soon!”

“It’ll be an open battle from then on.”

“Excuse me. I thought it had already started.” She tilted her head and listened. “Here’s Jackie and Ross.”

Jackie came striding in first, gawky, flamboyant and slightly drunk, wearing a denim dress, carrying half a drink in a huge old-fashioned glass. “Unless you had a lot better luck than I did on the phone, Katty love, let’s not talk about it, because I find it extremely distressing. Hello, Wing. What have you done for us lately? Excuse me, dear. You probably have some adorable ideas. Meager but adorable.”

“She’s been working on this since about quarter of six,” Ross said. “She’s a swinging thing tonight.”

“Give my little husband a weak drink, somebody,” Jackie said. “Leave him in shape to take me home over his shoulder. Honest to God, Kat, this Dial Sinnat thing floored me. After you called Tom from the bank this afternoon to tell him definitely no dice, he spread the bad word. I never heard Tom sound so low. So I phoned Dial. He’d just gotten home. The son of a gun thanked me for my interest in his personal decisions. He brushed me off like an expert. Then poor Wally Lime phoned me and we wept together, and then I started belting these lovely things. Are we mice or people? Are we a committee or a burial detail? I’ve got the general idea, kids. Somebody pressured Di. So let’s us pressure some of their boys. Walk me to a bay filler, fellas. I’ll lunge at his jugular. Bring me a big one. Like Flake, or a little one like Aigan. Makes no difference to Killer Halley tonight.”

“Can’t she fill a room, though?” Ross said with awe and pride.

Kat’s children came home from the Sinnats. Kat filled their plates and said they could stay up until nine-thirty if they played quietly in Roy’s room, and didn’t spill any food in there. Jimmy guessed that Kat was serving the small buffet sooner than she had planned. Jackie needed food and coffee.

“The trouble with us,” Jackie said as they were all eating, “we’re too damn nice. Even you, Wing. Perfect little gennlemen. What have we got left? A couple army types, you and me, Kat, a darling art gallery type, little Wally — our Madison Avenue South — and who else? Oh. Fat Doris. You know, it comforted me having Di on the squad. I thought he was the one with cojones, but he turns out to be a capon.”

“Down, Jackie!” Kat said firmly.

“What? What’s the matter?”

“You don’t know all the facts or all the reasons or how Di feels. Maybe you’d do the same thing. How can you tell?”

Jackie looked at her with one eyebrow tilted abruptly. “Sweet Katherine,” she said. “Sweet, gentle, forgiving, understanding Katherine.”

“Now, honey,” Ross said.

“The thing,” Jackie said, “is to see him in proper perspective. Okay? He could fool around with our little project as long as it didn’t cost him anything except time and money.” She turned her bright stare toward Jimmy. “The wise old owl that doesn’t say a word turned out to be a pretty stupid bird.”

“Am I supposed to say something significant?” he asked.

“You could give it a try.”

“I said it last week when I was talking to Kat about this. I said people were going to play rough.”

“And so are we!” Jackie said, banging her plate down.

“Fight, team, fight,” Ross said.

Jackie stood up and looked solemnly at her husband. “Funny man,” she said, and walked out of the house.

“Should you... go with her?” Katherine asked, worried.

“She’s okay,” Ross said. “Good groceries, Kat. Oh, she’ll hike around with steam coming out of her ears. She gets sore. She works it off. She’ll be back.”

They finished eating. Jimmy helped Kat take the dishes out to the kitchen. Jackie came back, as noisy as before, with Burt Lesser in tow. “See what I got!” Jackie said. “A hunk of the opposition. He was home alone, helpless and apologetic.”

Burt Lesser acted as though it was some sort of party game, as if he were the permissive, good-humored trophy in a scavenger hunt. He wore a pale blue coverall suit with short sleeves and a tricky brass buckle and his initials in dark red on the breast pocket.

