A Wasteland of Strangers

George Petrie

Ramona said, “I asked you a question, George. Where were you last night?”

I heard her that time, but the words didn’t register right away. I had so damn many things on my mind. My head felt stuffed, the way it does when you have a bad cold. I couldn’t concentrate on any one thing. It was all churned together, pieces here and there breaking off like swirls of color in a kaleidoscope; hang on to one, focus on it for a few seconds, and then it would slide back into the vortex and there’d be another and the same thing would happen.

“Well?”

“Well what, for Chrissake?”

“You don’t listen to me anymore,” she said. “You act as if you’re alone half the time we’re in the same room.”

“Ramona, don’t start—”

“‘Ramona, don’t start.’” Like a goddamn parrot. Hair all frizzy after her shower, nose like a beak jutting at me, mouth flapping open and shut, open and shut. And that dressing gown of hers, green and red, white feathery wisps at the neck and on the sleeves. Wings, feathers, bright little bird eyes... a scrawny, scruffy, middle-aged, chattering parrot. What did I ever see in her?

“What did I ever see in you?” I muttered aloud.

“What? What did you say?”

“Nothing.” Sip of coffee. Bite of toast. Glance at my watch even though I know what time it is. “I’d better get to the bank.”

“It’s only eight-twenty,” Ramona said. “I want an answer first.”

“Answer to what?”

“God, you can be an exasperating man. Where you were until after two o’clock in the morning. On a weeknight.”

The squawking and screeching echoed inside my head, making it ache. My eyeballs actually hurt from the pressure.

“George. Where were you?”

“At the Elks Lodge, playing cards.”

“Until two A.M.?”

“Yes, until two A.M. Pinochle. I lost nine dollars and had four drinks and then I drove home. Does that satisfy you? Or do you want to know who else was in the game and who won and how much and how many drinks each of them had?”

“You don’t have to yell—”

“And you don’t have to interrogate me as if I were a fucking criminal.”

Her mouth pinched until it wasn’t a mouth any longer, just a bunch of hard ridges and vertical creases. Kissing that mouth was like kissing two strips of granite. Was it ever soft, even on our honeymoon? I couldn’t remember her lips ever being soft.

“At the breakfast table, George?” Hard and tight like her mouth. “That kind of language at eight-twenty in the morning?”

For a few seconds I lost it. Couldn’t stop myself from saying, “That’s right, you don’t like fucking, do you? In any way, shape, or form, verbal or physical.”

She reacted as though I’d slapped her. Good! Up on my feet, in such a spasm I jostled the table and spilled the coffee, to hell with the coffee and her, too.

“How can you say things like that to me? I won’t stand for it, I won’t be abused. You’ll be sorry if you think—”

I went out and slammed the door on the rest of the squawking and screeching.

In the Buick I lit a cigarette. I don’t smoke much anymore, but I needed something to try to calm down. My head... how was I going to get through the day? And the weekend coming up? And next week, and the week after, and the week after that?

Ramona, Storm, Harvey Patterson, that stranger yesterday... them and the rest in this town, all the people with their small minds and small ways. And me stuck here in a dead-end job and a lousy marriage, wanting a woman I couldn’t have, a hundred other things I couldn’t have. Facing a future that could be even worse, a genuine hell on earth. It could happen.

If that stranger robbed the bank, it would happen.

I told myself for the twentieth time it was a damn-fool notion. The stranger didn’t have to be what he looked like; he was probably gone by now and I’d never see him again. But I kept right on imagining the worst.

I couldn’t stop him if he walked in and showed a gun. I’m not brave, I don’t own a gun myself or even know how to fire one. Fred and Arlene would do what they were told and so would I. We’d hand over the money in the cash drawers, the money in the vault, and chances were he’d get away with it.

And then there’d have to be an accounting.

Bank examiners, within hours.

It wouldn’t take them long to find the shortage. A day, two at the most.

Covered it as best I could, but no one can doctor bank records cleverly enough to fool an examiner. It was just a little more than seven thousand dollars, only I didn’t have the cash to replace it and no certain way of getting that much on short notice. The house was mortgaged to the hilt, the Indian Head Bay property Ramona had inherited wasn’t worth enough to support a loan, Burt Seeley poor-mouthing when he turned me down, Storm laughing in my face, and there was nobody else except maybe Charley Horne. Yearly audit was still three months away; the Indian Head Bay property had to have sold by then, priced rock-bottom the way it was. It had to. But I couldn’t cover the shortage now without going begging to Charley Horne, and he doesn’t like me any more than I like him after that zoning flap four years ago when he tried to expand his Ford dealership. He might loan me the money at an exorbitant rate, but more likely he’d tell me to go to hell. I’ve been afraid to find out because he’s my absolute last resort. If he turned me down—

Prison.

I’d go to prison for borrowing a measly seven thousand, for believing in that son of a bitch Harvey Patterson and his big talk about a sure-thing real-estate killing.

I couldn’t stand being locked up. The idea of spending years in the company of brutal men like that stranger terrifies me so much I can’t think about it without starting to shake and sweat.

Options? Sorry, Petrie, you’re fresh out. All you can do is wait and pray the hold-up notion really is a crazy fantasy and the economy picks up and somebody buys the Indian Head Bay property and you don’t get caught.

Except that I was already caught. That was what was tearing me up inside, making me wriggle and jump and lose my temper and think wild thoughts. More than one kind of prison for a man to be locked up in. Even if I managed to cover the shortage without being found out — caught, trapped, locked up in Pomo until the day I died.

Harry Richmond

Maria Lorenzo couldn’t get it through her thick Indian head that I didn’t want her to do any maid service in cabin six. She kept saying, “But if he stays another night he’ll need clean towels. And the bed — who will make up the bed?”

“He can make up his own bed,” I said.

“No clean towels?”

“I told you, no. Don’t even go near it.”

“How come you don’t want to give this man service?”

“That’s my business. You mind your own.”

“Okay, you’re the boss.” But it still bothered her; she kept frowning and shaking her head. “You want me to clean the office and your rooms?”

“It’s your day, isn’t it?”

“Change the sheets, put out fresh towels?”

Indians! Skulls thick as granite. “Everything, Maria, same as you always do on Fridays.”

“What about tomorrow?”

“Well? What about it?”

“Should I come and clean six then?”

“If Faith checks out. I’ll let you know.”

“But not if he stays? Still no service?”

“That’s right. Nothing. Nada.”

She shook her head again, muttered something in Pomo, and went around the counter into my living quarters. Stupid cow. But she had a nice ass, round and plump. Like Dottie’s when we were first married, before she got hog-fat after Ella was born. I couldn’t get near Dottie the last few years. All that lard... it made me want to puke when I saw her naked. Her own damn fault when she dropped dead of a heart attack. Two hundred and eighty-seven pounds...

I shut Dottie out of my mind and watched Maria wiggle around, bend over to straighten the papers and magazines on the coffee table. Dried my throat to see that ass of hers stuck up in the air, all round and inviting. She was in her late thirties and starting to wrinkle and lose her shape like a lot of Indian women at that age, but she was still attractive enough and her ass was just right. I craved a piece of that every time I saw her. But she wouldn’t have any of me. Some other white man, maybe, but not Harry Richmond. One time I made a pass she shot me down cold. Didn’t get offended or angry, just gave me a reproachful look and said, “I have a husband and three children, Mr. Richmond, and I believe with all my heart in the teachings of our savior, Jesus Christ.” Sure. But what if I’d been thirty instead of fifty and had all my hair and a flat belly? Bet she’d have sung a different tune then. Most Indian women are sluts, and the pious ones are the worst.

Indian women. Maria Lorenzo, that snooty little Audrey Sixkiller... what was it about the attractive ones that made me want it so much?

No use standing around here getting myself worked up for nothing. I went outside to the shed and fetched my tool kit. One of the downspouts on cabin three was loose, and this was as good a time as any to fix it. Maria knew enough to answer the phone if it rang.

Cold this morning. No sun, mist rising in the marshes, a high wind pushing thick clouds inland, with more scudding in behind. Couldn’t tell yet if we’d get rain on the weekend. Probably would, my luck being what it was. If it did rain, I wouldn’t get half a dozen rentals through Sunday night. I ought to be grateful to any guest deciding to stay another night, but not when that guest was John Faith. I’d take his money as long as he wanted to give it to me, but that didn’t mean I had to like it or anything about him. No telling what he was up to around here. Whatever it was, I wished he’d tend to it and go back where he came from. I’d sleep better when he was gone, that was for sure.

I was hammering a new clamp on the drain spout when the police cruiser drove in off the highway. Gave me a jolt to see Chief Novak at the wheel. Lakeside Resort is within Pomo township’s jurisdiction, just barely, but the town cops don’t patrol much out this way. No reason they should, really. I hadn’t had to call in the law in over three years, since the couple from Walnut Creek got into a drunken fight in cabin four and the man busted his wife’s arm for her. She had it coming, if you ask me, the way she kept running him down all the time, but that hadn’t kept me from calling the police. I can’t afford trouble.

Novak spotted me and pulled up. Instead of climbing out he rolled down his window. I pasted on a smile as I walked over.

“Morning, Chief. What brings you up here?”

“You have a guest named John Faith?”

No surprise there. I said, “That’s what he calls himself.”

“Check out already? I don’t see his car.”

“No, he paid me for another night.”

“When did he pay you?”

“About an hour ago. Little after eight.”

“Just one more night?”

“Just one. How come you’re asking about him? He get himself into some trouble already?”

“I just want to talk to him.” Novak’s face, now I looked at it close, was tight-skinned and hard around the mouth and jaw. His eyes were bloodshot and bagged, as if he hadn’t had much sleep last night. “What time’d he leave?”

“Right after he paid me.”

“Tell you where he was going?”

“Didn’t say a thing.”

“You know if he was here between midnight and two A.M.?”

“Midnight and two? Why? Something happen then?”

“Was he here, Harry?”

“Well... not when I went to bed around eleven-thirty. He’s in six and the windows were dark and no sign of that Porsche of his. I was awake another thirty, forty minutes and I didn’t hear him come in.” The wind had chapped my lips; I took out my tube of Blistex. “Tell you this, Chief. Whatever he’s done, it won’t surprise me.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You had a good look at him, up close?”

“Yesterday.”

“Then you know what I mean. Makes me nervous as hell having him here, but I can’t afford to turn down anybody’s business.”

“How’d he pay you? Cash or credit card?”

“Cash. Both times. Wad of bills in his wallet big enough to gag a Doberman.”

“What address did he put on his registration card?”

“Los Angeles, that’s all.”

“No street or box number?”

“Nope. I should’ve asked, I guess, but he’s not somebody you want to prod. Touchy. Mean and touchy. I can tell you his car license number, if you want that.”

“I already know it.”

“Well, how about the cabin he’s in?”

“What about it?”

“You want to take a look inside?”

Novak shook his head. “Not enough cause.”

“I could just unlock the door with my passkey and then go on about my business. Never know it if you happened to step inside for a minute or two—”

“No.”

“But if he’s guilty of something—”

“I don’t know that he is. Don’t you go invading his privacy either, Harry.”

“Not me. No, sir,” I said. “Sure you can’t give me an idea of what it’s all about? A man can’t help being curious—”

“I’m sure,” Novak said. He slid his window up, swung around, and drove back out to the highway.

Well, I thought. Didn’t I see it coming? Didn’t I know Faith was trouble the minute I laid eyes on him?

I waited a couple of minutes to make sure Novak didn’t decide to come back. Then I took out my passkey and headed for cabin six.

Storm Carey

When Neal was alive we almost always ate breakfast on the sun porch, no matter what the weather. The upper halves of the three outer walls are glass, with panels that slide open to let in air and garden fragrance, and you can look down the sloping rear lawn to the lakefront and the white finger of our dock, north to the sloughs, east all along the sharp, shadowed folds of the hills, brown now with their dark-green spottings of oak and madrone, south down the lake’s thirty-mile length as far as Kahbel Shores at the foot of Mt. Kahbel. A lordly view, Neal called it. Lord and lady of the manor, surveying their domain.

But the lord is dead and the lady is a tramp, and I seldom eat on the porch anymore, or even go out there. This morning, however, I felt drawn to it. I sat at the rosewood table and drank my coffee and ate my two pieces of toast and surveyed what was left of the domain and thought about Neal. He’d been warm in my thoughts when I’d awakened, almost as if he were still alive, as if he’d gotten up before me and was waiting on the porch for me to join him. Some mornings it’s like that, the feeling that he’s still here with me so acute I actually believe it for a minute or two. But, of course, the illusion soon fades and again becomes unbearable loss — a cramping deep inside like severe menstrual cramps, or what I imagine childbirth would have been if we’d ever managed to conceive. Then that, too, fades and I’m able to get up, shower, dress, do all the things that begin another day, that lead to another night.

The bed was a mess this morning, the sheets stained and even torn in one place, smelling rankly of the Hunger. Him, too, last night’s fodder for the voracious mouth. Here for two or three hours, and then gone again in the early-morning darkness. Night phantom, incubus. Strange, but when I closed my eyes I couldn’t picture his face or remember his name, even though I know him as well as I know anyone in Pomo, even though he’s been in my bed before. Instead, it was Neal’s face I saw, Neal’s lips and hands and body I remembered.

Before I showered I wadded up the sheets and pillowcases and the bathroom towel he’d used and took them out to the garbage. The girl would be in to clean today and she would remake the bed, but I didn’t want her to have to handle the Hunger’s dirty leavings. Some more residue of propriety, I supposed. And a pathetic residue at that: I seem to care more about a cleaning woman’s feelings than I do about my own.

So I sat alone on the porch and watched the clouds race across the sky, creating patterns of light and shadow on the lake’s surface, on the brown and dark-green hills, and drank more coffee to ease the dull hangover pain behind my eyes, and thought about Neal. The first night we’d met, at the party to celebrate the opening of a new winery in the Alexander Valley: the shy daughter of a Ukiah farmer and the handsome real-estate developer with hair that was already starting to silver even though he was only a dozen years older than my twenty-three. The first time we went to bed, and how patient he was with me... the evening at the Top of the Mark in San Francisco when he asked me to marry him... the month-long honeymoon cruise in the Caribbean... the day this house he’d built for us was finished and the way we’d celebrated, naked in bed, drinking Mumm’s, pouring it on each other’s body and then licking it off...