“Well, well, well,” he said, and took out a handkerchief and took off his heavy glasses, huffed on the lenses, and stood wiping them, looking at them all with an uncertain yet jolly look, his oval fleshy face naked without his glasses, and his belly thrusting the brass buckle forward with a look of comfortable arrogance.

Kat went to him quickly and said, “Burt, you know you’re welcome here any time. We didn’t send Jackie out to bring you back.”

“Cowards,” Jackie said. “Sit right there, Burt boy. This is an inquisition. We’re getting tough. We’ve got some questions to ask.”

Burt sat on the couch. He put his glasses on and looked hesitantly at Jimmy Wing. “I’m not in a position to make any official statement.”

“This is off the record,” Jimmy said, “whatever you say, Burt.”

“Get him a drink, Kat,” Jackie said. “Then you all sit down. I’ll be Perry Mason.”

Jackie stalked slowly back and forth in front of Burt Lesser, scowling, darting fierce looks at him from time to time. She was the only one who didn’t seem to sense the awkwardness of the situation.

“Now then,” she said, “are you the president of the Palmland Development Company?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Is it the purpose and intent of this company to fill Grassy Bay and make a lot of money?”

“Uh... to make a lot of money for everyone. Yes indeed.”

“You were not in favor of the Grassy Bay fill two years ago, Mr. Lesser. Is that true?”

“I wasn’t in favor of it. I didn’t... uh... actively oppose it, but I wasn’t in favor of it either. But this is a different situation.” He smiled at Kat and Ross and Jimmy, the smile of someone who is going along with a joke and wants to be appreciated.

“What’s so different about it?”

“Several things, Mrs. Halley. Several important things. We’re in a little business slump in Palm County, and we weren’t two years ago. This could be a tremendous shot in the arm. Also, having local people in control of it assures a real tasteful development. We don’t want to foul our own nest, you might say. Palmland Isles will be a credit to the area in every sense of the word.”

“Is that what you’re calling it? Ugh!”

“In every sense of the word. And we shall place all possible contracts and orders right here in Palm County. I have close contact with all the businessmen in the area, Mrs. Halley. I can assure you that the support for Palmland Isles is overwhelming. I think that you people are... uh... doing a disservice to the community by trying to oppose it.”

Jackie paced for a few silent moments. She stopped, whirled, pointed her finger so energetically at Burt that it made him flinch. “You have the feeling that this project will go through?”

“Oh, yes! There’ll be a clear majority in favor of it.”

“And you think we are wasting our time and energy?”

“I guess you could put it that way.”

She moved closer to him and lowered her voice. “Then answer this, Mr. Palmland Lesser! If you are so bloody sure of winning, why is your side pulling dirty despicable tricks on us, like blackmailing Dial Sinnat into pulling out?”

Jimmy saw that Burt Lesser was genuinely shocked and astonished.

“What? What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know the details. But you probably do.”

Burt Lesser flushed. “I don’t like your tone of voice, Jackie. I don’t know anything about Dial Sinnat and I don’t know anything about blackmail. That’s a damned dangeous word to throw around unless you know what you’re talking about, and I’m not sure you do.”

Jackie stared at him. “Now just one cotton-pickin’ minute, Mr. President!”

Lesser stood up. “I’m a little tired of this game.”

“Somebody on your team is playing dirty,” Jackie said sternly. “If you don’t know about it, you should. And if you don’t believe me, ask Kat here, or Jimmy, or phone Tom Jennings. Who have you got on your team who’d pull such a stinking trick?”

Jimmy saw the momentary uncertainty on Burt Lesser’s face. It disappeared quickly. “You know the five of us who have majority interests in this project, I’m sure. As far as the others who are on our team, as you prefer to call it, I can name Martin Cable, Ben Killian, Gerold Tucker, Willis Bry... in fact a long list of the influential men in this area. Every... uh... worthwhile project attracts support from all... uh... segments of society. I can’t be responsible, or be held responsible, if somebody in favor of the bay fill gets too anxious.” He turned to Kat. “Thanks for the drink, Katherine.”