Those, and so many more memories. But I wasn’t allowed to be alone with them this morning. Other thoughts intruded, another face appeared in my mind’s eye — not the face of last night’s incubus but the ugly visage of John Faith. An effort to block it out did no good; instead it was Neal’s image that blurred and turned to shadow and faded away.

The Hunger wasn’t satisfied. I’d known it in the shower earlier, when the mouth began to stir again inside me. For some reason it still wanted John Faith. Another surrogate like all the others, another incubus... or was he? The Hunger seemed to sense a difference, something to do with the part that remained hidden from me. It wanted Faith — that was enough for me to know now.

It wanted him and so I would have to find a way to feed it what it craved.

I left the porch, the lordly view, the warm memories of Neal, everything that had once meant something, and went to do the Hunger’s bidding.

Audrey Sixkiller

I kept blanking out on my class notes, on what the kids were saying and doing. Usually I have no problem maintaining order in my classes; today I couldn’t even maintain order in my own mind. The prowler last night had shaken me more than I cared to admit. That, and not being able to reach Dick until after three, and then not being able to sleep again after he left. Zombie woman. I probably shouldn’t have come to school at all, but at dawn it had seemed more important not to give in to the anxiety, to plunge right back into my normal routine. Now I wasn’t so sure.

Well, I could still take the afternoon off. Hang on until noon, then go home and regroup in private.

I wondered if Dick had found out anything. Chances were he hadn’t. He’d said he would have a talk with John Faith, but if the man was guilty he would hardly admit it; all Dick could do, really, was to try to scare him into leaving Pomo County and not coming back. And if he was innocent, there was nothing to point to anyone else. Dick had come back this morning, a while before I left for school, and searched my yard and the neighboring yard and hadn’t found even a scrap of evidence. He’d tried to convince me that the shot I fired would keep the intruder, whoever he was, from trying it again, but we both knew that wasn’t necessarily true. Being shot at could just as well make a would-be rapist even more determined to finish what he’d started.

Dick worried me, too. His concern had been genuine but he’d seemed remote, as if other things were weighing heavily on his mind. All he’d say when I asked where he’d been so late was that he couldn’t sleep and had gone for a long drive around the lake. He suffered from insomnia — Verne Erickson once told me it started after his wife left him — and quite a few insomniacs are night riders, but he’d never admitted before to being one of those. There was so much about him I knew little or nothing about.

Yes, and a few things I did know and wished I didn’t. I couldn’t help wondering if he was seeing Storm Carey again, if that was where he’d really been last night...

Giggle. Giggle, giggle.

The sounds penetrated, and all at once I realized the entire class — my ten o’clock, California History II — was staring at me. I’d been sitting there God knew how long, lost inside myself. The expressions on their faces told me what they’d be saying to their friends later on. “Wow, Ms. Sixkiller went brain-dead for a little while this morning.” Or “It was, like, you know, she lapsed into some kind of Indian trance thing.”

I cleared my throat. “Okay. Where were we?”

“We were right here,” Anthony Munoz said. “Where were you?”

That broke them up. I laughed with them; you don’t get anywhere with kids nowadays by being either authoritarian or humorless, a lesson a couple of Pomo High’s other teachers have yet to learn. And Anthony was the class clown, a leader the others followed. A poor student, barely passing, and a sometime troublemaker, particularly when he was around his older brother. Mateo was a bad influence — drugs, antiauthority behavior, Attitude with a capital A. He’d been expelled two years ago when another teacher and I caught him using cocaine inside the school. Anthony looked up to him; it troubled me that he might be led in the same direction, drop out or get himself expelled, too, one of these days. Underneath, Anthony wasn’t a bad kid. All he needed was to use common sense and develop a purpose in his life, one that would settle him down. Meanwhile, you had to walk a very careful line with him.

I glanced at my notes. “Upper California under Spanish rule, right? Established as a province of the newly established Mexican republic. What year was that, Anthony?”

“What year was what?”

“That California became a province of Mexico.”

“Who knows, man?”

“And who cares, right?”

A little more laughter.

“Well, I do,” I said. “And you should too, un poco. Come on, Anthony. What year did California become a Mexican province?”

“I dunno.”

Better, not quite as smart-ass. “I’ll give you a hint. It was twenty years after it became a province of Spain.”

“Yeah? What year was that?”

“1804. You can add twenty and four, can’t you?”

He scowled at me. But then his girlfriend, Trisha Marx, leaned over and poked his arm and said, “Yeah, Anthony, twenty plus four equals fifty-three, right?” Everybody laughed again. Anthony decided to laugh with them. He said, “No, fifty-seven, you dumb Angla,” and there was more laughter and then they settled down.

I treated them to a five-minute monologue on the period 1824 to 1844, the political turbulence that sprang up then and its root causes: anticlericalism, separatist sentiment, dissatisfaction with Mexican rule, demands for secularization of the missions. I was defining secularization for them — the smarter ones were taking notes, those like Anthony looking bored and getting ready to bolt — when the bell rang.

I reminded them of the reading assignment for next week and let them go. The room emptied in the usual jostling, noisy rush. I was arranging my notes for my next class when a tentative voice spoke my name.

Trisha Marx, alone and looking nervous. A bright girl, Trisha; if she applied herself, her grades would be much better and she’d have a more promising future than most kids in Pomo. But she’d fallen under Anthony Munoz’s spell, begun hanging out with him and his brother and their crowd, skirting the edges of real trouble. She needed the same thing Anthony did: a settling purpose in her life. I liked her and I hoped for her. In some ways she reminded me of myself at her age.

“Yes, Trisha?”

“You suppose I could... well...”

“Yes?”

“... Like, talk to you about something?”

“Class work?”

“No. It’s, you know, personal.”

“Important?”

“Kind of, yeah.”

“Of course we can talk. But I have another class...”

“I don’t mean now. Later. I’ve got something to do first.”

“Well, I’m thinking of playing hooky this afternoon. And you know where I live. Why don’t you come by my house and we can talk there?”

“Um, when?”

“After school. Say around four?”

“I don’t know,” she said, “maybe it’d be better if I do what I have to tonight, instead of... um, yeah, it would be.” She nibbled dark-red lipstick off her lower lip. “Would it be okay... tomorrow morning? Could I come by then?”

“If it’s early, by nine. I have a tribal council meeting at the Elem rancheria at eleven.”

“I’ll be there before nine. I... thanks, Ms. Sixkiller.” And she hurried out, clutching her books.

Now, what was that all about?

But even as other kids began to drift in for my next class, my mind shifted back to Dick’s absence last night. I wanted to believe he wouldn’t be foolish enough to take up with Storm Carey again, but I knew men well enough to understand that once bitten, twice shy was an axiom that didn’t always apply. If she crooked her finger in the right way, waggled her tail on a night when he was feeling lonesome... yes, it was very possible he’d go running to her. If he was seeing her again, how could I hope to compete? I could be just as good in bed, but a man couldn’t tell it by looking at me. One sideways glance at Storm Carey and he’d know it instantly.

I thought wryly of the old Pomo stories about the bear people, men and women who had the power to transform themselves and to go prowling at night in their hides and cloaks of feathers. They were fierce defenders of their territory; when they encountered interlopers, others like them or spooks such as the walépu, tremendous battles were fought using magic powers, great leaps into the air, bellows so loud they caused landslides, eardrum-shattering shrieks and whistles — whatever it took to intimidate and then to vanquish or destroy their rivals.

Too bad I couldn’t be one of the bear people and have their powers for just one night...

Zenna Wilson

No more than a minute after Stephanie and Kitty Waylon left for school I happened to walk out onto the front porch, to trim the hanging fern as I’d been meaning to do for days. If I hadn’t gone out there... well, I don’t dare let myself think about that. Thank the Lord I did go out.

He was there on the street, the bogey who’d scared me half to death in Treynor’s Hardware. Driving by our house in a disreputable old sports car, the window rolled down, inching along with his ugly face turned my way, staring first at the house, and then, as he passed it, staring at the girls skipping along the sidewalk, Steffie bundled in her cute fur-trimmed parka and Kitty wearing that tattered old brown thing her mother lets her out in public in. And the smile on his dirty mouth was nothing short of lewd.

I nearly had a seizure. By the time I raced down the steps and across the lawn I was gasping for breath and all I could manage was a weak shout that not even the girls heard. I don’t know if he saw me or not. He probably did, because he kept on going into the next block, though he didn’t bother to speed up so much as a hair. And he was still watching Stephanie and Kitty in his mirror — I swear I could see the tilt of his head through the back window.

The girls didn’t know what was going on, poor things, when I ran up all excited and out of breath and hugged them both. I didn’t want to scare them, so I made myself calm down before I asked, “Did that man say anything to you? Anything at all?”

They both said, “What man?” They hadn’t even noticed him!

I made them come back to the house with me and get in the car, and I drove them to school. It would’ve been sheer madness to let them walk with that intruder still around somewhere. He may not have said anything, but the way he’d been looking, and that lewd smile on his wicked face... well. I warned Stephanie again to beware of strangers, to never, ever, under any circumstances, let any strange man come near her and especially not a big ugly one driving an old red sports car. I warned Kitty, too, no doubt the first time the child had ever had such good sense put into her head, Linda Waylon being the kind of woman she is, off in a fog half the time and forever chattering nonsense the whole time she does my hair.

Well, I was still in a state when I got back from the school. There was no sign of him, but I didn’t let that stop me, not after what I’d seen, what might’ve happened if I hadn’t gone out on the porch when I did. I called the police right away. Chief Novak wasn’t in, so I had to talk to a female officer, Della Feldman, and I didn’t mince words with her. The police weren’t the only ones I called, either. People have a right to know when there’s a threat in their midst. I’d be a sorry soldier in God’s Christian army if I kept silent, wouldn’t I?

Richard Novak

I finally tracked down John Faith a little after ten o’clock. At the one place in Pomo I least expected to find him — Cypress Hill Cemetery.

I’d been all through town, half around the lake, and just missed him twice — once at the Northlake Cafe, where he’d had a late breakfast while I was out talking to Harry Richmond, and once on Redbud Street. Della Feldman, the day sergeant in charge, had had a frantic call from Zenna Wilson, who claimed Faith had been stalking her daughter and a playmate on their way to school. The Wilson woman was a nuisance and a wolf-crier, and the claim was likely another of her hysterical fantasies; still, after the prowler at Audrey’s home last night, I wasn’t about to treat any report of suspicious activity lightly.

But there was no sign of Faith or his Porsche in the Redbud neighborhood, and that frustrated me even more. I had no real reason to suspect the man of any wrongdoing, just the vague uneasiness he’d stirred in me yesterday, but there was a slippery, secretive quality to the way he kept moving around town, one place to another with no apparent motive. I should’ve gone out to Lakeside Resort as soon as I left Audrey’s the first time, rousted him out of bed, and to hell with protocol and a natural reluctance to hassle a man without provocation. But instead I’d gone to the station, given Verne Erickson the Porsche’s license number, and had him start a computer background check on Faith — find out if he was wanted for anything, if he had a criminal record of any kind.

I’d told Verne about the attempted break-in at Audrey’s and asked him to keep quiet about it for the time being. There was no sense in inciting fear of night prowlers and masked rapists. Zenna Wilson was a perfect example of why things like this needed to be kept under wraps until, if, and when it presented a public threat. Then, as tired as I was, I’d managed a couple of hours’ sleep on my office couch. Long, bad night. Half a pot of coffee and some breakfast at Nelson’s Diner, after which I wasted another half hour looking around Audrey’s yard and the cottage next door. And after that, Faith kept eluding me — until, as I was passing by on my way back from Redbud, I spotted his Porsche in the parking area just inside the cemetery gates.

I turned around and drove in and parked next to the Porsche. Faith wasn’t inside, or anywhere in the vicinity, and I didn’t see him on the narrow roads that led up into the older sections of Cypress Hill. But with all the trees and hillside hollows you can’t see much more than half the grounds from below.

The Porsche wasn’t locked. I opened the door, bent for a look inside. An old army blanket on the backseat, a plastic bag full of trash on the floor in front of the passenger bucket — that was all. I leaned across to depress the button on the glove compartment. Owner’s manual, a packet of maps bound with a rubber band, two unopened packages of licorice drops. And under the maps, the car’s registration slip. John Faith, street address in L.A. proper; the registration was current and had been issued eighteen months ago. I made a mental note of the street address, put the slip back where I’d found it, closed the box, and leaned back out.

“Finding everything all right, Officer?”

He was propped against one of the cypress trees about thirty feet away, in a patch of the pale sunlight that had come out a while ago. One corner of his mouth was curved upward — a smile that wasn’t a smile, just a sardonic twisting of the lips.

“More or less,” I said. “You mind, Mr. Faith?”

“Would it matter if I did?”

“It might.”

“Sure. Release lever’s on the left there, if you want to check inside the trunk, too. Nothing in there except a spare tire, some tools, and an emergency flashlight, but don’t take my word for it. Go ahead and look for yourself.”

“I think I will.”

I yanked the release, went up front, and peered into the shallow trunk compartment. Spare tire, some tools, an emergency lantern. Nothing else.

He came over to stand next to me as I shut the lid. “Mind telling me what you’re looking for?”

“What would you say if I told you a ski mask?”

“A ski mask. Uh-huh. I guess I’d tell you I don’t ski. Couldn’t if I wanted to in country like this, since there aren’t any mountains and not even a flake of snow on the ground.”

“Where were you between midnight and two A.M.?”

“In bed, asleep.”

“Not according to the owner of the Lakeside Resort. He says he was awake at twelve-thirty and you weren’t in your cabin.”

“Is that right?”

“But you say you were.”

“I was. He’s either blind or a damn liar.”

“Why would he lie?”

“Why would I lie? Somebody wearing a ski mask do something between midnight and two A.M.?”

“Somebody tried to do something. Attempted break-in, possibly with intent to commit rape.”

“Yeah? Well, it wasn’t me.”

“I hope not.”

“You have any reason to think it was me?”