“Well,” Jackie said thinly, “you better check out your folks, because if they get too anxious, some of our people might get too anxious too.”

“Is that some sort of a threat?” Burt asked her coldly.

“It’s a promise, pal.”

Kat said, “Burt, I’m sorry that this—”

“I know it isn’t your fault, my dear. No harm done. See you tomorrow morning, Jimmy. Goodnight, Ross. Jackie, I think you make a mistake in combining alcohol with your... civic activities.”

Kat went out with Burt. As soon as the door closed behind them, Jackie said, “The great white father! He’s doing it all to help the poor. Honest to God, men, if there’s anything I hate it’s a hypocrite.”

“You messed up pretty good, honey,” Ross said.

“Messed up? What did I mess up? I believe him when he says he doesn’t know anything about what they did to Di. So maybe he’ll go find out who did it and raise hell. Big fat phonies like Burt Lesser get real upset about appearances. They don’t mind stealing as long as it doesn’t look like stealing. Right, Jimmy?”

“Burt has a good reputation in the real estate business.”

“How would he do if he didn’t have Sally Ann’s money in back of him?”

Kat came back in and said, “He isn’t really sore. He’s just sort of hurt, I guess.”

“What a dreadful shame!” Jackie said.

“Honey, I’m taking you home,” Ross said.

“Oh, the hell you are! Not on your life, boy! I’m just beginning to swing.”

Ross smiled and stood up and took her by the wrists. She tried to pull away. He kept smiling. She looked at him gravely. “Really? I’m due to go home?”

“That’s what the man says,” Ross said gently.

She gave a huge shrug and looked over her shoulder at Kat and Jimmy. “All of a sudden it turned into an early night. Goodnight, darlings. The food was nifty, Kat. You call me tomorrow and tell me how horrible I was. Okay?” She yawned and leaned against Ross. “Steer me away, lover.”

After they had gone, Kat sat beside Jimmy on the couch and said, “It got out of hand, I guess.”

“She’s a very direct type gal.”

“When she brought Burt in, you know the crazy thing I did? I started looking around the room for Van, knowing he’d take over and smooth things out. There was just a half a second of looking for him. I didn’t want to have to cope.”

“You coped fine.”

“Did I? I didn’t feel as if I was. Burt handled it pretty well, don’t you think?”

“He kept his dignity.”

“Which is more than you can say for Jackie, bless her.” She yawned and hitched around on the couch to face him more directly. “Jimmy?”

“Yes, dear.”

“What do you know about that Reverend Coombs down in Wister?”

He looked at her in mild surprise. “Why?”

“Oh, nothing special, really. One of the guards at the bank was talking to me about him. He goes down there every Sunday. He said I ought to go down there too.”

Jimmy had the impression she was lying. “You don’t need him, Kat. You don’t need his brand of salvation.”

“What’s wrong with it?”

“He’s found a button to push. A new mixture. A kind of militant revivalism. He took over an old school in the piny woods and turned it into a church. He keeps it filled with self-righteous, beat-down people who’ve always hated anybody better off than they are, and he gives them good reasons for the hate, and makes them feel like God’s weapons. They’re going to save all us wicked ones if they have to kill us to save us.”

“Is that why they’ve whipped some people?”