“No particular reason.”

“Just figured you’d hassle the biggest, ugliest stranger you could find.”

“I’m not hassling you. Asking questions, that’s all.”

He showed me the non-smile again. “Anything else, Chief?”

“Your car registration says you live in Los Angeles,” I said. “Pomo is a long way from L.A.”

“Pomo’s a long way from anywhere.”

“Then why’d you come here?”

“Why not? Everybody got to be somewhere.”

“Answer the question.”

“Yes, sir, Chief. L.A.’s where I used to live. Got to be a town I didn’t like anymore, so I pulled up stakes a couple of weeks ago. You might say I’m scouting a new location.”

“Pomo?”

He shrugged. “I doubt it.”

“What’d you do down in L.A.? For a living, I mean.”

“Construction work.”

“You won’t find much new construction around here. This is a depressed county, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“I noticed. I’m not interested in a job right now.”

“No? Why is that?”

“I made good money down south and I saved enough to treat myself to some time off. I’ve got about five hundred in my wallet, if you want to see it.”

“Why would I want to see your money?”

“Come on, Chief. We both know the difference between transient and vagrant.”

“I don’t think you’re a vagrant.”

“Just a prowler and would-be rapist.”

That jabbed my temper. “Don’t get smart with me.”

“Smart?” He spread his hands. “I’m cooperating the best way I know how.”

“You do that and we’ll get along,” I said. “I’m not accusing you of anything, I’m just doing my job the best way I know how. You may not believe it, but I try to take people at face value — until I have cause to take them otherwise.”

He laughed, a quick, barking sound. “Me too, Chief. Me too.”

“A few more questions and you can go on about your business. What were you doing on Redbud Street earlier?”

“Redbud Street?”

“Residential neighborhood not far from here.”

“The one with all the trees and older houses? Looking, that’s all.”

“Why?”

“Seemed like it’d be a nice street to live on.”

“It is. Nice and quiet — a family street. Why were you driving so slowly?”

“Can’t see much when you drive fast,” Faith said. “Somebody call in to complain, Chief? Afraid I might be casing the neighborhood, looking for another house to break into?”

I let it go. He wasn’t going to tell me anything more than he already had. “What is it you’re after, Mr. Faith? What’re you looking for in a new location?”

“Not much. A little peace and quiet.”

I waved a hand at the plots and markers uphill. “This kind?”

“I like cemeteries,” he said. “Nobody bothers you in one — usually. And you can tell a lot about a place by the kind of graveyard it has.”

“What does Cypress Hill tell you about Pomo?”

“That it could’ve been what I want but isn’t.”

“Meaning?”

“Just that.”

“So you’ll be moving on soon.”

“Pretty soon.”

“Tomorrow? I understand you’ve paid for another night at the Lakeside.”

“That’s right. Unless you’re going to invite me to leave by sundown tonight.”

“I’m not going to invite you to do anything except obey the law. Are you leaving tomorrow?”

“Yes, sir. Tomorrow for sure.”

“What’re you planning for the rest of today?”

“Nothing different than what I’ve been doing.” Another replay of the non-smile, so brief this time it was like a dim light flicked on and off. “And none of it involves ski masks or forcible entry — houses or women.”

“I’m glad to hear it. One piece of advice.”

“I’m all ears.”

“As long as you’re here, keep in mind that citizens in small towns tend to be leery of a stranger who looks too close at them and their surroundings — as if he might have more on his mind than a friendly visit. As if he might actually be a threat. You understand?”

“Oh, I understand, Chief. I hear you loud and clear. I’ll do my best not to alarm the good citizens of Pomo while I’m enjoying your fine hospitality.”

The sarcasm was just mild enough not to provoke me. I said, “Then we won’t need to have another talk, will we?”

“I sure hope not.”

I got into the cruiser, still feeling frustrated; the conversation hadn’t satisfied me on any level. As I drove out through the gates, Faith was on his way uphill into the older part of the cemetery. And he wasn’t looking back.

Douglas Kent

I didn’t believe the Wilson woman’s story for a minute, of course. She’d called the Advocate before, with complaints about this and that or to offer a juicy hunk of speculative gossip that invariably turned out to be both slanderous and imaginary. Viper-tongued busybody and self-appointed guardian of public morals. Or, in the eloquent phrasing of old Pa Kent, “a fookin’ shit-disturber.” (Mine papa: bargeman, boozer, brawler, and barroom bard. He’d fallen into the Monongahela half a dozen times, dead drunk; the last time they fished him out, when I was a freshman at Penn State, he was just plain dead. If he’d had time for a final coherent thought before he sank into the depths, I knew exactly what it’d been — the same as mine would be under similar circumstances: “Fook it.” Ah, the sins of the father.)

I assured the biddy that I would personally investigate the matter and that the Advocate would do whatever it could to keep the citizens and streets of Pomo safe, and hung up before she could fill my ear with any more bullshit. After which I fired a fresh gasper and administered a little more hangover medicine to the Kent insides. Shakier than usual, this A.M. I’d applied so much salve to the old wounds last night that I hadn’t even the haziest memory of where I’d gone after staggering out of Gunderson’s. Last clear image: Storm with her hand on Bigfoot’s thigh, crooning her old black magic into his hairy ear. Woke up this morning on the couch in my living room, my head bulging with the percussive beat of a Pomo Indian ceremonial drum. A hell of a toot, all right. But I’d had provocation. Yes, indeed. Didn’t I always?

When the salve began to work its restorative powers, I tucked the bottle into the desk-drawer cranny and leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes. The poisonous Mrs. Wilson’s voice echoed faintly in my mind. Her alleged child molester was, of course, Storm’s last conquest, the beast who’d wandered in out of the cold. On the hunt for nine-year-old brats after a glorious night of fooking with the Whore of Pomo? Not too bloody likely.

An interesting theory, though. The lumbering hulk with the Frankenstein phiz, an actual monster in monster’s disguise? Nice irony there. And what would dear Storm say if she learned that the hands that had groped her fair body were, in fact, bloody claws? Would she be horrified? Sickened enough to change her profligate ways? Kent should live so long. Still, it’d be a cunning little joke on her, would it not? Give her a twinge or two — let her feel what she made me feel. A joy to see her face when she received a different kind of prick than she was used to...

An idea began to form in the aching cells and ganglia behind my eyes. I’d promised the biddy the Advocate would take up cudgels on behalf of Pomo public safety; well, then, why not do just that? An article written in the usual hard-hitting Kent style: yellow journalism at its most inflammatory. Nothing slanderous; no direct mention of the horse-hung beast, no specific allusion to child molestation or other such nefarious acts. But just enough neatly and thinly veiled references to “strangers in our midst,” “drifters of frightening mien and presence,” “possible influx into our fair town of the more base criminal element,” etc., so that Storm would know exactly who had inspired the piece. Know, and wonder. And then along would come Kent with his little prick: “I hate to tell you this, Storm, but there’s a possibility your latest bed partner is, in fact, the worst sort of vicious pervert...”

Well, Kent? Do you really want to sink that low?

Does a Sasquatch crap in the woods? Did the old man sink into the depths of the Monongahela?

Ah, but timing was the key. The piece had to run in today’s issue in order for it to have the desired impact. Could it still be done?

I took a squint at the wall clock. Ten past ten. The main-section deadline was eight A.M., and the press run usually begins at ten sharp. Today, however, the schedule was off; the Advocate’s presses are old and cranky, in spirit not unlike the rag’s crusading editor, and they’d been down when Kent staggered into the building a little over an hour ago. Joe Peterson, the pressroom foreman, thought he’d have them ready and rolling by ten, but that estimate obviously had been off by at least ten minutes. The entire building rumbles and rattles when the big Goss press begins its iron-throated roar, and the place had been mercifully quiet unto the present moment.

I got on the horn to the pressroom. Joe was still working on the bugger; his assistant said he thought he’d have it ready to do by ten-thirty. I told him to tell Joe to hold the press run, that new photographic plates would have to be made of page one and page eight. Hot editorial to be substituted for one of the existing news stories, I said; I was working on it now. He grumbled some but he didn’t argue. Kent’s word is law in the bowels of the Pomo Advocate, if nowhere else. Besides, did anyone in this godforsaken county really give a flying fook if Friday’s No-Star Final was a couple of hours late being printed and delivered?

On one corner of my desk were placement dummies for each of the pages in the main news section. I hauled over page one for a quick scan. The usual boring crap; I could dump the entire lot, with the possible exception of the news item on a three-car pileup that had put a local walnut grower out of his misery. I settled on the longest piece, a dull rehash of facts on the upcoming sewer bond issue and its various pros and cons, poorly concocted by Jay Dietrich, the Advocate’s young Jimmy Olsen. Twenty column inches, twelve on the front page and the rest on page eight. Kent, a chip off the old cliché of fast-copy newspaper hacks, could knock off twenty column inches in half an hour without breaking a sweat. Twenty-five minutes or less if the immediate reward was another slug of old Doc Beefeater.

All systems go. ’Twas ordained that Pa Kent’s boy have his fun with Storm and the Incredible Hulk, else circumstances wouldn’t have conspired to make it possible. No es verdad?

I fired up the trusty Compaq and set to work. Words flowed from the first sentence; Kent hadn’t been this sharp and persuasive, this coherent, in many a moon. Did I feel even a moment’s guilt or reluctance? I did not. Hell, I might actually be performing a public service here. For all I knew, Storm’s latest conquest really was a monster in monster’s guise.

Madeline Pearce

I saw Jordan today.

Well, no, that’s not true. It wasn’t Jordan. But he does look like Jordan, the resemblance is quite striking—

No. Stop it now. He doesn’t look anything like Jordan. He’s a large man, that’s all, in the same way Jordan was large. And he startled me, appearing so suddenly from behind the marble obelisk that marks our family plot. The sun was in my eyes—

Yes, and for just a second I thought he was Jordan. I truly did. But only for a moment. Only long enough to say, “Oh! Jordan!”

He stopped and looked at me, and, of course, I realized then that he wasn’t really anyone I’d ever known. A large, homely stranger with pale eyes — no, nothing at all like Jordan. Jordan was so handsome, the handsomest man I’ve ever seen, especially when he was wearing his uniform. Is it any wonder I fell in love with him that summer?

“My name isn’t Jordan,” he said.

“Oh, I know,” I said. “But when you stepped out so suddenly, why, for a moment I thought you were.”

“I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“You didn’t, really. That’s ours, you know.”

“Yours?”

“The Pearce family plot. My father and mother are buried there. And my brother, Tom, and my sister Pauline, and both their spouses. Alice’s husband, too. Alice is my older sister. She and I are the only Pearces left now.” I smiled at him. “My name is Madeline, but everyone calls me Maddie.”

“How are you, Maddie?”

“Oh, I’m fine. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you before. Are you visiting relatives here, too?”

“In Pomo, you mean?”

“No, here. Does your family have a plot in Cypress Hill?”

“I don’t have a family,” he said. He sounded sad, and I felt sorry for him. Everyone should have a family.

“Visiting a friend, then?” I asked.

“No. I like cemeteries, is all.”

“So do I. So lovely and peaceful with all the shade trees and flowers.”

“It was more peaceful when I first got here.”

“It was? How is that possible?”

“Nobody around. Not that I mind your company.”

“That’s nice of you, young man. I don’t mind yours, either.”

He laughed. His laugh was a bit like Jordan’s, too, deep-chested and robust. “This part’s pretty old,” he said. “Can’t read the names on some of the stones and markers.”

“I find that sad, don’t you?”

“Yeah. I do.”

“Cypress Hill is more than a century old, you know.” I found myself smiling at him again. Such a nice young man. “Even older than me.”

“You’re not so old, Maddie.”

“Seventy-nine.”

“Is that right? I’d have said nine or ten years younger.”

“Well. You’re very gallant.”

“Me?” His laugh, this time, had a different pitch. “You’re the first person who ever called me that.”

“Well, I hope I’m not the last.”

“I hope so, too. But I’ll bet you are. First and last.”

“I come here every week to visit my family,” I told him. “Usually Alice drives me, but she had a doctor’s appointment today. A neighbor brought me; she’s waiting in the car. She wants me to come and live with her.”

“Your neighbor?”

“No, my sister. Alice. She thinks I’d be better off, because I’m getting on, but I’m not sure I would be. I can’t make up my mind. I’ve lived alone such a long time.”

“Widow?”

“Oh, no. I’ve never been married. Once I nearly was, but... God has His reasons.”

“Was it Jordan you almost married?”

“Yes, it was. How did you know?”

“What kept it from happening?”

“He went away. He was a soldier, and he went away to Korea. He promised he’d come back and we’d be married, but he never did.”

“Killed over there?”

“I don’t believe so, no. Someone would have sent word if he’d been killed. For years I was certain he’d come and things would be the same as they were before he went away. But he didn’t.” I sighed and looked past him at the sky. Most of the clouds were gone; it was going to be a lovely day. “It was all such a long time ago, Jordan.”

“I’m not Jordan. My name is John.”

“John. You know, John, you don’t look anything like him. Except for a moment, when I first saw you.”

He didn’t speak for quite some time, and then when he did he said the oddest thing.

“I’ll tell you something, Maddie,” he said. “If this were fifty years ago and I were Jordan, I’d have kept the promise he made. I’d’ve come back and married you. Then you wouldn’t have had to live alone all those years.”

We parted after that, but on the way home I thought about him and the odd thing he’d said. He isn’t Jordan, he’s nothing at all like Jordan except for his robust laugh, but I don’t know how I could have thought he was homely and that his eyes were strange. Actually, he was rather good-looking. Not nearly as handsome as Jordan, of course, but in his own way quite an attractive young man.

I told all of this to Alice when she called after her doctor’s appointment. “Oh, Maddie,” she said, “I think it’s time you came to live with me. Honestly, it’s time.”

I’ve made up my mind. I think so, too.

Earle Banner

I came home from Stan’s Auto Body fifteen minutes early, and Lori wasn’t there. No sign of her, no note, nothing fixed in the kitchen even though I’d told her I might be home for lunch. Testing her, and she’d flunked again. How stupid does she think I am?

Wouldn’t be surprised if she was out screwing that big bastard she was pawing in the Northlake last night. Two of ’em laughing together like they were old pals, her with her hand on his arm, and everybody in the place looking and whispering. Her and him whispering before that... making plans for today? Son of a bitch wanders into town and she’s all over him like a bad rash. She likes ’em big, big all over. Big horse with a cock to match. Just right for a cheating little mare in heat.

Sometimes, Christ, I think I oughta just shoot her. Let her have one in the head with my .38, put her out of her misery. That movie I seen once, the one about the dance contest back in the thirties, guy who wrote that had it right. They shoot horses, don’t they?

Lying to me, all the time lying. Wasn’t what it looked like, Earle. Nothing between me and him or anybody else, Earle. Why won’t you believe me, Earle. Lies. Lies and horseshit. Why do I keep letting her do it to me? I don’t love her no more. Good lay, but the world’s full of good lays. Why don’t I walk? I oughta walk. Oughta’ve smashed her lying mouth again last night and then walked, but no, I let her whine and plead me right out of it. Don’t hit me, Earle, you promised you wouldn’t hit me anymore. Like it’s my fault. Like I’m the one playing around all the time. Once in a while, sure, a man don’t let a chance for some strange tail pass him by when it wiggles right up and begs for it. Storm Carey — oh, yeah! Gave that high-and-mighty bitch what she was begging for. Somebody oughta give her what else she’s begging for, smash her high-and-mighty mouth for her. Women. Lousy, lying bitches. Better not hit me anymore, Earle, I won’t stand for you hitting me anymore. Yeah? But I’m supposed to stand for her spreading her legs for every big bastard comes along. Well, I had enough, too. Man can only take so much—

Here she comes. Damn little Jap car of hers sounds like a washing machine, hear it coming half a mile away. I hate that crappy Jap car. Why the hell wouldn’t she listen to me and buy American like I told her? Push that friggin’ car off a cliff someday. Yeah, and maybe with her in it.

I went into the living room and stood there so she’d see me soon as she walked in. She almost dropped the grocery sack she was carrying. Her eyes got wide and scared. Good. I liked that. I liked it just fine.

“Earle,” she said.

“Didn’t expect to see me, did you?”

“Well, you said you might be home for lunch—”

“But you took a chance I wouldn’t be.”

“A chance? I don’t know what—”

“You know what, all right. You know what.”

“Earle, please don’t be mad.”

“How was it, baby? Huh?”

“How was what? Safeway? That’s where I’ve been, I had to pick up a few things—”

“I know what you picked up. That big, ugly bastard and his horse cock, that’s what you went out and picked up.”

“Oh God! I swear I was at Safeway. Go down and ask Sally Smith, she was my checker, she’ll tell you—”

“Lie to me, you mean. All you bitches lie for each other. You think I don’t know how it is?”

“I’ve never cheated on you, Earle. Never, not even once. Listen to me, honey, please—”

“I’m through listening, you damn cheap little whore.”

“Stop it! Stop it!”

I stopped it, all right. I stopped it with my fist smack in her lying mouth.

George Petrie

The way out occurred to me right after lunch. At least that was when I was first conscious of it. It may have been there all along, planted days ago or even longer, hidden and growing under all the pressures piling up and rotting inside my head like a compost heap. Taking seed and finally poking up like a little green shoot into the light.

When I saw it I was thinking again about the stranger, John Faith. I hadn’t thought about much else all day, hadn’t done much work. Every time the doors opened I expected it to be him. He hadn’t showed yet, but he didn’t have to walk in waving a gun during business hours. He could be cleverer than that. Usually I arrive each morning half an hour before Fred and Arlene, enter through the rear door from the parking lot; it wouldn’t be difficult for Faith to find that out, lie in wait for me some morning. Or worse, come right to the house and take me hostage there. Either way, he could force me to let him into the bank, empty the vault when the time lock released, shut me inside, and be long gone by the time anyone found me.

Did he have any idea how much cash we keep on hand for a small-town bank? Quite a lot. Must be around $200,000 in the vault right now. Some of the bills are marked, and we keep a record of the serial numbers; we also have one of those indelible red-dye packets. But if Faith is a professional thief, he’ll know ways to avoid traps like that. All that money, $200,000 in cash — his to spend, free and clear.

Unless somebody else took it first.

And there it was, the way out: Unless I took it first.

The idea is absolutely terrifying. But it also excites me. Dangerous... yet not any more so than taking the seven thousand. And not any more frightening than the prison sentence I’m already facing. It’s my one and only chance at escape, freedom, the brass ring. No more Ramona, no more Pomo, no more worries. And $200,000 in tax-free, spendable cash!

But if I did dare to take it, where would I go? You can travel anywhere in the world on that much money, to someplace that doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the U.S. All you need is a passport. And I don’t have one. Forever dreaming of far-off, exotic places, but I’d never been to any of them, couldn’t afford it on my salary. I’ve never been anywhere. Forty-seven years old, lived my entire life in this town, never been any farther from it than Las Vegas.

I can’t take the chance on waiting anywhere near the three or four weeks it takes for a passport application to be processed. And even if I could, even if I was able to leave the country myself, how would I get the money out? Airport security at both ends, no matter what the destination; carry-on and checked baggage inspection on international flights because of the terrorism threat. And I couldn’t risk entrusting that much cash to the mails or one of the air-freight companies. If I had enough time I could convert it to bearer bonds or arrange for a wire transfer... Christ, what’s the use in thinking about what can’t be done? If I’m going to take the money, it has to be right away, before something happens or I lose what little nerve I have. Tonight, Friday night. Before I close the vault and set the time lock for nine-thirty Monday morning. Give me two and a half days to get far away from Pomo—

To where, damnit? Where can I go in this country that the FBI wouldn’t be able to track me down, sooner or later?

Forget it. Demented idea. You’d never get away with it.

Maybe I could. If I were very careful about where I went, how and when and where I spent the money... maybe I could beat the odds.

I couldn’t get it out of my mind. Prison is death, but so is Pomo, and all that cash is life. My last chance to live, really live. It was almost as if I were entitled to the money, as if it were mine already by right of custodianship. Mine, nobody else’s.

I wanted that $200,000 so badly, the hunger for it gave me an erection. Sitting there at my desk with a hard-on, wondering if I really did have the balls that went with it...

Richard Novak

The background check on John Faith didn’t satisfy me any more than my talk with him at the cemetery had. On the one hand, there were enough facts to provide a clearer picture of him. On the other hand, the details were sketchy and superficial and open to all sorts of interpretation.

Faith was his real name — John Charles Faith. Born in Indianapolis thirty-eight years ago, orphaned at an early age, no family other than his deceased parents. Grew up in a series of foster homes, ran away from the last one at age sixteen. Married once, for six months, a dozen years ago in Dallas; no children. No military service. Spotty employment record, mostly construction work, in a dozen midwestern, southwestern, and western states; the longest he’d held any job was sixteen months. No credit history: He’d never applied for credit cards or a home or automobile loan. Arrested seven times in seven different cities and towns for brawling, public drunkenness, public nuisance, the last more than five years ago; two convictions, thirty days’ sentence on each. Arrested once in Mesa, Arizona, on a charge of aggravated assault that was later dropped. No known criminal activities, associates, or links. No outstanding warrants of any kind.

Some citizens — Zenna Wilson, for instance — would look at that background and find plenty of fuel for ominous speculation. I looked at it and saw little to indicate he was much of a threat to the community at large. Unless he’d come here for a specific purpose, some sort of strong-arm action, maybe... but that was city stuff, L.A. stuff. What was there in Pomo to attract a ham-fisted urban tough? Who was there in Pomo to attract one? Then there was the fact that he was smarter than your average street thug. No formal education, streetwise enough, but there was a sharp intelligence behind that scarred face and bitter smile. Cunning, too? Some kind of wise-guy agenda?

Looking for peace and quiet, he’d said. He hadn’t had much of that the past two days, yet he was still here and planning to stay another night. Why?

What did he really want in or from Pomo?

Storm Carey

Harry Richmond telephoned, finally, at two-fifteen. “He just pulled in, Mrs. Carey.”

“I’ll be right over.”

“You want me to tell him you’re on the way?”

“No. Not unless he tries to leave again before I arrive.”

“Anything you say, Mrs. Carey.”

Anything for twenty dollars; that was what I’d paid him earlier to keep an eye out and make the call. I hung up without saying good-bye and hurried out to the BMW.

The distance from my house across the Northlake Cutoff to Harry Richmond’s resort is a little better than five miles; I drove too fast and was there in under ten minutes. Richmond was on the office stoop, waiting. He came down the steps to meet me as I stepped out of the car.

“Still here,” he said.

“Which cabin?”

He didn’t answer immediately. Leer on his fat lips and his eyes fondling my breasts. His tongue appeared like a pink slug wiggling out of a hole, flicking from side to side as if he were imagining my nipples and how they would taste. Imagine was all he would ever do. A sleazeball, Mr. Richmond. Soft-bellied, dirty-minded, and money-grubbing. The Hunger wanted nothing to do with men like him, thank God.

“I asked you which cabin, please.”

“Six. His car’s parked in front. Have fun, now.”

I took my eyes off him. The only way to deal with the Harry Richmonds of the world is to deny their existence whenever possible — and let them know you’re doing it. I detoured around him and along the side of the office building into the central courtyard. I could feel him watching me, the crawl of his gaze on my buttocks; the Hunger and I pretended his eyes were hands and that the hands belonged to John Faith.

Faith’s mode of transportation suited him perfectly: battered and scarred, powerful, a ride that would be fast and exciting and not a little dangerous. The comparison put a smile on my face as I stepped onto the tiny porch. But I wiped it off before I knocked; I wanted him to see a different Storm Carey this afternoon, serious and sober and just a touch contrite.

He was surprised when he opened the door, but it lasted for only a second or two. Then his expression reshaped into a faint upturning of his lips, lopsided and sardonic. “Well, well,” he said. “Storm, isn’t it?”

He seemed even bigger in the daylight. Bigger and uglier, with those pale eyes and facial scars. His shirt was off; hair grew in thick tufts on his chest, black flecked with gray, and underneath it muscles and sinews rippled, flowed, like a deadly undertow beneath a calm surface. Frightening and compelling at the same time. Touch him and you might be hurt, but that only made you want to touch him more.

The mouth, the nibbling lips began to move again inside me. “Yes. Storm Carey.”

“What do you want, Mrs. Carey?”

“I told you last night, I’m not married.”

“So you did.”

“Do you mind if I come in?”

“Pretty small, these cabins. Not much inside except a bed, and I don’t feel much like lying down.”

“That isn’t why I’m here,” I said.

“No?”

“No. I came to apologize. I shouldn’t have come on to you the way I did. I’m not usually so brazen.”

“Only when you drink too much, is that it?”

“I had too many martinis, yes. There are reasons, but I won’t bore you with them. The point is, I’m sober today. No gin on my breath, no Paris Nights perfume. Just me.”

“Just you. So why’re you here?”

“I came to apologize, as I said.”

“Why bother? Two strangers in a bar, that’s all.”

“I didn’t want to leave you with the wrong impression.”

“That matters to you? What I think?”

“Yes. I really wasn’t slumming last night. And I wasn’t after a quick lay with the first man who came along.”

“Right. But you find big men exciting.”

“Not all big men. The other thing I told you is true, too: I like your face.”

“That’s what booze does to you. Gives you hallucinations.”

“I still like it. Cold sober and in broad daylight.”

“Sure you do.” The words were skeptical, but the pale eyes had softened: He was looking at me in a new way. The way most men look at me, the way the Hunger wanted the chosen ones to look. Not quite convinced yet, holding back, but seeing me as a desirable woman for the first time. The Hunger and I can always tell when a man’s testosterone level is on the rise.

“I’m sincere,” I lied. “Why else would I be here?”

“All right, you’re sincere. I’m flattered.”

“Apology accepted, then?”

“Sure, why not. Accepted.”

“Well, that’s a relief.” I smiled. And hesitated just the right length of time before I said, “Suppose we start over in a more civilized fashion. Have dinner together tonight, get acquainted.”

“Dinner. You and me.”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere you like. Gunderson’s. Or there’s a good Italian restaurant on the south end of town.”

“You wouldn’t mind being seen in public with me?”

“Why should I mind? Is it really so hard for you to believe that I find you attractive?”

“Not if I stay away from mirrors.”

“Oh, come now. You’ve had your share of women, I’m sure.”

“My share. Too many I wish had been somebody else’s share.”

“I could say the same thing, since my husband died.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Six years. I still miss him.”

“Yeah.”

“I mean it, I do. Were you ever married?”

A long pause before he said, “Once.”

“Did you lose her, too?”

“She lost me. She liked gin and one-night stands better than she liked having a husband.”

“And that’s why you don’t care for the smell of gin on a woman’s breath. Or casual pickups in cocktail lounges.”

“That’s why.”

“About dinner tonight,” I said. “I promise not to drink gin. Or anything else except in moderation.”

His eyes moved over my face, a harsh, visual caress that made the Hunger tremble. Then he said, “I don’t think I’m up to being stared at in any more public places. Pomo’s not the friendliest town I’ve been in.”

“No, it isn’t. But you do have a certain... presence.”

He laughed. “Presence. That’s one of the things I’ve got, all right.”

“I could fix us something,” I said.

“At your house?”

“At my house. I’m a very good cook.”

“Uh-huh.”

“If you’re reluctant because of last night...”

He shrugged; the currents under his mat of chest fur quickened. And the mouth and tongue moved again inside me, nibbling and licking downward.

“You don’t have any other plans for this evening?”

“No.”

“Nothing better to do?”

“No.”

“Come for dinner, then. Or at least for drinks — wine, beer. Or something nonalcoholic, if you prefer.”

A few moments while he considered. And then a heightening of the suspense when he said, “Tell you what. Give me your phone number and I’ll call you later, let you know if I can make it.”

“How much later?”

“By six, if I’m coming. Okay?”

“Yes, fine.” I touched his arm, gently. The feel of his skin sent the Hunger into a momentary frenzy. “Please call and please come, John. You don’t mind if I call you John?”

“It’s my name.”

“I really would enjoy your company.”

“All right, Storm.”