“Yes. And maybe some day they’ll whip the wrong one. I know of at least six cases which never even got into the papers. He works them up to a high pitch every Sunday and at least two evenings a week. They’re the good right arm of the Lord. The Army of the Lord, they call themselves. Full of holy fervor to punish the wicked. Politically they’re way to the right of the Birchers. They’re flat out against perfume, makeup, television, birth control, divorce, big cities, modern painting, fiction, jazz, public swimming, dancing, liquor, movies, magazines, candy, cigarettes. They make public confessions. Anybody who disagrees with them is un-American, a red Communist dupe. I don’t know how sincere Coombs is. If he’s after power, he’s getting it. They’ve cowed a lot of people down in the south county. He gives radio talks now, over WEVS in Everset, and I heard he’s getting a pretty good-sized audience here in Palm City. He’s a stocky guy about fifty, with huge shoulders and a great big head on him and a voice like a trombone. He claims to have spent the first forty years of his life in black sin, started reading the Good Book in jail, saw the light, started preaching on street corners and preached his way all the way across the country back to the swamps where he was born. Wherever he goes, there’s a little herd of the faithful clumping right along with him, carrying weapons, because he claims the Reds are out to get him. There must be a hundred like him, scattered around the country. There’s always a chance one of them will get to be big enough to be genuinely dangerous. I suppose his chance is as good as any of them have. No, Kat. That brand of salvation is not for you. Are you looking for some?”

She looked down at her hands. “I guess not. Not really. You remember, I took that trip home after Van died. I knew the whole world was a dirty fraud. I knew it was all a bad joke on people, without justice or reason or... decency.” She raised her head and looked at him, frowning. “I’m more emotional than logical, Jimmy. The minister up home tried to help me. He’d sit with me and talk and talk and talk and try to make the whole thing logical. He was just fooling around with semantics. There was no logic in a world that could take Van away from me. But I... found my own way to whatever I believe, sort of in spite of him. I sat in a field on a gray stone. The leaves turn early there, you know. ’Licia came running to me with a bright red leaf. I turned it over and over. I wasn’t looking for any deep thoughts or revelations or anything. I was just blue and empty, a woman looking at a leaf. I saw the pattern of the little veins in the leaf and I remembered hearing that no two leaves out of the trillions and trillions on earth are exactly alike. ’Licia had her hand on my knee, small and warm and grubby. I took her hand and turned it over and I looked at the patterns of it, the little pads and lines in the palm. It was unique too, like the leaf.” Kat opened her own hand for him to see.

“It wasn’t like solving a puzzle, Jimmy. And it wasn’t any great blinding flash of comprehension. The leaf was as much a part of some... orderly process as my daughter’s hand, both styled to live and die. I merely realized I wasn’t as empty as I had been. I felt a kind of a comfort. Whatever the leaf was, whatever my daughter’s hand is, even whatever the stone was I was sitting on, I was a piece of all of it, and all of it was a piece of me. And all that... that flow of reality, whatever it might be, it was certainly not something designed to benefit me. I felt ashamed, sort of. I felt I had shown a kind of witless, wicked arrogance to blame life for anything. A leaf could blame the tree for releasing it, and the stone could blame a glacier for carrying it away. You see, there’s no logic in it. It’s a kind of faith, I suppose. It’s my awareness of God, or I guess I should say Godness, because I’m more aware of a process than an entity. That awareness doesn’t make me miss Van any less. But it stops me from despising the other parts of life. It keeps me from poisoning myself. Jimmy. What do you believe in?”

“Me? Not very much. I don’t know. There’s as much chaos as there is order. There’s as much randomness as there is pattern. I believe in accident, mostly. I’m accidentally alive, and by being alive, I’m in the process of death. I believe in luck and good footwork.”

“With no purpose to any of it?”

“None that I can see at the moment.”

“That’s the emptiness I couldn’t endure, Jimmy. I’m too much of a coward to stand so alone.”

She looked at him in a quizzical way which deepened the small horizontal wrinkles above her rusty eyebrows. Her eyes were a shadowy gray in that light, her lips slightly apart. Her nearness was a magnetic field which pulled his mind into illogic, toward the threshold of words and acts which would mean nothing. He stood up quickly and with a great bursting effort, like a swimmer clambering up out of a pool.

“Did I say something wrong?” she asked.

“No. It’s just... I have to stop by the paper. I’d like to stay and talk. Thanks for the drinks and dinner, Kat.”

“You’ll see if you can find out who made Di resign?”

“I’ll try. I can’t promise anything.”

“I don’t want to get you in trouble with the paper because you’re trying to help us.”

“I’m not worried.”