The use of my first name was a good sign, very good. I wrote my address and telephone number on a slip of paper from my purse. He put it into his wallet rather than his pants pocket — another good sign. “Until later,” I said, and left him quickly. I could feel his eyes on my buttocks as I walked away — the third and best sign of all.

Out front, as I was opening the BMW’s door, Harry Richmond reappeared from under his rock. “That was sure quick, Mrs. Carey.” Smarmy, with the leer to underscore the words.

I denied his existence again. I started the car and drove away, the Hunger and I thinking that John Faith would surely call, both of us looking ahead to the evening — but not too far ahead, savoring the suspense and the various possibilities.

It was in my mind to bathe, a long, hot, scented soak in the tub, as soon as I arrived home. But I was forced to delay it because I had a visitor. Doug Kent was sitting on the front porch when I drove up, a martini in one hand, a cigarette burning in the other. Another glass and a half-full pitcher were on the wrought-iron table beside him.

“I took the liberty of making us a batch of Doc Beefeater’s favorite home remedy,” he said when I came up the stairs. He winked; he was already more than a little drunk, and in one of his crafty moods. “I know where you keep your spare key.”

“I’ll have to find a new place for it. What do you want, Doug?”

“Want? The pleasure of your company, of course. My good drinking buddy, Storm.”

“Not today.”

He pretended astonishment. “You don’t want a martini?”

“No. I’m off gin for a while.”

“I didn’t hear that. Sit down and have at least one to be sociable.” He patted a folded newspaper on the table next to the pitcher. “I brought you the latest Advocate, hot off the press.”

“Really, Doug, no. I have things to do.”

“Such as?”

“Private things.”

“Wouldn’t happen to involve Bigfoot, would they?”

“Bigfoot?”

“The strange beast in Gunderson’s last night.”

“His name is John Faith.”

“John Faith. My God.”

“Just leave everything on the table when you go. My spare key, too, if you haven’t already put it back where you found it.” I started past him to the front door.

He put out a restraining hand and said in a voice that was half irritated, half sly, “Better read my editorial, dear heart. Front page. Very edifying — one of my more provocative pieces, if I do say so myself.”

I might have gone on inside without responding; he can be exasperating at times. But he was holding the paper out toward me now and I didn’t like the expectant shine in his eyes. I took the paper and shook it open.

The editorial was at the top of the front page, under the headline STRANGERS IN OUR MIDST. “It has come to the attention of the Advocate that a new breed of visitor is on the prowl on the quiet streets and byways of Pomo. Not the benign vacationer and fisherman who are the lifeblood of our community, but a less wholesome variety of outsider — denizens of the urban jungle whose motives are at best shadowy and whose continued presence invites concern for public safety...” The rest of it was in the same inflammatory vein. And there was no mistaking the personal references toward the end, or the malicious intent behind them.

Doug was grinning at me when I finished reading. I threw the paper at him; it hit his arm and spilled some of his drink.

“You son of a bitch,” I said.

“Now, now, don’t be nasty—”

“Nasty! What’s the idea of writing crap like this?”

“To make the public aware of potential—”

“Bullshit. You did it to get back at me.”

“Why would I want to get back at you?”

“Because I won’t sleep with you. Because you think I slept with John Faith last night and you’re jealous. My God, you did everything but name him outright and brand him a homicidal maniac.”

“Well, he may be one.”

“... What are you talking about?”

“Seen following two little girls this morning. Stalking them. A pervert and a predator—”

“I don’t believe it. Who saw him? Who told you that?”

“I have my sources,” he said, but his grin had faded and so had his self-satisfied slyness. “Don’t know anything about the man, do you? Except how much of a beast he is in bed—”

“I didn’t sleep with him.”

“What?”

“I didn’t sleep with him, damn you. I tried to pick him up, but he turned me down and walked out. So you’ve played your vicious little game for nothing.”

He drained his glass, reached out to the pitcher, and slopped it full again. His hands weren’t steady.

“You’re disgusting, Doug,” I said. “A disgusting, mean-spirited, irresponsible drunk.”

My anger kindled anger in him. “You can’t talk to me that way—”

“I’ll talk to you any way I choose. That editorial gives me the right. You hate yourself and the whole world, but that’s not enough so you take it out on everybody else. Some pretty insufferable bastards live in this town, but I thought you were better than most. Kinder, at least. But you’re one of the worst. I don’t want anything more to do with you.”

“You don’t mean that, Storm.” Whining now.

“Don’t I? Get off my porch and off my property. And don’t come back, not for any reason. If you do, I’ll call the police and have you arrested for trespassing.”

For a few seconds he stared at me without moving. The hate in his eyes was for me now, as well as for himself. Then he guzzled his drink, lurched to his feet, and deliberately smashed the glass on the floor before brushing past me to the stairs, muttering, “Slut. Whore of Pomo.”

“That’s what it all comes down to, isn’t it?” I shut my ears to whatever else he had to say, and went inside to soak away my anger and wait for John Faith’s call.

Howard Wilson

Zenna started in as soon as I walked in the door. Didn’t ask how the Redding trip had gone, didn’t give me even a minute of peace. Mouth like a snake’s, that woman: Half the time when she opens it, venom comes spewing out. There’s an old proverb, or maybe a curse — Buddhist or something — that says gossips and troublemakers and hatemongers are doomed to spend eternity hanging by their tongues. If it’s true, a force somewhere already has a noose ready with Zenna’s name on it.

She wasn’t like that when we first started going together. Or if she was, I didn’t see it. Too much in love in those days, or maybe too blinded by testosterone. Good-looking woman and I wanted her badly, but she wouldn’t give in, made a lot of whispered promises about how it would be after we were married, and finally I was the one who gave in. And it wasn’t worth waiting for. I may’ve thought so back then, but not anymore. Except for Stephanie... but she’d come along too quick, and when the doctor told Zenna she couldn’t have any more, that was when she changed or got worse. Poking her nose in everybody’s business, yakking about people behind their backs, hunting dirt every place she went and with everybody she dealt with. Self-righteous, holier-than-thou. The worst kind of hypocrite.

More than ten years I’ve put up with it, mostly for Stephanie’s sake. But I work hard, too hard sometimes, and I don’t ask for much or want much out of life, and when I can’t even get the little I do ask... well, every man has his limits. Is it any wonder I’ve been driven past mine?

No, it isn’t. The wonder is that it didn’t happen sooner.

“... tell you, Howard,” she was prattling on now, “that man is one of Satan’s own. Something terrible will happen if he’s allowed to run loose on our streets. You mark my words.” Shrill, that voice of hers, like a razor slicing into my eardrums.

“What makes you so sure?” I asked wearily.

“If you’d seen him you wouldn’t have to ask that question. He has an evil face. Pure evil.”

“Man can’t help how he looks.”

“Howard, he’s been in Pomo two days now. And all he does is drive around in that old car of his, hardly saying a word to anybody. Just looking.”

“Looking at what?”

“Everything. Our house, this morning. Driving by so slowly he was hardly moving and staring right at our house.”

“So? Maybe he likes this kind of old-fashioned style—”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Howard! That’s not it at all. I know why he was staring. It gives me chills just thinking about it.”

“You figure he’s a rapist, I suppose? Hot after housewives?”

“You’re not funny, not one little bit. Rape is serious enough, but there are worse crimes.”

“Such as?”

“Kidnapping. Child molesting.”

“Jesus, Zenna!”

“Blaspheme all you like, but you weren’t here and I was. Our house wasn’t all he was staring at — he was staring at Stephanie and Kitty Waylon, too. Watching them on their way to school.”

She’d been saving that, easing into it for maximum effect; I could tell by the way she said it, with a kind of triumph mixed in with the fearful condemnation. Still, the words gave me a chill. I’d lost all love and respect for my wife, but Stephanie... I loved that kid more than anything else in the world.

“Are you sure? You weren’t just imagining the worst?”

“I was there, wasn’t I? I know what I saw. If I hadn’t stepped out on the porch just then, the Lord knows what might’ve happened.”

“What did you do?”

“Ran out and got the girls and drove them to school.”

“Did he say anything to them? Try to get them into his car?”

“No. They didn’t even know he was there.”

“What’d he do when you ran out?”

“Drove away. He saw me, that’s why.”

“Has he been back?”

“No, thank the good Lord. But the police haven’t seen fit to do their duty; he’s still in town, up to the devil knows what. Claire Bishop saw him less than an hour ago—”

“You called the police?”

“Well, of course I called the police.”

“And they said what?”

“What they always say. They’ll look into it. But I told you, they haven’t done anything — he’s still roaming around free.”

The edge was off my concern now. I’d been through this kind of thing too often with her — too damn often. Another false alarm, another pot of trouble stirred and boiled for little or no reason. The only danger Stephanie was likely in was from too much exposure to her mother.

I snapped open a beer, drank half before I lowered the can. It didn’t take away the sour taste in my mouth. “Made a bunch of other calls, too, I’ll bet. All your cronies.”

“Cronies? What kind of word is that to use?”

“The mayor? You call him, too?”

“No, I didn’t call Mayor Seeley.”

“The newspaper?”

That produced one of her tight little smiles. “Yes, I called the Advocate. I spoke to Douglas Kent himself. He listened to what I had to say. And he did something, at least.”

“What did he do?”

“Wrote an editorial,” she said, and the triumph was in her voice again-sharper this time, almost savage in its serf-satisfaction. She pushed today’s issue under my nose. “Right there on the front page. Read it, Howard, then you’ll see. Go ahead and read it.”

I read it. When I was done, I didn’t say a word. Zenna was waiting for me to make some comment, but if I’d opened my mouth I’d have said what I was thinking, and I wasn’t ready to do that yet. Soon, but not yet.

I’d have said, “This is why, Zenna, exactly why I’ve been driven way past my limits.” And then, with the same savage triumph in my voice, I’d have told her where I really was and what I was really doing last night when she thought I was sitting alone in a Redding motel room.

Audrey Sixkiller

Dick said, “I’m worried about you, Audrey. You sure you’re all right?”

It was what I wanted to hear. But I couldn’t help thinking: If you’re so worried, why didn’t you stop by instead of calling? Or at least call earlier?

“Don’t I sound all right?” I said. “I’m fine, really.”

“Maybe you’d better not stay there alone tonight.”

“Where would I go?” Your house?

“Stay with a friend.”

“I won’t be driven out of my home, not even for one night.”

“Then ask someone to come and stay with you.”

How about you? I almost said it. And at that, what came out was a variation: “Why don’t you come over after you’re off duty? I’ll make something to eat, and we can talk.”

“... I don’t know, Audrey. I’d like to, but I’m pretty tired and likely to be here late as it is. You know how Friday nights can be. I don’t want to make any promises I can’t keep.”

Oh, I knew how Friday nights could be. Lonely. And I knew excuses when I heard them, too. I had an impulse to ask him if he was too tired to accept an invitation from Storm Carey, but that would have been senseless and catty. I didn’t know he was seeing her again. Didn’t want to know if he was, not right now.

“Try to make it if you can,” I said. “For supper or... anytime.”

“All right. In any case, I’ll have one of the patrols keep an eye on your house.”

“Please, Dick, I really do want to see you... I need you tonight.” Shameless. How much plainer did I have to make it? Four-letter words? Storm Carey plain?

All he said was, “I’ll try.”

I went into the kitchen and brewed a pot of tea. The old, bitter Elem variety made from pepperwood leaves. William Sixkiller’s favorite cure-all for colds, fevers, sores, boils, and general malaise. When it was ready I carried a cup back into the living room. But instead of sitting down, I stood, sipping the tea in front of my memory cabinet.

After William Sixkiller died I gave most of the native artifacts he’d collected — woven sedge baskets, beadwork, bows and arrows, spear points — to the Pomo County museum. But I’d kept a few special items, favorites of mine and his. Looking at them, touching them, made me feel close to him. I slid the glass door open, ran fingers over the blackened bowl of the long pipe he’d carved from wild mahogany and smoked for forty years. He had helped to make the baby basket, too, that had been mine when I was an infant; the beads and bird feathers and other sleep-inducing charms attached to the hoop above the head were still bright after nearly three decades. The elderberry-shoot flute he’d played so sweetly had belonged to his grandfather. Even older was the musical bow made of a willow branch two feet long, with its twin sinew strings and the small stick you struck against the strings while you blew into the hollowed end of the bow; it dated to the days before the white man came, when, according to legend, the People were giants and the blood of the young warrior Kah-bel, slain in a battle over his beloved Lupiyoma, daughter of powerful Chief Konocti, painted the hills red and Lupiyoma’s tears of grief formed the mineral spring called Omaracharbe.

Wise Father, I thought, what am I going to do?

Well, I knew what he would say if he were beside me now. “Stop this foolish mooning over a white man,” he’d say. “Stop your white-acting ways. An Indian woman belongs with her own kind. If you wish to marry, choose a Pomo for your husband, or at least a man from another tribe.”

A man like Hector Toms, Father? Handsome young Hector, my first lover. Simple, gentle, one of the finest woodworkers in Pomo County until prejudice cost him three good jobs, one after the other, and bitterness and weakness made him turn — as brother Jimmy and so many others had — to alcohol and drugs. When I went away to school at UC Berkeley, Hector had left too, drifted to Sonoma County to pick fruit and then to San Francisco, Los Angeles, Dallas. A string of small and large cities, the new Trail of Tears. By then Native Americans were no longer being relocated to large urban centers by the Bureau of Indian Affairs — a well-intentioned (or was it?) program sponsored by the Eisenhower administration that was supposed to “mainstream” the Indian, end his reliance on Federal aid and benefits by providing employment training and housing in a more “acculturated” environment. Instead it succeeded only in uprooting 200,000 men, women, and children from their cultural and spiritual homes, dropping them into uncaring, alien cities and ultimately forcing some into menial jobs, the unintegrated majority into even more dependence on the government. The new Trail of Tears remained after the mainstreaming program was finally ruled a failure in the mid-seventies; it still remained today. And Hector had drifted onto it and was lost. The last I heard of him, years ago, he was said to be homeless in Chicago, a simple, gentle Elem woodworker with an alcohol and drug dependency living and dying alone on the cold, acculturated streets of a white man’s city.

Better off with my own kind? None of us is any better off with our own kind than we are with the white man’s kind, it seems. None of us.

And to that William Sixkiller might say, “Then don’t marry and bear children of any blood. Spend more time educating the white man’s children. Spend more time helping the cause of our people.” Yes, Father, except that I want a husband, children, and I already spend so much time teaching and in volunteer work I have little enough left for myself. Five days a week at the high school, adult education courses two evenings, graduate studies toward my master’s at Berkeley in the summer; the tribal council, aid and counseling service on the rancheria, one Saturday a month at the Indian Health Center in Santa Rosa. What more can I do?

My tea had cooled. I finished it, put the cup into the kitchen sink, and wandered into the back bedroom that had once belonged to Jimmy, that I had turned into my study. There were themes on the California missions to be corrected; I’d been doing that, with half my mind, when Dick called. I sat down and looked at the top one on the stack. The computer-generated type seemed blurred even after I rubbed at my eyes with a tissue.

Dick Novak isn’t the answer, I thought, more teaching and volunteer services aren’t the answers. What’s the answer?

Maybe there is none, at least not in this life. Live today, live tomorrow when it comes and not before. Events will happen, certain things will change — that’s inevitable. Some will be good; some will make you happy, if only for a while. Live for those.

William Sixkiller would approve of that philosophy. His daughter approved of it, too. But William Sixkiller was one of the spirits now and his daughter was still among the living, and the simple truth was, she wanted the white eyes so badly he was an ache in her heart and a fever in her soul...

I made an effort to concentrate on the themes. It took an hour to grade them all. Only three were worth more than a generous C, and half a dozen deserved F’s and received D’s instead. F grades were discouraged by Pomo’s civic-minded school board.

Time, then, to take the boat out. I’d been cooped up too long; alone on open water was much better than alone in a box. I was shrugging into my pea jacket when something smacked against the front door. I tensed until I remembered that this was Friday. Paper delivery, later than usual. I went and got it.

Front-page editorial: STRANGERS IN OUR MIDST.

What in God’s name is the matter with Douglas Kent? I thought angrily when I finished reading it. He might as well have headed this crap AN INVITATION TO VIOLENCE.

George Petrie

I did it.

Oh God, I did it, I took the money!

All afternoon I worried that I wouldn’t have enough nerve when the time came, the anxiety building as the bank clock crept toward six. Wasn’t until I said good night to Fred and Arlene and locked the rear door behind them that I knew for sure I was going through with it. And then, even while I was doing it, it all seemed to be some kind of waking dream — everything happening in slow motion, real and yet not real. Half of me watching the other half: Empty the vault of every bill except one-dollar notes. Carry the bags to the rear door. Set the time lock and close the vault. Tear up the printed list of serial numbers and flush the scraps down the toilet. Falsify some of the set of numbers on the computer and consign the rest to cyberspace limbo. Unlock the back door, make sure the lot was clear. Carry the bags out two at a time. Relock the door and get into the car. Seemed to take hours; my watch said forty-five minutes. Three quarters of an hour, 2,700 seconds, to steal $200,000.

I’m still sitting here behind the wheel, another three or four minutes gone, waiting for my hands to stop shaking. I need a drink desperately, but I don’t dare stop anywhere before I get home. I feel numb, awed. All that money stuffed into six plastic garbage bags, the kind we use in the paper-towel hampers in the bathroom. Garbage bags! I want to laugh, but I’m afraid if I do I won’t be able to stop.

Calm, everything depends on remaining calm. Can’t stay here much longer... suppose a patrol car comes in and the officers see me sitting alone in the dark? Mustn’t do anything to call attention to myself, arouse suspicion. If only my hands will steady enough so I can drive. Once I’m home, with a stiff jolt of scotch inside me, I’ll be all right. Even if Ramona notices how wired I am, it won’t matter. Won’t be there long, just long enough to pack. One thing worked out, the story I’ll tell her: Have to drive down to Santa Rosa; Harvey Patterson called and the real-estate deal may be on again after all, could mean big money for us, lot of details to be worked out in a hurry so I’ll probably be gone all weekend, might even stay over until Monday morning and then drive straight up to open the bank. Maybe she’ll believe it and maybe she’ll think I’m up to something, but she won’t try to stop me. Questions, yes, Ramona the parrot with her bright little bird eyes, but I can handle her questions. She won’t tell anybody I’m away for the weekend — I’ll swear her to secrecy, claim the real-estate deal has to remain hush-hush for the time being. She’ll sulk, but she’ll do what I say. I don’t have anything to worry about from Ramona.

On the road no later than eight-thirty, out of this damn prison for good. But I won’t head south. East. Spend the night somewhere beyond Sacramento, up in the Sierras. Not sure yet where I’ll go from there, but I’ll have plenty of time to make up my mind. Have to make it as far away from Pomo as possible by Monday morning, that’s definite. Means a lot of driving, careful driving with the precious cargo in the trunk, but that can’t be helped. I’ll manage. Have to get rid of the Buick at some point, but maybe that can wait until I get to wherever I’m going. Some place I can settle in unobtrusively for a long, quiet stay. Change my appearance before I get there, too — dye my hair, buy a pair of glasses. Then rent a house or cabin with no close neighbors, hole up for a month, two months, even longer just to be safe. The FBI investigation has to’ve been back-burnered by the first of the year. Then I can travel again, go somewhere warm, somewhere exciting, Florida Gold Coast maybe, where I can start spending some of the money. Start living again.

But that’s all in the future. First things first. Start the car, drive away from here, drive home. Can’t go anywhere without going home first.

Christ, why won’t my hands stop shaking?

Trisha Marx

Out there in the dark, Anthony kept shouting my name. He’d sounded annoyed at first, then kind of exasperated; now he was just pissed. He had a flashlight from the car and he kept shining it here and there over the trees and bushes, trying to find me. But he didn’t even come close to where I was hiding under a big pile of dead branches and oak leaves.

“Irish, goddamn it! You better come out, man. I’ll leave you here, I mean it, I’ll drive off and you can freakin’ walk home. That ain’t gonna make things any better. Trish? Shit, Trisha!”

The flashlight beam danced and stabbed. It was hard, white, like frozen light, and it kept cutting weird wedges and strips out of the dark — parts of tree trunks and limbs, ferns, rocks, like pieces in the magazine montage on the wall of my room. Don’t like all those pieces... I’m still stoned. Three joints, way too many. Why’d I think it’d be easier to tell him if I smoked some dope first? Stupid. Weirded me out and made him horny. Come on, querida, I’m getting lover’s nuts. Oh yeah? Come on, Anthony, I’m already pregnant with your kid. Wham. No more lover’s nuts, huh, Anthony?

It ain’t mine. I always used a rubber.

At least one time you didn’t.

It ain’t mine. You been screwing somebody else.

That’s the lowest, Anthony. You know better.

I don’t want no freakin’ kid!

You think I do?

Get rid of it.

No.

You want me to marry you? No way, man.

What happened to “I love you, Trish”? Just bullshit to get into my pants, right?

I ain’t getting married. Lose the kid or we’re quits.

I knew it. I knew it’d be like this. I knew it!

Slapped him, hard, harder than I ever thought I could hit anybody. And then out of the car, into the woods. And here I am.

“One more minute, Trisha. That’s all you got.”

Jerking light, pieces of the night. But I couldn’t see him at all. Good. I never wanted to see his crappy, lying face again.

“I mean it. One minute and I’m outta here, I’m history.”

Fuck you, Anthony. You’re already history.

I lay there shivering, waiting for him to go away, get the hell out of my life. The wind up here on the Bluffs was like ice, even down low to the ground where I was. The water in the lake must be like ice, too. Black ice. Deep, black ice.

“Okay! That’s the way you want it, man, it’s on your head. I’m gone.”

The light blinked out. So dark again I couldn’t see a thing through the leaves, not even the shapes of the oak branches swaying in the moany wind overhead. But I could hear him crunching around out there, heading back to his junky TransAm. Door slam, revving engine. Light again, spraying the trees, spraying the bare ground out toward the cliff edge as he swung away onto the road. Run, you asshole, go ahead and run. And the light faded away and he was gone and I was alone. Stoned and pregnant and all alone.

He wouldn’t come back. If I knew him, he’d go find Mateo and the two of them’d buy some coke or crank and really get whacked. If I knew him... only I didn’t. I thought I did and how he felt about me, but I was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. My mistake. My kid. All alone.

“I don’t care,” I said out loud. “Doesn’t matter. I don’t give a shit about anything anymore.”

Then I started to bawl. I couldn’t help it. I lay there bawling my head off, with my knees pulled up against my chest, and I couldn’t stop — for the longest time I couldn’t stop. Couldn’t suck in enough air and then I got too much and started to hiccup and then finally I stopped hiccuping and just lay there, tear-wet and cold and empty.

Empty, man.

After a while I crawled out from under the leaves and dead stuff and stood up, all shaky and feeling even more weirded out than before. That wind was really icy. Black ice up here, black ice down in the lake. The open part of the Bluffs was off to my left and I went in that direction, toward the road. Once I tripped over something and fell and skinned my knee, but I didn’t care about that either. I wasn’t thinking about anything anymore. I felt so empty and weird. When I came out of the trees I saw the road, empty like I was, leading down, but I didn’t go that way. Instead I walked out toward the cliff edge. I still wasn’t thinking about anything.

Then I was standing right on the edge, where the ground falls away sharp and straight down. Seventy or eighty feet straight down. The wind shoved at me like hands, so hard I could barely keep my balance. Over on the far shore the town lights and house lights winked and shimmered, reflecting off the black ice. Anthony was over there by now, maybe. And Daddy... Oh, God, how could I tell him? He’d have a hemorrhage. I quit looking at the lights and looked straight down instead. Some rocks down there, in among the cottonwoods and willows... never mind that. Look at how shiny the black ice is, out away from the shore. Lean forward so you can see better. Heights don’t bother me. Deep, black ice doesn’t bother me either. I felt so weird. The dope... Anthony... the baby... my trashed life. But I wasn’t afraid. Shiny, black ice. Lean out just a little farther—

Noises behind me, quick and close and louder than the wind. And somebody said, “You don’t want to do that.”

I almost lost my balance turning to look. My foot started to slip. But he was almost on top of me then, a big, black shape that caught my arm and yanked me back and swung me around before he let go. Then he was the one standing at the edge, with his back to it, like a wall that had sprung up there.

“Pretty close call,” he said. “You ought to be more careful.”

I couldn’t see his face too clearly. All I could see was that he was big, real big. My arm hurt where he’d grabbed me.

“Who’re you?” My voice sounded funny, like somebody pulling up a rusty nail. “Where’d you come from?”

“I’ve been up here awhile. Where’d you come from? The car that drove off a few minutes ago?”

“Doesn’t matter.” I was still thinking about black ice, but I didn’t feel so spacey anymore. The weed high was starting to wear off. “Why’d you grab me like that?”

“I didn’t want you to fall.”

“Why should you care?”

“Why shouldn’t I? What’s your name?”

“Trisha.”

“Trisha what?”

“Marx, okay? What’s yours?”

“John Faith.”

I rubbed my arm. “You’re the guy in the Porsche. At the Chevron station yesterday.”

“That’s right.”

“Stranger everybody’s talking about.” I guess I should’ve been afraid then, on account of the things people were saying about him, but I wasn’t. Not even a little.

He didn’t say anything, so I said, “What’re you doing up on the Bluffs?”

“Watching the lights.”

“What lights?”

“Around the lake.”

“By yourself? What for?”

“Safer than spending the evening with an armful of potential trouble.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind. You have a fight with your boyfriend?”

“More than a fight. He’s not my boyfriend anymore. I hate his guts.”

“That’s the way you feel now. Tomorrow...”

“Tomorrow I’ll hate him even more.”

“Why? He do something to you?”

“He did something, all right. I wish I could do something to him.” Like cut off his lover’s nuts.

“What’d he do, Trisha?”

“He got me pregnant.”

I don’t know why I told him. A guy I didn’t know, a stranger everybody was saying was some kind of criminal. I don’t think I could’ve told Selena straight out like that, and she’s my best friend. But I wasn’t sorry I told him. It was like spitting out something that was choking you.

“And he doesn’t want to marry you, right? That’s why he’s gone and you’re still here.”

“Yeah.”

“Your parents know yet?”

“No. My mother wouldn’t care if she did — she’s been gone three years and she didn’t even send me a card on my last birthday. Daddy cares, but he’ll have a hemorrhage when he finds out.”

“Maybe he’ll surprise you.”

“Doesn’t matter anyway,” I said. “I don’t care. About the kid or his asshole father or what happens to me. I just don’t give a shit anymore.”

“Sure you do. You care, Trisha.”

“Oh, right, you know more about me than I do. What makes you so smart?”

“Hurt inside, don’t you? Worst pain you’ve ever felt?”

“No. Yeah. So what if I do?”

“Then you care. People who don’t care don’t hurt. Think about it. The more you hurt, the more you care.”

“I don’t want to think about it. All I want is to stop hurting.”

“That’s what everybody wants. Bottom line. Everybody hurts, everybody wants to stop hurting. Trick is to find a way to do it without hurting anyone else. Or yourself.”

“Isn’t any way.”

“Not for some. But you’re young. You’ll be all right if you don’t let yourself stop caring.”

I was shivering again, hard. That wind was really cold. And the high was all gone, and most of the weirdness, and some of the emptiness. I could still see the lake down below, the deep, black ice; then I shook my head and the shiny image went away. I hugged myself.

“How about if I give you a ride home?” John Faith said. “My car’s off the road a ways and the heater works good.”

Don’t ever accept rides from strangers. How many times had that been drummed into my head? But I didn’t hesitate. He didn’t scare me; I wasn’t scared of him at all.

I said, “All right,” and went with him into the dark.

Zenna Wilson

The lord works in mysterious ways, His wonders to perform. For the second time that day He put me in a position to bear witness to the evil in our midst and do something about it.

I had just finished checking the chain and dead-bolt locks on the front door, and was standing by the window, testing its catch, when I heard a car outside. It was noisy, noisy-familiar, and when I parted the drapes I saw the disreputable car of that stranger, John Faith, rattle by and swing to the curb a short distance up the street. The passenger door flew open almost immediately and a young girl jumped out and ran off. It gave me quite a shock. The more so when I recognized Trisha Marx as soon as she passed under the streetlamp over there.

Her house was where she ran to, three north of ours. I expected the bogey to leap out and chase after her, but he didn’t. Took him by surprise, no doubt, and he knew he couldn’t catch her. In any event, he sat inside with the headlights still on and the engine puffing out exhaust fumes until Trisha disappeared around back. Then he U-turned and drove off the way they’d come.

Another outrage, pure and simple. Had he put his huge, dirty hands on that poor child? Well, he must’ve tried; otherwise why would she jump out and run home the way she had? She’s only seventeen. And poorly taught and plain foolish, I say, to let a man like that get her into his car in the first place.

I hurried into the kitchen. Stephanie was upstairs in her room, working on her papier-mâché animals, and Howard was already in bed even though it was only a little past nine; tired out from his trip and in a snippy mood because of it. A good thing he wasn’t down here, or he’d have tried to stop me from calling Trisha’s father, which is what I did that very minute. My Howard is a good man, a good provider, but he’s too easygoing, too trusting, and he expects me to bury my head in the sand the way he does. But I was born with a mind of my own. Someone has to keep vigil and speak out when the need arises, and I don’t see why it shouldn’t be me.

Brian Marx was home for a change, not off throwing good money after bad at the Brush Creek Indian Casino like he does most Friday and Saturday nights. He has a gambling problem — gambling is a sin, no matter what the Indians would have us believe; our pastor has spoken out against it on more than one occasion — and that’s one of the reasons Trisha is as wild as she is. That mother of hers is another, running off the way she did three years ago. And with a Jew, at that! Anyhow, I told Brian just what I’d seen, without mincing words, and of course he flew into a rage. He said he’d talk to Trisha and find out what happened. He said some other things, too, but I turned a deaf ear to them; Brian Marx has a foul mouth when he’s upset or has had too much to drink. I asked him to let me know as soon as he knew the whole story, but he hung up without saying he would or wouldn’t and without so much as a thank-you. Not that I blame him for being rude, under the circumstances.

If the bogey did try to attack Trisha, I wonder if Brian will go after him with a gun? He has two or three rifles and a pistol, and he’s hotheaded. (A wonder he didn’t go after Grace and her Jew when they ran off together.) Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, but in a case like this, with the police not willing or able to do their job, well, Brian would have every right to do what ought to be done. Yes, and he’d be forgiven at the Judgment, unless I miss my guess.

Well, whatever happens, it’s out of my hands now. I’ve done my duty and the Lord’s work not once but twice today. If I don’t hear from Brian by morning, I’ll call him at home again or at Westside Lumber where he works. I’m entitled, if anyone is, to a full account of that poor girl’s ordeal.

Lori Banner

It was about ten-fifteen when John Faith walked into the North-lake. We weren’t busy; eight or nine customers is all. But everybody stopped talking when they saw him, just like last night, only this time the stares were more hostile, and in one booth there was some angry muttering. I was the only one there who didn’t wish he was somewhere else, like in jail or lost in the Sahara Desert — and for no good reason.

He walked back to the counter and sat on the last stool nearest the entrance. That was Darlene’s station, but when I asked her if I could take him she gave me one of her looks and said, “Better you than me. I’d rather stay away from trouble.” She was still miffed; she’d started ragging on me as soon as she saw the new cut and swelling on my lip, and I stood it as long as I could and then told her to shut her face and mind her own business. I didn’t need any more lectures. Not tonight, I didn’t.

I put on a big smile as I approached John, even though the stretch hurt my lip. Most of it was for him, but partly it was for the customers with the narrow eyes and narrower minds. I wanted them to know there was one person in Pomo who didn’t believe all the crap she read in the newspaper.

“Hi there,” I said. “Cold night, huh?”

“Not so warm in here, either.”

“You shouldn’t let ’em get to you.”

He shrugged. “Coffee. Black.”

“Nothing to eat?”

“I’m not hungry.”

I poured a cup and set it in front of him. He took a couple of sips, and when I kept on standing there he said, “World’d be a hell of a lot better place if people quit hurting people and left each other alone.”

“Is that a hint for me to go away?”

“No. I didn’t mean it that way.”

“Editorial’s bothering you, huh?”

“Editorial?”

“I wouldn’t take it too personally. Doug Kent’s a drunk and a jerk and he likes to stir things up.”

“... What’re we talking about here?”

“The editorial in this week’s Advocate. Didn’t you see it?”

“No. Something about me?”

“Well, he didn’t mention you by name. I think there’s a copy around somewhere if you want to read it.”

“Pomo, the friendly town that just keeps on giving. No, I don’t want to read it. I can imagine what it says.”

“So if it wasn’t the editorial, what’d you mean about—” I got it then, from the way he was looking at me, and without meaning to I lifted a finger to touch my sore lip. “Oh, this.”

“Pretty swollen.”

“Not so bad. It just needs some more ice on it.”

“That kind of thing happen very often?”

“Why do you want to know?”

“Just asking.”

“Well, it’s none of your business, John. And anyway, maybe I walked into a door.”

“Sure. And maybe you ought to see somebody about it.”

“A doctor? For a fat lip?”

“I didn’t mean a doctor.”

“I know what you meant,” I said. “I guess you think I’m pretty dumb, huh? Just another dumb coffee-shop waitress.”

“I don’t think you’re dumb, Lori.”

“Well, you’re right, I’m not. I didn’t have to take this kind of job, you know. I could’ve been a nurse. That’s what I wanted to be — a registered nurse. I almost was, too, and I’d’ve been a good one. I had nearly all the training.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing happened. I quit the program.”

“Why?”

I met Earle, that’s why. He didn’t want me to be a nurse; he didn’t like the hours, he said, or the smell of hospitals and medicine, or women in starched, white uniforms. I loved him so much in those days, before the hitting started. I’d have done anything for him in those days, anything he wanted.

“I just quit, that’s all.” A guy in one of my booths called my name; I pretended I didn’t hear. I asked John, “You want a warm-up on your coffee?”

“No, thanks.”

I went halfway down the counter and then turned around and came back. “You know something, John?”

“What’s that?”

“You were right, what you said before. People ought to stop hurting each other and everybody leave everybody else alone.”

“It’ll never happen,” he said.

“Some of us can make it happen.”

“And some of us can’t. Not in this lifetime.”

I really saw him then, for the first time. How sad he was inside. Big overgrown hunk like him, and inside he was as sad and unhappy as a lost little boy.

Brian Marx

I shouldn’t’ve gone after him the way I did, I guess. But Jesus, Trisha is just a kid. And she had her bedroom door locked and wouldn’t open it, wouldn’t tell me how she came to be in that bastard’s car or where Anthony Munoz was or why he hadn’t been the one to bring her home — none of it. Too upset; I could hear her bawling in there. I’m no good with girls, I never know how to handle them when they get emotional. Damn Grace for running out on me the way she did. To hell and gone in Kansas City now, married to that union jerk she met down at Kahbel Shores, living the good life, and me stuck here with all the responsibility.

All I knew was what Zenna Wilson told me on the phone, and that had me half nuts, imagining the worst. So finally I ran out and jumped in the pickup and started driving. Lucky for me I didn’t think to take my pistol along. Shape I was in, I might’ve started waving it around when I found Faith and shot him or somebody else by accident, the way it can happen when a man’s armed and mad as hell and not thinking straight. Then what’d’ve happened to Trisha?

It didn’t take me long to run him down. I barreled up Main and out along the highway, no reason for going that way except I’d heard he was staying up at Lakeside Resort, and as I was passing the Northlake Cafe I spotted his car in the lot. Parked there big as life — you couldn’t mistake a low-slung job like that, in such a beat-up condition. I slammed on the brakes, skidded into the lot, and bulled inside the cafe.

I saw him right off. Sitting alone at the counter, hunched over a cup of coffee. Lori Banner was hovering around near him, saying something as I rushed up, but she quit talking and backed off a step when she saw my face. I’d heard Faith was a big mother, and he was. Hard-looking. But I didn’t care right then.

I caught his shoulder and pulled him around on the stool and got down in his face, so close I could’ve spit on the scar like a dead white worm across his chin. And I said, loud, “What’s the idea messing with my daughter?”

It got real quiet in there after that. That sudden quiet like when you mute the volume on the TV. Faith didn’t flinch or jerk away. He just scowled up at me. Man, he had eyes like the guy used to play for the Bears, Mike Singletary. Linebacker eyes.

We stayed like that, eye-wrestling, for maybe five seconds. Then he said, “Who the hell’re you?”

“Brian Marx. I asked you a question, mister.”

“Marx. Right. Trisha’s father.”

“Yeah. What were you doing with her tonight?”

“Bringing her home. She needed a ride, and I gave her one.”

“Ride from where?”

“Across the lake. High ground over there.”

“The Bluffs? You and her... that’s a friggin’ lover’s lane! She’s a kid, for Chrissake!”

Everybody in the place was gawking at us. Muttering now, too. A guy behind me said something that sounded like, “Kent was right... worse than anybody figured.”

Lori said, “Don’t make trouble in here, Brian,” and I gave her a quick glance. She was one to talk about trouble. Her lower lip was puffed up; Earle had belted her again.

“She’s right,” Faith said. “Suppose we take this outside.”

Before I could say anything he shoved off the stool and brushed past me and walked out. Ignoring me and walking fast, so I had to trail after him like a goddamn dog. That was what made me lose it. I wanted to hit him, bad, and as soon as we were in the parking lot and he turned around, I went ahead and let him have it. Nailed him under the eye with my right and knocked him on his ass. Some of the others were out there, too, by then, and a guy I didn’t know said, “Yeah! Serves the bastard right.”

But Faith got up fast, and I set myself because I thought he was gonna bull-rush me. Wrong. All he did was flex his shoulders, then let his meat hooks hang down loose at his sides.

“I won’t fight you, Marx.”

“What’s the matter? Afraid of it?”

“There’s no reason to fight. The only thing I did was give your daughter a ride home.”

“Says you.”

“What does she say?”

“Never mind that. Answer what I asked you before. What were you doing with her on the Bluffs?”

“I wasn’t with her. She was there with her boyfriend.”

“Yeah? What were you there for?”

“No reason. Driving around, taking in the sights.”

The mouthy guy in the bunch said, “Horseshit. Out hunting young girls—”

Faith glared his way and he shut up. Then he said to me, “She had an argument with the boyfriend and went and hid in the woods. He drove off and left her.”

“And you found her, huh?”

“If you want to put it like that. I heard him yelling for her, saw her wandering around after he left. She was pretty shaken up. I talked to her, calmed her down, gave her a ride home. That’s all.”

“If that’s all, why’d you stop down the street from my house? Why’d she jump out of your car and run away? You try to put your hands on her?”

“No. Who told you she ran away? Not Trisha.”

“Don’t matter who told me.”

“It matters,” he said, “because it’s a lie. She didn’t run, she walked fast. And I stopped where I did because that’s where she told me to stop.”

“She locked herself in her room, she was crying...”

“I told you, she had a blowup with her boyfriend. Ask her, why don’t you? She’ll tell you the same thing.”

Some of the crazy anger was starting to seep out of me. He was an ugly bugger and I wanted to keep on hating his guts, but I couldn’t seem to do it. Didn’t sound like he was lying. That damn Zenna, twisting things, making them seem worse than they were... I should’ve known you can’t believe half of what she says. And Anthony Munoz, no-good, smart-ass spic... driving off and leaving her was just the kind of thing he’d do. How many times had I warned her about him, that he’d get her in hot water someday if she didn’t watch out?

Yeah, Faith was telling the truth. He wasn’t any coward either. He could’ve taken me apart anytime he wanted to. I knew it then and everybody else that’d come out of the cafe knew it, too. They all kept their distance, and not even the mouthy guy had anything more to say.

I wasn’t yelling anymore when I said, “All right, man. But Trisha better not tell me you did anything but what you said — talked to her and took her straight home. She better not tell me you put so much as a finger on her.”

“She won’t,” Faith said, “because I didn’t.”

“All right, then. All right.”

And that was the end of it. I didn’t say I was sorry for popping him, and he didn’t ask me to. We didn’t say anything more to each other. He went to where Lori was and took a couple of bills out of his wallet and handed them to her. “For the coffee,” he said. Then he said, “See? Not in this lifetime,” and he walked away to his Porsche and fired it up to a roar and burned rubber all the way out into the street. Pissed. Holding it in check but mad as hell underneath. Yeah, he could’ve kicked the holy crap out of me if he’d wanted to.

So why hadn’t he?

The mouthy guy came up next to me and breathed onions in my face. “Maybe that bastard didn’t mess with your kid,” he said, “but he’s trouble anyway. Big trouble.”

“How do you know so much?” Lori said to him. She sounded pissed, too. “He never bothered anybody. All he wants is to be left alone.”

“Yeah? What you want to defend him for?”

“What you want to condemn him for?”

“You like his looks, Lori?”

“Better than yours,” she said. “His personality, too.” And she stormed back inside.

The guy said, “Women.” He laid a hand on my arm. “You read the paper tonight? Kent’s right. Stranger’s up to no good, else what’s he hanging around town for?”

I shrugged his hand off and didn’t answer. I was feeling crappy about the whole business, thinking that I shouldn’t’ve chased after Faith the way I did, should’ve talked to Trisha first. It all left a bad taste in my mouth. Right then it did, anyway.

But as I was driving home I got to thinking that it wasn’t all my fault. Faith had some blame coming, too. He shouldn’t’ve been hanging around up on the Bluffs at night, not for any reason. He shouldn’t be hanging around Pomo, either. Hell, he shouldn’t’ve come here in the first place. Maybe Kent and the mouthy guy were right after all. Maybe this Faith was up to no good. Nasty-looking type like him, with his linebacker eyes... yeah.

What else except up to no damn good?

Storm Carey

All evening I’ve had the strangest feeling. I can’t quite define it, except as a kind of... waiting. The kind you feel when you know someone is coming to see you, someone you’ve been expecting for a long time and the arrival is imminent. Anticipation. Not really intense, lacking eagerness, and yet... I don’t know, I can’t describe it. I can only feel it, sense the immediacy.

It isn’t John Faith I’m waiting for. At least I don’t believe it is. The feeling started after six, after the deadline for his call, and I’ve heard nothing from him since then. Not coming. Changed his mind. The Hunger and I were disappointed at first, but not as much as we would have been on another night. Now it seems not to matter at all.

Who is it we’re waiting for?

One of the other surrogates, incubuses? But none of them have called; there were no casual meetings today, not a word or a smile in the past few days that could be mistaken for invitation or encouragement. And I’m almost always the one to take the initiative, make the arrangements. The Hunger doesn’t permit unannounced drop-ins. Anticipation, enough time for the mouth and tongue to indulge their maddening foreplay, is an essential part of its need.

But the anticipation tonight is different. The mouth is closed, the tongue hidden, the lips still. Different and asexual, this waiting.

For what, then?

Soon. The word seems to sing in my mind. Soon.

I wander through the house, aimlessly. I haven’t eaten since noon, but I have no appetite. Or any interest in alcohol. The house is quiet, almost breathlessly so, as if it, too, is waiting, yet I also have no interest in music or radio or television noise. I prefer the silence. I turn on lights and turn them off again; I prefer the shadows.

Such a strange feeling...

In Neal’s study I gently run my fingers over the glass-smooth surface of his cherrywood desk, his leather “thinking” chair. I look at the Brueghel prints on the walls, the cabinets filled with his collection of antique snuffboxes and bottles. All just the same as it was when he was here. Carefully preserved: I could never bring myself to change or remove any of it. A kind of shrine — memories of his life. Memento mori — reminders of his death.

I go upstairs to the bedroom we shared, and standing in the darkness I look at the bed I’ve shared with so many others. Faceless, all of them; it’s Neal I see lying there, arms outstretched, beckoning to me. I want to cry, but there are no tears left. I turn away.

Outside in the night, there is the sound of a car. Light flashes across the window curtains as it comes uphill fast.

I hurry to the window, peer out. The car stops in that moment, in the shadow of the big cedar that towers above the garage. Its headlights wink out. No moon tonight, and restless clouds hiding the stars: I can’t tell whose car it is, or even if it’s one I’ve seen before. Nor can I quite make out the person who slips quickly through the driver’s door.

But I know who it is.

All at once my mind seems to open up like a night flower, and clearly, as if I’ve been gifted with second sight, I know who is out there and why I’ve felt so strange and what it is the Hunger and I have been waiting for, not just tonight but the two thousand previous nights. I know exactly what will happen in just a little while. I see the face close to mine, I hear the exchange of harsh words, I feel the outsurge of violent anger wash over me. An arm rises, something glints in soft light, the arm whips down—

Sharp knocking on the front door.

Inside me the mouth is active again, nibbling, licking downward in what quickly grows into a frenzy. More urgent than ever before, with a need so great it is unbearable. But the need is not for sex. The Hunger has never really been sexual at all; I understand that, too, now. From the first it was searching for another kind of release, another kind of fulfillment — I’ve been searching for them, yearning for them ever since Neal left me. Everything I’ve done in the past six years has been motivated by a single desire that I could neither admit to nor consummate on my own.

I yearn to go where Neal has gone. I ache to join him in the darkness or the light.

The knocking grows louder, more insistent. But I am not afraid; a feeling of peace seems to be settling into me. I smile as I move away from the window. Face the truth, embrace it, and it will set you free.

I make my way downstairs, not quite hurrying, and unlock the door. And I face Death standing there on the other side. And I say, smiling, “Come in.”

Richard Novak

I was halfway up the drive when John Faith came running out through the front door of Storm’s house.

The cruiser’s headlights picked out his car first, parked under the tree near the garage, and then him as he tore across the porch and off the stairs in one leap. The lights pinned him as he hit the path. His stride broke and he threw up an arm against the glare, took another couple of faltering steps. I jabbed the switch for the bar flashers, and when they came on, smearing the darkness with swirls of clotted red, he froze in a crouch with one leg bent and his eyes wide and shining, like a trapped animal’s.

I put the cruiser into a sliding half turn, jammed on the brakes; the rear end stopped a few inches from the Porsche’s, blocking it. My service revolver was in my hand as I got out. He stayed put; the only move he made was to lower the one arm to his side. Past him I could see the front door of the house flung wide open, light spilling out from inside. My stomach kicked over; I could taste bile in the back of my throat.

Storm.

I halted a few paces from Faith, the revolver on him belt high. “What’s going on? What’re you doing up here?”

“This isn’t what it looks like.” Eyes flicking from the weapon to my face and back to the weapon. “I’ve only been here a couple of minutes—”

“Not what I asked you. Why were you running?”

“On my way to call for help. I didn’t want to touch anything in there.”

“Where’s Mrs. Carey?”

“Inside. Better look for yourself.”

“Show me. And don’t make any funny moves on the way.”

The hallway lights were on; so were the lights in the front parlor. Faith went in there and off to one side, and when I saw her lying sprawled across the arm of the couch, broken and limp, the silky fan of her hair matted and dark red with blood, the sickness rose hot into my throat; I had to swallow three or four times to keep it down. Storm! Her name, this time, was like a scream in my mind.

“I didn’t do it,” Faith said. “I found her just the way you see her.”

Just the way I saw her. The deep wounds in the back of her skull... white and gray and red, bone and brain tissue and blood. And the thing beside her, flung down and half-hidden by the flare of her skirt, the goddamn thing that had done it... round and heavy, the glass surface all smeared with gore, like an organ that had been torn from inside her body and then cast aside. I tried to make myself go to her, check for a pulse, but it would be futile and I couldn’t bear to touch her like that. I dragged my gaze away, kept it tight on Faith.

He said, “It’s the truth — I found her like that. Not two minutes before you showed up.”

“What’re you doing here?” My voice had a wounded sound, hard and scraped raw.

“I was invited.”

“She invited you?”

“This afternoon. She came out to the place where I’m staying.”

“Just showed up at the Lakeside Resort and invited you to her home.”

“I met her at Gunderson’s last night. She was drunk and she tried to pick me up.”

“Tried?”

“I turned her down.”

“Woman like Storm Carey? Why?”

“I like my bed partners sober. The bartender there can vouch for the way it was.” No expression on his battered face as he spoke. Blood-scabbed cut on his cheek, I noticed then, and it hadn’t been there long. “She came out to the resort to apologize. Her initiative, not mine.”

“And then she invited you to her home.”

“That’s right.”

“At ten-thirty at night.”

“No, she wanted me to come earlier. For dinner, she said.”

“Why would she invite a stranger to dinner?”

“Why do you think? I told you she tried to pick me up last night. You must know the kind of woman she was—”

“Shut up about that. You didn’t know her, you don’t have any idea what kind of woman she was.”

His eyes kept flicking between my face and the revolver. He didn’t like guns pointed at him, that was plain. Afraid of me, the law? “All right,” he said.

“You didn’t come for dinner — why not?”

“Figured she was trouble and I’d be smart not to get involved with her.” His mouth quirked in that non-smile of his. “Looks like I figured right.”

“Why’d you change your mind?”

“I had it changed for me.”

“Yeah? How’d you get that cut on your cheek?”

“Part of what changed my mind. Hassle at the Northlake Cafe a little while ago, not my fault.”

“What kind of hassle?”

“The misunderstanding kind. I did somebody a favor and it got taken the wrong way and I got jumped for it. So I said the hell with it, I might as well get laid before I quit this lousy town. I drove here to see if she was still interested.”

“And?”

“Found her dead just like I said. I passed a car on the road, not far from her driveway. It could’ve come from up here.”

“What kind of car?”

“No idea. I didn’t pay much attention.”

“What color? New or old?”

“I told you—”

“Yeah, you told me,” I said. “I don’t think there was any car. I think you’re trying to throw up a smoke screen, divert suspicion. She was alive when you got here.”

“The hell she was.”

“What’d she do, Faith? Turn you down this time? Tell you she changed her mind, go away and leave her alone?”

“No. She was dead when I—”

“You got mad, you saw red, you picked up the big glass paperweight off the end table there—”

“No.”

“—and hit her with it. Hit her again, crushed her skull, and then threw the paperweight down and ran out in a panic—”

“Look at her, man, she’s been dead longer than a couple of minutes—”

“—and if I hadn’t shown up when I did, you’d’ve been halfway to the Oregon border by now. Isn’t that the way it really went down, Faith?”

“No! You’re not railroading me for this.”

“Nobody’s railroading anybody. All right, let’s go.”

“Go where?”

“Out to the cruiser.”

“You’re arresting me, is that it?”

“Move.”

“You’ve had it in for me ever since I got to this paradise of yours. You and two thirds of the people I’ve run into. I’ve taken as much as I can stand, Novak. I won’t be your fall guy for this.”

“You’ll do as I say, or I swear I’ll put a bullet in your leg and add resisting arrest to the charges. Move!”

His eyes flashed at me a couple of seconds longer, flicked again to my revolver, and then he moved — jerkily, his arms flat against his sides. I backed around to keep a distance between us as he passed through the doorway into the hall. I made myself glance once more at Storm; the image of her was like a burning thing in my mind as I followed Faith outside. I felt sick and torn up inside and half crazy. I loved her, I knew that now. Not the way I loved Eva, but still a fire-in-the-blood kind of love. And now her blood was all over the room in there...

The bar flashers on the cruiser were still going, painting the night and the dark lake water with streaks and glints of red, as if the night were also bleeding. I watched Faith’s back and the palm of my hand began to sweat around the revolver’s handle. No! Not that way! My head ached and there was a grittiness in my eyes; the lids felt stuck down at the corners.

“Stand there in the headlights,” I said to him.

When he obeyed I circled around behind him, transferring the revolver to my left hand, and leaned in through the driver’s window to unhook the radio handset. Verne Erickson had arrived early to relieve Della Feldman; I said when he came on, “I’m at Storm Carey’s house. She’s dead, murdered. Skull crushed, two blows with a glass paperweight. Suspect in custody — John Faith.” My voice still had that wounded sound; it cracked a little once or twice.

Verne said he’d have a backup unit and an ambulance there in a hurry. Calm, professional — and why shouldn’t he be? Nothing personal in it for him.

I replaced the handset and said to Faith, “Come around here, lean against the hood. Weight on your hands, legs back and spread.”

He did what he was told. I patted him down with my free hand. No weapon of any kind.

“All right. Left hand behind your back.”

He did that, too, without hesitation or argument. The revolver was still in my left hand; I reached around with my right to take the handcuffs off my belt.

That was when he made his move.

He shouldn’t have gotten away with it; I knew all the tricks and how to counteract them. But I wasn’t as alert as I should have been — too badly shaken, the image of Storm’s crushed and bloody head still searing my brain. So when he kicked back with his foot he managed to hook my ankle, even though I hopped and sidestepped the way you’re supposed to. Before I could fire he jerked the foot, spinning off the cruiser, and I spun and staggered the other way, off balance but not getting my feet tangled, staying upright.

He came after me, clawing for the gun. I squeezed off a wild shot close to his face, the report like a blow to the eardrums, and then we were in tight together and grappling. He had size and weight and strength advantages, but I wouldn’t let him pry the weapon loose. Never give up your piece. Drummed into our heads at the academy. If a perp gets control of it you’re dead meat. Even when he clubbed me in the face with a rocklike fist, smashed my nose, sent me reeling backward and down and skidding on my ass, I kept possession of the revolver.

I scrambled around, up onto one knee. Blood spurted from my nose, warm and slick and salty on my mouth; some of it got in my eyes, so I couldn’t see him except as a looming figure backlit against the red-swirled sky. I managed to shift the weapon into my right hand, raked my left over my face to clear off some of the blood; still couldn’t see him clearly. I leveled the gun and fired anyway.

Missed.

He was running by then. In a low, stumbling crouch, past the cars and into the tree shadows.

I heaved to my feet, ducking my head against my uniform jacket, blinking furiously. By the time I could see well enough to give chase, he was out of sight. Heading for the lake, I thought, on the lawn toward the lake. I ran that way, sucking in air, and when I got to where the lawn began its gradual downward slope, he was visible again, at an angle to the right of the pier. Nothing in that direction but the black water, a section of rushes, a series of low rock shelves that rose to fifty yards of high ground and then fell away again to the waterline. He’d trapped himself.

I pulled up and steadied my arm and fired another round.

Hit him with that one. He reared up, staggered — but he didn’t go down.

I triggered a third shot. That one was a clear miss: He kept right on running. But he had nowhere to go except up onto the shelves, and when he did that he’d be silhouetted against the sky. I’m a good shot; I wouldn’t miss that kind of target at fifty yards.

Down the lawn, taking the same angle he was. The grass was night-damp and I slipped once, almost fell. When I had my balance I saw him start onto the first shelf... and then at the last second he changed his mind. His only other option was the lake, frigid at night this time of year, too cold for any kind of distance swimming, but either he didn’t realize that or he was consumed by panic. He went straight off the rocky sliver of beach and into the lake in a flat, running dive.

It took me less than a minute to get to where he’d gone in, but as dark as it was I couldn’t make out any sign of him from the water’s edge. I climbed onto the first shelf, then the next, and the next, and I still couldn’t spot him anywhere. Sank to the bottom, dragged down by the weight of his shoes and clothing? Drowned? I climbed higher; as far as I could see the lake’s surface remained unbroken except for wind-made wavelets. With the bullet I’d put into him he couldn’t have made it all the way around the rocks yet, be hidden among the cattails farther down, not unless he was an Olympic-caliber swimmer. He had to’ve gone down.

But I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t make myself believe it.

Sirens had begun to wail in the distance. Or maybe they’d been wailing for some time and I hadn’t been hearing them. The backup unit and the ambulance, close now. Go up and meet them. But I didn’t do it. I stayed put on the rocks, the blood still pouring out of my busted nose, barely even aware of the pain. Thinking of her up there in the house with her skull crushed in, scanning the black water and the muddy shore and not seeing any sign of Faith and still not believing the son of a bitch was as dead as Storm, Storm, Storm, Storm...